A social anthropological study of changing climate and small-scale farmers in Soweto

M.A. (Anthropology)Abstract: Based on the aforementioned platform, this study seeks to account on how the changing effects of the climate is being explained and experienced by small-scale farmers in the urban agricultural sector in Soweto. The analysis of local account on climate change was viewed on four key social anthropological themes, namely perceptions, knowledge, valuations and responses. A qualitative research design was used in which observations alongside series of indepth interviews technique were adopted with the intention to obtain grounded data on the experiences and local knowledges on changing climate of small-scale farmers in the Soweto community. A purposive sampling design was used to select participants who are actively engage in small-scale farming operations in Soweto. To validate the results of the outcome, a diversified sampling population was used. The findings of this research reveals that changes in climate are not only seen through perceptions, the daily engagement with these changes give small-scale farmers an idea to associate them with what has occurred in the past. This then gives them a platform to come up with different socio-cultural explanations for the occurrence of such events. Explaining the occurrence of these climatic changes allows these small-scale farmers to find ways in which they can adapt to them. Using local knowledge, that takes into account the evolution of information, the small-scale farmers have been able to amalgamate different types of information to form one part of knowledge that is able to tackle the effects that climate change cause