What constitutes ‘success’ if you have land in the A1 land reform areas in Zimbabwe? This is the question we have been asking of local residents across our study sites in Mazowe, Gutu, Masvingo and Matobo districts. We have held 11 workshops in different sites, involving around 208 people (113 men and 95 women). The discussions were extremely revealing, showing how difficult it is to understand complex change over the 25 years following land reform.
The standard metrics from conventional economic evaluation are not enough, whether focusing on income or asset levels. Nor are the more elaborate assessments of multidimensional poverty or even of qualitative perspectives on ‘happiness’ or ‘well-being’, as each offer an externally-defined set of criteria. Of course, when thinking about success different people focus on different elements, making it important to have an open-ended definition that can be located in any particular context. Throwing the question of ‘what is success?’ back to villagers, a composite, grounded view emerges, and this is the basis for ‘success ranking’ of individual households in a village.
This article is from Zimbabweland, a blog written by IDS Research Fellow Ian Scoones. Zimbabweland focuses on issues related to rural livelihoods and land reform in Zimbabwe.