Showing papers in "Development and Change in 1997"

Women, Wages and Intra-household Power Relations in Urban Bangladesh

Abstract: This article discusses with examples from women working in the export-oriented garment industry the implications for kinship relations within the household of womens access to income-earning opportunities in Bangladesh. The question is whether decision making is consensual or conflictual and whether the absence of conflict in decision making signifies the absence of power within the household or its suppression. Interviews were conducted among 60 women engaged in 12 new export-oriented garment factories in Dhaka during 1988-89. The author analyzed whether womens earning capacity was a necessary sufficient or irrelevant factor in household gender relations. The interviews with women serve to bridge the gap between proposed theories and empirical evidence and to inform about power relations. Amatya Sen (1990) proposes that bargaining power is related to market exchange or subsistence consumption the form of payment (cash or kind) and location (outside the household or inside) and not to the value of productive contributions. Sens notion is also related to the threat of use of violence and to the perceived best interests in subordinating their personal well-being to that of others. Recent sociological literature about intra-household relations recognizes inequalities in power but there is disagreement about the role of womens earnings in affecting power relations. Economic studies focus on power as decision making. It is concluded from the interviews that womens wage employment changed their lives. There were changes in labor markets living arrangements marriage and migration. Individual women used the opportunities to secure a more central place within family relations to provide better for their children buy what they wanted renegotiate relationships and leave situations. Factory wages helped to give women a context for creating more choices.

The Symbolic Making of a Common Property Resource: History, Ecology and Locality in a Tank‐irrigated Landscape in South India

Abstract: Today there is a pervasive policy consensus in favour of ‘community management’ approaches to common property resources such as forests and water. This is endorsed and legitimized by theories of collective action which, this article argues, produce distinctively ahistorical and apolitical constructions of ‘locality’, and impose a narrow definition of resources and economic interest. Through an historical and ethnographic exploration of indigenous tank irrigation systems in Tamil Nadu, the article challenges the economic-institutional modelling of common property systems in terms of sets of rules and co-operative equilibrium outcomes internally sustained by a structure of incentives. The article argues for a more historically and politically grounded understanding of resources, rights and entitlements and, using Bourdieu's notion of ‘symbolic capital’, argues for a reconception of common property which recognizes symbolic as well as material interests and resources. Tamil tank systems are viewed not only as sources of irrigation water, but as forming part of a village ‘public domain’ through which social relations are articulated, reproduced and challenged. But the symbolic ‘production of locality’ to which water systems contribute is also shaped by local ecology. The paper examines the historical and cultural production of two distinctive ‘cultural ecologies’. This serves to illustrate the fusion of ecology and social identity, place and person, in local conceptions, and to challenge a currently influential thesis on the ecological-economic determinants of collective action. In short, development discourse and local actors are seen to have very different methods and purposes in the ‘production of locality’. Finally, the article points to some practical implications of this for strategies of ‘local institutional development’ in irrigation.

Primitive Ideas: Protected Area Buffer Zones and the Politics of Land in Africa

Abstract: This article critically evaluates participatory, integrated conservation and development programmes in Africa, focusing on protected area buffer zones. I argue that, despite the emphasis on participation and benefit-sharing, many of the new projects replicate more coercive forms of conservation practice and often constitute an expansion of state authority into remote rural areas. I suggest that the reasons for this state of affairs can be traced in part to the persistence in conservation interventions of Western ideas and images of the Other. These stereotypes result in misguided assumptions in conservation programmes which have important implications for the politics of land in buffer zone communities.

Social Exclusion: Towards an Analytical and Operational Framework

Abstract: This article attempts to analyse the economic, social and political dimensions of social exclusion. After comparing the concept with the conventional notions of poverty and marginalization, we argue that social exclusion overlaps with poverty broadly defined, but goes beyond it by explicitly embracing the relational as well as distributional aspects of poverty. It is shown that the concept has universal validity although it has not gained much attention in developing countries. Indicators to measure diAerent aspects of social exclusion are discussed; in this context, the article considers how appropriate it might be to use precariousness of employment as a measure. Finally, methodological problems involved in operationalizing the concept as a tool of policy formulation to fight exclusion are underlined.

Environmental Action, Gender Equity and Women's Participation

Abstract: For poor households, and especially for the women who own little private land, forests and village commons have always been critical sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation and to shifts in property rights away from community control and management to State and individual control and management. More recently, though, we are seeing small but notable reversals in these processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups have emerged, initiated variously by the State, by village communities, or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity, especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men? Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male centred? What is women's participation in these initiatives? What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered responses to the environmental crisis.

How do local institutions mediate market and population pressures on resources? Forest panchayats in Kumaon India.

Abstract: This article addresses one of the most controversial issues in resource management: how do population and market pressures affect resource use? After examining some shortcomings in several major approaches to the issue, the authors use structural equation analysis to decipher the relative and reciprocal influence of population pressures, markets, and institutional arrangements on forest use in the Kumaon Himalaya in India. By deploying an approach which investigates comparatively the effects of these factors, the article attempts to find a way out of the stultifying positions that participants in the debate on overpopulation and environmental change are forced to adopt. The results presented in the second half of the article are especially interesting, showing that local institutions created by the state play a critical role in mediating the influence of structural and socio-economic variables. The findings thus possess significant implications for all who are interested in co-management of renewable resources by the state and the community.

The Poverty–Purdah Trap in Rural Bangladesh: Implications for Women's Roles in the Family

Abstract: Trends in poverty, working through changing roles of women in income generation, have been advanced as one explanation of changing fertility in Bangladesh. This paper examines women's work patterns in two rural villages in northern Bangladesh and finds little evidence of increasing workforce participation, despite high contraceptive use rates. Observation of women's work patterns suggests that purdah, the practice of female seclusion, influences and conditions women's decisions regarding roles they assume, and remains a dominant influence in women's lives, showing little evidence of responsiveness to poverty.

Common Property Resource Institutions and Forest Management in Latin America

Abstract: This article focuses on how common property resource (CPR) institutions managing forest resources in Latin America have responded to change, a subject relatively ignored in the English-language literature. It examines in particular the evidence surrounding the popular view that CPR institutions must inevitably break down in the face of economic and demographic pressures—an extension of the `tragedy of the commons' thesis. The evidence shows that there have been a number of both positive and negative experiences. The negative experiences include the obvious vulnerability of Amerindian informal institutions to the individualistic incentive structures of market forces. The apparent incompatibility between the market and `gift' economy leads to a questioning of the current donor emphasis on market-orientated natural forest management among indigenous groups that have received little exposure to market forces, and alternative approaches are suggested. However, many indigenous and other groups have responded positively to market pressures and there is ample evidence that, given an appropriate policy environment, community-based natural forest management can still be regarded as a `great white hope' for forest conservation, especially considering the largely negative environmental and equity impacts of individualized resource privatization, as in the Brazilian Amazon. However, CPR institutions have generally faced an unsupportive policy environment; it is therefore over-simplistic for those in favour of privatization of property rights to ascribe their erosion to commercial or demographic pressures per se.

Representing Crisis: The Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation and the Project of Development in Post‐Rana Nepal

Abstract: Erik Eckholm in a 1976 treatise linked population growth to contemporary upland deforestation and soil erosion which are presumed to cause downstream flooding and silting. Since the 1980s Eckholms theory has come under intense criticism on empirical theoretical and ideological grounds. There is a widespread belief that an ecological crisis of unprecedented proportion is taking place in Nepals Himalayan region. An historiography of Eckholms theory is presented with regard to Nepals environmental crisis during the post-World War II period. That historiography reveals that representations of and discourses on the nature and extent of environmental degradation have been an important dimension of the modernization basic needs and neoliberal aid regimes which shaped the post-World War II development project in Nepal. The notion of aid regime refers to a given constellation of donors sectoral emphases aggregate assistance and composition of assistance. Within specific historical and institutional constellations some conclusions have seemed more logical than others and certain interventions have become more legitimate. The production of environmental interventions is intimately connected to the production of environmental knowledge both of which are intricately linked with power relations. The facts about environmental deterioration have become subordinate to the broader debates upon the politics of resource use and sustainable development.

New Democratic Spaces at the Grassroots? Popular Participation in Latin American Local Governments

Abstract: This article sounds a note of caution with regard to the idea that political decentralization and increased popular participation, notably at the local level, could help consolidate fragile democratic regimes, and render their institutions both more eAcient and more responsive to their constituents. Taking a review of two major strands of the decentralization literature as its starting point, the article shows that political decentralization often runs into bureaucratic obstacles and politically motivated resistance from local and

Water, Rules and Gender: Water Rights in an Indigenous Irrigation System, Marakwet, Kenya

Abstract: The management of indigenous irrigation systems has received increasing attention both from social science researchers and from those development agents who seek to change them, or to find in them a model for organizing newly developed irrigation schemes. This article discusses how water is allocated within one such irrigation system, the hill furrow irrigation of the Marakwet escarpment in Kenya. It describes the ‘formal rules’ of water rights, giving particular attention to the issue of gender with respect to water rights. It then discusses the ‘working rules’ relevant to water allocation, involving various informal practices of sharing, buying and stealing. The implications of this complexity for understanding the operation of indigenous farmer-managed irrigation systems are examined.

Property vs. Control: The State and Forest Management in the Indian Himalaya

Abstract: The latest orthodoxy to emerge in environmental literature centres on the notion that state ownership of forests results in poor management and ecological degradation. Depending on their political persuasion, scholars, policy-makers and activists either advocate privatization of state forests, or demand their transferral to local communities as solutions for promoting sustainable forest management. This article argues that such proposals are flawed because they assume that ownership status determines the ways in which resources are used and managed. It argues that an analytical distinction needs to be made between property and control for understanding the complex interplay of social, economic, political and ecological factors that influence forest stock, composition and quality. Through a historical analysis of the development of state forestry in the Indian Himalaya, the article shows how state ownership of forests does not result in the monolithic imposition of proprietary rights, but emerges instead as an ensemble of access and management regimes.

Beyond Gender Roles? Conceptualizing the Social and Economic Lives of Rural Peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: The repeated failure to design and appropriately target policies and interventions which address the needs of rural peoples in Africa suggests that something may be wrong with our understanding of the way that these peoples live their lives. Perspectives which focus on intra-household processes, and on gender issues in particular, represent useful advances in the way that the social and economic lives of Africa’s rural peoples are conceptualized. However, this article questions the value of adopting development planning, policy and project approaches based on the rigid identification of ‘gender roles’. By reference to field research undertaken in northern Ghana, the paper aims to demonstrate that other social constructs, such as marital status and seniority, may be as important as gender in determining the roles and status of individuals in African rural societies. The article concludes by highlighting a number of practical implications of this finding in terms of the structuring of development-oriented research and the targeting of policy and interventions.

Chinese Business and Ethnic Equilibrium in Malaysia

Abstract: The economic success of the Chinese in Southeast Asia has often led to tense relations between them and the politically-dominant ethnic groups. This article examines the changing nature of the Chinese business community in Malaysia over three decades, and suggests a way to understand conflict and co-operation among the Chinese and Malays over the economy. The analysis bridges the gap between two contrasting views on the future of Chinese businesses: one which sees the state as using the Chinese for their present skills on the way to reducing their economic strength, and another that sees the rise of China and the consolidation of Chinese overseas networks as giving added leverage to Chinese capital over the state. This article argues that a simple Chinese versus Malay view of ethnic conflict is no longer useful, and suggests that approaches to ethnic conflict should take into account the interplay of two key variables—the internal organization of the Chinese business community and the class structure of indigenous society. Changes have occurred in both, resulting in reduced levels of ethnic scapegoating and broader political support for higher-growth strategies over narrow ethnic redistributive issues.

Borrowing of Land, Security of Tenure and Sustainable Land Use in Burkina Faso

Abstract: Lack of formal security of land tenure is often cited as a constraint for participatory land management programmes which try to motivate African farmers to grow trees and to realize other improvements in their fields in order to control soil erosion. According to this approach, the borrowing of land would represent an insecure form of land tenure hindering sustainable land use. However, on the basis of a case study in Burkina Faso, this article demonstrates that this is not necessarily so: borrowing arrangements may play a part in avoiding local overload of the carrying capacity and in an efficient distribution of village lands among the farming units. Furthermore, borrowing does not hinder some major intensification techniques of land use which are currently being applied in Burkina Faso. Legal interventions which aim to increase security of tenure and to create favourable conditions for sustainable land use may in fact have the opposite effect.

Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain: Gender Analysis of Economic Transition in Cuba in the 1990s

Abstract: This article argues that Cubas economic demise following the collapse of the former Soviet Union should be seen as a crisis in reproduction as well as a crisis in consumption and production. Using qualitative field research carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Havana and in the province of Matanzas the author shows that the commodities and services required for reproduction could no longer be guaranteed through the distribution system of the Cuban state. Consequently people began to devise a range of survival strategies in order to ensure the reproduction of their household including trading in unofficial markets leaving formal employment and engaging in a portfolio of income-generating activities in the informal sector. Such strategies were patterned by the existing sexual division of labor and show a reinforcement of traditional gender roles. The article argues that these changes will have important political as well as economic consequences for Cubas future. (authors)

Reforming Cuban Agriculture

Abstract: This article focuses on the two major reforms undertaken in the Cuban agricultural sector during 1993 and 1994: the re-organization of the state farm sector into worker-managed production co-operatives and the opening of free agricultural markets for above-plan production. It is argued that the Cuban agricultural sector is now characterized by multiple forms of organization of production and land tenure or a ‘mixed economy’, and that the two reforms have produced a turn-around in agricultural performance. Still, the macro-economic impact is likely to depend on a deepening of the reforms in two directions: the development of a free market in agricultural inputs and a reform of the food rationing system.

The Paradox of Narrowing Wage Differentials and Widening Wage Inequality in Mexico

Abstract: This article examines the parallel phenomena of narrowing wage differentials among major groups of workers and widening wage inequality in general in Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s. In trying to understand this paradox, it finds that a human-capital model cannot explain wage determination in the 1990s. Although employees with higher skills and education have enjoyed increasingly higher relative returns to their human capital, much of the variance in wages is not attributable to differences in human capital or rates of return. Discriminatory wage policies have combined with policies of trade liberalization to markedly widen the wage gap between lower-paid and higher-paid workers.

Food Security in India: Measures, Norms and Issues

Abstract: Although assessments by conventional macromeasures show considerable improvement in food security in India the levels of cereal consumption and calorie intake of even the general population are still below the normative threshold limits. This article brings out the dynamics of changes in institutional and production conditions and their implications for consumption patterns and food security at the microlevel. The article uses empirical evidence to raise a number of issues and calls for emphasis on investment in human capital by way of improvements in food and calorie intake for efficiency and economic growth. (authors)

Rural Development Patterns in Post‐Reform China: The Pearl River Delta Region in the 1990s

Abstract: Since the reforms that began in 1979, economic development in China has been marked by four major policy initiatives: the re-integration of the Chinese economy with the global economy, the decentralization of economic decision making away from the central state to lower levels, and, especially in the coastal regions, the shift away from subsistence agriculture towards rural industrialization and increasing commercialization. In this article, the eAects of the reform policies are discussed in the context of the Pearl River delta region, the economic core of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Closely proximate to Hong Kong, with many Overseas Chinese connections, the province was given opportunities to innovate within the new policy option and has been marked by rapid economic growth. The article focuses on the impact of industrialization, commercialization, and globalization in four contrasting areas of the Pearl River delta in the 1980s and 1990s. At a general level, what McGee has called desakota zones have emerged and follow a development process which is similar to that observed in parts of East and Southeast Asia in the 1970s. When examined from the perspective of villages and localities, the blending of government policies, geographical location, and market forces with an array of local social values has resulted in separate and distinctive patterns of development.

Women's Work in Urban Bangladesh: Is there an Economic Rationale?

Abstract: This study examines gender issues in formal informal and semi-formal employment in Dhaka Bangladesh. Data were obtained from a 1992 household survey conducted among seven randomly selected primary sampling units (PSUs) out of 28 PSUs in metropolitan Dhaka City. Household income is measured taking into account formal educational level of the household head and monthly per capita household expenditure on market goods and services such as food clothing education health care housing and other items. Market skill level is measured by years of formal schooling. A background review of the literature focuses on the role of purdah or seclusion in delineating gender-specific economic activities. Findings indicate that 46% of women were engaged in nonmarket household production. About 20% of women and 25% of men attended school at economically active ages. 25% of women and almost 66% of men received wages for market work. An increase in income was associated with a larger proportion of men and women attending school but women were a lower proportion. The proportion of paid market workers and the female labor force participation rate (LFPR) was highest in the poorest households. In the poorest households almost all women had very low skill levels. Among wealthy households only 14% of women had very low skill levels. Levels of schooling appeared unrelated to market production up to the college level. Results confirm that the supply effects of gender roles and human capital influenced the size of female LFPR. Women were engaged in employment with low returns because women were largely poor and had few or no market skills. Findings suggest that female LFPR was not solely the domain of patriarchal systems and purdah norms but an economic strategy in response to income needs. Policy should be aimed at making the existing market more sensitive to womens needs and equity.

Establishing a Liberal Political Order Through a Constitution: The Papua New Guinea Experience

Abstract: The experience with the independent constitution of Papua New Guinea is examined in this article to argue that, while constitutions are able to set up institutions and define their jurisdiction, they are less effective in establishing values and norms. Constitutions establish broad frameworks for politics but are rarely successful in determining the dynamics of politics or the conduct of parties, which depend principally on social and economic circumstances. The parliamentary system in PNG has been influenced more by traditional notions of clan leadership and reciprocity than by any Westminster convention. In PNG, the courts and other institutions for discipline and control of administration have been more effective than in many other developing countries, principally due to the weakness of the state-political system. Nevertheless, there remains considerable tension between the Rule of Law and democracy as it has developed in PNG.

The Identity of Capitalists and the Legitimacy of Capitalism: Sri Lanka since Independence

Abstract: In many Asian countries, the early decades of independence after World War II were marked by tension between ‘indigenous’ political elites and business elites that were in large part alien, or from minority ethnic groups. This tension was one reason for the preference that most governments showed for statist and nationalist economic policies. It has abated in most cases; political and business elites now tend to pursue more co-operative strategies. Much of the explanation for this lies in changes in the international political economy that made market-oriented economic policies more attractive to political elites. There are in addition internal political reasons for this rapprochement. These vary from case to case, and have been explored in most detail by scholars in relation to the Southeast Asian countries where Overseas Chinese have dominated larger scale business. This article extends this literature by examining the causes of the gradual rapprochement between ‘majority’ politics and ‘minority’ business in Sri Lanka.

Fighting Inflation in Latin America

Abstract: Inflation has been a chronic problem for Latin American economies since the Second World War. In the 1980s, inflation ran out of control in many countries. This article analyses the causes of these high inflation rates and discusses the experiences of Latin American countries in fighting (hyper-) inflation in the 1980s and 1990s. Particular attention is given to the relative merits of orthodox versus heterodox approaches, and to the use of the exchange rate as an inflation stabilizer. The article concludes, among other things, that achieving fiscal balance is crucial, whatever method is used, and that a fixed exchange rate can help to stabilize inflation but contains many risks, in particular with open capital accounts.