La majorité de la population de Ziguinchor (Sénégal) appartient au groupe diola. Ce sont des 'autochtones' vis-à-vis des gens du nord, en particulier des Wolof, dont la présence paraît liée à l'action de l'État sénégalais et de son administration territoriale. Les pratiques locales sont ainsi dominées par une opposition entre des représentations foncières quasi villageoises des premiers occupants et les conceptions bureaucratiques mises en ouvre par les fonctionnaires de l'État.

What are the key causalities in the linkages between environmental resource scarcity, the non-violent assertion of rights to the environment and the (non) avoidance of violence itself? Focusing on the natural resource land, the author studies three different cases of conflict over land at the local level in Diamar‚, Baba Deli and Kubadje, in the extreme north of Cameroon, from 2001 to 2004, using different sociological, geographical and anthropological methods.

What are the key causalities in the linkages between environmental resource scarcity, the non-violent assertion of rights to the environment and the (non) avoidance of violence itself? Focusing on the natural resource land, the author studies three different cases of conflict over land at the local level in Diamar‚, Baba Deli and Kubadje, in the extreme north of Cameroon, from 2001 to 2004, using different sociological, geographical and anthropological methods.

The papers included in this volume were earlier presented at a conference on the settlement of land claims in Africa, which was held in Amsterdam in September 2003. The papers are written primarily from an anthropological perspective.

Text in Italian. English sum.: This study examines a number of cases in which the people of Ziguinchor, in the Casamance region of Senegal, have been in dispute with the public authorities over the question of access to land in urban areas. These conflicts, however, should not obscure the fact that the citizens of Ziguinchor and the representatives of the Senegalese State generally manage to reach a consensus on questions of urban land use.