Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Changing livelihoods: the Free State, 1990s |
Author: | Murray, Colin |
Year: | 2000 |
Periodical: | African Studies |
Volume: | 59 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 115-142 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | household income rural households Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/713650975 |
Abstract: | The first section of this paper offers a reaction to the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods paradigm advocated by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), in the light of the author's own experience of investigation of changing livelihoods in the Orange Free State through the 1990s, and of the key objectives of a DfID project undertaken in South Africa entitled Multiple Livelihoods and Social Change. The second section discusses two examples of household survey work carried out in the Free State (on land needs and land tenure reform). The third section presents four case studies, each illustrative of changes of livelihood in the Free State during the 1990s. The argument is that such detailed in-depth studies are a valuable supplement or an essential alternative to the combination of participatory methods and small-scale sample surveys. The case studies deal with what has happened to ex-farmworkers and their families; who has benefited from land redistribution; who has bought land privately; and who has been using privately-owned land. Investigation of changing livelihoods requires both macro-context and specific history of individuals' working lives. Neither survey work nor research in any one community captures the diversity of livelihoods at any one time or the changes in combinations of modes of livelihood that take place over time. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |