Real acts, imagined landscapes
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Date
2011
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)
Abstract
Why do we want land and agrarian reform? Why should its policies be supported? Much can be said about its stated purposes and goals, but why do those goals matter — and to whom? If, as James Ferguson remarked earlier in this colloquium (Ferguson 2011), ‘land’ can have a multitude of functions — if it is true that we can’t just assume we know what ‘land’ is for — do we necessarily know what ‘land reform’ is for?
Perhaps, following Ferguson, we could think of land reform itself as rather like one of John Austin’s ‘speech acts’. Austin thought we could learn a lot by exploring just how many things we can ‘do with words’ (Austin 1962): perhaps the same is true of land reform itself.
Description
Keywords
South Africa, Land reform, Agrarian reform
Citation
du Toit, A., 2011. Real acts, imagined landscapes. Cape Town: Institute for Poverty Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS).