The article re-examines the principles of land tenure in West Africa, showing in particular that it was the principle of transfer that metamorphosed personal property into common family property. Commonly owned properties were effectively protected from theft by the threat of magic sanctions but only in as far the belief in their effectiveness was shared. Today, it is respect of the shared code of honour and shame, more than the law, that guarantees the reciprocal execution of contractual obligations of exchange. But while the violent commodification of ancestral fields is being translated into intense land speculation and the illegal privatization of public space, normative proliferation supports the right of the richest and continues to increase the severity of conflicts about land
