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

该奖项支持的研究解决了后种族隔离时期南非共有财产土地使用的环境可持续性问题。具体而言，调查人员将研究资源型商品的非正式市场结构和农村家庭结构如何影响哪些家庭成员（特别是按性别划分）利用哪些共有财产地作为这些商品的来源。这些商品不是种植的农产品，而是最终在非正式的城市市场上出售的手工艺品和药品的材料。调查者将通过对商品的市场特征的初步比较来决定研究的对象是哪些商品。这项研究将追踪从城市非正规市场到农村家庭和土地的生产和销售链中的社会和经济联系。通过与链中每一点参与者的访谈，研究者将构建这些联系及其与特定性别和家庭的商品生产的关系。这项研究的结果将是重要的，因为非农业商品的营销在南非农村家庭的生计中发挥着重要作用，这些土地使用对公共土地的最终环境可持续性的重要性，以及公共土地在后种族隔离南非的农业和重新安置政策中发挥的作用。

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.