(3)  I conducted research on topic (3) mentioned above. The field research was carried out on Kapchorwa District, eastern Uganda from Dec. 7, 2003 to Mar. 15, 2004.
          By the 1950s or 1960s, most of the land in the research area was free and people used it for grazing cattle and goats. At that time, conflicts over land utilization occurred only with neighboring ethnic groups. With the spread of intensive maize cultivation, however, individual households began to extend their fields with ox ploughs. At present, almost all the land in the area is occupied, and the holdings have been divided into individual households. People told me that the male head of each household held the land rights, and that his wife utilized the land. However, this does not mean that the land is totally “owned” by the husband. This is different from the European idea of “ownership,” which says that land belongs totally to an individual, as well as from “communal ownership,” which is the antithesis of the above.
          There is a sort of land rights, but these rights can always be disturbed and claimed by others －brothers, wives, kinsmen, neighbors, and tenants.
          Disputes sometimes arise among neighbors over encroachments over field boundaries. The people concerned try to resolve the matters privately, or sometimes in the village court. On the other hand, there are also disputes among family members over land transfers, and in this case the people involved discuss matters in meetings of their kin group. For instance, for the inheritance of family land, people usually say that “a father’s land should be equally divided among his sons,” but problems sometimes arise for various reasons, such as conflicts among sons or wives, for example. At the meetings discussing the dispute, people give their understanding of suitable solutions, the history of the land and the people concerned. Thus, rights over land are not simply an issue of the land itself but involve the daily relationships among the members of household, members of the kin group, or neighbors.

In the course of this research, I obtained the following data concerning land issues:
Survey of land issues in Uganda and the research area through documentary research
(a) Recent literature on land issues at MakerereUniversity library. (b) Judicial precedents at the High Court and District Court, and Land Tribunal in the District, which was established two years ago. (c) Aerial photos of the research area from 1955 and 1990.

Anthropological research in the village
(d) Data on acreages of cultivated fields of all households in the village. (e) Interview data on land transfers among several sample households. (f) Interview data on several cases of conflicts over land holdings. (g) Minutes of an ongoing land case in the Village Court, and (h) Translated discourse of the persons involved in that case.