Land rush: simulating negotiations over land rights
(2014) Simulation & Gaming : an international journal of theory, design and research —
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- LAND RUSH is a board game that enables players to critically assess how investors from different social classes are presented with different kinds of opportunities and constraints as they try to acquire land and to manage it sustainably in a highly competitive environment. The game reflects three characteristics of contemporary land dynamics in a changing world. First, it illustrates that smallholder farming is oriented largely towards risk spreading, while current agrarian policies of international and national policymakers tend to be geared towards production maximization and commercialization. Second, it shows how the rules of play in the land arena are not unequivocally defined, but are subject to change in a context of legal pluralism. Third, it demonstrates that access to and exclusion from land depend on a process of interaction and competition between actors possessing unequal power and resources. Better-off actors have a comparative advantage in asserting their land rights, but poorer actors still exert agency, albeit in constrained ways.
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Ansoms, A., Bogaerts, O., Claessens, K., & Geenen, S. (2014). Land rush: simulating negotiations over land rights. Simulation & Gaming : an international journal of theory, design and research. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/32593