Rural education and rural realities: The politics and possibilities of rural research in Southern Africa

Abstract

From text: Rurality studies and research emerged from established disciplines such as agricultural sciences (Maat, 2001), agricultural education (Phipps, Osborne, Dyer & Ball, 2007) and human geography (Cloke, Crang & Goodwin, 2004). With regards to the latter, human geography and urbanisation studies (Reader, 2004) developed almost bifocally with the realisation that the sustainability of conurbations and cities needed to be premised on an understanding of sustainable rural livelihoods, beyond the mass agricultural production associated with intensive industrialised agricultural planning, clearing, and planting. Agricultural sciences do not conventionally focus on rural life as a social activity in which the fabric of human relations and community enable (and sometimes disable) sustainable economic agricultural development. In more recent times, food and nutrition security have also shifted in focus from the phenomenon of the urban poor to a realisation that, without richly textured and empowered rural communities, the connection between small- and large-scale agricultural production and food security becomes more attenuated and dispersed. In all of this, education, as a means for developing environmental awareness, addressing societal challenges, and enabling individual and communal aspirations to social mobility and transformation, remains a critical and yet underexplored dimension of rural life, whether based on agricultural or other social activity. As with most issues, there is a history to this.