Cartographic History, the Post-Colonial Landscape and the Agricultural Settlement Scheme: A Case Study of Citizen-Based Mapping in Northeastern Ibadan Rural Hinterland
Date
2023-10
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
Maps of economic imagination provide visual insights into alternative agrarian spatial thought. This thesis examines visual contribution to reconstituting agricultural subjectivity. It explores the potential of citizen-based mapping in consolidating alternative visions of the agricultural settlement scheme. Visualisations are integral in the discursive technologies of post-colonial state policies that produce modern agricultural subjectivity. On one hand, these state cartographic strategies involve othering practices of subaltern agriculture. On the other hand, there are resurgent ideas of community-based agricultural schemes verbalised amongst subaltern groups. Hence, there is an ongoing political-economic struggle of visions mediated by visualisation and verbalisation. Drawing upon theoretical literature in spatiality, postcolonialism and governmentality, the thesis explores taken-for-granted knowledge, sites of economic difference and silenced voices/visions on the post-colonial agricultural landscape. Using Northeastern Ibadan rural hinterland of Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria, as a case study, the thesis argues that visualisation offers insight into counter-narratives and alternative reframing of the agricultural settlement scheme. This study employed a multi-method qualitative approach involving the critical historical reading of state maps, ethnographic analyses and mapmaking techniques to visualise and summarise developmental concerns and aspirations. The thesis demonstrates that state imaginative geographies strive in shaping agricultural identities and subjectivities. Recently, these cartographic legacies of state rationalities seek the active consent of the citizenry in the drive toward state-sanctioned neoliberal imaginary. The study contends that the post-colonial state in Nigeria envisions a large-scale agricultural development rather than supporting smallholder subaltern agriculture. Hence, there is intentional and unintentional involvement in visual disinformation and engagement in anti-political economic imaginations of subaltern agriculture. However, the visualisation of verbalised counter-narratives contesting state developmental visions and alternative imaginations of the agricultural settlement scheme unveil anticipatory spatialities desiring a break from economic decline and stagnation in rural hinterlands. This transformation of imaginaries into visual images emphasises new perspectives and new insights renegotiating the political subjectivity of subalterns. This thesis demonstrates that visual geographies of subaltern aspirations offer alternative visions of the agricultural settlement schemes.
Description
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, to the Faculty of Science, School Of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023.
Keywords
Cartographic histories, Citizen mapping, Community mapping, Post-colonial landscape, Landscape, UCTD
Citation
Ogundiwin, Babatunde Adedayo. (2023). Cartographic History, the Post-Colonial Landscape and the Agricultural Settlement Scheme: A Case Study of Citizen-Based Mapping in Northeastern Ibadan Rural Hinterland. [PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/42305