Book Revuws 87 
for change and adaptation. Nevertheless the resettlement exercise evidently brought considerable 
turmoil to the communities involved. 
Two contributions concern the problems faced by decaying urban communities: these concern 
Jamestown in New York State and the Craigmillar Estate in Scotland. The article on Jamestown 
traces the development of a co-operative effort between labour, management and government 
leaders in an area of severe industrial decline. Poor labour management relations were 
transformed after a combined effort by all concerned. Craigmillar, a sprawling housing estate 
catering to the poorer section of Edinburgh, suffered from typical inner-city deprivations and was 
characterised by despair. This was tackled by the development of a creative community arts 
programme which managed to provide an outlet for local residents. This in turn brought about a 
community awareness of local problems, which led finally to community action. A further 
contribution relates how several deprived communities in the USA managed through community 
action, drama and igenuity, to establish their own electricity supply through the establishment of 
renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind energy, and in the process outwitting the 
exploitation of landlords and uncaring utility companies. 
The prolific variety of this anthology may be seen with two further examples. One chapter 
describes the process of resettling traditionally nomadic Bedouins in planned settlements in 
southern Israel. Although political, economic and ecological changes have led to 'spontaneous 
sedentarisation', most attempts by the Israeli Government to resettle the tribes ended in failure. 
It was only when neighbourhoods and architectural house styles were designed to cater directly to 
the needs of the Bedouins (eg large, two-storied accommodation with space to keep livestock) that 
the resettlement exercise started to yield results. The second example concerns a small valley in 
the middle of Norway with a tradition of self-suffiency - yet in decline due to uneconomic 
production. Following the efforts of a local entrepreneur and outside funding, a local community 
development programme helped sponsor action research into the various economic and social 
problems of the community. This generated a self-supporting development process where the 
local people appeared to take a common responsibility for the future of their own community. 
A major theme that links these separate contributions is the contention that once people are 
convinced that certain conditions are intolerable a dynamic is set in motion that can lead to 
creative and constructive change. Indeed one of the discussion papers notes that a principal 
finding was that the success with which communities dealt with their crises depended on their 
recognition that they were indeed in crisis. This perspective is valuable as it reminds us that 
people have a right to define their own reality - perhaps to define their own crisis - and that 
development is something that should be shaped, defined and directed by those who are 
principally concerned, ie the local communities. Of course the other half of the equation - the 
structural inequalities, oppression, exploitation, governmental responsibilities to assist the poor 
and deprived and so on - is avoided, but at least we are reminded that people have the potential to 
bring about change if they so choose, and even in situations of poverty can create their own 
resources. As such, this anthology reminds us in. a positive and optimistic way that constructive 
social development is indeed possible, even in seemingly depressing and hopeless situations. 
Reviewed by N P Hall, School of Social Work, Harare. 
Land Reform in the Making: Tradition, Public Policy and Ideology in Botswana, Richard P 
Werbner (ed), Rex Collings, London, 1982 (pp XV + 162, no price given). 
It is a measure of the Botswana government's interest and perhaps faith in social research that 
this collection of articles criticising its policies is possible. Collections of diverse articles pertaining 
to a single developing country and based on field research are rather rare these days and, if for 
that reason alone, welcome.
88 Book Reviews 
That said, I found this collection disappointing for a number of reasons. All of the information 
it contains is at least ten years old (it doesn't help, of course, to be reviewing a book five years 
after its date of publication) and Werbner is careful to note that.new ideas were already in the air 
as the papers went to press (p. i). Notwithstanding its title, this collection is not a coherent set of 
papers systematically examining changes in Botswana' land policy. Rather this is a collection of 
disparate papers whose only link is that they all deal with Botswana (and so might better have 
appeared separately in Botswana Notes and Records). The editor's introductoiy remarks 
appear to have been stimulated by the content of the papers, and thus seem rather to be a 
concluding round-up than an introduction. None of the contributors takes up Werbner's points 
about 'frontier processes' and the distinction between 'incorporative' and 'exclusive' tenurial 
ideologies. So the editor's claim that 'the unity of the collection emerges from the complimentary 
of the contributions to it' (p. ii), is, in my view, at best wishful thinking. 
Indeed, the title of the collection itself misleads. Werbner's introduction provides the nonspecialist 
with only a limited and selective guide to the history, content and relationships between 
the different land Acts addressed by some of the contributors, and little indication of what is to be 
regarded as 'land reform'. It does not, in my opinion, 'explore some of the available evidence on 
the making of land reform during the early phases of Botswana's transition from its colonial 
dependence...' (p. i). Of the seven papers, only those by Hitchcock and Comaroff are in any way 
related to issues of land reform. Two, by Roberts and Werbner, deal with the administration of 
land law and/or tenure in Kgatleng and North-East Districts respectively and make useful points 
about the differences between central intentions and local interpretations. Silitshena's paper, 
dealing with rural trade in Kweneng District, while interesting in itself, seems unrelated to any 
words in the book's title, except, that perhaps, 'public policy' — indirectly. 
Of the four contributors who discuss issues pertaining to land, if not 'land reform', only 
Hitchcock deals with the central 'Tswana model' (in this case, of the Ngwato) so often referred to 
by the others. The rest describe minority and perhaps peripheral systems (Almagor, the 
immigrant Namibian Mbanderu; Sutherland, the Yeyi of Ngamiland District; Comaroff, the 
peculiar case of the Barolong farms), whose specific relevance to any main argument I did not 
perceive. 
Different authors alse describe different land laws and policies in their different areas in 
different time periods, thus compounding the problems of comparison. Hitchcock presents a 
wealth of useful information to show why the Tribal Grazing Land Policy of 1975 was, in his 
view, misconceived (though it is easy - but often premature. - to criticise a new policy in the 
earliest years of its implementation). In contrast, Comaroff focuses on the Tribal Land Act of 
1968, and it argues that, in six years, it managed to create very dramatic 'class' differentiation in 
the unusual historial circumstances of the Barolong farms. I did not find his argument 
persuasive, in part because, like some of his fellow-contributors, Comaroff paper tends 
frequently to the assertion rather than the provision of hard data. 
The other two papers dealing with land virtually ignore new land legislation. In a badly 
constructed paper, Almagor, often contradicting himself, argues for what is in my opinion an 
irrelevant and distracting theoretical distinction between functional and substantive rationalities 
among the Mbanderu, who managed to acquire livestock and monopolise the grazing in the 
immediate hinterland of Lake Ngami. He does not fell us how they managed to displace their 
local Tswana hosts, nor precisely why they felt threatened by the 1975 Tribal Grazing Land 
Policy, nor indeed how the displaced Tswana regarded their expansionist neighbours. 
Sutherland's interesting comparisons of different ecological zones among the Yeyi do not pretend 
to deal with any land legislation at all, noting instead the potential for change built into the 
'traditional' responses to differing production possibilities in different ecological circumstances. 
Not being a Botswana specialist myself, I found this collection useful in its detail, which often
Book Rcvitws 89 
overwhelmed my capacity to absorb it: it is a source to return to in the future when further 
information is required. However, I was recurrently irritated by textual references to places and 
people that appear on none of the seven maps provided in this book. Moreover, it took me a long 
time to formulate a (probably deficient) idea of the background against which these papers would 
be assessed. Surely some concession should be made to the reader whose knowledge of the 
country's issues is, by definition, less than that of the writers of these papers. 'Land reform* is, 
after all, of comparative interest even to those who know nothing of Botswana's specific 
circumstances. 
Re\ iewed bv A 1* Cheater. Department u! NIK ii>ln«4\. I'nherMiv i>i'Ziml>;ilme. 
Social Attitudes and Agricultural Productivity in Central Africa, Jean Bonvin, Development 
Centre of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, 1986 (pp 135, no 
price given). 
Actually this book presents the findings of research conducted in 1977 in one Central African 
country, Burundi, and its simultaneous publication in English as well as French is a very 
welcome addition to Anglophone knowledge of Francophone Africa. Perhaps its greatest use may 
lie not in any value its specific findings may have for policy purposes but rather in the areas of 
research methods, where it provides another textbook case of the problems of survey research on 
this continent. 
Bonvin provides, at the very beginning, a brief description of Burundi which, apart from 
saying nothing about the country's social characteristics, is useful, as is his detailed map of the 
country's communes. He then proceeds to attempt to steer a middle course between the 
theoretical rocks of marxism amd modernisation theory, in what he himself describes as more 
'applied economics' than the development of new theory. This application assumes that different 
districts of Burundi may be ranked on an evolutionary scale in their incorporation into the 
contemporary international political economy. Bonvin is therefore interested to investigate the 
differences between Burundi's more and less effectively incorporated areas, in respect of their 
economic modernisation. 
The idea is, in principle, interesting. Its execution was less satisfactory. While asserting that 
participatory observation would have been 'ideal' (p 84), Bonvin instead opted for a survey 
questionnaire, properly piloted, finally containing 395 questions, administered to 1 655 farmers 
in the two interior communes of Ruyigi and Ngozi, and four communes in the Rusizi plain area 
north of the capital, Bujumbura (where peasantisation had been established under the Belgian 
colonial regime and was in the process of collapse post-Independence). His reasons for selecting 
the survey process rested on the excessive time needed for anthropological investigation, and the 
problem of generalising its results. Bonvin is now wiser, having realised that the survey and its 
processing took him ten years anyway, and that his results were not only unreliable in many 
respects, but also had a limited capacity for generalisation! 
In the meantime, he experienced research that will undoubtedly have provided him with 
enormously funny stories with which to regale colleagues and students for years to come. He has 
realised that the statistical universe from which samples are drawn is, in third world countries at 
least, seriously defective at both central and local administrative levels, thus often necessitating 
the creation ot the universe before the sample may be drawn, that 'in spite of its size, the 
questionnaire used in the quantitative enquiry failed to uncover many significant elements of the 
process of change in the rural structures' (p 102); that university students may be unreliable 
interviewers and coders, no matter how well trained, especially when they are physically 
uncomfortable in the countryside; and that officials may mislead about computing capabilities in 
developing countries, thus leading to enormous difficulties in processing data. There are still a