The Question of Common-Access Lands and Sustainable Rural Development in South Africa

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

SBR-9709456 Haripriya Rangan University of Kentucky The research supported by this award addresses the issue of environmental sustainability of common-property land uses in post-apartheid South Africa. Specifically, the investigator will study the ways in which the structures of the informal markets for resource-based commodities and of rural households influence which members (especially by gender) of which households make use of which common-property sites as sources of these commodities. The commodities are not cultivated farm products, but rather, materials for crafts and medicines to be sold eventually in informal urban markets. The investigator will determine which commodities to make the subject of study from preliminary comparison of commodities' market characteristics. The research will proceed by tracing the social and economic linkages in the chain of production and marketing from urban, informal markets to rural households and land. Through interviews with participants at each point in the chain, the investigator will construct these linkages and their relationship to the gender- and household-specific production of commodities. The findings of the research will be important because of the large role that the marketing of non-cultivated commodities plays in the livelihoods of rural South African households, the importance of these land uses to the ultimate environmental sustainability of common lands, and the role that common lands play in agrarian and resettlement policies in post-apartheid South Africa.