Showing papers in "Human Ecology in 1998"

Closing the Commons: Cooperation for Gain or Restraint?

Abstract: Research concerning the value of communal resource management is limited in two respects. First, while many studies present evidence that communal management is common among traditional societies, a strong theoretical basis is lacking to explain why individuals participate in monitoring and sanctioning efforts. Second, few studies have actually demonstrated resource conservation. There are several ecological and economic reasons for thinking that groups may find it harder to design appropriate conservation measures than to prevent free-riding. However, if groups can surmount these problems, communal management may have advantages over privatization or government control. These arguments are illustrated using results from a pilot study of the communal management of mother-of-pearl shell (Trochus niloticus) in the Kei Islands of Eastern Indonesia. It is found that villagers successfully cooperate to defend access to, and regulate their own harvest of trochus. In doing so, they are able to prevent free-riding, and to provide themselves with a long-term source of cash income. However, it is here argued that their aim is “gain rather than restraint.”

Integrating Indigenous Resource Management with Wildlife Conservation: A Case Study of Batang Ai National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia

Abstract: This paper examines the indigenous land and forest management systems of the community of seven Iban longhouses whose territories comprise the area of Batang Ai National Park in Sarawak, Malaysia. It also discusses the integrated conservation and development program (ICDP) at the park. This project is attempting to work within the existing system of customary law to build on traditional legislative infrastructure and management practices, in order to enlist the cooperation of local people and their leaders in implementing a new conservation strategy. In addition to reinforcing local authority, park planners recognize the need for local people to be given strong incentives to participate in co-management of the protected area. This paper argues that, despite a history of conflict with indigenous peoples, State officials have in this instance demonstrated a willingness to work with local people and community leaders. At the same time, they are encouraging community development, helping people to find alternatives to activities that threaten the park's wildlife.

Land Use Patterns Among Small Farmer Settlers in the Northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract: This descriptive study identifies patterns of land use among small farmer settlers in the Northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon using cross-sectional data collected among approximately 400 households in 1990. A “typology” of land use patterns is built and considered in relation to two household characteristics: duration of settlement and labor. Several variations in land use patterns are identified according to the degree of forest clearing they involve. Findings suggest that most settlers reflect a low cleared area pattern which may be related to a “brake” family-based coffee production cleared and places on the area cultivated. Reducing clearing by settlers already in the region may therefore mean reinforcing what most are already doing. However, since lower welfare may be associated with lower cleared areas patterns, reinforcing their use will involve making them more profitable. Improving the well-being of the human as well as natural resources of the Amazon frontier will inevitably entail policy measures which reconcile the needs of settler households with forest conservation.

Swidden, Sawah, and In-Between: Agricultural Transformation in Borneo

Abstract: The change from swidden to sawah cultivation in Tara'n Dayak villages in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, is presented as a long-term, complex incremental process in which distinct, unstable, and often confusing production technologies figure as transitional forms. The transitional phases are discussed in terms of their efficiency and sustainability. It is argued that the failure to perceive and understand long-term processes of agricultural change may result in both misinterpretation of technological patterns and environmental variables, as well as of rules of labor and resource sharing.

When community is not enough : Institutions and values in community-based forest management in southern Indiana

Abstract: Community-based management is increasingly viewed as the most appropriate arrangement for promoting sustainable development of natural resources. A common assumption is that the values of community members, often assumed to be homogeneous, foster successful outcomes. However, analysts often treat these values and their homogeneity as exogenous factors, ignoring the community's potential role in managing members' values. This study of community-based forest management in two southern Indiana sites examines how the members of the two communities created institutions to screen, maintain, and defend their values. Analysis reveals that different institutions shaped members' preferences and led to different levels of community stability, conflict management, and natural resource condition. We argue that understanding community-based management processes and outcomes requires careful attention to how institutions facilitate or hamper the construction of community members' values.

The Dynamics and Social Organization of Tropical Deforestation in Northwest Ecuador, 1983-1995

Abstract: This paper examines the regional dynamics and natural resource use strategies related to the deforestation of tropical rain forests west of the Ecuadorian Andes for the period 1983–1995. Research was based on regional level analysis of remotely sensed and secondary data and local level analysis of the ways local populations use the resources at their disposal. The process observed departs significantly from what has been described in the literature for Latin America and should be seen as a window into a broader environmental process occurring in most tropical forests on the Pacific side of northern South America. Deforestation in the Northwest Ecuador is primarily related to a complex productive structure, made up a countless number of timber producers and middlemen, ranging from fully informal to fully formal, and from small scale to large scale. A key finding is that local traditional populations play a critical role through productive coalitions between small primary producers and large timber firms. These have been shaped by the articulation of local conditions with external markets, settlement processes, and the convergence of local populations in an economic system which relies on the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. If deforestation rates in Northwest Ecuador remain at current levels, forests in the region will disappear completely within 30–35 years, a fate that is likely to be the same for most tropical rain forests west of the tropical Andes.

The Role of Education in Neotropical Deforestation: Household Evidence from Amerindians in Honduras

Abstract: A survey of 101 Tawahka Amerindian households in the Honduran rain forest examined the effects of schooling on the clearance of old-growth rain forest. The results of tobit, ordinary least square, probit, and median regressions suggest that: (i) each additional year of education lowers the probability of cutting old-growth rain forest by about 4% and reduces the area cut by 0.06 ha/family each year, and (ii) the effect of education on deforestation is non-linear. With up to 2 years of schooling forest clearance declines; with between 2 and 4 years of schooling, clearance increases, but beyond 4 years education once again seems to curb deforestation. Even a little education curbs forest clearance because it is easier for individuals to acquire information about new farm technologies from outsiders in order to intensify term production by river banks. Estimates of the social rate of return to education for indigenous populations of Latin American have been shown to be high. We suggest that these rates of return may need reappraisal for Amerindians in the rain forest to take into account the positive and negative environmental externalities of education.

A Political Ecology of Picking: Non-Timber Forest Products in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract: Using a political ecology framework, this research analyzes the recent entry of recent Latino and Southeast Asian immigrants into the harvesting of non-timber forest products in the Pacific Northwest. Using both permit data and interviewing, it suggests that a world market for these products, government policy, and environmental conditions have the potential for driving harvests to unsustainable levels and exacerbating incipient conflicts.

Nomadization in Rajasthan, India: Migration, Institutions, and Economy

Abstract: Despite a global trend toward settlement, the incidence of pastoral nomadism is on the rise in the Marwar region of Rajasthan, India. Typical explanations for this change use models of population pressure; increasing herds and decreasing pasture are held to blame. This explanation, however intuitive, is unsatisfactory. Instead, changing institutional and economic patterns are creating new contexts for strategic movement. Bottlenecks in the yearly resource calendar, caused by the disintegration of obligatory social relationships, force migrations during periods of scarcity. Changes in the volume and pattern of the meat and wool markets have also created opportunities for migrating pastoralists. Producers increase their access to markets and the reproductive rate of their herd through long, annual, migration. While nomadism is a general adaptation to changes in the socioeconomic conditions of the region, differential resource endowments account for the range of strategies; wealthy herders have opportunities not enjoyed by more marginal producers.

Smallholders in the Maya Lowlands: Homage to a Garden Variety Ethnographer

Abstract: Ancient Maya subsistence practices and their relation to the rise and decline of Maya civilization have long been the subject of archaeological debate. Traditionally Mayanists correlate subsistence strategy with political economy, positing that a change in one must correspond to a change in the other. Since smallholders, as defined by Netting, can exist within a variety of political and economic systems, their ubiquity in the Maya Lowlands may explain why household studies often fail to detect political or economic change at a macro level. The absence of smallholders, however, may correlate with the depopulation of many Maya cities at the end of the ninth century.

The role of African rice and slaves in the history of rice cultivation in the Americas

Abstract: This paper presents the botanical and historical evidence for the role of African rice (O. glaberrima) and slaves in the crop's introduction to the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By focusing on culture, technology, and the environment the research challenges the perspective of the Columbian Exchange that emphasizes the diffusion of crops to, rather than from Africa, by Europeans. The evidence presented in this paper suggests a crucial role for glaberrima rice and slaves in the introduction of African crops to the Americas.

Rationality‚ Representation‚ and the Risk Mediating Characteristics of a Karakoram Mountain Farming System

Abstract: Despite emerging appreciations of contextual knowledge systems, elements of diversity in mountain farming systems are often characterized as irrational and as obstacles to achieving the production goals of 'modernized' agriculture. In this paper, I suggest that these negative representations are produced at least in part as a function of the normalization of a large-scale agriculture as rational. A case-study of a mountain farming system in the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan is presented to expose a contextual rationality in relation to risk minimization and to challenge characterizations of this system as 'backward,' unsophisticated and irrational. Specifically I examine the risk mediating characteristics of practices such as field dispersal, delayed planting, intercropping, and polyvarietal planting and conclude that the characteristic feature of this local farming system is a contextually rational diversity. This conflicts with the modernist paradigm of rationality and economic growth subscribed to by a local development agency. Intervention based on ill-informed interpretations of “traditional” practice have the potential to increase vulnerability of villagers by failing to appreciate the contextual rationality of diversity.

Land Use and Land Right Dynamics: Determinants for Resource Management Options in Eastern Burkina Faso

Abstract: The paper first examines established theories on the population-environmental nexus. Farmers' options in responding to declining soil fertility or shortage of land vary from village to village and even household to household. Responses are conditioned by social relations with neighboring villages and the labor availability of individual households. The example from the Boulgou Province in Burkina Faso shows that some farmers have been able to expand their acreage in other villages' territories on a virtually permanent basis, thereby compensating for increased population pressure and for land degradation. Currently, labor availability, social relations, and distance to the land seem to be the main constraints on land expansion. However, the pattern of land use changes is expected to be increasingly influenced by the existence of more formally established rights than at present. In the light of the empirical findings, the relevance of the “Gestion des Terroir Villagois” concept as a tool for planning for sustainable natural resource management at the village level is discussed. This approach seems imperfectly suited to address a reality in which social and physical environments are superimposed in a spatially complex way.

Adoption of modern agricultural technologies by lowland indigenous groups in Bolivia : The role of households, villages, ethnicity, and markets

Abstract: A survey of 102 Mojeno and 62 Yuracare Amerindian households in the department of Beni in the Bolivian rain forest was done to measure the effects of household and village attributes, ethnicity, and markets on the adoption of chemical herbicides and insecticides for farming. We hypothesized: i) that village attributes would matter more among households with weak links to the market, ii) that education and income would matter more in households integrated to the market, and iii) that ethnic membership would not matter because, as a null hypothesis, we assume all cultures are equally adept at processing information about technological innovations. The results of a probit model with Huber robust standard errors did not confirm any of the hypotheses. Village variables were statistically significant at all levels of integration to the market. Contrary to human capital theory, income and education played a more prominent role in relatively autarkic villages. Ethnicity was statistically significant in the pooled sample and at different levels of integration. Results suggest that conventional determinants of adoption of new farm technologies may need reappraisal in more autarkic settings.

Balancing on a Planet: Toward an Agricultural Anthropology for the TWenty-First Century

Abstract: Robert Netting had a central role in establishing agricultural anthropology. Many people rightly remember him as an astute ethnographer of farming communities, focused on analyzing the empirical details of changing patterns of household composition, land holding size and labor use. Yet, during his career he was increasingly concerned about the sustainability of smallholder vs. conventional industrial agriculture models on a global scale. Thus, Netting also had an important role in laying the foundation for the development of an agricultural anthropology for the twenty-first century, an anthropology that shows how smallholders “balancing on an Alp” can help us to understand how we might balance on this planet. This paper analyzes Netting's contribution to the future of agricultural anthropology in three key areas: the environment, population, and agriculture relationship; farmer knowledge and epistemology; and models for global sustainability.

Modeling Agricultural Production Strategies in the Northern Rio Grande Valley, New Mexico

Abstract: Diversification in agricultural techniques is a common strategy of risk minimization in nonindustrial societies. However, attribution of suboptimal behavior to risk minimization without consideration of the structure of risk and its environmental context obscures the complexity of agricultural decision-making. The productive potential of a prehistoric agricultural system that includes floodwater and dry farming and stream irrigation is modeled using Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis to evaluate whether diversification occurred as a response to population pressure or as a risk buffering strategy. The estimated productive potential of floodwater and irrigation farming is sufficient to have supported the estimated local population, suggesting that risk buffering is a more likely explanation. Floodwater farming and stream irrigation form a dual strategy that is effective at reducing risk. However, the potential of dry farming for subsistence production is insufficient for buffering more than a 2% productive shortfall. We propose that, within this generally risk-averse economy, dry farming was oriented toward the production of nonsubsistence crops such as cotton.

Cattle Raiding and Its Correlates: The Cultural-Ecological Consequences of Market-Oriented Cattle Raiding Among the Kuria of Tanzania

Abstract: Among the agro-pastoralist Kuria people of Tanzania, many young men are engaged in an illicit livestock trade in which cattle stolen in Tanzania are sold to Tanzanian and Kenyan buyers for cash. In contrast to earlier theoretical formulations that have focused on pastoralist livestock raiding's presumed benign human-ecological functions of redistribution and herd management, this paper argues that Kuria cattle raiding is the driving force behind deleterious, and severe, human-ecological consequences in the study area, including a plummeting cattle population and a steady decline in food production in northern Tanzania's agriculturally bountiful Tarime District.

International NGOs and Land Use Change in a Southern Highland Region of Ecuador

Abstract: Nongovernmental organizations are increasingly influencing resource management and land use in areas of small farm agriculture in Latin America. A field study of NGOs working in upper Canar, a region in the southern highlands of Ecuador, documents the changing human environment relations in an indigenous area and the influence of NGOs in the change process. Case studies of PLAN International and CARE indicate that the NGOs are helping marginalized producers shift land use away from traditional grains and tubers toward dairying and vegetables. Given current needs and resource constraints, the new land uses represent effective adaptive strategies. However, the NGO work is having notable consequences for land use intensity and labor utilization patterns.

Sustainable Herd Management and the Tragedy of No Man's Land: An Analysis of West Himalayan Pastures Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Abstract: Using ground truth and remote sensing data this paper tries to demonstrate once again that commons as well as privately owned pastures are managed by their appropriators in such a manner that sustainability as a goal can be approached, while areas not recognized as controlled by one or more legitimate persons and hence open to all may well be overexploited. The analysis of pastures which are recognized as commons in the western Liddar valley in Kashmir (India) shows that these lands are not overexploited by the nomadic and transhumant pastoralists using them. On the whole, individually owned pastures were also not found to be overstocked. Those plots, however, through which all herders transit on their bi-annual migration and which are not recognized as being owned by any authority are highly degraded.

Native American Sovereignty and Natural Resource Management

Abstract: The relationship between Native Americans and the Euro-American settlers has evolved from the latter seeking to end the separate identity of the former to one in which the U.S. government uses Native rights to control large-scale resource problems. This new relationship arose out of a need to control water in Western states for irrigation, but has expanded into other areas. The Navajo sheep reductions of the 1930s and 1940s may be seen as an instance of this relationship. Concerns about siltation behind the Hoover Dam justified a program that dramatically transformed the Navajo economy. A second case concerns conflict over a caribou herd in northwestern Alaska. The conflict eventually led to the Federal government taking management of fish and game on Federal lands back from the state government. Both these cases show the development of a technocracy, based on Federal trusteeship over Native resources, concerned with the control of nature similar to that observed in Wittfogel's writings on Chinese irrigation.

Netting in Nepal: social change, the life course, and brideservice in Sangila.

Abstract: The links among family characteristics, pre-marital experiences organized outside the family, and participation in choice of spouse are now well established for historical transformations in a range of social settings. Less examined are the consequences of these changes for subsequent inter-familial relationships in societies where marriage organizes kin alliances and interfamilial labor obligations. Using survey and ethnographic data gathered in Nepal, this paper examines the implications of change in work, living experiences, and the marriage process for subsequent inter-familial relationships exemplified by crosscousin marriage and the provision of brideservice. Hypotheses are developed which consider the impact of community context on these behaviors; these are tested in logistic regression analyses for the first marriages of all 430 ever-married women in the community. Cross-cousin marriage and brideservice are shown to be related to prior familial characteristics, life-course experience, and elements of the marriage process in ways that are significantly conditioned by community history and proximity to urban centers.

Competition and Communal Regulations in the Kombu Kelp (Laminaria angustata) Harvest

Abstract: Kombu is a kind of seaweed growing in northern Japan. In Hidaka District, Hokkaido Island, it comprises an important source of income. In the harvest of wild kombu, competition among the harvesters tends to be intense because of its high price and the fact that it is a limited resource. About a century ago, severe competition caused resource depletion and decline of kombu quality. Today, however, the resource is used sustainably by the villagers, who observe complex communal regulations for the use of common property. This study examines the ecological role of these regulations in the management of kombu as common property, and demonstrates that these regulations facilitate equal access to the resource, maintaining the unity of the local community, as well as efficient resource use.

Keeping the home fires burning : The changed nature of householding in the Kofyar homeland

Abstract: In the early 1960s, Robert Netting described households in the Kofyar homeland in Nigeria and explained their size, composition, and other characteristics as adjustments to agrarian ecology. Household changes attending movement to a frontier were analyzed in the same framework. By the 1980s, the economic rationale for homeland farming had all but disappeared, and some villages seemed on the verge of abandonment. Yet deliberate strategies for preserving homeland settlements had prevented abandonment. The demographic characteristics and household composition in the homeland now provide a window into a wholly different set of processes than what Netting described 30 years ago. Home settlement is kept viable as a facility to support ethnic identity and to attract government resources. Beneath superficial similarities are profound changes in the nature of the household and factors shaping it, reflecting the changed rationale for keeping the home fires burning.

Diet, Income, and Agriculture in an Eastern Caribbean Village

Abstract: This study of a Vincentian community in the Eastern Caribbean explores the impacts of income on dietary quality and food import dependency. It finds that two forms of income—total household income and the income that women control—are positively correlated with total dietary diversity as well as with frequency of consumption of numerous imported foods. However, no relation is evident between banana incomes and consumption of imported foods, thus questioning the general belief in the literature that the growth of banana production has been responsible for increasing dependence on food imports in the Windward Islands. The beneficial impacts of income on dietary quality that have been found in many other developing areas are more limited here because malnutrition is not a widespread problem. But income is closely linked to consumption of foods that contribute to overnutrition and obesity, growing concerns in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Property, Power, and the Political Economy of Farming Households in Costa Rica

Abstract: The relationship between size of landholdings and household economic status is fairly clear, particularly in societies where agricultural exports dominate the economy. Less clear is the effect of differential access to and control of productive property within households and the ways in which it affects the economic opportunities of individual household members. This paper examines property holdings and inheritance patterns among coffeeproducing households in Costa Rica. I show that while cultural norms regulatin g labor contributions do affect the balance of authority within households, de facto property rights can significantly enhance an individual's decision-making power both within households and between generationally-related households. Unless new opportunities arise, as population increases, coffee production expands, and lands become increasingly scarce, we shall likely see increased stratification both within households—as women inherit less land—and among households, as some sons inherit at the expense of other sons and daughters.

Transport and Urban Growth in Preindustrial Europe: Implications for Archaeology

Abstract: Archaeologists, geographers, and economists recognize a vital linkage between transport conditions and urban development. Archaeologists attribute aspects of the Mesoamerican urban tradition to the limiting effects of inefficient transport. The relationship between transport and population growth is evaluated here. A large sample of preindustrial European cities with known populations is categorized according to the navigability of their waterways, and their growth is monitored over three centuries. Median population sizes were consistently lower among landlocked cities than among seaports and cities on rivers. Effects of population stasis was more pronounced among landlocked cities. Capital cities appeared able to stretch population limits in each category, but not to elude them. The applicability of the model to prehistoric urban development is discussed, as are potential problems that would be encountered.