Showing papers in "The Geographical Journal in 2006"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a critique of contemporary fire policy in the region and the fire ecology model on which it is based, through an analysis of burn scars for the 2002-3 fire season generated from ETM+ imagery, they document the spatiotemporal pattern of burning for an area in southern Mali.
Abstract: A simple ecological model underlies contemporary fire policy in many West African countries. The model holds that the timing (or seasonality) of annual savanna fires is a principal determinant of vegetation cover. The model’s origin can be traced to the ideas held by influential colonial scientists who viewed anthropogenic fire as a prime force of regional environmental degradation. The main evidence in support of the model derives from the results of a series of long-term burning experiments carried out during last century. The experimental results have been repeatedly mapped onto fire policy often taking the form of a three-tiered model in which fire exclusion is considered the ultimate management objective, late dry-season fire is discouraged and early dry-season fire is allowed but only under specific, often state-controlled circumstances. This paper provides a critique of contemporary fire policy in the region and the fire ecology model on which it is based. Through an analysis of burn scars for the 2002–3 fire season generated from ETM+ imagery, the study documents the spatiotemporal pattern of burning for an area in southern Mali. It argues that current policy, which is informed by an a-spatial model, cannot adequately account for the critical pattern of burning that is characteristic of the region. A reinterpretation of the burning experiments is presented in light of four factors: empirical data; recent developments in patch-mosaic theory; historical evidence on the effects of fire suppression; and data on indigenous burning strategies, all of which suggest a need to reconsider current fire policy.
153 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the impacts of market shocks and institutional change on smallholder livelihoods, and the challenge of adaptation in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, and found that the existence and development of local networks among farmers, service providers and information sources may be critical for facilitating adaptation, particularly in the context of economic liberalization and globalized agriculture.
Abstract: This article explores the impacts of market shocks and institutional change on smallholder livelihoods, and the challenge of adaptation in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The rapid decline in coffee prices since the dissolution of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 has had widespread and profound impacts across coffee-producing regions. The data collected in the three case studies of this project confirm the severity of the impact, particularly in the Mexican and Guatemalan communities. They also illustrate the importance of the historical relationship between farmers and public institutions in defining farmers’ perception of risk, their awareness of the nature of the changes they face, and thus the flexibility of their responses to present and future uncertainty. The project’s findings indicate that the existence and development of local networks among farmers, service providers and information sources may be critical for facilitating adaptation, particularly in the context of economic liberalization and globalized agriculture.
152 citations
TL;DR: The Land Stewardship project as discussed by the authors is a strategic policy initiative within the State of Victoria that was looked to as a means of redressing environmental degradation in agricultural landscapes while also being attentive to rural community and economic issues.
Abstract: Recent assessments of Australia's land and water resources have revealed widespread patterns of serious decline, much of it directly associated with agricultural practices. The environmental degradation associated with agriculture has both biophysical and socio-economic underpinnings. While there have been calls to attend to the sustainability 'crisis' of Australian agriculture, policy settings remain firmly locked onto a productivist trajectory. We consider the implications of contemporary policy settings for farmland sustainability against the background of debates as to the meaning of 'multifunctionality'. The discussion is then turned to the Land Stewardship project, a strategic policy initiative within the State of Victoria that was looked to as a means of redressing environmental degradation in agricultural landscapes while also being attentive to rural community and economic issues. Towards the end of the paper we reflect on the question of how the Land Stewardship project aligns with theorizations of multifunctionality.
111 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of an alternative food network based in the Abruzzo National Park, Italy, explores how ideas of sustainable farmland management can be expressed through broader understandings of developing networks of care concerned with local economies and societies, high-quality specialist food products, particular "traditional" farming practices and livestock breeds, as well as the ecology of a farmed landscape.
Abstract: This paper focuses on a case study of an ‘alternative’ food network based in the Abruzzo National Park, Italy, to explore how ideas of sustainable farmland management can be expressed through broader understandings of developing networks of care concerned with local economies and societies, high-quality specialist food products, particular ‘traditional’ farming practices and livestock breeds, as well as the ecology of a farmed landscape. The scheme allows customers, internationally as well as in Italy, to ‘adopt’ a milking sheep on a large mountain farm. In return, adopters are sent food products from the farm. The adoption scheme is inter-twined with an agri-tourism project which provides accommodation, runs a restaurant and engages in educational activities. The scheme is the result of the individual initiative of its founder, and is associated with a strongly expressed ethical position concerning the value of sustaining valued local rural landscapes and lifestyles, and the importance of ‘reconnecting’ urban dwellers with rural areas, farming and ‘quality’ food production. Yet the localness of the scheme is sustained through wider national and international networks: volunteer and paid workers are drawn from several European countries, funding has been acquired from the EU LEADER programme, and internet and transport technologies are essential in connecting with and supplying an international customer base. The broader economy of care instanced in this case study draws attention to a need to develop strategies for sustainable farmland management constructed around wider programmes of social, economic and cultural, as well as environmental, concern.
94 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between mainstream development policy and post-colonial theorists has often been characterized as a dialogue of the deaf as discussed by the authors, where the protagonists are often thought to be talking at or past one another, rather than with each other.
Abstract: The relationship between mainstream development policy (and perhaps also development studies) and postcolonial theorists has often been characterized as a dialogue of the deaf. Rather like in the old ‘debates’ between adherents of modernization and neo-Marxist theories, the protagonists are often thought to be talking at or past one another, rather than with each other. This paper reassesses some firmly held views on both sides of the schism. On the one hand, many official development agencies appear to promote business as usual (often quite literally, as a recent War on Want report attests in the case of the UK's DFID using its aid budget to promote profitable opportunities for British corporations). On the other hand, some postcolonial purists rely on surprisingly modernist, totalizing discursive techniques while claiming post-structural credentials, or baulk at the prospects of practical engagement. Discrepancies between theory, discourse, policy and practice are not the preserve of one side. However, the middle ground is firmer and better trodden than most believe. Considerable progress has been made and the paper assesses examples of productive engagement and concludes with suggestions for carrying forward the challenges.
86 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between neoliberalism and environmentalism in the form of questionable environmental narratives is explored in this article, where the authors argue that current neoliberal reforms such as the Morocco-US free trade agreement need to be scrutinized carefully to prevent a further exacerbation of poverty and to prevent further land degradation in these areas.
Abstract: Neoliberal restructuring in Morocco has been taking place for over twenty years. Beginning with a decade of structural adjustment, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, parts of the public sector have been privatized, state services such as health care and education reduced, tariffs lowered and exports heavily promoted. In the dryland agricultural areas, a declensionist colonial environmental narrative has been appropriated to help justify and implement the neoliberal goals of land privatization and the intensification of agricultural production in the name of environmental protection. This paper contributes to areas of growing interest for geographers through an analysis of the underexplored relationship between neoliberalism and environmentalism, in the form of questionable environmental narratives, in Morocco. Land degradation in the dryland agricultural areas of Morocco is commonly blamed on overgrazing by local pastoralists despite existing documentation that suggests instead that ploughing of marginal lands and over-irrigation are the primary drivers of land degradation in the region. The deployment of this colonial environmental narrative of ‘native improvidence’ has facilitated an expansion of state power over collective rangelands under neoliberalism at the same time that government involvement has decreased in other sectors. The effects of neoliberalism in Morocco have been complex and thus the paper argues that current neoliberal reforms such as the Morocco–US free trade agreement need to be scrutinized carefully to prevent a further exacerbation of poverty as well as to prevent further land degradation in these areas.
82 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on postcolonial transitions in parts of Africa where the state actively injures or kills a local citizenry, sometimes in the name of development, and argue for framing such cases as examples of the "bare life", "camp" biopolitics articulated by Georgio Agamben.
Abstract: Development studies and postcolonial studies conceptualize and examine the Third World in different ways, yet works associated with the two fields can usefully be combined to illuminate key issues in our time. This article focuses on postcolonial transitions in parts of Africa where the state actively injures or kills a local citizenry, sometimes in the name of development. Using Zimbabwe and Rwanda as very different examples of such transitions, and drawing on selected development and postcolonial writings – fact and 'fiction'– I argue for framing such cases as examples of the 'bare life', 'camp' biopolitics articulated by Georgio Agamben. These concepts enable us to see the widening spaces of exception to law that a postcolonial state can create in periods of crisis and defend on the grounds of post-coloniality, that is, as states always already injured by colonialism and its biopolitical development project. The terrain such states enter might be termed 'fascism'– a location of political economy that development studies has generally neglected in recent years but that novels depicting postcolonial contexts can make vivid.
79 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the ways in which a dialogue between development and postcolonial scholarship might contribute to the theorizing of transnational networks in contemporary development, through consideration of three inter-related themes: epistemologies, spatialities and ethico-politics.
Abstract: This paper explores some of the ways in which a dialogue between development and postcolonial scholarship might contribute to the theorizing of transnational networks in contemporary development. It does so through consideration of three inter-related themes: epistemologies, spatialities and ethico-politics. The discussion of epistemologies points to the potential benefit in reworking the analysis of the relationship between structure and agency in networks, whereas the discussion of spatialities focuses attention on the interface between the global and the local. Dialogue between development and postcolonial approaches also creates space for considering the politics and ethics of transnational development networks. In particular, this discussion prompts challenges around how to ethically research subaltern knowledge in transnational development networks, including how to trace the translation and redeployment of subaltern knowledge through networks. Consideration of these themes highlights not just overlaps and disjunctures between development and postcolonial approaches, but opportunities for further dialogue and future research on transnational development networks. To illustrate the points made in the paper, examples are drawn from Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), a transnational network of civil society organizations working with urban poverty.
77 citations
TL;DR: The analyses indicate that airline network accessibility was an especially influential variable but also that the importance of this variable diminished in the latter weeks of the outbreak, suggesting further planning is needed to develop a concerted response to contain future epidemics.
Abstract: In fewer than four months in 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) spread from China to 25 countries and Taiwan, becoming the first new, easily transmissible infectious disease of the twenty-first century. The role of air transport in the diffusion of the disease became obvious early in the crisis; to assess that role more carefully, this study relates the spatial-temporal pattern of the SARS outbreak to a measure of airline network accessibility. Specifically, the accessibility from those countries that were infected by SARS, beginning with China, to other countries was measured using airline schedules. The country-pair accessibility measure, along with other country-level factors relevant to the disease, were tested as determinants of the speed with which SARS arrived in infected countries as well as its failure to arrive in most countries. The analyses indicate that airline network accessibility was an especially influential variable but also that the importance of this variable diminished in the latter weeks of the outbreak. The latter finding is partly attributable to public health measures, particularly health screening in airports. The timing and geography of those measures are reviewed using data from media reports and interim World Health Organization (WHO) documents during the outbreak. The uneven effort to curtail the international diffusion of SARS suggests further planning is needed to develop a concerted response to contain future epidemics.
77 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used Ghana's attempt at urban water privatization to illustrate that Ghana's development practice is characterized by a dependence on foreign sources of capital and expertise that illustrates a psyche and mindset of Eurocentrism associated with the elite and decisionmakers of the country.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with subaltern actions providing alternatives to development practice I use Ghana's attempt at urban water privatization to illustrate that Ghana's development practice is characterized by a dependence on foreign sources of capital and expertise that illustrates a psyche and mindset of Eurocentrism associated with the elite and decisionmakers of the country The rationale for water privatization, the how of privatization, and the anti-development opposition to privatization not only demonstrate this dependency but also the extent to which decisionmakers are willing to sacrifice sovereignty and culturally sensitive ways of doing things, to global capital, in exchange for development funds In the state's zeal for Western or Occidental development, subalterns in Ghana have devised hybridities that are post-traditional and Oriental in nature to solve their water problems These development solutions are couched within structures provided to human agency and suggest that development practice should therefore listen to subalterns in terms of how they imagine and solve their problems The concern with subaltern voices shows the relationship between postcolonial studies and development practice
67 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a shift from "alternative" to "sustainability" is advocated, with a focus on the grounded practices and experiences of producer-suppliers within these networks.
Abstract: There has been particular interest in ‘alternative’ food over the last 10 years, with many policymakers and researchers throughout the Minority World following a growing number of consumers and producers in supporting organic farming and a host of ‘alternative’ food networks. To date, there has been a tendency for theory and policy to emerge somewhat divorced from the grounded practices and experiences of producer-suppliers themselves within these networks. Urging a shift from ‘alternativity’ to ‘sustainability’ as a more critical and valuable tool to analyse food networks, this paper draws upon in-depth ethnographic research with small-scale producer-supplier case studies in south Wales and southern Ontario. In so doing it explores often overlooked voices and stories within sustainable food discourses. Focusing on the value of farmer-led understandings and responses, the paper highlights important implications for policymakers and consumers and outlines future research on sustainable food networks.
TL;DR: In this paper, the early part of the paper draws on experiences elsewhere in Africa, as well as key contexts in Rwanda, to assert that conservation of national parks may best be served by flexible and inclusive partnerships that seek to integrate conservation activities across different agents and scales.
Abstract: This paper seeks to contribute to Rwanda's ongoing restructuring of protected area management. The early part of the paper draws on experiences elsewhere in Africa, as well as key contexts in Rwanda, to assert that conservation of national parks may best be served by flexible and inclusive partnerships that seek to integrate conservation activities across different agents and scales. This assertion is then explored more critically through empirical research that investigates the views of potential conservation partners. The findings suggest that attempts to develop partnerships that are built around national parks will face difficulties. Whilst there is a general willingness to be further involved in park management, this is complicated by cleavages in beliefs about how wider participation might be implemented. In particular, it is only international conservation NGOs that currently seem to be comfortable with the national park approach to conservation management: only they see themselves as having the expertise to be decision-making partners and only they would want their role in a partnership to be formalized.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluate Ontario's Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) and compare it with agri-environmental measures instituted in the European Union and other parts of North America.
Abstract: Evaluation of Ontario's Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) scheme, launched in 1993, provides an opportunity for comparisons with agri-environmental measures instituted in the European Union and other parts of North America. The EFP has a strong ‘bottom-up’ dimension in that it is farmers’ organizations that have been central both to the scheme's instigation and to its ongoing management. This has affected the nature of the actions taken by individual farmers participating in the scheme. These actions are reviewed, especially in terms of the participants’ attitudes towards stewardship of the land, environmental outcomes, cross-compliance measures, barriers to participation and the role of statutory regulation. Some contrasts are drawn with the greater ‘top-down’ controls exerted in several EU agri-environment schemes, with the latter's promotion of extensification and the changing role of farmers as ‘producers of countryside’ in a multi-functional agricultural system. The diffusion of EFP schemes throughout Canada is noted and is cited as confirming the maintenance of fundamentally different attitudes to the development of farm-based environmental actions compared with those adopted in the EU.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that participation has emerged as a new orthodoxy among development professionals who seek to identify themselves as ethical and moral agents of an emancipatory development project, which has had clear impacts in terms of fostering the emergence of local organization and advocacy groups.
Abstract: Post-colonial critiques of development reveal the neo-colonial potential of the development project, embedded in the imbalances of power in relations between West and East, First World and Third World. One of the core responses to the challenge of such a critique has been to turn to new participatory approaches that privilege local knowledges, locally defined needs and priorities, above the vagaries of aid agencies or the 'expertise' of development professionals. In this paper I argue that such a shift in development discourse and method has had a significant impact on the discursive practices of professionalism and professional responsibility. Drawing on ethnographic research with development professionals in northern Thailand, I argue that participation has emerged as a new orthodoxy among development professionals who seek to identify themselves as ethical and moral agents of an emancipatory development project. The rise of such orthodoxy has had clear impacts in terms of fostering the emergence of local organization and advocacy groups. At the same time, however, this paper considers how a 'pro-local' orthodoxy may also be having dis-enabling effects for the very project of emancipation that professionals wish to carry out.
TL;DR: The authors assesses the nature of the resulting debate and compare the merits of a decoupled policy approach to managing the rural environment with one much more closely linked to the practice of farming, concluding that an outcome of the continuing liberalization of agricultural policy will be a more demarcated countryside, in which productive and internationally competitive operators will increasingly be removed in space and in terms of policy treatment from the large number of economically marginal producers whose role will be to supply the public environmental goods under contract from the state.
Abstract: Document Summary) Whatever their eventual outcome, the current round of international trade negotiations taking place as part of the Doha Development Round offers a clear demonstration of the growing influence of a neoliberal agenda for international agricultural policy reform. Despite being powerfully supported by an alliance of agribusiness interests and country groupings, neoliberalism is far from universally accepted as the model for the future governance of an agriculture which is both commodifying and market led. This paper assesses the nature of the resulting debate and the range of alternative visions being proposed. It analyses the development of the European negotiating stance within the current round of trade talks and compares the merits of a decoupled policy approach to managing the rural environment with one much more closely linked to the practice of farming. The paper concludes by suggesting that an outcome of the continuing liberalization of agricultural policy will be a more demarcated countryside, in which productive and internationally competitive operators will increasingly be removed in space and in terms of policy treatment from the large number of economically marginal producers whose role will be to supply the public environmental goods under contract from the state. (PUBLICATION ABSTRACT)
TL;DR: In this paper, the two editors of this special issue, although both geographers come from very different conceptual and theoretical backgrounds, started working together about six years ago on some joint research on Bedouin livelihoods in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, near the Sudan border, along with colleagues from South Valley University in Aswan.
Abstract: t the outset, it needs to be said that the two editors of this special issue, although both geographers, come from very different conceptual and theoretical backgrounds. Almost by accident, we started working together about six years ago on some joint research on Bedouin livelihoods in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, near the Sudan border, along with colleagues from South Valley University in Aswan. John Briggs has worked in Africa for over 25 years, focusing on development theory and praxis, and hence has become imbued with the debates and frustrations associated with
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the impact of structural adjustment on unemployment and class formation in Kingston, and the relationship of these issues to housing problems, finding that at least a quarter of the population remains both unemployed and concentrated into areas of poor quality housing.
Abstract: Since the early 1980s, the introduction of International Monetary Fund-directed structural adjustment packages to stabilize the Jamaican economy has reduced the scope of the government, cut back its capacity to intervene in the housing market, opened the economy to foreign goods (but limited capital), and re-produced the colonial version of a non-dynamic, labour-surplus urban economy in Kingston. This paper traces the impact of structural adjustment on unemployment and class formation in Kingston, and the relationship of these issues to housing problems. Rented, poor-quality housing, underpinned by low socio-economic status and historically high rates of unemployment, has created an overt spatial concentration of poverty, located in West and East Kingston. Nevertheless, overall unemployment is currently lower than at independence in 1962, and virtually all housing indicators have recorded improvements over the same time period. These improvements have been due to a deceleration in the growth of Kingston's population since the mid-1960s; government commitment, despite structural adjustment, to improve the quality of collective consumption; and the determination of Kingston's citizens to build better homes for themselves, often aided by loans from local building societies and remittances from family members resident overseas. However, at least a quarter of Kingston's population remains both unemployed and concentrated into areas of poor quality housing. These circumstances in Kingston are compared with those in adjacent Latin American cites under structural adjustment.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relate it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through health and medical networks on the other.
Abstract: This paper examines the struggle against malaria undertaken by the fascist regime in the Pontine Marshes, south of Rome, and relates it to discourses of domination of nature on the one hand, and modernization and civilization through technological networks such as health and medical networks on the other. The marshes''first nature' is described first of all, focusing on malaria and the difficulty of making an impact on marsh biology before the fascist enterprise and before the large-scale employment of modern technology for the subjugation, channelling and development of the marshes. Secondly, the paper focuses on the organization of medical anti-malaria networks in the marshes during the years immediately preceding and during the fascist period (1922–43). Thirdly, the 'second nature' produced in the marshes following the land reclamation and anti-malaria projects is examined, and an assessment is provided of the fascist anti-malaria project in the marshes.
TL;DR: The Indian Ocean Tsunami has invited unseen scales of generosity, both by 'ordinary' people and by donor governments as mentioned in this paper, both by "ordinary" people and "donor governments". But, even though we have seen these impressive expressions of generosity at different levels and in different contexts, the TEC in its recent report enumerates a number of failures in the delivery and practice of post-Tsunami aid.
Abstract: he Indian Ocean Tsunami has invited unseen scales of generosity, both by 'ordinary' people and by donor governments. The Tsunami fitted nicely into a conception of 'natural' disaster that invites images of innocent, 'pure' victims. There is nothing you can do when Nature comes over you with her destructive forces. This is different in the case of famine or civil war these kinds of disasters seem to be contaminated by human evil. And still, even though we have seen these impressive expressions of generosity at different levels and in different contexts, the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition (TEC) in its recent report enumerates a number of failures in the delivery and practice of post-Tsunami aid (Cosgrave 2006). Nature does not humiliate aid can and I would like to argue it probably has done so to a significant degree in the post-disaster response in South Asia. This humiliation has happened in the very process of translating the tremendous celebration of generosity in the West into practical aid for people affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami. More than one year after, there may be time to reflect critically upon the Tsunami experience of generosity and to complement the observations made in the recent special issue in the G] on the spatialities and temporalities of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Nigel Clark described the immediate, unconditional acts of generosity, giving and kindness in the Tsunami-affected areas in his thoughtful piece for the G] special issue (Clark 2005). Those local acts of generosity had, however, quickly come out of sight, and public attention shifted to the geographies of our generosity in the West: who was giving how much? Which national governments donated most? In which country were private donations highest? Which TV gala yielded the l rgest amount of donations? It became almost like a spo ts competition over who was the most generous. Social pressure was high to be generous and to donate, often more than many people have ever donated for a single charity case before. But, as the TEC report states: 'the international aid community as a whole undervalues the very important contribution of local communities to their own survival and recovery . . . The international media also overlook local actors and focus on international actors' (p. 9). Whose disaster is it then? My core proposition in this brief essay will be that the way that generosity was practised in the West had a significant impact upon how aid was implemented in the Tsunami-affected areas. Overall, I want to argue that those practices of generosity have had rather ambivalent effects.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report on the results of a village level study of migration and small farming in the Rio Grande Valley of Jamaica, highlighting the various ways in which migration affects small farming at the local level.
Abstract: The relationship between population mobility and farming is complex and has been the focus of numerous studies. Despite differing perspectives on the subject, there is an increasing realization that migration sustains farming in many rural communities, but with contradictory effects. Notwithstanding this conclusion, there is a paucity of village level studies that explain the precise ways in which migration in its various forms affects the survival of small farms. This paper reports on the results of a village level study of migration and small farming in the Rio Grande Valley of Jamaica. Apart from highlighting the various ways in which migration affects small farming at the local level, the study confirms the contradictory impact of migration on small farming in this remote agricultural community. It is noted, however, that the net effect is positive and the capital and labour resources, which are made available as a result of migration, play pivotal roles in the survival of small-scale farming as an economic activity in the area.
TL;DR: Sustainability, it is often claimed, is a nebulous a d slippery re ource for thought and practice, one able to marshal together a range of competing, and indeed contradictory, narratives about society-nature relations as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Sustainability, it is often claimed, is a nebulous a d slippery re ource for thought and practice, one able to marshal together a range of competing, and indeed contradictory, narratives about society-nature relations. Rendering this category meaningful by way of composite definition seems, at times, a preoccupation without prospect, incompatible with how sustainability functions within and across political and cultural discourse. If the currency and legitimacy of 'sustainability' often turns on the vexed issue of theoretical and practical 'proscription', it is also the case that the idea travels with remarkable efficiency precisely because it allows society to project on and secure the future in different ways. Thus the task of critical inquiry into sustainability tends to point in two quite different directions. On the one hand, it seeks to iron out diverse and rapidly proliferating agendas into a coherent political and cultural project with operational targets and measurable ends. On the other, it seeks to unpack and interrogate the different meanings that sustainability agendas produce. The issue of farmland management is particularly instructive in both these respects, for in the occupancy and experience of an ostensibly straightforward material entity like 'farmland', a whole system of competing expectations, agendas and values are now gathering and responding to the exigencies and moralities of 'sustainability'.
TL;DR: This paper used discourse analysis to deconstruct the environmental and scientific narratives employed by two key actors (Monsanto-Mahyco and the Deccan Development Society) in the debate in India.
Abstract: Transgenic cotton is promoted in India on the basis that it will improve rural livelihoods, but such claims are contested on the basis that they are ‘unscientific’. In this study, discourse analysis is utilized to deconstruct the environmental and scientific narratives employed by two key actors (Monsanto-Mahyco and the Deccan Development Society) in the debate in India. Whilst strong differences in the ideology of the two actors are found to account for their approaches to managing the environment, significant similarities in their approach to science and their recourse to Foucauldian governmentality are also evident. The conclusion considers how the use of discourse analysis could empower the rural poor to take part in the debate in India.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the challenges of moving from geographies of response to geographies with responsibility, and suggest that there are aspects of the initial 'unconditional' response that we should seek to hold open so as to bring to attention our responsibilities to those 'others' who are both set apart and brought closer by disaster.
Abstract: remind us that we need to ask how responses (as donors, as academic researchers) carry with them responsibility. In this piece, and elsewhere (2005), Korf makes a strong case for being more careful and reflexive about the way we give, and for being more attentive to the organizational channels through which gifts are mediated. Nothing could be more timely than this reminder that the relief effort could have been done otherwise more sensitively, more fairly, more effectively. This is of great importance not only for those still living through this tragedy, but also for all those who will be on the receiving end of disasters, and relief efforts, yet to come. In this reply we explore some of the challenges of moving from geographies of response to geographies of responsibility. In the light of Korf's remarks, we suggest that there are aspects of the initial 'unconditional' response that we should seek to hold open so as to bring to attention our responsibilities to those 'others' who are both set apart and brought closer by disaster.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look at the beliefs of the population in North Cameroon concerning water, fish and water spirits in the context of the construction of a dam (1979) and of a flood embankment for a rice irrigation scheme financed by the World Bank.
Abstract: We look at the beliefs of the population in North Cameroon concerning water, fish and water spirits in the context of the construction of a dam (1979) and of a flood embankment for a rice irrigation scheme financed by the World Bank. These operations caused a drought that had severe effects on the environment and the inhabitants’ economic activities. Acknowledging the new approaches within development and ecological development thinking, we emphasize that local people are part of their environment, and that the environment and people's use of the ecosystem ought to be regarded as a functional unit. Our main argument is that the success of environmental strategies requires that the unequal power relations between the different actors and agencies and the perceptions of policymakers and NGOs be analysed and examined regularly in the course of a project to test their aims and integrity. In addition, the positions of beings and cosmological entities, which in the eyes of the population are ‘actors of power to be reckoned with’, like the water spirit, should also be included. The hidden agendas of all actors can be as difficult as the water spirit (Maama Waata) itself, by which we mean that hidden agendas are equally a part of reality as is the water spirit, even if they are not visible at first.