“Transnational livelihoods and landscapes - political ecologies of
globalization”
Eds.
Tony Bebbington (Associate Professor, Geography, Univ. of Colorado),
[log in to unmask]
and
Simon Batterbury (Assistant Professor, Geography & Reg.Dev, Univ. of Arizona
& Visiting Research Fellow, DESTIN, LSE),
[log in to unmask]
Special Issue of:
Ecumene (next year renamed Journal of Cultural Geographies - what happened to
the ecumenical bit??)
Volume 8, Number 4 (October 2001)
--------
In this collection, the contributors argue that ‘globalization’ has varying
local impacts on rural societies, and that despite its perverse effects and
distortions, these societies are often able to create new options out of the
globalisation process - market access, economic diversification, enriched
local organizations, gendered economic opportunities, managed environments.
Through detailed field investigations, the contributors take on, therefore,
a) a political economy of globalisation that fails to descend to the local
scale, or to consider the actual effects on livelihoods and landscapes b)
depressing forecasts for marginal regions distant from core economies c)
the overlooking of ‘environment’ and ‘landscape’ in geographies of global
change - whether developed in political, economic, or 'new' cultural
geography. The introductory paper sets out the main argument and relates
this to the classic works in geography, with a plea for more ‘ecumenical’
research. The last 2 also contain some scientific analysis of resulting
environmental changes. Please send me feedback.
Especial thanks to Don Mitchell, the faculty fund at the LSE, and several
tireless editors.
Simon
--------
Transnational livelihoods and landscapes: political ecologies of
globalization
AJ Bebbington, SPJ Batterbury
pp. 369-380
This paper introduces a collection of articles on ‘Transnational livelihoods
and landscapes’. We outline the analytical value of grounding political
ecologies of globalization in notions of livelihood, scale, place and
network. This requires an understanding of the linkages between rural people
to global processes. We argue that the exploitation of these linkages can,
under certain circumstances, result in new options and markets for rural
people in marginal regions, even though many rural societies also confront
serious political, environmental and economic challenges that likewise derive
from globalization.
Developing identities: indigenous mobilization, rural livelihoods, and
resource access in Ecuadorian Amazonia
Tom Perreault (Geography, Syracuse Univ.)
pp. 381-413
In the 30 years since Ecuador’s agrarian reform, indigenous organizations
have had a major impact on the country’s institutional, political and natural
landscapes. Originally formed largely in accordance with state-prescribed
models, and with considerable guidance from external institutions, these
organizations have worked to defend existing land claims; access
institutional, financial and natural resources; and make civil rights claims
against the state. Regional and national indigenous organizations have
mobilized discourses of cultural identity in strategic ways in order to
achieve these goals. This paper examines the scalar linkages between the
processes of economic and social transformation in the Ecuadorian Amazon and
the ways in which indigenous organizations have responded to these changes
since the country’s agrarian reform. I argue that the material and discursive
mobilization of identity has been central to the aims of accessing resources
and claiming political rights.
Through a comparative case study of a regional indigenous federation and
one of its constituent base communities, I highlight the differences between
organizational histories, capacities and aims. Most studies of indigenous
movements in the Amazon Basin have considered only regional or national
organizations, often giving a false impression of homogeneity within such
movements. I contend that detailed analysis of the relations between regional
secondary-level indigenous federations and local base communities, as well as
the micro-level processes of production and resource mobilization at the
community and household scales, is crucial in understanding indigenous
organizing processes in Ecuador today.
Globalized Andes? livelihoods, landscapes and development
Tony J Bebbington (Univ. of Colorado)
pp. 414-436
Contemporary globalization in the Andes challenges the sustainability and
quality of rural livelihoods. However, it is also the case that rural people
have often addressed these destructive dimensions of economic globalization
through a progressively deeper engagement in other types of globalized
relationship. They have done this by organizing, through engagements with
networks linking them to international actors, and through participation in
new product and labor markets. While such global entanglements do not
guarantee local development and empowerment, they offer one of the few ways
to confront the demise of rural localities.
This paper discusses such sets of globalized relationships in four
localities in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Particular attention is paid to the
ways in which the emergence and activities of local organizations and social
movements have been affected by the nature of their relationships with wider
transnational development networks, and the constraints and possibilities
that come with these relationships. The cases demonstrate how forms of
global entanglement vary greatly across sites, and so suggest that the
effects of globalization on livelihoods and landscapes are not easy to judge
normatively or ex ante. Instead they imply that rather than speaking of
globalization generically, it is important to consider the types and
sequences of globalized relationships in which people and places have been
enmeshed. This suggests the need for historically situated studies of
‘glocalization’ in order to understand both the actual processes of
livelihood change under conditions of globalization, and the conditions under
which more sustainable and locally governed rural livelihoods and landscapes
might be built.
Landscapes of diversity: a local political ecology of livelihood
diversification in south-western Niger
Simon PJ Batterbury (Geog & RD, Univ. of Arizona and Development Studies,
LSE)
pp. 437-464
The landscapes created by livelihood diversification in rural Africa result
from human activity, from biophysical processes, and from their
interrelations. The paper explores these interrelationships through analysis
of ‘productive bricolage’ – the ways in which rural people in one of Africa’s
most disadvantaged countries have constructed a livelihood system that is a
response to local constraints and opportunities, and to broader patterns of
income- generating possibilities. Zarma farmers in south-west Niger inhabit a
region where the political economy has helped fuel economic migration and a
partial withdrawal from agriculture, and has significantly altered social
relationships and labour patterns in and between households. Zarma responses
to these conditions include income diversification, and these activities are
expressed in their fields and their farms, as well as in their economic and
locational choices. Attempts to build bridges between the concerns of a
geographically aware ‘local political ecology’, concerned with these patterns
of livelihood dynamics and resource use, and the new cultural geography of
landscape must continue to pay attention to material practices enacted
through human agency. Social and environmental change is a fluid, non-linear,
and dynamic process in drylands that are marginal to the globalized economic
system.
Complex communities and emergent ecologies in the regional agroforest of
Zambrana-Chacuey, Dominican Republic
Dianne Rocheleau (Geography, Clark Univ.), L Ross, J Morrobel, L Malaret,
with R Hernandez, T Kominiak
pp. 465-492
Global economic change and the discourses, models and practice of
international sustainable development are major forces of ecological
construction and restructuring. The paper illustrates how the social and
ecological co-construction of forests in the Zambrana-Chacuey region in the
Dominican Republic has material consequences for distinct groups of people
and for other species in rural landscapes. The introduction of the Acacia
mangium – a fast growing tree – as a timber cash crop for smallholder farmers
in the region between 1984 and 1994 had major social, economic and ecological
consequences. A rural federation collaborated with ENDA-Caribe, an
international non-government organization, in a ten-year social forestry
experiment to develop and promote economically and environmentally viable
timber cash cropping systems for smallholder farmers. The experience of the
federation members provides a window on the workings of gender, class and
popular organization in the making of forest ecologies, and demonstrates the
influence of transnational sustainable development models and organizations
in the social and biological transformation of rural life. The encounter
between the complex social and ecological context with an apparently simple
project yields insights into the social, political and material construction,
destruction and transformation of biotic assemblages in forests, fields,
pastures and gardens in this forest/farm matrix. The research findings also
illuminate the distinct effects of the resulting restructured ecologies on
the diverse interest groups and plant communities within the regional
agroforest.
|
