Towards Endogenous Livestock Development: Borana Pastoralists’ Responses to Environmental and Institutional Changes

Borana pastoralists in southern Ethiopia are faced with the challenge of developing more efficient and sustainable use of natural resources. In past decades poorly adapted development interventions and inadequate land-use policies aggravated by population growth have weakened pastoral rangeland management. Ignoring pastoralists’ technical and organizational capacities has contributed to progressive land degradation, the erosion of social structures and poverty. The Endogenous Livestock Development concept recognises pastoralists’ indigenous knowledge-based strategies and priorities, and uses them as the bases for further development of their production system and social relations, to be utilized, improved and combined with modern technologies. This paper explores the Borana pastoralists’ adaptive strategies for improved utilization of natural resources and the manner in which they respond to environmental risk and external influences such as water development and new formal administration. The adaptive responses include controlled integration of crop production and protection of grazing reserves, as well as changing cattle breeding priorities and the adoption of camel husbandry. The pastoralists have started negotiations with the administration to regain control of land utilization by strengthening directives for settlements, land use pattern and extraction rates. To support these initiatives the study recommends that pastoralists and other stakeholders enter into an institutionalized process of negotiation that builds on indigenous knowledge and organizational structures and facilitates validation and implementation of newly generated knowledge.

Smallholders and the ‘Household Responsibility System’: Adapting to Institutional Change in Chinese Agriculture

During the last quarter century, China’s agricultural sector has undergone a dramatic transformation from collective to private production under the so-called “Household Responsibility System.” This incentive system, designed to increase yields, reallocated communal land to peasant households, creating hundreds of millions of smallholders with relative autonomy over land use decisions and crop selection. Based on recent ethnographic research, this paper discusses the smallholder farming system of a mixed-ethnic community that intensively cultivates small land plots for subsistence and market exchange in China’s populous southwestern province of Sichuan. The paper characterizes the smallholder system in terms of biodiversity of plant and animal species, market distribution of crops, multiple cropping systems, and labor and technology inputs. The paper also describes how smallholders adapt their agricultural practices and decisions to changing market conditions and agricultural policies. Significantly, these adaptive strategies focus on shifting to the production of various cash crops, including melons and mangoes. Implications for the long-term viability of China’s smallholders, particularly in ecologically and economically marginal areas, are also discussed.

Policies,Political-Economy,and Swidden in Southeast Asia

For centuries swidden was an important farming practice found across the girth of Southeast Asia. Today, however, these systems are changing and sometimes disappearing at a pace never before experienced. In order to explain the demise or transitioning of swidden we need to understand the rapid and massive changes that have and are occurring in the political and economic environment in which these farmers operate. Swidden farming has always been characterized by change, but since the onset of modern independent nation states, governments and markets in Southeast Asia have transformed the terms of swiddeners’ everyday lives to a degree that is significantly different from that ever experienced before. In this paper we identified six factors that have contributed to the demise or transformation of swidden systems, and support these arguments with examples from China (Xishuangbanna), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These trends include classifying swiddeners as ethnic minorities within nation-states, dividing the landscape into forest and permanent agriculture, expansion of forest departments and the rise of conservation, resettlement, privatization and commoditization of land and land-based production, and expansion of market infrastructure and the promotion of industrial agriculture. In addition we note a growing trend toward a transition from rural to urban livelihoods and expanding urban-labor markets.

Causal Explanation of Indonesian Forest Fires: Concepts, Applications, and Research Priorities

Problems with studies, claims, and assumptions that have been made about the causes of fires in Indonesia's tropical moist forests are identified, and the kinds of concepts, methods, prioritizing, and data needed to resolve the problems are discussed. Separate sections are devoted to studying ignitions, studying fire susceptibility and fire behavior, and using the goal of causal explanation to guide interdisciplinary research.

Does Tenure Matter? A Comparative Analysis of Agricultural Expansion in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor

This article compares how public protection of forests and common-property forest institutions serve to control outside encroachment into frontier forests in Honduras and Nicaragua. The article combines institutional analysis with ethnographically based fieldwork and analysis of land-cover images to evaluate how property-rights arrangements influence monitoring, enforcement, and compliance with rules to restrict agricultural expansion in two biosphere reserves in the Mosquitia Corridor. Findings show that territorial demarcation and common-property rights are important components for frontier forest conservation. In areas with weak enforcement mechanisms and heavy reliance on social norms over official regulatory measures, the findings suggest that the perceived legitimacy of tenure arrangements and their respective land-use rules are fundamental to controlling the agricultural frontier.

Skunkworks in the Embers of the Cedar Fire: Enhancing Resilience in the Aftermath of Disaster

A coalition of environmental activists and professionals created the San Diego Fire Recovery Network (SDFRN) while the largest wildfire in California history was still burning at the city’s edge in October 2003. Acting quickly while the citizenry questioned governmental ability to protect their rapidly growing region, SDFRN proposed to reduce fire risk in a way that altered residential knowledge practices and identity while reshaping governance relationships. While this effort stalled after governmental agencies restored public confidence through massive fire prevention initiatives, SDFRN’s efforts may not have been in vain. Retained within collective memory, SDFRN contributed to community resilience by diversifying possible responses to environmental change and uncertainty. In this way, flexible, informal learning organizations such as SDFRN may serve as “skunkworks,” seizing on disaster in order to incubate social–ecological relationships that might avert greater tragedies to come.

Space,Time, Rhetoric and Agricultural Change in the Transition Zone of Ghana

This paper examines change within farming systems in the Brong Ahafo Region in Ghana, and the impact of agricultural modernization and mechanization on the regional economy and local farming systems. It combines anthropological, historical, and remote sensing techniques to document changes in farming practice and land use and land cover. It argues that change is not the product of simple evolutionary sequences of responses to population pressures or adoption of modern technologies, but arises out of a complex set of factors interacting within wider regional economies, which are increasingly commodified and commercialized and subject to global market pressures. These include technical, institutional, market, movements of labor, and transport infrastructure development dimensions, which often create new opportunities for local farmers other than those envisaged in agricultural development policies. Tracing the opening up of the transition zone over the last 40–50 years through the development of state farms and mechanized synthetic agriculture, the paper examines the changing fortunes of farming systems within a radius of 30–40 km from agricultural technology hubs and the implications for models of agricultural development.

Securing Access to Seed: Social Relations and Sorghum Seed Exchange in Eastern Ethiopia

Access to seed is crucial for farming, though few studies investigate household-level access in the informal ‘farmer seed systems’ which still supply most seed in poor countries. This paper uses empirical data of seed exchange practices for sorghum in eastern Ethiopia to analyze how social relationships influence access to off-farm seed for a major crop. Seed shortfalls are common, and farmer–farmer exchange is important for providing locally-adapted seed to fill this gap, but access varies considerably among households, also affecting quantities supplied and terms of exchange. Preferred sources for off-farm seed (neighbors, government, market) also vary among farmers, reflecting agroecology and asset-ownership, but also differing access to these sources. Social network theories highlight the importance of reciprocal ties, and the cultural norms underpinning them, in accessing seed. These cultural norms are contested, with some claiming that commercial transactions are increasingly common. Implications for interventions supporting farmer seed systems, particularly emergency seed aid, are discussed in relation to the socially-mediated nature of seed access.

Is it a revolution?

Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence properties is also discussed.

In Search of Sustainable Land Use and Food Security in the Arid Hillside Regions of Central America: Putting the Horse Before the Cart

This article is based on a 2003 case study of the Special Program for Food Security in two dry, upland regions of Honduras and Nicaragua. In particular the research sought to identify factors influencing farmers’ interest in various “best practices” being promoted as alternatives to the use of fire in cropping and ranching systems. The economic feasibility and/or affordability of several of these practices are questionable in light of most farmers’ priorities, risk concerns, or limited resources. The technical feasibility of several of the practices is unclear, at least in the marginal agroecological environments in which most of the farmers in these regions operate. The study highlights the weaknesses of agricultural development initiatives designed without a sufficient understanding of existing agricultural strategies and their purposes. It also reveals the limitations of technological approaches to problems of food insecurity and land degradation, and the need for broader, more integrated rural development strategies. The findings support critiques regarding the biases of many development professionals that may prevent them from giving sufficient attention to local knowledge and perspectives.

Forty Years of ‘The Strategy’: Levins on Model Building and Idealization

This paper is an interpretation and defense of Richard Levins’ “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology,” which has been extremely influential among biologists since its publication 40 years ago. In this article, Levins confronted some of the deepest philosophical issues surrounding modeling and theory construction. By way of interpretation, I discuss each of Levins’ major philosophical themes: the problem of complexity, the brute-force approach, the existence and consequence of tradeoffs, and robustness analysis. I argue that Levins’ article is concerned, at its core, with justifying the use of multiple, idealized models in population biology.

Corpus Interruptus: Biotech Drugs, Insurance Providers and the Treatment of Breast Cancer

In researching the biomedically-engineered drug Neulasta (filgrastim), a breast cancer patient becomes aware of the extent to which knowledge about the development and marketing of drugs influences her decisions with regard to treatment. Time spent on understanding the commercial interests of insurers and pharmaceutical companies initially thwarts but ultimately aids the healing process. This first-person narrative calls for physicians to recognize that the alignment of commercial interests transgresses the patient’s humanity.

Basic Semiosis as Code-Based Control

Though the formal coherence and empirical utility of Marcello Barbieri’s concept of organic code have been starting to become established, a general conception of how the semantics of organic codes is related to the pragmatics of their use is still missing. Barbieri took a first step towards such a conception by distinguishing three types of semiosis in living systems: manufacturing, signalling, and interpretive semiosis. This paper integrates Barbieri’s distinction into Roman Jakobson’s systematization of possible functions of messages in order to propose a general conception of possible types of semiosis in living systems. As a result, Barbieri’s thesis that manufacturing and signalling semiosis are basic types of semiosis, can be confirmed and completed communication-theoretically.

Aggregate, composed, and evolved systems: Reductionistic heuristics as means to more holistic theories

Richard Levins’ distinction between aggregate, composed and evolved systems acquires new significance as we recognize the importance of mechanistic explanation. Criteria for aggregativity provide limiting cases for absence of organization, so through their failure, can provide rich detectors for organizational properties. I explore the use of failures of aggregativity for the analysis of mechanistic systems in diverse contexts. Aggregativity appears theoretically desireable, but we are easily fooled. It may be exaggerated through approximation, conditions of derivation, and extrapolating from some conditions of decomposition illegtimately to others. Evolved systems particularly may require analyses under alternative complementary decompositions. Exploring these conditions helps us to better understand the strengths and limits of reductionistic methods.

Adaptationism and the adaptive landscape

Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation. We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.

Labor and its Productivity in Andean Dairy Farming Systems: A Comparative Approach

Globalization induces changes in the combinations of productions and activities within farming systems in all parts of the world. These changes can only be apprehended through an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and diversity of these farming systems. Labor, as a major technical determinant of differences in competitiveness, is central in these transformations. The technical and economic analysis of labor in Andean dairy production in this paper illustrates this issue. Combining various scales of analysis of labor and productivity highlights the technical obstacles faced by Andean dairy farmers, demonstrates the technical and economic principles of these production systems, and puts them in a competitive context. This analysis also discusses the benefits of a labor-centered approach of farming systems.

Individual variability of behavioural responses by Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) to human disturbance

Sub-Antarctic Marion Island has had a permanent research station for 50 years and the islands Wandering Albatrosses have been intensively studied for 20 years. The reactions of breeding birds to approaches by a human on foot were recorded. Three response variables were calculated: intensity of vocal reaction (IVR), intensity of non-vocal reaction (INR) and overall response index (ORI). At 5 m from the nest, twice as many birds stood and/or vocalised as at 15 m. Nearest neighbour distance, age and gender did not explain individual variability of responses. Study colony birds had higher IVR scores than non-study colony birds; birds at colonies closest to the station had the highest ORI scores. A better breeding record was associated with lower IVR and ORI scores, but a causative relationship remains to be demonstrated. A minimum viewing distance of 25 m is recommended for breeding Wandering Albatrosses.

---

Temporal Heterogeneity in the Study of African Land Use

This paper introduces a set of four collaborative papers exploring temporal heterogeneity in the analysis of African land use over a decadal time period, from 10 to 50 years, in the second half of the twentieth century. The four cases were chosen amongst the seven teams of anthropologists, human geographers and remote sensing specialists who had carried out long-term research and who met to discuss their findings at a workshop in 2003. All seven teams’ work and the collective discussion—on Casamance (Senegal), Brong Ahafo (Ghana), Southern Niger/Northern Cote d’Ivoire, Oyo State (Nigeria), Maasai Mara (Kenya and Tanzania), Gwembe (Zambia), and Malawi—inform this introduction. We identify several temporal processes in all the cases, each operating on its own temporal frame: population growth and, above all, mobility; livelihood change through crop and occupational change; tenure ambiguity; powerful though “punctuated” interventions by state policy; and climate change. Conceptual and methodological implications are disussed.

Expressed Emotion,Human Agency,and Schizophrenia: Toward a New Model for the EE-Relapse Association

Although there is a clear statistical association between expressed emotion (EE) and schizophrenic relapse, our understanding of the mechanisms underlying this relationship is underdeveloped. This study tested a theoretical model in which caregivers’ perceptions of their ill relative’s agency underlie the EE-relapse association. To evaluate this model, we completed qualitative and quantitative analyses of narratives provided by individuals caring for a relative with schizophrenia. The results indicate that high-EE caregivers perceive the expression of symptoms as stemming from their ill relative’s agency more frequently than low-EE caregivers. This was true for both high-EE-criticism and high-EE-emotional overinvolvement caregivers. High-EE and low-EE caregivers did not differ in their perceptions of the role of their ill relative’s agency with regard to the control of symptoms. The findings suggest that EE may be a proxy risk factor for caregivers’ perceptions of their ill relative’s agency.