A collection of studies about rural people in Zimbabwe: women, traders, food producers, children and labour migrants; what they do, and how they manage their resources - land, capital, knowledge and markets - in competition and co-operation with others. Particular attention is given to the tensions arising between the rural people themselves and other actors in rural development and interested parties, for example the short term need for food and fuel security against sustainable development and the environmental agenda; and the importance of addressing the social dimensions of the increasing...

Drawing on original data, secondary literature, aerial photographs and archives, this book analyzes changes in the use of the landscape and the nature of rural livelihoods in two South African villages. Taking an interdisciplinary approach on how livelihoods and landscapes in the Eastern Cape link the text provides a comprehensive study of the patterns of land use over time. Three separate chapters focus on cropping and cultivation practices, livestock and foraging as well as the gathering of wild plants. The book gives a vivid picture of the social dynamics and the interaction between...

Debates the emergent proprieties of rural and peri-urban South Africa since land and agrarian reforms were initiated after the transition to democracy in 1994. This book explores how these reforms have broadened options for the use of land and natural resources.

Notions of land and agrarian reform are now well entrenched in postapartheid South Africa. But what this reform actually means for everyday life is not clearly understood, nor the way it will impact the political economy. "In the Shadow of Policy" explores the interface between the policy of land and agrarian reform and its implementation and between the decisions of policy "experts" and actual livelihood experiences in the fields and homesteads of land reform projects. Starting with an overview of the sociohistorical context in which land and agrarian reform policy has evolved in South...

This book focuses on empirical experiences related to market development, and specifically new markets with structurally different characteristics than mainstream markets. Europe, Brazil, China and the rather robust and complex African experiences are covered to provide a rich multidisciplinary and multi-level analysis of the dynamics of newly emerging markets. Rural Development and the Construction of New Markets analyses newly constructed markets as nested markets. Although they are specific market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different...