Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Land and Agrarian Studies)
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Item Conundrums of food governance in South African metropoles(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Kroll, FlorianThis thesis reflects on the discourse and practice of urban food governance in the city of Cape Town, considered from the point of view of a Foucauldian analysis of deliberative statecraft. The focus is on the ways in which metropolitan governments have tried to make food systems visible and galvanise strategic intent to govern them. Food systems governance discourse (FSGD) lies at the heart of these efforts. It interprets food systems issues as a wicked problem requiring adaptive governance. How does food systems problematisation inform governmental institutions, policies and rationalities? What are the resulting limitations and affordances of FSGD? To explore these questions, it distils insights from five papers. The first paper, “Mapping obesogenic food environments in South Africa and Ghana: Correlations and Contradictions” (Kroll et al 2019), considers a spatial strategy to problematise food environments. This reveals that, in Khayelitsha, formal shopping centres present problematic food environments, while street traders make healthier options more accessible. Although the key role of poverty highlights the need for interventions beyond food systems, the paper argues that food environments are an appropriate target for governance. Legibilising foodscapes promotes coherent institutional agendas, enabling the state to apply spatial governance instruments to food issues. In the second paper, “Digital storytelling for policy impact: perspectives from co-producing knowledge for food system governance in South Africa” (Adelle, Black and Kroll 2022) the focus of problematization is on how vulnerable people unfold agency in adverse food environments. The paper recounts an intervention that includes actor perspectives in deliberative processes. We argue that participants’ stories impact governance actors’ subjectivities, deepening their understanding and supporting shared agenda-setting. “Agroecology and the metropolitan biopolitics of food in Cape Town and Johannesburg” (Kroll 2021) explores state capabilities to promote agro-ecological transitions. It finds poor alignment between the rationalities and institutions of government and ‘deep, just transition’. However, the presence of sympathetic officials presents opportunities for alliances to reorient instruments of government. The paper argues for persistent strategic engagement between officials and agro-ecological proponents.Item Blue economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas: the case of Mtwara coast, Tanzania(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Mtui, Rose Sallema; Isaacs, MoeniebaThis thesis explores Blue Economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas. It examines whether fishing communities are gaining or losing from investments in the marine park areas; and unpacks the dilemmas that authorities face when they promote investments while protecting communities’ livelihoods at the same time. The study futher assesses the role of the state in supporting communities’ livelihoods. The thesis draws on the literature on the political ecology of natural resource governance and blue and green economies. It expands the scholarly debates around the logic behind blue economy, and its impacts on fishing communities’ livelihoods and the environment at large. It locates its discussion on Harvey’s theorisation of the accumulation by dispossession (AbD) and on Issa Shivji’s articulations of AbD and displacement. Several conceptual insights including governmentality, displacement, livelihood and vulnerability, local livelihoods (referring to Dorward’ aspirations), criminalisation of livelihood and ecological crisis are used to explain the logic behind blue economy in Mtwara, Tanzania and how investment activities impact communities’ livelihoods and the environment.Item Land, livelihoods and belonging on redistributed land of former labour tenants in South Africa(Universty of the Western Cape, 2024) Yeni, SithandiweThis thesis explores what happens to the lives of the ‘relative surplus population’ when they repossess land in the context of neoliberal capitalism characterised by the crisis of social reproduction. It explains how land repossession has shaped tenure arrangements, livelihoods, and notions of belonging among the former labour tenants and their descendants. It draws on Marxist and feminist political economy theories and applies the concepts of racial capitalism and belonging. The combination of these theories and concepts, such as primitive accumulation, relative surplus population, social reproduction, gendered labour, belonging and racism, helps to explain the history of land dispossession and its outcomes and the position of working-class women in the process. I use these theoretical tools and concepts to analyse contemporary processes of agrarian change under neoliberal capitalism. The research was conducted in Mhlopheni in KwaZulu-Natal province, using qualitative and quantitative research methods. This was done through a survey of 32 out of 41 households, 25 life histories, nine focus groups, and 56 in-depth interviews, mainly between 2021 and 2022. Additional telephonic interviews were conducted between 2023 and 2024. Respondents included people living in Mhlopheni, predominantly former labour tenants and their descendants, government officials, land activists and people who currently and previously worked at the land rights nongovernment organisation that supports former labour tenants in this region. This data was supplemented with the literature.Item Generational dynamics of commercial farming in highland Kenya(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Hakizimana, CyriaqueDebates on the role of commercial farming as a key driver for agrarian change are well established in the agrarian scholarly field. however, they tend to focus on the class and gender dimensions. generational aspects of commercial farming and their implications for rural livelihoods for young people are neglected in this vast literature. this dissertation seeks to fill this gap. it seeks to understand drivers that shape inclusion in and exclusion from commercial farming, outcomes for rural youth, their responses, and how they are gendered. the research presented in this dissertation was conducted in timau region of meru county in kenya. timau was one of the 237 settlement schemes that formed part of the kenyatta-era public schemes programme known as the “million-acre settlement scheme” that redistributed formerly european-owned large-scale capitalist farms to develop a smallholder agricultural sector in kenya. intersecting dynamics of generation, gender, and class determine who has access to agrarian resources, and who benefits from them. this dissertation argues that the limitation of young people’s access to agrarian resources is linked with generational dynamics in land acquisition within the household. the interplay of these factors creates processes of unequal gender and generational distribution of agrarian resources. the youth land scarcity identified in this dissertation, therefore, is proposed to be generationally manufactured to shield and protect the patriarchs’ own socio-economic benefits from commercial farming. generation, gender, and class social relations are important composite elements of the generationally manufactured land scarcity, and their intersection determines the form of young people’s inclusion in or exclusion from commercial farming.Item Blue economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas: The case of Mtwara Coast, Tanzania(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Mtui, Rose Sallema; Isaacs, MoeniebaThis thesis explores Blue Economy investments and injustices around marine protected areas. It examines whether fishing communities are gaining or losing from investments in the marine park areas; and unpacks the dilemmas that authorities face when they promote investments while protecting communities’ livelihoods at the same time. The study futher assesses the role of the state in supporting communities’ livelihoods. The thesis draws on the literature on the political ecology of natural resource governance and blue and green economies. It expands the scholarly debates around the logic behind blue economy, and its impacts on fishing communities’ livelihoods and the environment at large. It locates its discussion on Harvey’s theorisation of the accumulation by dispossession (AbD) and on Issa Shivji’s articulations of AbD and displacement. Several conceptual insights including governmentality, displacement, livelihood and vulnerability, local livelihoods (referring to Dorward’ aspirations), criminalisation of livelihood and ecological crisis are used to explain the logic behind blue economy in Mtwara, Tanzania and how investment activities impact communities’ livelihoods and the environment. It highlights the current blue injustice work and debates on blue economy which are deeply embedded in neo-liberal policies that explain pathways of resource use and communities’ livelihoods.