"This book provides a detailed analysis of how public authority and the state are formed through debates and struggles over property in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Although scarcity may indeed promote exclusivity, the evidence from Ghana shows that when many institutions contend for the right to authorize claims to land, the result of an effort to unify and clarify the law is to intensify competition among these institutions and to weaken their legitimacy. The book explores particularly how state divestiture of land in 1979 encouraged competition between customary authorities and how, as a result, the institution of the earthpriest was revived. Such processes are key to understanding property and authority in Africa."--Jacket.