"Where We Used to Plough"

This book offers a historically and ethnographically informed case study of environmental governance, institutional and land-use change, and livelihood strategies in South Africa. Based on rich archival material, the author reconstructs how the state invented a degradation narrative and used it as legitimation for the regulation of human-environment relations during the 20th century. In addition, the study investigates how people today make a living in a post-agrarian society characterised by low agricultural production, diversification of non-farm incomes, and declining population numbers.

Christiane Naumann is a lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne.