About
Terminology and concepts
Thinking about tenure perspectives across rural and urban situations highlights that a problem exists with terminology, which unhelpfully and inaccurately polarizes descriptions of reality. This problem is merely a symptom of deeper, underlying problem of duality, which occurs at different levels.
- the terminology tends to privilege "formal" over "informal" as though formalisation is the ultimate solution.
- the term "informal" is suggestive of a disorganized, even chaotic or anarchic "other", which is at odds with what is often a complex, well organized and regulated set of rules and procedures
- indicates a false polarisation, more appropriately represented as a continuum in which the situation is moving towards more informality or more formality.
The terms "legal" and "extra-legal" are sometimes offered as a more constructive alternative to “formal” and “informal”. While this is useful, there is the continued problem in the language that the implied solution lies in “legalisation” of the extra-legal in the sense that Hernando de Soto employs the term, meaning that the “solution” lies in legalisation. Social legitimacy at a local level, as mentioned above, is regarded by many as being as important, if not more important, than the formalities of the law. These terms are therefore all contingent and do not provide ultimate solutions to the problem of terminology.
Some tenure systems defined as "formal" have in reality become informal over time. This happens when the property information in situations where the state has intervened to bring people into registered system (e.g. township-type layouts) has declined to such an extent that people with registered tenure, such as ownership evidenced in a title deed, once more find themselves regulating their property informally. This process is sometimes call "deformalisation" or reversion to locally optimal systems. This happens when rights holders are unable to use, access and afford the system, i.e. the system becomes unsustainable. While some systems defined as "informal" in reality display more robust characteristics than the legal system.
In an effort to address some of these terminological issues, Leap has developed a glossary of definitions for using various terms in our work.