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The political ecology of late South American pastoralism: an Andean perspective A.D. 1,000-1,615
No full textPrehispanic South American pastoralism has a long and rich, though often understudied, trajectory. In this paper, we analyze the transition from a generalized to a specialized pastoralism at two geographical locations in the Andes: Antofagasta de la Sierra, Southern Argentina Puna, and the Ancash Highlands, Peruvian North-central Puna. Although at opposite ends of the Andes this herding specialization commences during the same moment in time, A.D. 600-1,000, suggesting that a similar process was at work in both areas. Moreover, this was a process that was irrevocably tied to the coeval development of specialized highland agriculture. From a perspective of political ecology and structuration theory we emphasis the time-depth and importance that Andean pastoralism had in shaping highland landscapes. Taking into consideration risk-management theory, ecology and environment as crucial factors in the development of a specialized pastoralism we nevertheless emphasis the importance of the underlying human decisions that drove this process. Based broadly within the field of political ecology we therefore emphasize how human agency and structure impacted on these landscapes, society and animal husbandry. Our article covers such aspects as the human and animal use of resource areas, settlement location, herding patterns, selective breeding, and human-induced alterations to pasturage.Keywords: Andes, pastoralism, political ecology, Southern Andes, Central Ande
Who owns the flows? Distinguishing ownership of resource flows from ownership of resource stocks clarifies debates about property bundles, commons tragedies, and degrowth
No full textTheories of ownership have long focussed on the institutions governing resource stocks such as land, and largely neglected the ownership of resource flows such as the crops that flow from that land. Originating among early modern legal scholars, the assumption that the paradigm form of ownership was of land has been inherited by later theorists. The 'tragedy of the commons' thesis, for example, conflates the absence of stock ownership with the absence of flow ownership, and several commons scholars have now started to move away from a stock-centric conception of ownership. The same assumption has also been inherited by theorists applying Heinsohn and Steiger's 'property economics' to theories of degrowth. Here, I recast their theory to include ownership of flows as well as stocks, answering critics who point out that their theory cannot account for unsecured debts. This recasting places greater focus on the different ways in which ownership institutions not only assign an owner to a resource, but also motivate the transfer of resources between individuals. This prompts a new way to frame a key question for theorists of degrowth: in a nongrowing economy where fewer transfers can be motivated by the likelihood of receiving returns on loans, will this result in more possessive behaviours, in more communal ownership norms of reciprocity, or in more command ownership through coercion and status? Existing theory, focussed on stocks, groups these different institutions together as 'private' or 'nonproperty' ownership. This article suggests that disambiguation of the different 'nonproperty' institutions that govern the ownership and transfer of resource flows is key to better understanding the political and institutional implications of degrowth
The muddy semiotics of mud
No full textIn North Bihar, mud ensures prosperity for farmers, but also materially signals the lower status from which their wives try to raise the family, even at the cost of risking their own and their children's lives. This article provides a semiotic analysis of mud, an ambiguous material in its physical combination of land and water, a substance with specific gendered and class dimensions, and a symbolic marker whose presence on bodies indexes their socio-political identity. The sensuous relationships that revolve around mud and the prejudices it indexes illuminate meanings of dirt within processes of environmental knowledge and risk. By attending to the semiotic processes through which we understand nature, this article suggests that mud naturalizes the discrimination at the origin of dirtiness.Historical and political circumstances, such as the progressive loosening of the links between caste and occupation, show that mud is not dirt, but it becomes dirt when other kinds of dirt lose their meaning.
Editorial Introduction
Get PDFThis volume presents the proceedings of an international exploratory workshop titled “Egypt’s Role in the Hebrew Bible,” held at the University of Lausanne on April 22–23, 2015
Editorial: ITET: Instructional Design Practices in Teacher Education
No full textInstructional design (ID) is the study of designing, developing, and assessing learning and teaching environments. With the advancement of online education, ID has once again become an important discipline for ensuring quality course offerings. At ITET, we do not believe that DBR, TPACK and instructional design are mutually exclusive concepts or that we should select one over another. The advancement of constructivist and, subsequently, connectivist paradigms influenced modern instructional design research significantly.DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i2_czerkawsk
A cartography of dispossession: assessing spatial reorganization in state-led conservation in Saadani, Tanzania
No full textProclaimed as the "most important conservation success story", protected areas have become the preferred method among state signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity for addressing conservation challenges. However, state-governed protected areas have been criticized for their failure to achieve ecological and social goals. Reaching a consensus on wildlife conservation strategies has not translated into widespread acceptance of state-governed protected areas by local communities. Critics debate whether the state is sincere and efficient when exerting spatial control. This article analyses state-based conservation in the Saadani landscape in Tanzania, exploring the nature of spatial reorganization and institutional approaches guiding the establishment of protected areas. Spatial reorganization and the actions of conservation organizations have led to the disenfranchisement of the very people whose efforts had enabled biodiversity to be conserved. This is despite an apparent shift in the nature of Tanzania's conservation policies towards more participatory approaches. Through detailing mechanisms used by the state for exerting spatial control in Saadani, we highlight how the approach has been counterproductive for satisfying the country's commitment to the Aichi framework on biodiversity targets and has undermined grassroots backing for conservation. In the context of strong support from the international conservation organizations for Tanzania's conservation efforts, this suggests the need for reassessing global conservation policies and identifying urgent measures and effective mechanisms to protect rights to territory and ancestral tenure in places targeted for conservation.Keywords: conservation, Convention on Biological Diversity, protected areas, spatial reorganization, actions of the state, Saadani, TANAPA, Tanzania. Uvinje
Ives, Sarah. 2017. Steeped in heritage: the racial politics of South African rooibos tea. Durham: Duke University Press. Reviewed by Emma McDonell
No full textOsterhoudt, Sarah R. 2017. Vanilla landscapes: meaning, memory, and the cultivation of place in Madagascar. Reviewed by Laura S. Meitzner Yoder
No full textNarrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era
No full textThis article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice