This article focuses on the methodological lessons from Sam Moyo’s scholarship.
Sam’s research is characterised by a combination of detailed empirical
investigation, deep knowledge of the technical and practical aspects of
agricultural production and farming livelihoods, and big-picture political
economy analysis and theory. Sam’s method is an insightful contemporary
application of the method originally set out in Marx’s
Grundrisse. Many contemporary explorations of agrarian
political economy fail to sustain the important tension and dialectical debate,
between diverse empirical realities and their ‘multiple determinations and
relations’ and wider theorisation of the ‘concrete’ features of emergent
processes of change. The implications of Sam’s methodological approach for the
analysis of Zimbabwe’s land reform are discussed, especially in relation to the
land occupations and the politics of agrarian reform since 2000.
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