Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Political and Economic Impacts of Land Registration and Titling Efforts

土地掠夺是将以前的公共资产私有化和收购的过程，特别是在农村地区，在美国具有战略经济和政治利益的世界地区产生了重大影响。科学研究探索了政府层面这种投机性投资的动机，但对土地登记和所有权实践中正式确定财产的过程的关注要少得多。该项目对毕业生进行严格的、以经验为基础的科学田野调查方法的培训，考察了历史上受到各种不同的、有时是相互竞争的土地登记和所有权做法影响的背景。除了为研究生提供严格的、有经验的科学实地考察方法方面的培训提供资金外，还将制定这一案例研究的结果并与国际学者和组织分享，从而加强国际科学合作。约翰霍普金斯大学博士生保罗·科尔布里将在黛博拉·普尔博士的指导下，对约旦河西岸的土地登记工作进行民族志和历史研究。他将探讨约旦、以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构的土地登记项目如何建立私有财产并改变农村地区的政治和经济生活。这项研究依赖于约旦档案的数据、巴勒斯坦村庄的口述历史、对官僚、律师、商人和土地登记人员的采访，以及对正在进行的土地登记项目的观察。他的假设是，约旦和以色列的土地登记使私有财产成为围绕农地所有权的民族主义政治冲突的核心。然而，过去几十年来，巴勒斯坦农业产量的长期下降削弱了农业的经济和政治意义。这项研究有助于了解巴勒斯坦权力机构目前的土地所有权努力是如何在围绕出售农业土地的地方和全国冲突的背景下展开的，并改变了巴勒斯坦政府与其臣民之间以及以色列人与巴勒斯坦人之间的关系。通过对构成土地登记的各种过程的仔细关注，他的研究试图扩展目前关于土地私有化和土地变化的社会科学文献。这项研究还加深了我们对巴勒斯坦和中东的理解，并采用了一种侧重于经济因素而不是文化或宗教因素的方法。最后，它为学者和政策制定者经常忽视的以巴冲突中平凡的、日常的法律、社会和技术方面提供了新的线索。

Land grabs, the process through which formerly public assets are privatized an acquired, particularly in rural areas, have had significant impacts in areas of the world in which the U.S. has a strategic economic and political interest. Scientific research has explored the motivations for such speculative investments at the government level, but there has been significantly less focus on the process through which property is formalized in land registration and titling practices. This project, which trains a graduate in methods of rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, examines a context historically impacted by varied, and sometimes competing, land registration and titling practices. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in methods of rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, findings from this case study would be developed and shared with international scholars and organizations, thereby increasing international scientific cooperation. Johns Hopkins University doctoral student Paul Kohlbry, with the direction of Dr. Deborah Poole, will undertake an ethnographic and historical study of land registration efforts in the West Bank. He will explore the ways in which Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian Authority land registration projects have instituted private property and transformed political and economic life in rural areas. This research relies on data from the Jordanian archives, oral histories in Palestinian villages, interviews with bureaucrats, lawyers, businessmen and land registration personnel, and observation of an ongoing land registration project. His hypothesis is that Jordanian and Israeli land registration made private property central to nationalist political conflicts which revolved around the ownership of agricultural land. However, the long decline of agricultural production in Palestine over the past decades has lessened agriculture's economic and political significance. The research contributes to understanding how current land titling efforts by the Palestinian Authority unfold in the context with local and national conflicts around the sale of agricultural land and transform the relationship between the Palestinian government and its subjects and between Israelis and Palestinians. By giving careful attention to the various processes that constitute land registration, his research seeks to expand current social science literature on land privatization and agrarian change. This study also deepens our understanding of Palestine and the Middle East and adopts a methodology that focuses on economic, rather than cultural or religious factors. Finally, it sheds new light on the mundane, everyday legal, social and technical aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict that are often missed by scholars and policy makers.