A Critical Realist Exploration of Intergenerational Relations to Land in Small Scale Commercial Farming Families, Mushawasha Masvingo, Zimbabwe, 1953-2014
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The land reform process in Zimbabwe has raised critical questions about land with \nregard to ownership and access, productivity of land and the most suitable size of land \n(small scale or large scale). Over a decade after the most recent phase of land reform \nin Zimbabwe, critical questions about land are continually debated in an ever-growing \nliterature on land. These questions span a wide margin, from ownership, access, and \nproductivity to who exactly should benefit from land reform processes. One important \ndebate has centred on the question of whether the primary consideration of land reform \nprocesses should be aimed at addressing the more ideational aspects of land (return \nto ancestral land, land as central to personal identities and the subsequent political \nand social processes of determining who belongs and who is a stranger) or material \nconcerns (relating to questions of food security, livelihood making and the concerns \nwith environmental change). Subsequently, literature dealing with land is often \norganised around a particular theme such as identity, tenure, politics, political \neconomy, livelihoods and questions relating to environmental change. Using the case \nof small scale commercial farming families of Mushawasha in Masvingo Zimbabwe \nwho came to own the land as purchase area farmers as a result of the 1930 Land \nApportionment Act, this thesis constitutes an attempt to integrate multiple approaches \nto the question of land, using a critical realist framework. I argue that the link between \npeople and land, which is explored generationally and in the context of broader \neconomic, political, historical and social change in Zimbabwe, is ever changing and is \ninfluenced by a number of factors. For that reason, viewing the question of land in a \nreductionist fashion from either an ideational or a material paradigm is unsatisfactory. \nWhat this research reveals is that the links between people and land are tempered \nnumerous factors including generation, gender and residential status.
Author: Mukai Ratidzo Jaison
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1030989169