Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority Thomas Sikor and Christian Lund ABSTRACT In this introduction we argue that access and property regarding natural re- sources are intimately bound up with the exercise of power and authority. The process of seeking authorizations for property claims also has the effect of granting authority to the authorizing politico-legal institution. In conse- quence, struggles over natural resources in an institutionally pluralist context are processes of everyday state formation. Through the discussion of this theoretical proposition we point to legitimizing practices, territoriality and violence as offering particular insights into the recursively constituted rela- tions between struggles over access and property regarding natural resources, contestations about power and authority, and state formation. INTRODUCTION: THE ARGUMENT As larger political economic forces transform rural resources of material or cultural value, access to these resources is often contested and rife with con- flict at many levels simultaneously. In societies characterized by normative and legal pluralism such as post-colonial and post-socialist countries, this is particularly evident. The central dynamic is created by people’s attempts to secure rights to natural resources by having their access claims recognized as legitimate property by a politico-legal institution. The process of recogni- tion of claims as property simultaneously works to imbue the institution that provides such recognition with the recognition of its authority to do so. This is the ‘contract’ that links property and authority. Property is only property if socially legitimate institutions sanction it, and politico-legal institutions are only effectively legitimized if their interpretation of social norms (in this case property rights) is heeded (Lund, 2002). The process of seeking The articles in this issue of Development and Change originate from a researcher training work- shop jointly organized by the Junior Research Group on Postsocialist Land Relations, Humboldt University Berlin, and the Graduate School of International Development Studies, Roskilde University, in late 2006. Funding for the workshop was provided by Deutsche Forschungsge- meinschaft and Roskilde University. We thank Sara Berry, Anne Larson and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this introductory essay. This essay has also bene- fited from very stimulating discussions with the workshop participants and contributors to this issue. Development and Change 40(1): 1–22 (2009). C  Institute of Social Studies 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA