In the Shadow of Policy: Everyday Practices in South African Land and Agrarian Reform

A detailed history of how agrarian reform has manifested in South Africa and how it will progress into the future. In the Shadow of Policy explores the interface between the policy of land and agrarian reform and its implementation and between the decisions of policy "experts" and actual livelihood experiences in the fields and homesteads of land reform projects. Starting with an overview of the sociohistorical context in which land and agrarian reform policy has evolved in South Africa, the volume presents empirical case studies of land reform projects in the Northern, Western, and Eastern Cape provinces. These draw on multiple voices from various sectors and provide a rich source of material and critical reflections to inform future policy and research agendas. Notions of land and agrarian reform are now well entrenched in postapartheid South Africa. But what this reform actually means for everyday life is not clearly understood, nor the way it will impact the political economy.

Paul Hebinck is an associate professor of sociology of rural development at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and an adjunct professor at the University of Fort Hare, Alice, South Africa. He is the coauthor of Reforming Land and Resource Use in South Africa: Impact on Livelihoods and Rural Development and the Construction of New Markets. Ben Cousins is a professor and a Department of Science and Technology/National Research Foundation (DST/NRF) research chair in Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) as the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He founded PLAAS in 1995 and directed it from its inception until September 2009.