Beyond Propietorship: Murphree’s Laws on Community-based Natural Resource Management in Southern Africa

Dr Marshall Murphree is a prominent scholar in the fields of common property theory, rural development, and natural resource management. After graduating from the London School of Economics with a doctorate in social anthropology, he returned home to Zimbabwe to work as a missionary before joining the University of Zimbabwe, where he became director, and subsequently Professor Emeritus, of the Centre for Applied Social Sciences.

Beyond Proprietorship presents a range of contributions to the May 2007 conference held to honour Murphree’s work, and it conveys his central concerns of equality and fairness. The focus is on marginalized people living in poor and remote regions of Zimbabwe, but also includes important discussions about the policy implications of regional tenure regimes, and the place of local resource management in global conservation politics. 

The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the recent history and experience of remote area development, semi-arid agriculture, conservation, and wildlife utilization in southern Africa.