This course follows Chapter 25, 'Rurality and Rural Development', by Paul Stewart in:
Sociology: A comprehensive South African Introduction (2nd Edition). 2020. Paul Stewart and Johan Zaaiman (Editors) Juta: Cape Town. pages 588-612.
The course covers the challenge of defining the rural; Ibn-Khaldun's typology of rural and urban; the Wageningen School's construal of rural as co-production with nature; Henri Lefebvre's rural sociology; the 'agrarian question' in the classical literature; the phases of rural transformation in South Africa; an interrogation of 'rural development' and aspects of rurality in South Africa.