Call
for Abstracts
Reflections on South Africa’s Agrarian Questions after 20
years of Democracy
Centre
for African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP 14/15 AUGUST
2014
The Centre for African
Studies at the University of Cape Town will be hosting an international
workshop which will reflect on South Africa’s land and agrarian questions 20
years after the advent of democracy in South Africa. The workshop will be held
in the Centre for African Studies gallery on 14 and 15 August 2014.
We invite scholars
working on agrarian change, land reform, farm workers, rural development,
social movements, trade unions, nature conservation, or eco-tourism in South
Africa to submit an abstract. We specifically encourage young and upcoming
scholars with fresh empirical and/or
ethnographic material to participate in this event. This includes scholars who
have recently completed their PhDs and Phd students in the final stages of their
project. The main objective of the workshop is to discuss and share a broad
range of themes and explore how new material contributes to and refreshes
mainstraim debates in contemporary agrarian scholarship.
The output of the
workshop will be to publish a selection of the high quality papers presented in
a special issue with a relevant academic journal. To make this possible,
presenters must submit a full paper.
Why this workshop now?
After 20 years of
democracy, and 20 years of market-led land reform in South Africa, land and
agrarian questions remain unresolved. This in many ways is evidenced by the
increasingly rising discontent among landless people and the poor; ongoing
“service delivery protests”, the farm worker “uprisings” in the Western Cape,
Marikana shootings, the housing struggles waged by Abahlali Basemjondolo and the emergence of former ANC Youth League
President, Julius Malema and his Ecomic Freedom Fighters who are now
articulating grassroots struggles demanding economic justice. These expressions
of frustration and demands for social justice and transformation have been met
by violent repression by the post-apartheid state and indicate the urgent need
to address the process of transformation in South Africa.
In this context, South
Africa’s land and agrarian questions are a relevant and timely matter. There is
little doubt that post-apartheid governments have spectacularly failed to
redress distorted land ownership patterns and agrarian relations that were
inherited from colonialism and apartheid and continue under neo-liberal
capitalism. This thus calls for reflections on ongoing debates on the meanings
of land, agriculture, and land-based livelihoods in post-apartheid society. Some
scholars have reduced the agrarian question to an agrarian question of labour,
while others have envisaged repeasantisation as an important outcome of
redistributive land reform which can address poverty. Our aim is to reflect,
rethink, reconceptualise and reimagine land and agrarian questions.
We welcome papers
on one or more of the following themes:
§ The state of land reform in
South Africa. What are the outcomes of land reform so
far (restitution, redistribution, tenure reform)? How do land beneficiaries
make sense of land reform and how has it transformed their lives and the lives
of those around them? We hope for contributions of local rural and urban case-studies
from different regions, life histories, livelihoods, identity and belonging.
§ Processes of Agrarian change.
Does South Africa have a peasantry? To what extent do land and agriculture
contribute to (rural) livelihoods in South Africa? Do poor citizens want land,
or jobs, or both? How do we conceptualise and think of people who combine
wages, entrepreneurship, and land-based livelihoods? Nature conservation,
tourism, agro-bussinesses, fair trade, organic farming.
§ Farm workers. Labour
questions. Proletarianization. Organization of labour, wages, labour struggles,
unions.
§ Grassroots perspectives.
What is the role of social movements and NGOs in articulating and representing
South Africa’s land and agrarian questions?
§ South Africa’s Democratic State. The politics of land and agriculture
in national and global perspective. Policy-making debates.
§ Theory.
In what ways can we articulate and think of South Africa’s agrarian questions?
What theoretical questions and insights emerge from South Africa’s agrarian
questions?
§ Engaged scholarship.
The link between academic debates and activism (action research?!), policy
formulation, issues of representation, positionality of researchers.
Deadline for
Abstracts is 15 February 2014 and 1 July
2014 for the full paper. Abstracts should not be more than 300 words and
papers should be within the 8000 word limit. For submission of abstracts, papers and queries, please do not hesitate to email: agrarianquestions@gmail.com
Organizers:
Grasian Mkodzongi, A.C. Jordan
Post-Doctoral Fellow: A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies and Femke Brandt, Post-doc fellow: NRF Research
Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa.
