Research area
Historical Namaqualand in the South African/Namibian border region is currently experiencing a new chapter in a long and complex history of changing land use and resource management. The area which includes parts of the Northern Cape in South Africa and the Karas Region in southern Namibia is dissected by the perennial Orange River (Gariep), a vital water artery in an otherwise (semi-)arid landscape. The region has seen a number of different land use and resource management systems over the past 200 years. Increasing global economic integration as well as apartheid-motivated delimitations of commercial farms and labour reserve economies have most prominently influenced land use and the social organisation of society in the region. Currently, large-scale agriculture and nature conservation projects dominate land use in this post-apartheid cross-border region. These large-scale projects are contested by those who claim their own rights to land and land use, among them formerly disadvantaged and often very poor communities living in Namaqualand. Given its diverse history and the often conflictual articulation of multiple land claims the region provides an ideal starting point for an analysis of different narratives around land use and management. Placing these narratives in a broader historical and socio-political perspective furthermore allows for a more balanced discussion of land use that aims to transcend some of the antagonisms between the various stake holders, local, national and international ones.
Project aims
This project is an interdisciplinary joint research endeavour, which aims at developing a feasible, interdisciplinary methodology that merges different data produced by distinct research practices (history, geography, environmental science).
The project examines, firstly, the history of land use, land management and land claims and its changes. Secondly, the project examines how these changes inscribed themselves onto the landscape and how transformations of landscape reflected changes in land use. Pivotal are, for example, environmental changes, especially with regard to soils, vegetation and water resources. In order to account for these diverse short-and long-term transformations, and in an attempt to synthesise their analysis – by transcending disciplinary frameworks - the project develops and deploys multidisciplinary methodological approaches for the purpose of theorising what we call integrated “landscape narratives”.
Central in this respect are interdisciplinary “landscape archives”. By this we mean a conceptual and practical tool which considers the materiality and discursiveness of landscape and hence looks at evidence of landscape narratives and representations, the physical environment (e.g. soil profiles with regard to radionuclide concentration, visual (3-D) data on soil erosion and accumulation etc.), archival documentation (e.g. written, visual and map material), oral (re-) collections and local/indigenous knowledge. We propose such an archive to become an integrated research tool, for example as a (theorised) digital platform and database. Here the purpose is to construct a “landscape archive” that generates and supplies scientific data gathered in close communication with selected local and regional stakeholders, and design it as a tool applicable and accessible beyond the limitations of the research project itself. We regard such a theorised “landscape archive” as a particularly innovative proposition and outcome of the overall research project.
Based on the findings of our research we want to question and reassess current land and resource management regimes and challenge dominant “landscape narratives”. We want to provide a platform to different and differing claims (e.g. those of marginalised communities), which can serve as a basis for future negotiations on sustainable and inclusive land use. This is of particular importance as recent initiatives, such as trans-frontier parks, generally justify their land use policies through references to the environmental and socio-political history of the cross-border landscape that are often rather based on imaginaries than solid evidence. A critical assessment of these recent initiatives will start with the assessment of the archives, histories and bio-geographical contexts to which these initiatives relate themselves and on which policies and livelihoods, resettlement schemes and even climate change politics are designed.
