Introduction: Drastic Rural Changes in the Age of Land Reform

This introductory chapter presents the objectives and interests of the book as well as important topics that will be addressed in the following chapters. The main purpose of the book is to reflect upon the meanings of drastic African rural changes by analysing recent land reform. Whereas the stated objectives of land reform were relatively similar, that is, strengthening the land rights of users, the experiences of rural change in Africa in the same period have been quite diverse. In this context, this book conducts a comparative analysis, with in-depth case studies to seek reasons that have brought about different outcomes. From the second to fourth sections, we provide an overview of the characteristics of customary land tenure, the pressure over, and change in, African land, and backgrounds of recent land tenure reform. The fifth section considers what land reform has brought to African rural societies. It is evident that land reform has accelerated the commodification of African customary lands. In addition, the political implications of land reform will be examined. The case studies in this book will clarify some types of relationships between the state and traditional leaders, such as collusion, tension, and subjugation. It is likely that these relationships are closely related to macro-level political order and state–society relations, but further in-depth research is required to understand these issues.

Development of the My Cult-Rural Toolkit

The EU H2020 RURITAGE project takes 20 case studies, considered to be Role Models (RMs) of successful heritage-led rural regeneration from Europe, to analyze them and transfer knowledge and learning to a network of Replicators (Rs). To quantify the success of these RURITAGE interventions, a monitoring framework has been developed which includes a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and a co-monitoring program. This program takes a bottom-up approach working with key stakeholders to understand their values. The My Cult-Rural Toolkit described in this paper has been designed and developed to support the co-monitoring program. The toolkit includes various methods allowing expert and non-expert engagement with the landscape valuation process through embodied and situated approaches. All the co-monitoring tools share the principle of gathering data through real-time interaction in the place of interest, following principles of the embodied approach to ecosystems’ valuation. The toolkit employs both participatory hands-on workshops (Mini-Landscapes, Object Mapping, and Walking Maps) for in-depth understanding of values attached with landscape, and digital mobile apps (Rate my View App and Landscape Connect App) for exploratory, participatory mapping. This paper describes the toolkit and discusses benefits and limitations of its usage in the context of co-monitoring of cultural and natural heritage (CNH) inspired rural change.

The Other Agrarian Urbanisation: Urbanism in the Village

This article considers a range of early 20th-century projects in which rural space was made subject to an ensemble of institutional forms and practices grounded in emergent urban paradigms. The projects in rural reconstruction I consider here seized on village space and the minds and souls of villagers as their terrain of operation. Rural reconstruction entailed the production of intimate knowledge of the rural population, the development of affective modes of engagement with them, and investments of governmental power not only in state institutions but in more abstract concepts like the ‘rural community’. Many projects were largely propagandistic; their concrete effects were minimal. But rural reconstruction brought urban logics, objects, and institutional forms directly into village milieus in ways that continue to shape how India’s urban and rural areas are conceptualised and operate in relation to one another. If urbanism in India today is deeply enmeshed in agrarian processes, then this article attempts to reverse the gaze by asking how expert knowledge directed towards managing rural change in 20th-century India depended crucially on emergent urban paradigms.