Social
reproduction
refers
to
the
maintenance
and
sustenance
of
people
through
care,
education,
health,
kinship
and
environmental
relations.
It
encompasses
the
often-invisible
work
of
nurturing
children,
supporting
the
elderly,
providing
food
and
water,
managing
illness
and
maintaining
households,
all
roles
disproportionately
carried
by
women.
Placing
social
reproduction
at
the
centre
of
our
analysis
shifts
how
we
understand
the
outcomes
of
land
reform.
Success
is
not
only
measured
in
terms
of
yields,
income,
or
accumulation
but
also
in
whether
households
can
reproduce
themselves
from
one
generation
to
the
next.
This
requires
examining
how
caregiving,
education,
health
shocks,
and
access
to
water
and
energy
shape
livelihoods.
As Ben
Cousins points
out
in
the
Oxford
Handbook
of
Land
Politics,
“the
character
of
social
reproduction shapes change,
but
that
change
is
mostly driven by
the
restless
and
relentless
forces
of
capital
in
one
guise
or
another.”
The
shaping
of
patterns
of
accumulation
and
the
success
of
land
reform,
however,
are
vital
foci
for
analysis.
To
explore
this
theme
as
part
of
our
25
years
after
Zimbabwe’s
land
reform
project,
we
interviewed
27
women
of
different
ages,
both
married
and
single
(divorced/separated;
widowed),
and
some
in
polygamous
unions,
across
our
A1
(smallholder
land
reform)
sites
in
Mvurwi,
Gutu,
Masvingo
and
Matobo.
These
were
extended
interviews,
sometimes
lasting
several
hours,
that
very
often
touched
on
sensitive
issues
and
elicited
intense
emotions.
It
was
clear
that
our
informants
wanted
to
talk
about
these
themes.
Very
often,
their
role
as
women
in
supporting
processes
of
agrarian
transformation
had
not
been
taken
into
account,
despite
the
lip
service
paid
to
‘women’s
empowerment’
or
‘gender-sensitive’
development
approaches.
These
core
interviews,
focusing
exclusively
on
issues
of
social
reproduction,
were
complemented
by
around
100
biographical
interviews
with
both
men
and
women,
where
some
of
the
themes
were
touched
on.
These
also
explored
how
gender,
generation,
class,
technology
and
environment
intersect
in
everyday
life.
Through
a
very
open-ended
interview
process,
guided
by
some
themes
we
identified
beforehand,
we
explored
a
huge
range
of
issues.
The
interview
transcripts
from
our
focused
sample
of
27
women
stretch
to
67
pages
and
44,000
words.
Our
interviews
explored
the
following
themes:
Gendered
pathways
to
land
access
and
ownership;
accumulation
patterns
and
gendered
work;
gendered
social
roles;
changing
cultural
norms
and
patterns
of
marriage/divorce;
everyday
caring
labour
in
households;
gendered
patterns
of
leisure
and
women
in
leadership
roles.
By
analysing
themes
such
as
unpaid
care
work,
access
to
social
services,
extended
family
obligations,
changing
institutions
of
marriage
and
inheritance,
technological
innovation
and
gender
dimensions
of
leadership
and
governance,
this
blog
series
shows
how
the
hidden
labour
of
social
reproduction
is
central
to
understanding
both
the
possibilities
and
limits
of
accumulation,
shaping
agrarian
transformations
in
the
process.
Social
reproduction
encompasses
the
practices,
relations
and
institutions
that
support
daily
survival
and
revitalise
communities
across
generations.
In
agrarian
environments,
such
processes
go
beyond
wages
and
markets
to
include
unpaid
and
undervalued
labour,
such
as
food
preparation,
childcare,
livestock
care
and
reciprocal
exchange.
Important
recent
literature
from
the
fields
of
feminist
political
economy,
agrarian
studies
and
social
reproduction
theory
highlights
these
dynamics
(see here, here and here and
earlier
classics, here and here).
These
often-hidden
forms
of
labour
sustain
livelihoods
and
farming.
They
also
expose
inequality
as
women
bear
disproportionate
care
responsibilities
while
men
dominate
land
and
cash
crops.
In
this
context,
the
endurance
of
colonial
legacies
in
African
rural
life
is
highlighted,
along
with
the
persistence
of
outdated
calls
to
‘tradition’.
Using
social
reproduction
as
a
framework
allows
us
to
move
beyond
simply
material
analyses
of
farming,
focusing
on
production,
sales
and
income.
It
situates
agrarian
life
in
the
invisible
work
of
sustaining
households,
the
temporal
reproduction
of
inequality,
the
reach
of
institutions
and
the
lived
experience
of
power
relations.
Together,
the
seven
blogs
that
follow
show
how life
is
made
and
remadein
agrarian
communities:
through
everyday
practices,
narratives
around
gendered
roles,
intergenerational
shifts
in
relationship
norms
and
power
dynamics
played
out
in
different
domestic
and
organisational
spheres.
A
focus
on
social
reproduction,
therefore,
highlights
that
the
story
of
land
reform
cannot
be
understood
through
a
focus
on
production
alone.
The
interviews
demonstrate
that
households
sustain
themselves
both
through
processes
of
accumulation
from
agriculture
and
livestock
rearing,
and
through
the
interwoven
practices
of
caregiving,
education,
health
management,
and
kinship
obligations.
These
practices
are
deeply
gendered,
with
women
carrying
disproportionate
responsibilities
for
unpaid
care
and
reproduction,
even
as
they
also
play
leading
roles
in
farming
and
accumulation,
increasingly
so
in
the
larger
farms
of
the
land
reform
areas.
The
result
is
that
livelihood
success
and
accumulation
patterns
are
uneven,
shaped
as
much
by
social
reproduction
as
by
production.
Families
who
could
draw
on
remittances,
drill
boreholes,
or
access
schools
and
health
services
are
better
able
to
reinvest
and
expand,
while
those
facing
illness,
widowhood
or
caregiving
burdens
often
slide
into
precarity.
Class
differentiation,
therefore,
cannot
be
separated
from
gendered
and
generational
patterns
of
social
reproduction.
Research
must
ask
how
care-giving
responsibilities
constrain
or
enable
farming;
how
environmental
change
reshapes
reproductive
labour,
and
how
education
and
health
access
determine
opportunities
for
accumulation.
By
centring
social
reproduction,
we
can
develop
a
more
complete
and
nuanced
understanding
of
agrarian
change
and
the
long-term
impacts
of
land
reform
in
Zimbabwe.
This
is
the
first
blog
in
the
series
on
social
reproduction
and
land
reform.
The
blog
was
written
by
Sandra
Bhatasara
and
Ian
Scoones,
with
inputs
from
Tapiwa
Chatikobo
and
Felix
Murimbarimba.
The
photo
was
taken
by
Alport
Ndebele
as
part
of
the
2025
exchange
visit.
It
was
first
published
on Zimbabweland.
Post
published
in:
Agriculture