List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Foreword
Keith Hart

Introduction. Land, Finance, Technology: Perspectives on Mortgage Lending
Daivi Rodima-Taylor

PART I: SITUATING LAND MORTGAGE IN TIME AND SPACE

Chapter 1. The Glittering Mortgage, the Vanishing Farm: Enticement, Entrustment, Entrapment
Parker Shipton

Chapter 2. A Brief Legal and Social History of Mortgage
David J. Seipp

Chapter 3. Land Tenure: From Fiscal Origins to Financialization
Michael Hudson

Part II: Mortgage as Cultural Export: Land, Family, and the State

Chapter 4. Inheriting Debt: Legal Pluralism, Family Politics, and the Meaning of Wealth in Ghana
Sara Berry

Chapter 5. Tales of Mortgage, Risk, and Taxation in Rural Senegal
Kristine Juul

Chapter 6. Signs of Trouble: Land, Loans, and Investments in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda
Mette Lind Kusk and Lotte Meinert

Part III: Old Rules and New Twists: Reinventing and Resisting Land Financialization

Chapter 7. Reinventing Land Mortgage in Post-Socialist Europe: The Romanian Case
Stefan Dorondel, Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Marioara Rusu

Chapter 8. Distressed Publics: Circumventing the Mortgage from South Africa to Ireland
Nate Coben and Melissa K. Wrapp

Chapter 9. Governing the Old City: Land Records, Digitization, and Liquidity in Lahore
Tariq Rahman

Part IV: Coming Full Circle: Hopes, Ideologies, and Life on the Ground

Chapter 10. Mortgage Credit as an Instrument of Economic Growth in Colonial Massachusetts, 1642-1777
Winifred B. Rothenberg

Chapter 11. When Land Takes Wing: The Concentration of Holdings and the Human-Animal Dimension
Parker Shipton

Conclusion: Envoi
Parker Shipton

Index

Land and the Mortgage

History, Culture, Belonging

Edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton

Foreword by Keith Hart

324 pages, 19 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-80073-348-0 Hb Published (February 2022)

eISBN 978-1-80073-349-7 eBook

Details

“The topic is original, and the breadth and scope are very impressive. The intended historical depth and the geographical reach makes the book interesting for a very wide audience. Rodima-Taylor and Shipton have an eye for the institutional tidal wave as well as its counter-currents and imaginative variations over time and space, as they unpack the history of modernity through the mortgage.” • Christian Lund, University of Copenhagen

“Land and the Mortgage is an outstanding collection that offers timely comparative and historical analysis of mortgage lending from a human economy perspective. Distinguished anthropologists, historians, economists, and legal scholars focus on the sociality of debt and the embeddedness of mortgage lending in sociopolitical relations. Ranging across continents and millennia, this engaging volume will be essential reading for any study of financialization processes, land titling, credit practices, debt relations, and the cultural history and political economy of land.” • Angelique Haugerud, Rutgers University

The mortgaging of land is not just economic and legal but also social and cultural. Here, anthropologists, historians, and economists explore origins, variations, and meanings of the land mortgage, and the risks to homes and livelihoods. Combining findings from archives, printed records, and live ethnography, the book describes the changing and problematic assumptions surrounding mortgage. It shows how mortgages affect people on the ground, where local forms of mutuality mix with larger bureaucracies. The outcomes of mortgage in Africa, Europe, Asia, and America challenge economic development orthodoxies, calling for a human-centered exploration of this age-old institution.

Daivi Rodima-Taylor is Researcher and Lecturer at the African Studies Center of the Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University. She has conducted longitudinal field research in East Africa, and co-edited special issues of numerous journals. Her work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Parker Shipton is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies, Boston University. Educated at Cornell, Oxford, and Cambridge, he has taught at Harvard and consulted for several international aid agencies. He is also the former President of the Association for Africanist Anthropology.

Series: Volume 9, The Human Economy

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Area:

LC: HG5095 .L36 2022

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; BUS054030 BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Real Estate/Mortgages; BUS054010 BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Real Estate/Buying & Selling Homes

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Land and the Mortgage

History, Culture, Belonging

Edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton

Foreword by Keith Hart

Related Link: Berghahn Blog

Series: Volume 9, The Human Economy

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Area:

Home -> Title

Contents

Land and the Mortgage

History, Culture, Belonging

Edited by Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton

Foreword by Keith Hart

Related Link: Berghahn Blog

Series: Volume 9, The Human Economy

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Area: