Sara Berry's article on Asante, Ghana highlights the centrality of propertization to the agenda of privatization (“Tomatoes, Land and Hearsay: Property and History in Asante in the Time of Structural Adjustment.” World Development. 25:8, pp. 1225-1241, 1997).

The problem of the article is framed by what seems like a bewildering turn-around of international lending institutions – first, through SAPs, they pushed for market liberalization, and now they are pushing for firmer state controls and regulations -- in particular getting the state into land enclosures and privatization. Berry contends that both actions are undertaken in order to promote "Democracy," i.e. "agricultural productivity" and "sustainable development," but both strategies of imposed property rights regimes fail to address the real issue: “Calls for privatization continue, despite accumulated evidence that transfers of ownership do not necessarily transform patterns of resource management” (1226).