Drs. Femke Brandt

Femke Brandt is a PhD candidate at the COM Department of the VU University since 2008. She is currently doing fieldwork in the Eastern Cape Province. Her project looks into farm conversions from conventional agriculture to wildlife-based production and the experiences of farm workers/dwellers associated with those farms. Her research is embedded in a WOTRO integrated programme titled 'Farm Dwellers, the Forgotten People? Consequences of conversions to private Wildlife Production in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape'.

The title of her research project is ‘Networking Livelihoods in South Africa’ and entails an ethnographic ‘mobile’ study into farm dweller’s livelihood strategies and processes of networking on- and off-farm in the face of proliferating farm conversions to wildlife-based production. Existing research indicates promising labour opportunities generated by game farms, while studies done by rural advocacy NGOs associate this type of land use with increasing evictions and displacements of farm dwellers. Moreover, privatization and modernization in the agricultural sector seem to reinforce a trend away from permanent labour towards more flexible labour arrangements such as casual work and contract labour. In the context of South Africa’s land reform programme, rural development and poverty alleviation policies, together with the growth of the tourism sector in preparation for the World Soccer Cup in 2010; the prospects of farm dwellers livelihoods and labour in the agricultural sector are timely subjects.

Themes addressed in the research are the organizational/institutional - individual nexus through studying farm dwellers’ processes of networking within the institutional structures and power relations that affect their social relations and decision-making processes. The project also probes the ‘modernization paradigm’ and ‘management revolution’ argued to be taking place on South African farms and its impact on labour practices and livelihoods.

 The study is conducted in a region historically labelled ‘white commercial farming area’ where wildlife farms predominantly focus on trophy hunting. The history of the farm conversion and the life histories and perspectives of workers/dwellers linked to these farms are central in illuminating changing social and labour relations and power configurations in the rural economy of the Eastern Cape.

Email: f.brandt@fsw.vu.nl