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1.
An intense environmental dispute surrounds the maize-fields of Mexico. Mexican maize traditional varieties (or ‘landraces’) constitute a global genetic resource that may well be critical to future agricultural development and corn breeding. Many environmentalists, farmers, and consumers in Mexico are therefore concerned that their maize landraces may have been ‘contaminated’ by imported transgenic maize, grown in the USA. The criticisms of this transgenic technology are complex and call into question the nature of the boundary between political and ecological (i.e. scientific) disputes. Our paper surveys these criticisms, and this political-scientific boundary, in a three-part analysis. First, we turn to Gramsci’s notes on science from his eleventh prison notebook to rethink the political ecology of transgenic maize, i.e., the way the ecological analysis of transgenic introgression is treated as politics. Second, we present the multiple criticisms of transgenic maize as scalar phenomena. Third, we review the recent scientific literature on transgene introgression to evaluate recent calls for the ‘decontamination’ of Mexican maize. Our reading illustrates two dilemmas facing the group that occupies the hegemonic subject-position in this dispute, ecological scientists. First, the popular desire to ‘decontaminate’ Mexican maize exceeds their capacities (due to complications involved with sampling). Second, although the political debate surrounding ‘contaminated’ Mexican maize exceeds science, the boundary between the dispute’s scientific and parascientific elements cannot be adjudicated scientifically. In other words, the boundary between science and politics is porous. Thus in two respects the dispute is ecological, yet beyond the capacity of this science to resolve. Yet, following Gramsci, these findings should not lead us to see science as mere ideology, or apolitical, or encourage a retreat into metaphysics. Rather it points to the need for a social transformation that sees science as “humanity forging its methods of research … in other words, culture, the conception of the world.” By exploring the dilemmas of decontamination, the dispute over transgene introgression in Mexican maize-fields provides an opportunity to elaborate upon Gramsci’s neglected insights into the politics of science. 相似文献
2.
Agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) has intersected with a wider debate about ‘sustainable agriculture’, especially in Europe. Agbiotech was initially promoted as an alternative which would avoid or remedy past problems of intensive agriculture, but such claims were soon challenged. Agbiotech has extended the dominant agri-industrial paradigm, while critics have counterposed alternatives corresponding to an agrarian-based rural development paradigm. Amid controversy over environmental and health risks in the late 1990s, an extra issue emerged − the prospect that genetically modified (GM) material would become inadvertently mixed with non-GM crops. In response the European Commission developed a policy framework for ‘coexistence’ between GM, conventional and organic crops. This policy has aimed to ensure that farmers can freely choose among different production systems, which would develop side by side, yet specific proposals for coexistence rules favour some choices over others. Such rules have been contested according to different policy agendas, each promoting their model of future agriculture. Moreover, a Europe-wide network of regional authorities has promoted ‘GM-free zones’ as a territorial brand for green, localised, high-quality agri-food production, whose diverse qualities depend upon symbolic, immaterial characteristics. This alternative has been counterposed to the agri-industrial production of global commodities - symbolised by the European Union, especially its product authorisation procedure for the internal market. ‘Coexistence’ policy was intended to mediate policy conflicts over GM crops, yet it has become another arena for contending agricultural systems, which may not so readily co-exist in practice. Wherever an agrarian-based rural development paradigm gains local support, its alternative agricultures are in contradiction rather than coexistence with GM crops. 相似文献
3.
JoAnn McGregor 《Geoforum》2005,36(3):353-369
This article is about the politics of conservation in postcolonial Southern Africa. It focuses on the process and consequences of redefining the Nile crocodile as an endangered species and explores the linked local and international, commercial and conservationist interests that allowed the animal to re-establish itself in state-protected waterways in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It investigates the effects of the animal’s successful re-accommodation by examining conflicts between crocodiles and the fishing communities sharing space on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Fishermen’s hostile representations of the animal emphasize competition for fish, harassment, fear, loss of assets and loss of life. Their fear of crocodiles is heightened by the animal’s entanglement in local social life, through its association with witchcraft. The article emphasizes the importance of considering both hegemonic and marginalized ideas about animals in the light of the material interactions, relations of power and historical contexts that shape them. Understanding the attitudes and circumstances of the local communities who bear the physical and economic costs of living with dangerous animals is important--it threatens the future of conservation programmes and reveals the potential for significant abuses to accompany the conservation of wildlife in postcolonial contexts. 相似文献
4.
In this paper, we explore how ‘peak oil’ anxieties are woven into the spaces and practices of the state in Norway and the consequences of this for environmental justice and the public sphere more widely. We focus in particular on an ongoing struggle over access to hydrocarbon deposits in the Norwegian Arctic, the so-called ‘Battle of the North’. We use this dispute to highlight three wider theoretical points regarding (i) the continuing relevance of the state in the governing of nature-society relations, (ii) the increasingly fragmented and fluid nature of state space, and (iii) the significance of ‘security’ as a term around which social, economic and environmental tensions pivot. The paper concludes by reflecting on current efforts to prevent new oil activities in the north of Norway. 相似文献
5.
Food commodities, geographical knowledges and the reconnection of production and consumption: The case of naturally embedded food products 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
This paper focuses on a particular group of food commodities, associated with the wider turn to ‘alternative food networks’, that are described as ‘naturally embedded food products’ (NEFPs). These are commodities (specifically meats and cheeses) that utilise grassland biodiversity as an input into production to positively influence, in various ways, the final qualities of the commodity. Building on the geographical literature on commodity circuits and analysing data derived from NEFP promotional materials and focus groups with urban and rural residents in the UK, the paper interrogates the geographical knowledges that are deployed by producers in the promotion of NEFPs and how these knowledges are accommodated and contested by consumers as they bring their own geographical knowledges to the interpretation of these commodities. The paper undertakes this task in order to problematise the extent to which alternative food networks in general and NEFPs in particular are bringing about a reconnection of producers and consumers and, concomitantly, a defetishisation of food, as is claimed for them by many of their policy and academic proponents. In the process the paper reveals how the food commodities associated with alternative food networks entail the creation of new and rival fetishes paradoxically as a result of efforts to ‘thicken connections’ between the production and consumption of food. 相似文献
6.
In the northern uplands of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the state is taking dramatic steps to (re)configure agricultural production through the introduction and subsidisation of hybrid rice and maize seeds. These require yearly cash investments and access to state supplied inputs, a far cry from earlier upland ethnic minority livelihood strategies. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework that brings together an actor-oriented livelihoods approach with concepts from everyday politics and resistance, to examine the relations now at play as ethnic minorities, namely Hmong and Yao households in Lào Cai province, react to the introduction of these hybrid seeds, negotiate with the state over their use, and contest and subtly resist the wholesale adoption of this programme. Our framework takes us beyond an investigation into financial benefits and yields, to focus upon the social, cultural and political aspects inherent in upland farmer decision-making regarding state interventions. Our findings reveal that such agricultural programmes have resulted in new food insecurities and vulnerabilities overlaying more established concerns. Yet in turn, ethnic minority households evaluate these innovations according to their own terms, and have responded by negotiating, accommodating, and also contesting the state’s initiatives using creative and innovative everyday politics and livelihood strategies. In so doing, they have worked to maintain autonomy over choices and decision-making vis-à-vis the economic, social and cultural reproduction of their household units; a delicate balancing act in a socialist state. 相似文献
7.
Tackling fuel poverty is central to the delivery of the Scottish Executive’s commitment to social justice. Many Scottish rural households are not linked into the mains gas network and rely on expensive alternatives, despite being surrounded by plentiful supplies of low-cost renewable wood biomass. A regional study was undertaken to establish the potential market for pelletised wood fuel, available as a low-value by-product from the rapidly expanding Scottish forest industry sector. The wider implications of the research findings are analysed by extending the principles of industrial symbiosis from a site-specific to a regional scale. Promoting an indigenous pellet-based wood fuel market for rural Scotland would fulfil important Scottish Executive economic, social and environmental sustainability objectives. Adding off-site social symbiotic elements increases the potential for on-site technical symbiosis in nascent Scottish forest industry clusters. At present, market failure is preventing the realisation of these benefits, and the paper concludes by identifying ways in which market intermediation, through wood fuel energy service companies, might overcome the current barriers to exploiting such symbiosis. 相似文献
8.
In response to a growing body of literature encouraging geographers to present textured, regional case studies that demonstrate how neoliberalism functions at diverse scales, this article presents a nuanced account of neoliberalism in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. The study seeks to illustrate how neoliberal reforms to agriculture and ongoing neoliberal tourism development in the Yucatecan state of Quintana Roo intersect to create a unique regional context for migration between the state’s rural areas and Mexico’s largest planned tourism development zone in Cancun. The research presented is based on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews that took place in 2003 with rural residents and regional migrants working in Cancun. Through the employment of an experiential definition of neoliberalism, grounded in the lived experiences and perceptions of study participants, the article suggests that rural-urban tourist pole migration is the result of a complex negotiation of the region’s neoliberal landscape. The article argues that rural residents’ and migrants’ perceptions of the failure of agriculture as a livelihood is shaped relative to the perceived success of the tourism industry and better livelihood opportunities in Cancun. These widespread perceptions of agricultural failure in the Yucatan peninsula are constructed not solely in response to local conditions but rather in response to the overall regional outcome of neoliberal economic restructuring initiatives which have negatively affected traditional agriculture in the rural sphere while privileging tourism development in the urban sphere centered in Cancun. 相似文献
9.
J. H. Drummond 《GeoJournal》1990,22(3):335-343
In recent years geographers have researched the problems of many rural areas of the third world. However, analysis of rural and agricultural development in the Bantustans of South Africa has been conspicuously absent. Although mythically independent, the Bantustans have their own Departments of Agriculture, as well as parastatal bodies, which develop and implement agricultural policies. This paper examines agricultural policy in the Bophuthatswana Bantustans, which is largely based on increasing food production for national self-sufficiency through the establishment of agricultural development projects. The effects of the implementation of this programme on a specific rural community, the village of Dinokana, are discussed. Two irrigation based projects were implemented in Dinokana in the early 1980's. The project planners did not seem to be concerned about the existence of an indigenous irrigation system which had been the foundation for agricultural development at Dinokana for several decades, and which could have been revived and upgraded. This suggests that there is a need for agricultural planners to have a detailed historial knowledge of local African agriculture. Geographers could play a valuable role here, by uncovering the dynamics of past systems of African agricultural production, in particular focusing on patterns of rural resource management. 相似文献
10.
Under neoliberal schemes like audit systems, consumer demands born of concerns about food safety, the environment and animal welfare are theoretically poised to influence agricultural production systems (Campbell and Le Heron, 2007). Whether such influences might reverse or redirect the trend toward environmentally-damaging rampant productivism of the 20th century hinges in part on the subjective positions of farmers and the ways in which they inform how farmers respond to policy and market signals.In this paper we argue the need for a genuine engagement with both the complexities of farmer subjectivity and the interactions amongst farmer subjectivity and agro-ecologies, and animal bodies in particular. This paper presents a case study of sheep farmers on the South Island that reveals contestation and transitions in traditional markers of “good farming”, particularly animal health. We observe how such transitions arise from reconfigurations of the relationships between agro-ecological, political and social histories. In this paper’s formulation, neither state subsidies nor neoliberalism in agriculture is primary cause or ultimate effect of the transformation of agricultural practice. Rather, changes in the political economy expose contradictions in farmer subjectivities, the resolution of which may block or reinforce trends suggested by the political economy. We suggest that contested ideas about animal health within the social field of pastoral farming in New Zealand makes it possible that New Zealand’s sheep growers may take the high road of best environmental practice via highly audited environmental standards of production demanded by elite consumer markets, or that they may remain in the intensifying trajectory of continuing to drive the sheep’s body to its maximum possible intensity of production. The mixed legacy of neoliberal reform is that it has simultaneously enabled both of these contradictory trajectories in New Zealand pastoralism. 相似文献
11.
Emily Eaton 《Geoforum》2008,39(2):994-1006
This paper traces attempts to foster local, sustainable food projects in Niagara, Canada as part of community economic development (CED) projects during two distinct periods of provincial governance. In the first period (1990-1995), social democratic government support for local sustainable food projects through CED can be understood as neocommunitarian in nature. During this time there was a concerted attempt to link local people with access to local food and also to support a relationship between local food projects and agri-tourism. I argue that this neocommunitarian policy was an accommodation to a wider and more global neoliberal hegemony and was underlain by a romanticism of petty commodity production and a tenuous link to social and ecological sustainability. In the second period of governance (beginning in 1995) the progressive conservative government led by Mike Harris pursued particularly virulent, revanchist forms of neoliberal governance. With many of their state supports slashed, Niagara NGOs and activists turned, and were pushed, to more market-led, elitist forms of local food projects and agri-tourism. In these latter food projects, the practices of ecological and social sustainability were significantly hollowed out and their local and light green nature was harnessed as accumulation strategies. The paper is based on interviews conducted in the year 2003 with people involved in various urban and rural food projects (including community gardening, community supported agriculture, local/seasonal cuisine, organic/ecological farming and food box programs). 相似文献
12.
The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures. 相似文献
13.
The growth of intensive export-oriented Pangasius catfish production in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is unparalleled in terms of rapidity and scale by any other agricultural sector, with production climbing from a low base to more than 1 million tons in a single decade. This paper examines the effects of this remarkable change on the rural class structure in locations where catfish farming has boomed, and analyses the role of local state-society relations in mediating outcomes resulting from the integration of local actors into the global value chain. We conclude that private economic activity is deeply embedded in informal relations with the state bureaucracy in Vietnam, with the result that the expansion of catfish aquaculture has generally acted to reproduce and entrench existing class relations rather leading to a radical reconfiguration of the rural class structure. 相似文献
14.
Population pressure, agricultural intensification and changes in rural systems in Bangladesh 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Abu Muhammad Shajaat Ali 《Geoforum》2007,38(4):720-738
Sustainable agricultural growth is the key to rural system changes that include changes in rural bio-physical environment, economic infrastructure and social conditions. The present study has examined the temporal changes in 18 selected indicators of rural systems in Bangladesh during the period 1975-2000, and explored the influences of demographic, market forces, environmental, institutional and technological factors inducing and mediating such changes. An analysis of 64 district level published census data showed significant increase in agricultural intensity, cropping patterns, land productivity and farm income; decline in labor and technological productivities; and major improvement in rural housing, economic and social conditions during this period. Spatially, major agricultural growth and rural development were observed in districts with high population density, less constrained environments, and better access to markets, irrigation canals, and capital loans. 相似文献
15.
Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
Andrea J. Nightingale 《Geoforum》2011,42(2):153-162
Current theorising in human geography draws attention to the relational emergence of space and society, challenging ideas of difference that rely on fixed identities and emphasising the importance of the everyday in the production of social inequalities. Similarly, feminist political ecology has emphasised the role of ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ in the production of subjectivities such that ideas of gender and nature arise in relation to each other. In this paper I build from these insights to explore the ways in which the embodied performance of gender, caste and other aspects of social difference collapse the distinction between the material and the symbolic. Symbolic ideas of difference are produced and expressed through embodied interactions that are firmly material. Through this kind of conceptualisation, I hope to push forward debates in geography on nature and feminist political ecology on how to understand the intersectional emergence of subjectivities, difference and socio-natures. Importantly, it is the symbolic meanings of particular spaces, practices and bodies that are (re)produced through everyday activities including forest harvesting, agricultural work, food preparation and consumption, all of which have consequences for both ecological processes and social difference. Through the performance of everyday tasks, not only are ideas of gender, caste and social difference brought into view, but the embodied nature of difference that extends beyond the body and into the spaces of everyday life is evident. I use ethnographic evidence from rural Nepal to explore the ways in which boundaries between bodies, spaces, ecologies and symbolic meanings of difference are produced and maintained relationally through practices of work and ritual. 相似文献
16.
The liberalisation of agricultural markets is one of the most contested issues in international politics. Debates surrounding it counter-pose the moral imperative to dismantle protectionist agricultural subsidies in order to combat rural poverty in the South with fears for the livelihoods of marginal farmers and the environmental integrity of the countryside in the developed North. A largely European concern with defending the ‘multifunctionality’ of agriculture is dismissed by critics as a protectionist excuse for continued farm support. In this paper we seek to assess how far support for multifunctionality can be construed as a form of resistance to the neoliberal project for agriculture. The paper begins with an analysis of the European negotiating stance in the Doha round and the subsequent evolution of debates surrounding multifunctionality in an international setting. Having identified the European Union as one of the key sites of articulation concerning the implications of trade liberalisation for a multifunctional agriculture, the paper goes on to argue that multifunctionality within the framework of European rural policy emerges as a much more elusive and susceptible concept, informed by radically different interpretations of the vulnerability of family farmers to greater market exposure and the extent to which agricultural restructuring should be regarded as an issue of wider public concern. This maps onto a technically complex debate about how best to procure environmental public goods in a period of rapid agricultural change. The paper concludes that with these differences still very much in play, questions concerning the compatibility of multifunctionality with market liberalisation remain deeply unresolved at an important moment in the internationalisation of rural policy governance. 相似文献
17.
E. Sokari-George Dr. 《GeoJournal》1990,22(1):93-98
Conclusion Urban and rural development arek inextricably related, that regional planning can play important roles as catalyst for agriculture
and rural development; and that a system of growth centres and/or agropolitan policy which can be important in achieving economic
growth with social equity, will be far more influential. Again if the National Planning Authority, Regional Planning Agency
and the policy of growth centre in the rural areas of the recommended regions is pursued, it will not only increase agricultural
productivity or a path to agricultural transformation for deleterious effects of migration to corporate farming but also could,
over time help to reduce the pressure on the urban areas by providing counter-magnets to migration and we envisage, will bring
about a national regional planning budget which should be operated on yearly basis. 相似文献
18.
Elaine Stratford 《Geoforum》2006,37(2):273-286
Baldacchino [Baldacchino, G., 2002. Jurisdictional self-reliance for small island territories: considering the partition of Cyprus, The Round Table, 365, 349-360] has argued that the ‘troika’ of smallness, insularity and peripherality may incline island peoples (rather more than mainlanders?) to question the effects of economic globalization and be especially disposed to innovative approaches to development. He views jurisdictional capacity as integral to that task. Much of the literature on such issues relates to island nations, but this work focuses on Australia’s smallest and only island state of Tasmania, and thus on a sub-national jurisdiction. In what follows I explore the effects of an attempt to enrol Tasmanians in the creation and stabilization of a ‘2020 vision’ meant to be global in its reach, to focus on the particular strengths of the island state, and be innovative in advancing sustainable development. Known as Tasmania Together, the 20-year strategic vision outlines diverse economic, social and environmental goals assembled over two years via widespread consultations with the island’s communities of place and interest. For a time Tasmania Together generated significant debate about what it means to be an island people, and whether and to what extent Tasmanians’ future will be secured through economic globalization or localized endeavours premised on sustainability principles. Important to Tasmanians as well as to island studies, these rhetorics of social and spatial engagement also have salience beyond the borders of the island state, highlighting larger questions about the technologies of governmentality, agency and the performance of identity. 相似文献
19.
G. J. Osemeobo Dr. 《GeoJournal》1991,23(3):241-248
A survey was conducted in 21 rural settlements to assess wildlife conservation under a common utilization. Wildlife was managed through traditional regulations to meet subsistence requirements for food, income, recreation and health care. However, the conditions under which common property resource utilization thrived: traditional beliefs, communal land tenure system and uncertain income streams were almost disintegrated by changes in land use and social attitudes.The resource base for rural economies, the natural vegetation, was in crisis of depletion and degradation due to modern techniques of agricultural and forestry production. A conservative strategy is suggested. Rural land use should be based on planned agroforestry practices: smallholder tree planting, protection and regeneration of indigenous plants with potential social and economic value, domestication of wild animals and ranching of game with livestock. 相似文献
20.
Neo-rural populations and their relations with local decision makers in rural Québec: collaboration or conflict? 总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1
The socio-demographic recomposition of the countryside is affecting local interactions and power relations. Understanding these relationships remains a challenge, as the studies to date are often limited to conflicts between neo-rural populations (newcomers) and long-time country residents over partial issues, without including decision makers. To go beyond this conflictual and fragmentary perspective, the objective of this article is to present an overall picture of both cooperative and oppositional relations between four groups, namely, newcomers, long-time rural residents, leaders of local organizations and municipal officials, in regard to all the issues that concern them. The data are based on interviews with these various actors in two contrasting rural areas of Québec (Canada). After looking at the newcomers’ mixed assessment of their participation in community life, we concentrate on areas of collaboration and/or conflict between all the actors regarding demographic, economic, sociocultural, political, environmental and agricultural issues. Three main trends emerge, revealing unexpected ways of interacting, complex power relations and antagonistic conceptions of rural spaces and their future development. 相似文献