A sociological analysis of intermediary non-governmental organizations and land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe

The thesis offers an original sociological understanding of intermediary Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the modern world. This is pursued through a study of NGOs and land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe. The prevailing literature on NGOs is marked by a sociological behaviourism that analyses NGOs in terms of external relations and the object-subject dualism. This behaviourism has both ‘structuralist’ and ‘empiricist’ trends that lead to instrumentalist and functionalist forms of argumentation. The thesis details an alternative conceptual corpus that draws upon the epistemological and theoretical insights of Marx and Weber. The epistemological reasoning of Marx involves processes of deconstruction and reconstruction. This entails conceptualizing NGOs as social forms that embody contradictory relations and, for analytical purposes, the thesis privileges the contradiction between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’. In this regard, it speaks about processes of ‘glocalization’ and ‘glocal modernities’ in which NGOs become immersed. The social field of NGOs is marked by ambiguities and tensions, and NGOs seek to ‘negotiate’ and manoeuvre their way through this field by a variety of organizational practices. Understanding these practices necessitates studying NGOs ‘from within’ and drawing specifically on Weber’s notion of ‘meaning’. These practices often entail activities that stabilize and simplify the world and work of NGOs, and this involves NGOs in prioritizing their own organizational sustainability. In handling the tension between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’, NGOs also tend to privilege global trajectories over local initiatives. The thesis illustrates these points in relation to the work of intermediary NGOs in Zimbabwe over the past ten years. Since the year 2000, a radical restructuring of agrarian relations has occurred, and this has been based upon the massive redistribution of land. In this respect, local empowering initiatives have dramatically asserted themselves against globalizing trajectories. These changes have posed serious challenges to ‘land’ NGOs, that is, NGOs involved in land reform either as advocates for reform or as rural development NGOs. The thesis shows how a range of diverse ‘land’ NGOs has ‘handled’ the heightened contradictions in their social field in ways that maintain their organizational coherence and integrity

Reclaiming the land: the resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America

In the early 1990s, Rehman Sobhan (1993) argued that after two decades in which agrarian reform was a global non-event, ‘[vjotaries of agrarian reform’ had been reduced to ‘a fringe group of romantic throwbacks left over from the 1950s and 1960s’ (1993: p.3) He offered a broad overview of post-Second World War experiences in Asia, Latin America and Africa, and distinguished between radical and non-egalitarian reforms in terms of their effect on eliminating class differentiation and modes of domination in the countryside. He concluded by arguing that ‘ [t]he political mobilization needed to realize radical reforms in the contemporary developing world remains elusive’’ (1993: p.133, my emphasis). Nearly ten years later, Deborah Bryceson (2000), after discussing the post-Second World War academic literature on the peasantry, suggested that '[pleasant theory is on the retreat’ (2000: p.29); that it was critical to bring peasants ‘back into theoretical and policy debates’ (2000: p.30); and that the ongoing reproduction of the peasantry in Latin America, Asia and Africa through contradictory processes of formation and dissolution seemed to give them an ‘enduringpresence’ (2000: p.6). She concluded also by referring to an elusiveness, speaking about the multifaceted survival strategies of the peasantry under conditions of global neo-liberalism that make the peasantry - conceptually - ‘more elusive than before’ (2000: p.30, my emphasis). These brief comments on the status of the peasantry and agrarian reform provide an important historical and theoretical backdrop to the volume under review

NGOs and rural movements in contemporary South Africa

This article provides a critical examination of relationships between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and rural movements in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly with regard to the possible subordination of movements to NGOs. In discussing NGOs as a particular organisational form, and in reviewing some arguments pertaining to NGOs and rural movements globally, I explore whether NGOs in South Africa have a progressive role to play in agrarian transformation

Civil society and state-centred struggles

This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses

Imagining Civil Society in Zimbabwe and ‘Most of the World’:

This chapter re-visits the notion of civil society in what Partha Chatterjee (The Politics of the Governed, 2004) calls ‘most of the world’ (beyond the capitalist metropoles) and, in doing so, uses Zimbabwe (and Africa more broadly) as an entry point into the literature on civil society. This chapter consists of four main sections. First, I discuss literature on civil society in Africa which, in the main, dichotomises civil society and the state empirically without any sustained theoretical reflections. Second, I provide an overview of Zimbabwean society and politics over the past decade and the ensuing debate, which in many ways produces a Manichean dualism whereby civil society is equated with progression and the state with regression. Third, I locate this conceptualisation of civil society within the broader international literature on civil society. These three sections, as a whole, highlight slippages in defining and understanding civil society: between civil society as a set of empirically identifiable organisational formations and civil society as a social space marked by civil liberties and voluntary arrangements in bourgeois society. Finally, I reimagine civil society in relation to ‘most of the world’

Liberation movements in power: party and state in southern Africa

In Liberation movements in power, Roger Southall provides a rich and refined account of political transformation in three ex-settler colonies in southern Africa, namely, South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. In particular, he focuses on their former hegemonic national liberation movements, namely, the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Namibia and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) – now ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) – in Zimbabwe, their metamorphism into political parties and party machines, and their ‘capture’ of state power as the dominant political party subsequent to the end of white settler colonialism and the emergence of non-racial democracy. The general conclusion is that democratic ideals and procedures have become subordinated to the dictates of authoritarian restructuring

Marx, Weber and NGOs:

This article offers a sociological understanding of intermediary NGOs in the modern world. In does so by drawing on certain epistemological insights of Marx and Weber, and this entails methodologies of both deconstruction and reconstruction. In arguing against a sociological behaviourism that pervades the NGO literature, the article conceptualises intermediary NGOs as a ‘social form’ embodying contradictory relations. For analytical purposes, the contradiction between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ is brought to the fore

South African marxist state theory: a critical overview

The article provides a critical analysis of Marxist work on the South African state. It first examines the early Poulantzian‐State Derivationist debate on the relation between state and society, and then discusses the ‘new directions’ which focus on the state itself. The sensitivity of the ‘new directions’ to the traditional Weberian concern about state bureaucracy is important for enriching Marxist theory. But the article concludes by suggesting that a comprehensive dialectical Marxist approach to the South African state still awaits development

Book ReviewZimbabwe\'s unfinished business - rethinking land, state and nation in the context of crisis By Amanda Hammar, Brian Raftopoulos and Stig Jensen (eds) 2003

Weaver PressAfrican Sociological Review 2004, 8(2): 180-18

Zimbabwe takes back its land:

Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land offers a useful introduction to fast-track land reform in contemporary Zimbabwe for a broad popular audience unfamiliar with the existing literature on fast-track land reform. But its value as a contribution to a more specialised and nuanced body of knowledge about fast-track is considerably more problematic