Showing papers in "Development and Change in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the pillars of the new governance project, emphasizing the citizenship claims associated with it, along with some of the tensions that arise from export-dependent growth, budget limitations, a weak tax base and the difficulties of managing enhanced social expectations.
Abstract: The idea that states should take on an enhanced role in the pursuit of development is once again becoming increasingly pronounced in the global South. In Latin America, the ‘return of the state’ is associated with neostructuralism or post-neoliberalism and the rise of the New Left. Post-neoliberal projects of governance seek to retain elements of the previous export-led growth model whilst introducing new mechanisms for social inclusion and welfare. In addition to being a project of growth based on exports and expanded social spending, post-neoliberalism has a distinctive political character. This article explores the pillars of the new governance project, emphasizing the citizenship claims associated with it, along with some of the tensions that arise from export-dependent growth, budget limitations, a weak tax base and the difficulties of managing enhanced social expectations. In making their argument, the authors draw on the examples of Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina.
363 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the contradiction between development and conservation observed in PES is inevitable in projects framed by the asocial logic of neoclassical economics and will entail a net upward redistribution of wealth in the global North.
Abstract: Commodification and transnational trading of ecosystem services is the most ambitious iteration yet of the strategy of ‘selling nature to save it’ The World Bank and UN agencies contend that global carbon markets can slow climate change while generating resources for development Consonant with ‘inclusionary’ versions of neoliberal development policy, advocates assert that international payment for ecosystem services (PES) projects, financed by carbon-offset sales and biodiversity banking, can benefit the poor However, the World Bank also warns that a focus on poverty reduction can undermine efficiency in conservation spending The experience of ten years of PES illustrates how, in practice, market-efficiency criteria clash directly with poverty-reduction priorities Nevertheless, the premises of market-based PES are being extrapolated as a model for global REDD programmes financed by carbon-offset trading This article argues that the contradiction between development and conservation observed in PES is inevitable in projects framed by the asocial logic of neoclassical economics Application in international conservation policy of the market model, in which profit incentives depend upon differential opportunity costs, will entail a net upward redistribution of wealth from poorer to wealthier classes and from rural regions to distant centres of capital accumulation, mainly in the global North
256 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors find that there might be an intensifying dialectic between change and limits influencing the relations between capitalism and nature and that this dialectic might lead to future research on neoliberal conservation and market-based environmental policy.
Abstract: Nature™ Inc. describes the increasingly dominant way of thinking about environmental policy and biodiversity conservation in the early twenty-first century. Nature is, and of course has long been, ‘big business’, especially through the dynamics of extracting from, polluting and conserving it. As each of these dynamics seems to have become more intense and urgent, the capitalist mainstream is seeking ways to off-set extraction and pollution and find (better) methods of conservation, while increasing opportunities for the accumulation of capital and profits. This has taken Nature™ Inc. to new levels, in turn triggering renewed attention from critical scholarship. The contributions to this Debate section all come from a critical perspective and have something important to say about the construction, workings and future of Nature™ Inc. By discussing the incorporation of trademarked nature and connecting what insights the contributions bring to the debate, we find that there might be what we call an intensifying dialectic between change and limits influencing the relations between capitalism and nature. Our conclusion briefly points to some of the issues and questions that this dialectic might lead to in future research on neoliberal conservation and market-based environmental policy.
236 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the recent revalorization of non-state forms of order and authority in the context of hybrid approaches to governance and state building in Africa, and argue for a more empirical and comparative approach to hybrid governance that is capable of distinguishing between constructive and corrosive forms of nonstate order, and sharpens rather than blurs the relationship between formal and informal regulation.
Abstract: In this article, I explore the recent revalorization of non-state forms of order and authority in the context of hybrid approaches to governance and state building in Africa. I argue for a more empirical and comparative approach to hybrid governance that is capable of distinguishing between constructive and corrosive forms of non-state order, and sharpens rather than blurs the relationship between formal and informal regulation. A critique of the theoretical and methodological issues surrounding hybrid governance perspectives sets the scene for a comparative analysis of two contrasting situations of hybrid security systems: the RCD-ML of eastern DR Congo, and the Bakassi Boys vigilante group of eastern Nigeria. In each case, four issues are examined: the basis of claims that regulatory authority has shifted to informal security systems; the local legitimacy of the security forces involved; the wider political context; and finally, whether a genuine transformation of regulatory authority has resulted, offering local populations a preferable alternative to the prior situation of neglectful or predatory rule. I argue that hybrid governance perspectives often essentialize informal regulatory systems, disguising coercion and political capture as popular legitimacy, and I echo calls for a more historically and empirically informed analysis of hybrid governance contexts.
168 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the political dimensions of community-level PES in Cambodia, where contracts for avoided deforestation and biodiversity conservation were implemented in five communities, and examined three aspects of the community level PES model that are inherently political: the engagement of communities as single homogeneous entities, capable of entering PES contracts; the simplification of land-use practices and resource rights; and the assumption that contracts are voluntary or reflect "community choice".
Abstract: A growing number of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) schemes are being implemented at the community level in developing countries, especially in the context of climate change mitigation efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). In parallel, there is vigorous commentary about the implications of market-based or neoliberal conservation strategies, and their potential effects on communities that depend on natural resources. This article explores the political dimensions of community-level PES in Cambodia, where contracts for ‘avoided deforestation’ and ‘biodiversity conservation’ were implemented in five communities. The research examines three aspects of the community-level PES model that are inherently political: the engagement of communities as single homogeneous entities, capable of entering PES contracts; the simplification of land-use practices and resource rights; and the assumption that contracts are voluntary or reflect ‘community choice’. These elements of PES work both discursively and practically to silence certain voices and claims, while privileging others. Therefore, the problematic nature of community-level PES is not that it is a market per se, but that it is a powerful intervention masquerading as a market. This process of ‘market masquerades’ emerges as a key element in the politics of neoliberal conservation in practice.
161 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present baseline indicators of the degree of gender inequality in asset ownership for the eleven countries in the region that have collected individual-level data on asset ownership and suggest that the distribution of property by gender is more equitable than a headship analysis alone would imply.
Abstract: Most studies that incorporate a gender dimension into the study of poverty or other development outcomes focus on the sex of the household head. This article argues that a headship analysis gives only a partial view of gender inequality since it does not take into account the position of women within male-headed households. Drawing primarily on the Living Standard Measurement Studies for Latin America and the Caribbean, the authors present baseline indicators of the degree of gender inequality in asset ownership for the eleven countries in the region that have collected individual-level data on asset ownership. Disaggregated data on asset ownership within households suggest that the distribution of property by gender is more equitable than a headship analysis alone would imply. But the degree of gender inequality also varies according to the specific asset and among countries. Further comparative work on asset ownership requires attention to the marital regimes governing property rights in marriage. Finally, the authors suggest how household surveys could be improved by standardizing the collection of individual-level asset data across countries.
111 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the impact of micro-credit on male and female time use, and drew on this analysis to explore the linkages between credit and women empowerment, and found that women who use loans in self-managed enterprises were able to allocate more time to self-employment.
Abstract: This study examines the impact of microcredit on male and female time use, and draws on this analysis to explore the linkages between credit and women's empowerment. A study of time use can help understand these linkages, because if credit is intended to improve women's livelihoods, it can also be expected to influence the way women allocate their time. Its other advantages are that it does not suffer from much time lag and can be objectively measured. Using household survey data from rural India, the findings show that while microcredit has little impact on women's time use, it helps their husbands move away from wage work (associated with bad pay and low status) to self-employment. This is because women's loans are typically used to enhance male ownership of the household's productive assets. Further, it is found that it is only women who use loans in self-managed enterprises who are able to allocate more time to self-employment. If credit is intended to increase the value of women's work time, it follows that it is not access to loans but use of loans that matters. Ensuring women's control over loan-created assets must therefore be a critical policy objective.
107 citations
TL;DR: This article argues that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures, and shows how rubber has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment.
Abstract: Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.
106 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that TEEB's rhetoric of crisis and value aligns capitalism with a new kind of ecological modernization in which ‘the market’ and market devices serve as key mechanisms to conform the real and the virtual.
Abstract: This article uses theories of virtualism to analyse the role of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project in the production of natural capital. Presented at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the project seeks to redress the ‘economic invisibility of nature’ by quantifying the value of ecosystems and biodiversity. This endeavour to put an economic value on ecosystems makes nature legible by abstracting it from social and ecological contexts and making it subject to, and productive of, new market devices. In reducing the complexity of ecological dynamics to idealized categories TEEB is driven by economic ideas and idealism, and, in claiming to be a quantitative force for morality, is engaged in the production of practices designed to conform the ‘real’ to the virtual. By rendering a ‘valued’ nature legible for key audiences, TEEB has mobilized a critical mass of support including modellers, policy makers and bankers. We argue that TEEB's rhetoric of crisis and value aligns capitalism with a new kind of ecological modernization in which ‘the market’ and market devices serve as key mechanisms to conform the real and the virtual. Using the case of TEEB, and drawing on data collected at COP10, we illustrate the importance of international meetings as key points where idealized models of biodiversity protection emerge, circulate and are negotiated, and as sites where actors are aligned and articulated with these idealized models in ways that begin further processes of conforming the real with the virtual and the realization of ‘natural capital’.
101 citations
TL;DR: It is described how conservation philanthropy supports capitalism both discursively and in more practical ways, particularly through emerging ideas of philanthrocapitalism, which may be enhancing the neoliberalization of both philanthropy and conservation.
Abstract: This article examines the role of philanthropy in conservation as a way of exploring how and why conservation might be becoming more neoliberal. It describes how conservation philanthropy supports capitalism both discursively and in more practical ways. Philanthropy is examined in terms of the two forces considered to be driving the neoliberalization of conservation — the need for capitalism to find new ways of making money, and the desire of conservationists to engage with capitalism as the best way of getting things done. It demonstrates how philanthropy can speak to both of these logics simultaneously, particularly through emerging ideas of philanthrocapitalism, which may be enhancing the neoliberalization of both philanthropy and conservation.
97 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role of trilateral development cooperation in the changing geographies of development and global partnerships and foreground and critically evaluate the politics of trilater development cooperation, arguing that trilateral cooperation has potential to improve aid effectiveness, harness the energies and expertise of southern partners and reshape development relations in more egalitarian ways.
Abstract: Changes are reverberating through the international development system. This article focuses on (re)emerging development actors in the South and their role in setting agendas, challenging current aid orthodoxies, and re-articulating development cooperation relationships between and within the North and South. Specifically, the article examines trilateral development cooperation, a significant new trend in foreign aid. The first aim is to examine the role of trilateral development cooperation in the changing geographies of development and global partnerships. The second aim is to foreground and critically evaluate the politics of trilateral development cooperation. The authors argue that trilateral development cooperation has potential to improve aid effectiveness, harness the energies and expertise of southern partners, and reshape development relations in more egalitarian ways. Alternatively, however, it may work to co-opt (re)emerging donors into a depoliticized and ineffective aid system. While this argument has been made by many critics with regard to North–South development relations, the authors also question the projection of shared interests and essentialized developing country identities in relation to the South–South element of trilateral development cooperation. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to extend critical perspectives to all elements of the new development partnerships emerging within a rapidly changing global landscape.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the working conditions for football stitchers engaged in different forms of work organization, factories, stitching centres and home-based settings in Pakistan, India and China.
Abstract: A critical challenge facing developing country producers is to meet international labour standards and codes of conduct in order to engage in global value chains. Evidence of gains for workers from compliance with such standardsandcodesremainslimitedandpatchy.Thisarticlefocusesontheglobal football industry, a sector dominated by leading global brands that manage dispersed global value chains. It assesses the working conditions for football stitchers engaged in different forms of work organization, factories, stitching centres and home-based settings in Pakistan, India and China. It draws on detailed qualitative primary field research with football-stitching workers and producers in these three countries. The article explains how and why work conditions of football stitchers differ across these locations through an analytical framework that interweaves both global and local production contexts that influence work conditions. In doing so, it argues that current debates on the role of labour in global value chains have to go beyond a narrow focus on labour standards and corporate social responsibility compliance and engage with economic, technological and social upgrading as factors that could generate sustained improvements in real wages and workers’ conditions.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that such trade-offs may be less an inherent feature of the world than an artefact of the neoliberal governance model upon which the global conservation movement increasingly relies, as embodied in the integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs).
Abstract: The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's HouseAudre Lorde (1983)
ABSTRACT
Recently, a number of prominent conservationists have declared the last quarter century of global efforts to unite conservation and development through so-called integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) an overwhelming failure, asserting that there are likely to be irreconcilable trade-offs between environmental preservation and enhancing human well-being that future policy will have to take into account. I suggest, however, that such trade-offs may be less an inherent feature of the world than an artefact of the neoliberal governance model upon which the global conservation movement increasingly relies, as embodied in the ICDP approach. In eschewing questions of resource redistribution and instead depending on economic growth to address social inequality, neoliberal conservation strategies often paradoxically force into opposition the very conservation and development interests they ostensibly seek to reconcile. This thesis is illustrated through discussion of Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, a celebrated biodiversity hotspot where conservation interventions increasingly emphasize neoliberal market mechanisms designed to incentivize preservation by demonstrating the economic value of in situ natural resources.
TL;DR: Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, in Mozambique rural poverty is worsening. as mentioned in this paper showed that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro-poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers.
Abstract: Despite rapid economic growth and massive inflows of aid, in Mozambique rural poverty is worsening. Agricultural production and productivity have not increased in the last decade. Use of chemical fertilisers and other modern technology is low and decreasing. The present development model emphasises that the government and donor role is to provide human capital and infrastructure, while the private sector is responsible for economic development and ending poverty. The most recent national surveys confirm what is being seen elsewhere in Africa, that this non-interventionist strategy does not raise agricultural productivity or reduce poverty. Of Mozambique’s population, 80 per cent is engaged in agriculture, but contributing only one fifth of the GDP. This suggests that investments in agriculture are likely to generate pro-poor growth, both to rural and urban dwellers. The policy failure is increasingly recognised, but donors and government have invested too much political capital in this policy to change easily
Abstract: African clothing industries have declined since the implementation of economic liberalization policies in the early 1980s whilst used-clothing imports to Africa have increased. The general effects of economic liberalization on African clothing industries are well documented, although little research has been conducted on the particular impact of increased imports of second-hand clothes on the local manufacturing sectors. Whether these two processes are causally related is difficult to determine due to limitations in official data sets. In this article, the used-clothing trade is explored in detail and a broad range of cultural and local economic processes are investigated. Trends such as declining local purchasing power and the opening of African markets to cheap new clothing imports, as well as imports of used-clothing, are examined, along with the converse boost to African clothing export production resulting from preferential trade agreements in the 2000s. With respect to the differential legal and illegal imports of second-hand clothing to selected African countries, it is demonstrated that official trade data sets often fail to capture the nuances of contemporary social and economic processes.
TL;DR: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released its vision of what a green economy might look like and how we might get there as mentioned in this paper, which is based on the work of the authors of this paper.
Abstract: The world has become a rather depressing place. The global economy appears to be slowing down again, numerous governments are insolvent and herds of callous market traders are zealously trying to bring about their ruin for the sake of personal profit. The ozone hole is bigger than ever; greenhouse gas-driven climate change shows every prospect of accelerating; there is another famine in the Horn of Africa and the list of threatened, endangered and extinct species grows ever longer. Super-rich over-armed countries are conducting resource wars that kill thousands of innocent people and seem destined to foster extremism. Trade laws are unjust, the arms trade rife, and global agreement about what to do collectively to tackle these global problems appears as elusive as ever. The Millennium Development Goals’ targets for tackling poverty and international targets for reducing carbon emissions are not likely to be realized. Collectively we are not in a good situation, and we do not seem to know what to do about it. Our political leaders lack the political will to direct the changes that we need. As Adams and Jeanrenaud (2008: 19) put it, when considering the prospects of a sustainable economy: ‘There are no road maps for the future that faces humankind in the twentyfirst century. People have not been here before . . . We face a future to which the past is at best a poor guide’. It is in this context that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released its vision of what a green economy might look like and how we might get there. Towards a Green
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a critique to the human trafficking discourse in relation to child migration, based on data obtained from the anti-trafficking community in the Greater Mekong Sub-region combined with an analysis of secondary material.
Abstract: This article presents a critique to the human trafficking discourse in relation to child migration, based on data obtained from the anti-trafficking community in the Greater Mekong Sub-region combined with an analysis of secondary material. It also presents a set of qualitative accounts of migration at a young age from Lao PDR and Thailand. On this basis a more theorized, grounded and nuanced perspective on child labour migration is developed. This situates child labour migration historically, embeds it within overarching processes of rural transformation and accounts for young migrants’ agency in the social process of migration, the latter shedding light on the social production of exploitation in relation to young migrants.
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of intensified monitoring and evaluation (M&E) requirements on a number of South African NGOs is examined, focusing on three areas - data that are considered appropriate to conduct M&E, staffing and organizational cultures, and NGOs' reformist relationships with other civil society organizations (CSOs).
Abstract: Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are increasingly challenged to demonstrate accountability and relevance, with reporting, monitoring and evaluation arguably having become development activities in their own right. Drawing on interviews and observation research, this article examines the impact of intensified monitoring and evaluation (M&E) requirements on a number of South African NGOs. M&E - and the types of expertise, vocabularies and practices it gives rise to - is an important area that is usually neglected in the study of NGOs but that significantly impacts on NGOs' logic of operation. By focusing on three areas - data that are considered appropriate to conduct M&E, staffing and organizational cultures, and NGOs' reformist relationships with other civil society organizations (CSOs) - M&E is revealed as a central discursive element in the constitution of NGOs appropriate to neoliberal development. By engaging a neo-Foucauldian framework of governmentality, M&E practices are thus understood as technologies through which governing is accomplished in the trans-scalar post-apartheid development domain.
TL;DR: The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006 as mentioned in this paper is a recent Indian law that recognises the rights of marginalized groups in democratic processes.
Abstract: Inclusion of marginalized sections and minorities remains one of the most vexing problems for democratic politics. This article discusses the enactment of a recent Indian law, ‘The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006’, as exemplifying the possibilities of inclusion of marginalized groups in democratic processes. The law was enacted in response to a nationwide mobilization of marginalized forest dwellers and their advocates demanding rights over forests. Grassroots-level formations representing forest dwellers came together across scales and spaces to form a network that successfully negotiated India's democratic politics to achieve the passage of the law. The case illustrates the role of grassroots mobilizations in creating alternate discourses of legitimacy, networking across scales and locations, and using spaces provided by representative democracy to include the voices and demands of the marginalized in democracies.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that social mobilizations that are devoted to contesting development and creating alternative economic arrangements conducive to the pursuit of a dignified life are not adequately captured by the term social movements and propose to name them "hope movements" to account for the collective action directed to anticipate, imperfectly, alternative realities that arise from the openness of the present one.
Abstract: Social mobilizations that are devoted to contesting development and creating alternative economic arrangements conducive to the pursuit of a dignified life have recently sprung up. Not only do they criticize the current state of affairs but they actively seek and experience new ways of living, inspired by what Bloch calls the anticipatory consciousness of the ‘not-yet-become’, that is, another reality not yet materialized but which can be already experienced. This article argues that these mobilizations are not adequately captured by the term ‘social movements’. The uniqueness of these mobilizations requires a conceptual and epistemological turn that is able to accommodate the post-development critique of development as well as their emancipatory dimension. We propose to name them ‘hope movements’ to account for the collective action directed to anticipate, imperfectly, alternative realities that arise from the openness of the present one. We conclude by discussing the political relevance of hope movements for the pursuit of the good life as an alternative to development.
TL;DR: This article first examines concerns about large-scale climate interventions, and then goes on to envision a regime driven by humanitarian agendas and concern for vulnerable populations, implemented through international development and aid institutions.
Abstract: Climate engineering, or geoengineering, refers to large-scale climate interventions to lower the earth's temperature, either by blocking incoming sunlight or removing carbon dioxide from the biosphere. Regarded as ‘technofixes’ by critics, these strategies have evoked concern that they would extend the shelf life of fossil-fuel driven socio-ecological systems for far longer than they otherwise would, or should, endure. A critical reading views geoengineering as a class project that is designed to keep the climate system stable enough for existing production systems to continue operating. This article first examines these concerns, and then goes on to envision a regime driven by humanitarian agendas and concern for vulnerable populations, implemented through international development and aid institutions. The motivations of those who fund research and implement geoengineering techniques are important, as the rationale for developing geoengineering strategies will determine which techniques are pursued, and hence which ecologies are produced. The logic that shapes the geoengineering research process could potentially influence social ecologies centuries from now.
TL;DR: In this article, a thematic examination of the IMF and the World Bank's recent crisis programmes finds strong evidence of prescriptive continuity with the pre-crisis repertoire of these organizations, contradicting their legacy of policy adaptation during times of systemic turbulence.
Abstract: A thematic examination of the IMF and the World Bank's recent crisis programmes finds strong evidence of prescriptive continuity with the pre-crisis repertoire of these organizations, contradicting their legacy of policy adaptation during times of systemic turbulence. How are we to account for this anomaly? The current specialist literature on the Fund and Bank offers plausible explanations, mainly by stressing principal–agent relations and intra-organizational dynamics. Yet these lender-oriented approaches need to be complemented by looking at the demand side of the lending relationship as well, that is, by focusing on the Fund and Bank's borrowers. Of particular relevance is the growing diversification of development trajectories in the South, which creates strong disincentives against paradigm recalibration. The article highlights the analytic potential of one vital dimension of this diversification: the shrinking common ground of macroeconomic failure in large emerging economies, illustrated here in a brief comparison of Mexico, Thailand and Turkey.
TL;DR: The article shows how a boom in domestic nature tourism is currently transforming Wayanad into a landscape for tourist consumption and argues that the contemporary commodification of nature in tourism and conservation is intimately related to earlier processes of commodifying nature in agrarian capitalism.
Abstract: This article engages ethnographically with the neoliberalization of nature in the spheres of tourism, conservation and agriculture. Drawing on a case study of Wayanad district, Kerala, the article explores a number of themes. First, it shows how a boom in domestic nature tourism is currently transforming Wayanad into a landscape for tourist consumption. Second, it examines how tourism in Wayanad articulates with projects of neoliberalizing forest and wildlife conservation and with their contestations by subaltern groups. Third, it argues that the contemporary commodification of nature in tourism and conservation is intimately related to earlier processes of commodifying nature in agrarian capitalism. Since independence, forest land has been violently appropriated for intensive cash-cropping. Capitalist agrarian change has transformed land into a (fictitious) commodity and produced a fragile and contested frontier of agriculture and wildlife. When agrarian capitalism reached its ecological limits and entered a crisis of accumulation, farming became increasingly speculative, exploring new modes of accumulation in out-of-state ginger cultivation. In this scenario nature and wildlife tourism emerges as a new prospect for accumulation in a post-agrarian economy. The neoliberalization of nature in Wayanad, the authors argue, is a process driven less by new modes of regulation than by the agrarian crisis and new modes of speculative farming.
TL;DR: The authors highlights the co-performance of stereotypical gender roles where men and women jointly seek to establish the status of women as housewives rather than as farmers and of men as providers, thereby upholding a particular social order and simultaneously reinterpreting the meanings of existing norms to include new realities.
Abstract: Problems of measuring and public recognition of women’s work are not merely statistical. This article highlights the co-performance of stereotypical gender roles, where men and women jointly seek to establish the status of women as housewives rather than as farmers and of men as providers, thereby upholding a particular social order and simultaneously reinterpreting the meanings of existing norms to include new realities. Evidence from rural north India demonstrates the discernable disjunctures between social norms, narratives and action. Conscious of the growing insecurities faced by their husbands in the context of a rapidly changing economy, women try to allay rather than aggravate them. Instead of asserting their identities as ‘workers’, their strategies for gaining recognition and reciprocity from their husbands focus on reconstituting gender relations in the household, by expanding individual spaces and making incremental gains within the existing social order, rather than struggling for wider transformative changes.
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparison of Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalization, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally different social takes on neoliberalism is presented.
Abstract: The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to ‘embed’ the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally different social takes on neoliberalism. The irony of the Turkish case is that with the empowerment of the Islamists, religious opposition to neoliberalism was muted and secular opposition further marginalized and labelled as ‘anti-democratic’. As a result, free market policies were not only sustained, but deepened and intensified, turning Turkey into a neoliberal ‘success story’. The (thus far) sustained mobilization of youth and labour in Egypt makes a direct imitation unlikely. Another major factor that would prevent a ‘Turkish’ solution to Egypt's crisis is the contrasting structure of the religious fields. Moreover, while the passive revolution has further solidified the professional and unified religious field in Turkey, the revolutionary process in Egypt seems to reinforce the fragmentation of the religious field. The article points out that making Islam compatible with neoliberalism would be more difficult in a country with a fragmented religious field, such as Egypt. Although neoliberalism was imposed from above and resisted from below in both nations, in Turkey it came to be embraced in the name of Islam and democracy, whereas in Egypt it remains an imposition and popular struggles against it persist. It is suggested that this process and field-based approach to a Polanyian problem can also shed new light on discussions about ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used the results of extensive field research to analyse the different ways paper and pulp companies assure their land base for eucalyptus plantations, with negative impacts in many places.
Abstract: The recent expansion of tree plantations is the most important agrarian change in many parts of Brazil. This article uses the results of extensive field research to analyse the different ways paper and pulp companies assure their land base for eucalyptus plantations. The mechanisms of land access have changed little over the decades, amounting to a process of primitive accumulation which seems to be controlled by the ways the pulp industry influences land markets and prices, the strength of any resistance, and particularly the government support enjoyed by industry. Many paper and steel companies, either directly or indirectly, are increasingly relying on eucalyptus plantations, with negative impacts in many places. The expansion of tree monocultures with rural exclusion is characteristic of the wider phenomenon of land grab which is driven by the dominating financial logic of current capitalism.
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of land allocation and landlord-stranger relations in Western Ghana is presented, which suggests that at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that was identified by Mahmood Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights.
Abstract: In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifurcated nature’ of the African state which, in his account, imposed ethnic hierarchy and chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving democratic citizenship for the urban minority. Have twenty years of ‘decentralized democracy’ in many countries washed away these distinctions? This article takes up this issue in an analysis of the politics of land allocation and landlord–stranger relations in Western Ghana. An analysis of historical trajectories, and our own field observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, suggest that at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that was identified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. The record also shows that state policies and institutions, rather than working to chip away at ethnic hierarchy and chiefly authority, work at least in part to reproduce these features of the local political economy. In both non-democratic and democratic eras, Ghana's central government has played an important role in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain. These local hierarchies influence the practical meaning of democracy and economic liberalization for rural citizens, and should be explored more systematically in future studies of democratic and electoral politics in Ghana and elsewhere.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review how private equity funds, and their partners in development finance institutions, frame and value the consequential impact of their industries on people and things, and explore show this valuation, and other related calculative technologies of concern for the environment, such as risk assessment and offsetting, are incorporated into firms' investment decision making.
Abstract: Private equity funds, mostly domiciled in secrecy jurisdictions, are dominantinvestors in the resource-based economies of Africa. Some of the investmentsthat these funds make have been speculative and based on perceivedhigh-value ?futures? in biodiversity, bio-fuels and land, carbon capture orstrategic minerals. However, private equity funds are also heavily investedin mining, energy and infrastructure, which also generate wealth from thenon-human world; ?old? markets alongside the ?new? markets for discoverednature-based commodities. This article reviews how private equity funds,and their partners in development finance institutions, frame and value theconsequential impact of their industries on people and things. It then exploreshow this valuation, and other related calculative technologies of ?concern?for the ?environment? ? such as risk assessment and offsetting ? are incorporatedinto firms? investment decision making. This enquiry finds that:1) financiers currently employ thin, partial and pseudo-mathematical methodsof assessing environmental impact and worth; and 2) that environmentaland developmental impact ?science? is a performative technology, with onlymarginal relation to the material world it seeks to measure and protect. Usingcalculative technologies in which financial considerations are privileged,financiers have wrought a dissociated, incomplete and partial valorizationof the non-human world. Nonetheless, 3) these calculative devices assistin legitimizing private equity funds as institutional leaders in pre-existingpower structures which exploit natural resources in Africa for the benefit ofmoney-holders. These propositions roughly correspond to the technical, empiricaland theoretical dimensions of a socio-technical arrangement applyingto nature-based accumulation, which, overall, performs a political process offinancialization.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programs using a case study from Ethiopia and found that climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well, and that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio-political context of implementation.
Abstract: Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio-political context of implementation Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well