Daniel Weiner

Community participation and geographic information systems.

Geographic information systems (GIS) and geographic information technologies (GIT) are increasingly employed in research and development projects that incorporate community participation. For example, there are now applications involving indigenous natural resource mapping in arctic and tropical regions within the Americas (Marozas, 1993; Cultural Survival Quarterly, 1995; Bond, this volume). There is also a rapidly growing network of planning professionals interested in how GIS can merge with community participation in the context of neighborhood revitalization and urban planning (Aitkin and Michel, 1995; Craig and Elwood, 1998; Leitner et al., this volume; Sawicki and Peterman, this volume; Talen, 1999, 2000). Environmental groups are experimenting with community GIS applications to promote environmental equity and address environmental racism (Sieber, 2000; Kellog, 1999). Furthermore, NGOs, aid organizations, and governmental agencies are linking communities with geographic information systems as they seek to promote more popular and sustainable development projects (Dunn, et al., 1997; Elwood and Leitner, 1998; Gonzalez, 1995; Harris et al., 1995; Hutchinson and Toledano, 1993; Jordan and Shrestha, 1998; Kwaku-Kyem, 1999; Mitchell, 1997; Obermeyer and Pinto, 1994; Rambaldi, G. and J. Callosa 2000; Weiner, et al., 1995; Weiner and Harris, 1999).

Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication in Developing Countries

The merging of participatory development methods with geo-spatial technologies has come to be known as Participatory GIS and is now an emergent development practice in its own right. PGIS combines a range of geo-spatial information management tools and methods such as sketch maps, participatory 3D models, community-based air photo and satellite imagery interpretation, GPS transect walks and GIS-based cognitive mapping. Participatory GIS implies making GIT&S available to disadvantaged groups in society in order to enhance their capacity in generating, managing, analysing and communicating spatial information. PGIS practice is geared towards community empowerment through measured, demand-driven, user-friendly and integrated applications of geo-spatial technologies. GIS-based maps and spatial analysis thus become major conduits in the process. A good PGIS practice is embedded into long-lasting and locally driven spatial decision-making processes, is flexible, adapts to different socio-cultural and bio-physical environments, depends on multidisciplinary facilitation and skills and builds essentially on visual language. If appropriately utilized, the practice should exert profound impacts on community empowerment, innovation and social change. More importantly, by placing control of access and use of culturally sensitive spatial information in the hands of those who generated them, PGIS practice can protect traditional knowledge and wisdom from external exploitation. Effective participation is the key to good PGIS practice. Whilst the focus of traditional GIS applications is often on the outcome, PGIS initiatives tend to emphasize the processes by which outcomes are attained. At times the participatory process can obfuscate systematic inequalities through unequal and superficial participation. For example, PGIS applications may be used to legitimise decisions which in fact were taken by outsiders. The process can also easily be hijacked by community elites. For PGIS practices to be successful, they must be placed in a well thought out and demand-driven process based on the proactive collaboration of the custodians of local and traditional knowledge and of facilitators skilled in applying PGIS and transferring technical know-how to local actors. Participation thus cuts across the process from gaining a clear understanding of the existing legal and regulatory frameworks, to jointly setting project objectives, defining strategies and choosing appropriate geo-spatial information management tools. The integrated and multifaceted nature of PGIS provides legitimacy for local knowledge and generates a great sense of confidence and pride which prepares participant communities in dealing with outsiders. The process is intended to build self-esteem, raise awareness about pressing issues in the community and produce concrete and sustainable spatial solutions.

Apartheid Representations in a Digital Landscape: GIS, Remote Sensing and Local Knowledge in Kiepersol, South Africa

A GIS is currently being developed for the Kiepersol locality in the Eastern Transvaal which integrates conventional environmental and infrastructural data with nonconventional behavioral and cognitive information. Regional political ecology informs the GIS design in which socially differentiated knowledge sources are brought together. The GIS production process is undertaken with concern for the competing discourses associated with post-apartheid social transformation in South Africa and in full appreciation that geographic information systems are social constructions. The multiple realities of resource access and use represented within the Kiepersol GIS are intended to contribute to democratic decision-making for land and agrarian reform.

Land Use and Agricultural Productivity in Zimbabwe

Given a continuation of current trends, with increasing population growth and declining food production, Southern Africa (excluding South Africa) which could nearly feed itself during 1979–81, will be only 64 per cent self-sufficient by the turn of the century. Zimbabwe has a particularly important role to play in trying to prevent such a disaster. It is by far the most important exporter of food and cash crops in the region, and has been allocated the task of co-ordinating a food-security strategy for the nine member-states of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, namely Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Social differentiation in the communal lands of Zimbabwe

While Zimbabwes smallholder production expansion is well documented, very little is known about social differentiation in the communal lands where most black smallholders live. This article draws on a growing body of post‐independence survey data, as well as the authors’ research and field experiences, to analyse the structure and dynamics of communal land social differentiation. Utilising a framework which focuses on reproduction and accumulation, four primary social classes are identified: petty‐commodity producers; worker‐peasants; lumpen semi‐peasants; and the rural petty‐bourgeoisie. We then propose specific processes which may promote and/or constrain rural class formation and speculate about possible impacts on communal land agrarian politics in the 1990s. Class categories and associated processes are presented as hypotheses for further investigation and discussion, rather than as firm research conclusions.

The politics of land reform in South Africa after apartheid: Perspectives, problems, prospects

Transforming existing land and agrarian relations presents the new democratic South African government with one of its major challenges. Colonial land dispossession and apartheid forced removals lie at the heart of the repressive regime which the national liberation movement sought to overthrow. A decisive transformation of land and agrarian relations is thus intimately bound up with the construction of a new democratic order in South Africa. Expectations in rural areas are very high, and the 1994 election results reveal that with the exception of Natal, there was a massive ANC vote in provinces with a predominantly rural constituency. This offers a major challenge to the ANC, as its capacity to deliver will weigh heavily in future elections, as was the case in the November 1995 local government elections. The commitment to undertake a national programme of land and agrarian reform is likely to be severely constrained by numerous political and economic concerns. This study identifies a variety of political considerations which will constrain or enhance the possibilities for meaningful land and agrarian reform. These are essentially linked to the balance of political forces as they manifest themselves in the process of democratic transformation and are expressed in the nature of the political transition itself, as well as in the character of local organisation, the role of civil society, the constitution of the new government and its bureaucracies, and

(Re) Defining Peri-Urban Residential Space Using Participatory GIS in Kenya

Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for African urban planning and research is now becoming a reality. But there is limited technical expertise and the necessary infrastructure to support local government efforts in data‐poor environments. As a result, the creation of urban geo‐spatial databases have tended to reside in the central government, large municipalities, research institutions, donor funded projects and individual research initiatives. To date, such applications have focused on observable and quantifiable aspects of the urban built environment while experiential information has remained peripheral. This paper employs a participatory GIS approach to integrate community local knowledge with traditional urban spatial data. Our objective is to populate urban‐based geo‐spatial databases for a more robust understanding of quality of life in Athi River town, Kenya. The Athi River GIS includes formal data and local knowledge on land cover, land use, hydrology, topography, infrastructure, industry, service provision, and housing. Community data was obtained through mental mapping, focus group discussions, GPS‐based transect walks, social histories of exclusion, oral narratives of land use, and relevant archival material. The study concludes that GIS in Kenya is being introduced within an empiricist and positivist epistemological and methodological framework. With more focus on the visual and quantifiable aspects of the built environment, the perceptions of disenfranchised peri‐urban communities are being excluded. In the paper, a place‐based (re) definition of residential quality of life is achieved by integrating community local knowledge into a GIS as an information layer. In the study, local knowledge and expert GIS data are thus found to be complementary.

The Agrarian Question and Politics in the 'New' South Africa

New right and neo‐liberal ‘development’ discourses have heavily impacted on the politics of agrarian restructuring in South Africa. Mechanisms for resolving agrarian contradictions are being discussed and presented as abstract planning decisions to be made by agricultural and rural development experts. This legitimation of ‘neo‐classicism’, if unchallenged, will reproduce and support current neo‐apartheid forms of restructuring. In this article, we argue for a process of agrarian transformation where rural political mobilisation and the establishment of viable agricultural production systems are complementary. The paper is not an exercise in proposing specific (top‐down) ‘solutions’ or ‘models’, which has become a recent pre‐occupation in South Africa. Rather, we write with the objective of supporting a process whereby democratic transformation in rural South Africa remains possible.

Socialist transition in the capitalist periphery: A case study of agriculture in Zimbabwe

Abstract Zimbabwes liberation struggle yielded a government publically committed to socialist transition. The plan was for ZANU-PF, the ruling party, to seize control of the state and restructure the economy as part of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. A primary transformation objective was to develop black agriculture through the establishment of producer cooperatives and state farms while increasing support to peasant farmers. Internal and external constraints, international pressure, and a growing class alliance between the black bourgeoisie, white-settler farmers and emergent peasant producers effectively stifled prospects for radical agrarian restructuring. A conservative bi-modal agricultural strategy became the backbone of government policy. Large-scale capitalist agriculture was maintained and supported. A small-farm development effort was increasingly targeted to ‘progressive’ black farmers. At the present time, class formation in Zimbabwes labor reserves is accelerating. Food surpluses have not resulted in improved nutrition nationally. Historical processes of black farm marginalization—particularly in semi-arid regions and amongst unwaged households—continue. Capitalist consolidation of white-settler agriculture is accelerating the substitution of labor for capital at a time when national unemployment is skyrocketing. The capital and land resources necessary to restructure agriculture are monopolized by large-scale capitalist farmers. The development of capitalism in Zimbabwean agriculture is generating growth but intensifying spatial and social agrarian differentiation. This is consistent with classical Marxian interpretations of the agrarian question. It is unlikely that rural Zimbabweans will experience anything resembling a socialist transition in the short-term. But numerous contradictions associated with capitalist agricultural development may ultimately create socio-economic conditions supportive of a socialist economic development strategy. Political pressures for land reform are presently intensifying. In Zimbabwe, the struggle for control of political power and economic resources has shifted from race to class in a very short period of time.

Agricultural transformation in Zimbabwe: Lessons for South Africa after apartheid

Abstract When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, reversing historical inequalities became a primary rural development objective. Growth, it was argued, must also generate greater equity. As part of their overall plan, sophisticated agricultural institutions were made available to black farmers and a land resettlement program enacted. Due to constitutional constraints, international pressure, fears about restructuring the economy too rapidly, and a class alliance between white farmers and an emerging black bourgeoisie, limited highveld land was reallocated and large-scale commercial farmers maintained their historical privileges. The only significant change in the subsector was increased capital intensity of production. Small-scale black farmers with access to good land and productive resources have responded remarkably to new production opportunities. In only 7 years, black production of maize and cotton more than doubled and marketed contributions rose from less than 10% to approximately half of national sales. The pattern of agricultural development, however, is spatially and socially limited. New forms of uneven rural development are emerging. The majority of rural blacks still have inadequate land and off-farm income resources to insure subsistence levels of consumption on an annual basis. The rural crisis persists. In South Africa, a Zimbabwe-type small farm development strategy would help a minority of households who are already relatively privileged in terms of access of land, agricultural capital and off-farm income resources. To achieve rural growth and equity, new forms of social organization in farming must be developed concurrent with a major land redistribution program. Zimbabwes strategy has successfully generated short-term growth but cannot fulfill longer-term rural development objectives.