ABSTRACT
Sustainable agriculture (its learning, practice and development) is becoming increasingly important in Africa and globally because of its potential to reduce social ecological risks while simultaneously enhancing related sustainability and resilience. Against this background, the objectives of the study forming the basis of this chapter were to explore and expand the learning and practice of sustainable agriculture in three research sites in southern Africa. This paper focuses on how the author worked with critical realism to underlabour Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to address the research objectives. Using a multiple case study approach, the author worked with 80 farmers, extension workers, sustainable agriculture facilitators and researchers and organic marketers to explore and expand their learning and practice of three kinds of sustainable agriculture: permaculture, organic farming and the Machobane Farming System (MFS). In particular the author made use of critical realism’s dialectics, multiple layers of reality and causal explanation, double hermeneutics, and modes of inference to deepen data generation, analysis and use. Working with critical realism enabled the study to: (a) pay attention to causal mechanisms and power relations; (b) provide explanatory critique; (c) achieve in-depth ‘exploration’ through inductive, abductive and retroductive analysis; and (d) overcome the constructivist limitations of CHAT. Critical realism also enabled the mobilization of research participants’ agency and reflexivity to respond to the socio-ecological issues and risks that they were facing. The author concluded that critical realism can be effectively used to underlabour constructivist and epistemological theories for ontological depth; and to help understand and tackle contemporary social ecological issues.
