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1.
Although some scholars describe migrant farmers as ‘exceptional resource degraders’ others do not. This paper uses evidence from the transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana, to examine whether there are substantial differences between households of migrants and the host population regarding agricultural land use. The aim is to determine whether migrants are more destructive of the land (and hence the environment) than the host population. This will be examined using a standard model of the determinants of agricultural land use, to which we add variables representing demographic impacts, including in-migration. The data used are from a household survey undertaken in 2002 among 110 migrant and 142 host population farming households in central Ghana. Results are mixed. We find no support for the hypothesis that households with migrants are less likely to consider the long-term effects of land use by increasing the land area in cultivation, but at the same time there is evidence of use of more land-intensive agricultural practices which tend to degrade farm land over time.  相似文献   

2.
Julie Wilk  Donald Kgathi 《GeoJournal》2007,70(2-3):121-132
Information from 117 questionnaires and focus groups in four villages in the Okavango Delta, Botswana was used to identify households exposed to different levels of risk in order to relate them to various livelihood activities and coping strategies. Current household strategies such as migration and diversification that are used to cope with recurring hazards such as drought, reduced flooding and animal disease are becoming more limited because of fencing policies and changed flooding regimes. In the light of future challenges such as climate change and increased upstream water abstractions, the heavy reliance on government assistance will probably increase especially among female-headed households and high-risk households. Without targeted initiatives based on spatial and social distributions of risk, then the dependency syndrome of Botswana is likely to continue and be exacerbated.  相似文献   

3.
Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world. The majority of households continue to rely on farming to meet their needs. However the country is also going through an important transition as the market extends into formerly remote rural areas. Drawing on surveys of nine villages in three districts, the paper elucidates how households are managing the transition from subsistence to market. Agriculturally resilient communities with considerable potential are contrasted with villages where the scope for increases in farm output are sharply constrained. The growing role of non-farm activities is highlighted and a distinction drawn between `distress' and `progressive' diversification. The paper argues that diversification is propelled by very different forces and has markedly different implications in livelihood terms. It is also suggested that while general statements can be made about livelihood transitions in the country, and the production and reproduction of poverty, at a household level it is often not possible to `read-off' likely livelihood conditions from a mere assessment of resources.  相似文献   

4.
This paper argues that critical geographies of Latin America begin with an analysis of how and why the bodies and geographies of geographers themselves matter. To focus on the geographer as a producer of knowledge is not to advocate the kind of navel gazing so abhorrent to many scholars. Rather, it is an effort to call attention to and critically assess how the geographer's embodied social position and geographic location inform the production of knowledge about and representations of Latin American people and nature. To illustrate how and why bodies and geographies matter, I draw from feminist and post-colonial theory and include examples from my own experiences and those of other researchers doing fieldwork in Latin American countries. I conclude by exploring the notion of situated knowledge as a tactic that writes bodies and geographies into academic texts. Ultimately, situating knowledge represents a political intervention and contribution to the broader goals of emancipatory politics shared by critical human geographers.  相似文献   

5.
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   

6.
Recent studies have addressed the social and environmental impacts of biofuel crops but seldom the question as to why rural producers engage in their production. It is particularly unclear how governments worldwide, especially in middle-income countries such as Brazil, Thailand, and Mexico, could enroll so many smallholders in biofuel cropping projects. Conventional views see yields and economic returns as main drivers for smallholder participation in biofuel production but ignore the role played by power and politics. This paper analyses the rapid biofuel expansions (oil palm, jatropha) in the southern Lacandon rainforest in Chiapas (Mexico) and their partial failure (jatropha) from a political ecology perspective. Our findings indicate that biofuel expansions in this region not only occurred for productive reasons, but also because biofuel programmes provided prospects for political gains through strengthened rural organisations. In contrast with emphasis on state coercion and local resistance—common in political ecology—the biofuel expansion relied, in this case, upon a ‘politics of consent’ in which both the state and rural organisations, albeit in a power-laden relationship, sought to achieve their own goals by supporting the planting of biofuel crops. These findings suggest the need to rethink how particular approaches within political ecology apply Gramsci’s notions of power and hegemony and, more broadly, to consider the importance of politics in explaining why certain forms of agricultural production become dominant.  相似文献   

7.
Feminist scholars have emphasised the central import of bringing feminist approaches into political geography, so as not to reify the global or the totalizing ambitions of political geography. However, the reification of the global is perhaps a pragmatic strategy for small places in a big world. Singapore is touted as the Asian development miracle; a Tiger Economy that has survived in spite of its small size and lack of natural resources. This year the man credited with its transformation from a backwater island-state to a global city-state, passed away. This is also the year that marks the 50th year of Singapore’s independence. In writing this review I analyse the overlap and synergies between the developmental goals of a newly independent state and the goals of the feminist movements. In particular, I maintain that the government’s push to transform Singapore into a global city from the late 1980s onwards, and its strategic use of Asian Family Values as the panacea for the threat of Westernisation have resulted in a more divided movement. Looking past the legacy of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, I ask how we may begin to reclaim feminist politics to stitch together the divided spaces produced by Singaporean state biopolitics. Through this exercise, this intervention contributes to feminist articulations on the problem spaces of feminism; and challenges the reification of the global by talking across multiple worlds that feminist politics inhabit.  相似文献   

8.
In Europe the process of agricultural engagement or disengagement is attributed to the economic factor and mainly on the level of alternative employment source development. It is the relational quality of economic, social and environmental factors that determine sustainability of agricultural holdings and, hence, households. In regions of poor agricultural structures and of many employment opportunities as well as in regions suffering from agricultural depression, households exhibit stronger tendencies towards agricultural disengagement. Remarkably in southern Europe a stable agricultural engagement and not disengagement is observed, even though in recent years there are limited possibilities of alternative income sources and prevailing agricultural depression. This article highlights the factors which lead households to stable engagement with agriculture in a region of southern Europe, the island of Lesvos. The island is characterised by traditional olive grove mono-culture, poor agricultural structures and limited employment opportunities. The investigation of the economic, social and environmental farm household characteristics concluded that in regions where poor agricultural infrastructure and lack of employment prevail, all three factors of sustainability contribute to stability and/or low agricultural disengagement. Among these, the economic factor is the most sensitive and hence highly influential. The social factor is highlighted as a quality and consistent factor due to the respect for tradition. The environmental factor, finally, is characterised by mild cultivation practices, contributing to environment conservation.  相似文献   

9.
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   

10.
The everyday politics of rural young people who live in post-war settings in the Global South is poorly explored. In the aftermath of a recent civil war in Nepal (1996–2006), villages have been operating without elected bodies, and poorly functioning local governance has been concentrated around party patronage networks and community development. In the lives of many young people, the aspirations and practices of educational and labour mobility have been dominant. Based on fieldwork carried out in the Panchthar District, this article discusses how ordinary young people nevertheless engage in different political dimensions. Guiding the analysis through the narratives of four young men and women, I have accentuated how the tension between socio-political situatedness and young people’s life strategies shapes the versatility of their political engagement. How do those who did not become political activists balance their daily lives, mobility and household obligations with involvement in party and local development politics? By exploring their motivations and engagement, I come to two conclusions. Firstly, young men navigate party politics by juggling the legacy of patronage and rejecting parties, as well as by involving themselves in disruptive events and seeking personal benefit from them. Secondly, young men and women negotiate their political motivations in community development politics primarily through household dynamics adjusted to their mobile lifestyle.  相似文献   

11.
Livelihood diversification can be crucial for poor rural households in the African Sahel. Migration is a common diversification strategy during the dry season, but there are also areas with significant strategies on the farm, such as incomes from gum and resins. Sudan is a country where the income from gum arabic, the gum from the Acacia senegal tree, has played a large economic role for smallholders for generations, but there are signs of a declining production which is detrimental if people have no alternative incomes. The results showed that in parts of the country, the 1984 drought caused an event-driven change resulting in a discontinuation of production. However, in other parts of the country, the agricultural system providing gum arabic proved to be more resilient to the drought and the incomes from gum arabic still play a large role. The results illustrated a complexity of driving forces, regional differences and a large variability in incomes between households. Some causes were indirect such as prices, drought, precipitation and locust, whereas the others were direct and hence more controllable by households. This study underlined the direct causes, such as how labour input is prioritised between livelihood activities, which have not been given as much attention in previous literature. Secondly, the need for a holistic view of livelihoods is underlined in order to understand the future of gum arabic production. Empirical data were collected from extensive fieldwork.
Bodil ElmqvistEmail:
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12.
This paper examines how gender relations within rural communities in north-central Mexico affect women’s perceptions of and responses to environmental and social risks. Several studies currently exist which suggest various reasons as to how people especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change perceive their risks, and how this influences their responses. In this paper, I take a feminist approach to questions of social–environmental risks and adaptation to argue that risk perception is tightly linked to knowledge production, and knowledge production is a power-laden process involving the constant negotiation of resources, responsibilities and knowledge. I base this argument on the results of fieldwork conducted from September 2009 to May 2010 with women residents of two ejidos in northern Guanajuato, Mexico. In drawing from feminist political ecology studies, I intend to show how gender, environmental knowledge, risk perception and thus, adaptation are constituted by and embedded in social relations of power.  相似文献   

13.
This paper explored the status of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in southeast Nigeria using qualitative and quantitative methods in data collection. One hundred and sixty farmers were selected from the area. Also, focus group discussions were conducted. Data collected were subjected to qualitative analysis and logit regression. The study identified five broad and important practices relevant to CSA in southeast Nigeria, which include: adjusting agricultural production systems, mobility and social networks, farm financial management, diversification on and beyond the farm, and knowledge management and regulations. The determinants of CSA in southeast Nigeria include: education, income, credit, extension, livestock ownership, farming experience, land area cultivated, distance to the market and water resources, leadership position, risk orientation, gender, land ownership, household size, and mass media exposure. Government policies need to support research and development that develops and diffuses the climate-smart technologies to help farmers respond changes in climatic conditions.  相似文献   

14.
In the context of contemporary concerns about climate change and food security, Conservation Agriculture (CA) has emerged as a well-supported and central component of the agricultural sector development strategy across sub-Saharan Africa, including in Zambia, which is the focus of this paper. A variety of narratives about the benefits of CA over conventional agricultural systems underpin endeavours towards ‘scaling up’ CA and increasing rates of adoption amongst smallholder farmers nationwide. However, there is a knowledge politics underlying the translation of a weak evidence base around CA into persuasive narratives and financial and political support. In this paper, we trace the evolution of five narratives around CA in Zambia in relation to changing political agendas and the involvement of new public and private sector actors, and review the development of evidence bases and knowledge that support and challenge each of these narratives. We discuss the potential to open up space within this knowledge politics to alternative narratives and the contestation of the pervasive CA scaling up agenda. Critical reflection is essential to ensure that national and local evidence is more effectively used to guide national climate and agricultural policy developments and international donor initiatives.  相似文献   

15.
R. Kada 《GeoJournal》1982,6(4):367-371
Part-time farming is a wide-spread phenomenon in contemporary rural Japan. Characterized by an extremely small-scale rice farming and by a unimodal equitable rural development, most Japanese farm households have combined farming with off-farm employment. In this article, after an examination of the definition of part-time farming (farm household as the unit), the trend of and factors for part-time farming are described and analyzed. Growth and expansion of off-farm employment opportunities, continued small-sized farming, rapid increase in farmland prices and development and diffusion of labor-saving technology are among the major forces which encouraged part-time farming in Japan. Although the overall performance of part-time farms appears less efficient in the use of non-labor resources (e.g., land and machinery), part-time farms still occupy a significant share in the aggregate agricultural production and in the total farmland cropped. Various on-farm and off-farm adjustments are pointed out which have enabled dual employment patterns to be adopted by these people. In essence, due to the limited opportunities for farm-size expansion, part-time farming is considered a necessity, rather than a choise, for most Japanese farm families. But this has also caused some serious agricultural problems, especially with respect to its impact on farmsize structure and inefficient land use. At least for the purpose of maintaining a high income level and for equitable access to opportunities, part-time farming has seemingly contributed beneficially to the farming population of Japan.  相似文献   

16.
Ben Page 《Geoforum》2002,33(1):41-54
Urban agriculture in Africa is a growth area for development institutions and researchers. It is often portrayed as a coping strategy through which the urban poor have adapted to structural adjustment. It is enframed in an apolitical, ahistorical way because development institutions seek to create spaces into which development projects can be inserted in the future. This paper uses a case study from the town of Buea in south-west Cameroon to illustrate the differences between the international image of urban agriculture and its practice in one particular place. The increase in agricultural production in Buea in the 1990s initially appears to conform to the standard picture of urban farming as a recent, pragmatic and unplanned response to falling household incomes. However, such a portrayal neglects the history of urban farming, the pleasure that agriculture brings to farmers and the political consequences of expanding agricultural production. One of the concrete outcomes of increased urban agriculture in Buea in the 1990s has been to act as a `safety valve' against social unrest. It has acted as an `anti-politics machine'; a mechanism through which a sensitive political operation (reducing the salaries of civil servants) is achieved through apparently disconnected apolitical acts (enabling urban households to expand agricultural production). The Cameroonian government has opportunistically encouraged urban agriculture during a period of rapid economic change as one strategy for reproducing existing social relations.  相似文献   

17.

The study analyzed the food security and dietary diversity of tea workers in Lakkatura Tea Garden and Ootterbhag Tea garden in greater Sylhet district of Bangladesh. A total of 200 respondents (100 from each tea estate) were interviewed to evaluate the food security and dietary diversity. The study found that average daily per capita calorie intake by tea workers was 2095.96 kcal. In addition, around 85.30% of the total calorie intake was received from the rice consumption. Average per capita daily intake of rice was estimated at 538.51 gm which is higher than the national average. It was also observed that 71.7 and 65.0% households were food secure in Lakkatura and Ootterbhag Tea garden, respectively. In Lakkatura Tea Garden, 61.67% tea workers have medium dietary diversity and in Ootterbhag Tea Estate 49.47% tea workers have low dietary diversity. Using the logit model analysis, this study provides food consumption patterns of tea workers and determine the factors responsible for food security. Household size, farm income and daily calorie intake were found having significant influence on households’ food security. For improving socioeconomic conditions of tea workers, educational institution should be set up to improve their educational status and government should give loans for them at a low interest rate and create alternative job opportunity in off season.

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18.
Feminist political ecology (fpe) is at a crossroads. Over the last 2 years, feminist political ecologists have begun to reflect on and debate the strengths of this subfield. In this article, we contribute by pointing to the limited theorization of race in this body of work. We argue that fpe must theorize a more complex and messier, notion of ‘gender’, one that accounts for race, racialization and racism more explicitly. Building on the work of feminist geography and critical race scholarship, we argue for a postcolonial intersectional analysis in fpe – putting this theory to work in an analysis of race, gender and whiteness in Honduras. With this intervention we demonstrate how theorizing race and gender as mutually constituted richly complicates our understanding of the politics of natural resource access and control in the Global South.  相似文献   

19.
Ji  Feng  Shi  Yuchuan  Zhou  Huixing  Liu  Haiming  Liao  Yi 《Natural Hazards》2017,87(1):165-184
Farmers along the Amazon River each year face multiple natural hazards that threaten crop production and limit the potential for agricultural development of the expansive floodplain and active channel. In this paper we report the findings of a study of natural hazard-related risk associated with rice production on silt bars in the active channel of the Amazon River near Iquitos, Peru. Data were gathered in four rice producing communities in 2014 using household surveys (n = 83 households), focus group discussions, surveying of land elevations along the Amazon River, and interpretation of remote sensing imagery. The probability, extent, and severity of rice crop shortfalls were estimated for recent production years and the economic losses to farming households were also assessed. Our findings point to a very high risk of crop shortfalls due to natural hazards, suggesting that a good year brings rice farmers bounty and a bad year, near penury. River stage reversals (repiquetes) and edaphic conditions were found to be more problematic than the often cited hazard of high and/or early floods. Also surprisingly, farmers’ perceptions of hazards and risk diverged markedly from actual shortfalls experienced during the production years studied. Our results provide the first quantitative estimates of risk due to the multiple natural hazards along the Amazon River and point to the need to assist lowland farmers with risk mitigation so as to unlock the considerable potential of Amazon floodlands for agricultural production.  相似文献   

20.
There is a growing understanding that the impacts of climate change affect different communities within a country, in a variety of ways—not always uniformly. This article reports on research conducted in the middle hills region of Nepal that explored climate change vulnerability in terms of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity across different well-being groups, genders of the head of household and household location. In the study region, dry land farming has increasingly experienced climate-induced changes to farm productivity and natural resources. The experience of vulnerability to decreased livelihood options and natural resource hazards due to a changing climate varied according to household wealth and well-being status, with very poor and poor households more vulnerable than medium and well-off households. The research indicates that the climate change adaptation would benefit by considering: (i) differential impacts of vulnerability mainly based on well-being status of households; (ii) understanding of the local socio-political context and underlying causes of vulnerability and its application; and (iii) identifying vulnerable populations for the units of vulnerability analysis and adaptation planning.  相似文献   

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