141 research outputs found
Review of \u3cem\u3eRural Communities: Legacy and Change.\u3c/em\u3e Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora. Reviewed by James Midgley.
No full textBook review of Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora, Rural Communities: Legacy and Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008. $45.00 papercover
Book Review (Submitted by Cornelia Butler Flora) - Food and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing Agriculture in the Middle
No full textFood and the Mid-Level Farm: Renewing Agriculture in the Middle, Edited by Thomas A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, and Rick Welsh. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2008. ISBN # 978-0-262-12299-3. $25 paper
Climate Justice in Latin America
No full textThe Center for Latin American Studies is pleased to announce the interdisciplinary series Climate Justice in Latin America, which will take place over the 2013-14 academic year. The first event, Gender, features sociologists Cornelia Flora and Stephanie Buechler, and was be moderated by Kendra McSweeney (Department of Geography, The Ohio State University).Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies.Center for Latin American Studies.School of Environment and Natural Resources.Department of GeographyEvent Web Pag
Modernization and development as part of the globalization process: Holistic participatory community development in a community in the Mantaro Valley, Peru
No full textDevelopment has been conventionally defined as directional change towards nationally organized economic growth. Currently, however, with the emergence of the global marketplace, the focus of development efforts has gone from nationally organized to globally organized economic growth (McMichael 2000). Bhattacharyya (2004) defines community development as the process of creating or increasing solidarity and agency. Community development involves building the capacity of people, encouraging them to create their own dreams and learn new skills and knowledge.;There are three community development issues that can impact the direction community development practice might take: structure (social practices and organizations: social capital), power (relationships with those who control resources: political capital) and shared meaning (social meaning: cultural capital) (Hustedde and Ganowicz 2002). According to Pichon et al. (1999), in Latin America development towards economic growth has focused on the top-down dissemination of modern technology that was presumed adapted to any type conditions. The process of modernization in rural Latin America was an attempt to "improve" people's quality of life and standard of living. However modernization can set development against preservation of the environment (Pichon et al. 1999) natural capital. Given the evident failure of many countries to achieve development through the adoption of "modern" technology provided by first world countries, and the growing worldwide awareness of the pressure being put on the environment, the development project is shifting by bringing sustainability to the foreground (McMicheal 2000).;Rural communities in Latin America are experiencing a modernity that stresses the individual rather than community values. This focus led to changes in social stratification and increased social mobility produced by urbanization (Roberts and Woods 2005). The challenge faced by development processes is to put sustainability in the forefront combining "modern" knowledge with "traditional" knowledge and recognizing the importance of community in building development strategies to achieve sustainability, thus the importance of the idea of community development linked with sustainability. Strategies to curb environmental threats have been incorporated in to the development agenda (Chambers 1997, Dunlap et al. 2002, Martens and Rotmans 2002, McMichael 2000, Roberts 2005, Edwards 1994, Kaimowitz et al. 1999). One such strategy is that of community-based conservation (Agrawal and Gibson 1999). But, as Chambers (1997) points out, adoption of such strategies involved the revaluation of traditional knowledge within community as well as a willingness of outside agents involved in the development process to learn from local people.;My research looks at one rural peasant community in Peru, the community of Colpar, and analyzes ten years of participatory community development during which members of the community have engaged in actions directed towards more sustainable livelihoods. I use the community capitals framework to analyze the state of each capital in the community at different periods in time. The community capitals framework (CCF) developed by Flora et al. (2004) focuses on natural, human, social, financial, built, cultural and political capitals; availability and distribution of assets within and among communities, and the interaction between these different types of capitals in adding to or detracting from each other. As the same authors point out, this framework can also be a method of determining stratification and exclusion by looking at the structure of opportunity that emerges from the availability of or lack of access to resources/capitals. Thus, the CCF is a useful tool for analyzing social changes in the community (and at household level thus taking into account heterogeneity) as related to their ability or lack of ability to invest or build certain assets to respond to external or internal events.;My study analyzes the sustainability of holistic participatory community development in the face of modernization and facilitated mainly by Grupo Yanapai, a non-government organization working in the area for the last twenty years utilizing participatory action-research methodology. I look at the capacity of the community to face constant socio-economic change (positive and negative) due to modernization.;I use Bhattacharyya's (2004) and Hustedde and Ganowicz's (2002) definitions of community development to guide my analysis of the different processes that took place in the community of Colpar. Results from this research can be used to learn more about the sustainability of development processes in the face of modernization in peasant rural communities taking into account nestedness and heterogeneity within community.</p
Healthy communities equal healthy ecosystems? Evolution (and breakdown) of a participatory ecological research project towards a community natural resource management process, San Miguel Chimalapa (Mexico)
No full textIn tropical forest regions throughout the world, forest fires are a major risk to the well-being and sustainable livelihood of rural communities. The Chimalapas region is one of the priority conservation areas in Mexico since it is one of the country's most important sources of water, supports exceptionally diverse ecosystems and species of flora and fauna. Unlike in temperate conifer forests, fire is extremely rare in the Chimalapas cloud forests, but after the 1998 fire events, forest fires are a constant threat in the region. These fires result from the indiscriminate use of fire in agricultural activities as well as from natural events (lightning). Changing climatic conditions (an extremely dry season and the related El Nino phenomenon) potentially linked to global warming greatly increased the likelihood of fire. Perceived and actual threats of forest fires on a community's 'natural capital' are influenced by conditions of other community capitals: human, social, cultural, political, financial and built. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus group, participant observations, and meetings, and systematic document reviews in order to analyze and compare how local people and external stakeholders perceive natural capital and potential threats to the various community capitals. My results suggest that the occurrence of severe fires caused an imbalance among the community capitals, driven by changes in social-environmental relations. Increased pressures from external interests (i.e., protected area establishment, researchers) threatened control by local communities over their natural resources. These analyses suggested a 'domino effect', in which an impact on one major community capital (natural) through a severe disturbance event (fire) escalated to effect all other community capitals (built, financial, social, human, cultural and political). I mapped the main stakeholders' responses to the domino effect of the forest fire events, as well as the subsequent process of negotiating control and the relevance of the knowledge jointly created during a participatory process in rural community development. Process of 'spiral down' and 'spiral up'---by which community capitals either continue to degenerate or are regained and revitalized through transformative processes---are discussed with relation to maintaining healthy communities and ecosystems.</p
Differing perspectives of landscape change in Hebron's Eastern Slopes
No full textThis thesis aims to establish the linkage between group affiliation, political history, and interpretation of landscape change in the southern West Bank (Palestine). The environment of Palestine (encompassing modern-day Israel and the West Bank and Gaza) has been interpreted through sociopolitical lenses as first the Zionists and then Palestinian nationalists tried to establish their rights to the land. Impressions and interpretations of ecosystem and landscape are assumed to be relatively value-neutral, so that society accepts statements by scientists about environmental and landscape history as an accurate and acceptable picture of what has happened and what needs to be done. This research builds on sociological work on the social construction and interpretation of landscape and the environment (Grieder and Garkovich 1994; Freudenberg, Frickel and Gramling 1995).
I tested interpretations of the environment through guided face-to-face interviews with fellaheen (villagers), Bedouin, and refugees old enough to remember the landscape in 1948 and living in the southeastern West Bank (Hebron District). In this region, many landscape rehabilitation and environmental conservation projects have been proposed to thwart and reverse the process of desertification. I also interviewed Palestinian and Israeli scientists who were involved in these projects and read scientific works on the area. I hypothesized that the social formation involved in scientific training would lead to similar views regardless of the differences in political histories influencing Palestinian and Israeli scientists.
I further hypothesized that these perceptions of environmental change differ from those held by fellaheen, Bedouin, and refugees. I found, however, that group association played a significant role in the scientists' interpretation of data regarding environmental and landscape change. Furthermore, these perceptions differed among social groups (fellaheen, Bedouin, and refugees) but this difference was minimal within each group. These results indicate that sociopolitical differences cause a remarkable difference in perceptions about the value of landscape and landscape change among various social groups
Local inquiry and alternative knowledge: cognitive dimensions of the sustainable agriculture movement
No full textThis study analyzes the experiential and cognitive practices of a group of alternative agriculturists in the North Central region as a concrete expression of a grassroots social movement, which is critical of conventional agriculture, and seeks a new knowledge base for social change in the U.S. agricultural landscape. The study inventories inquiries that alternative agriculturists in the North Central region make to ATTRA (Appropriate Technology Transfer to Rural Areas), a USDA funded alternative agricultural information center based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The purpose is to determine whether the ideational and value dimensions of the inquiries are congruent with the knowledge interests reflected in alternative agriculturists experimental and cognitive activities. Two theoretical perspectives, social movement theory and sociology of knowledge, ground the study;Aided by NUD * IST, a qualitative research software, I employ an interpretive, hermeneutically informed process of "reading" and interpreting symbolic meanings embedded in textual discourse to analyze the experiential and cognitive practices of alternative agriculturists. I also use a keyword search strategy to determine the ideational and value dimensions of inquiries to ATTRA;Alternative agriculturists' cognitive practices show ideological precepts about stewardship, social justice, and human relationships with nature, are not necessarily irreconcilable with reason and creativity. Farmers are creating and disseminating critical new knowledge. However, that creative process is firmly guided and shaped by underlying ideological world-views about their ecological and social environments. The processes are integrally linked. They also neither reject the possibility of conventional scientific agricultural knowledge nor reify local knowledge. Rather, they continue to learn through their local and situation specific experimentation, the most effective approaches to selectively combine diverse kinds of agricultural knowledge in ways that work for them both philosophically and pragmatically;While the imperatives of financial and material sustainability underpin initial shifts towards alternative management practices, the interpretive analysis illuminate a concern for the quality and perpetuity of our environmental capitals---water quality, soil quality and ecological diversity, and social capital;This analysis also crystallizes the functional importance of resources in risky shifts. As farmers transition to alternative agricultural systems, institutional support structures are pivotal in sustaining farmer behavior.</p
Biofuels in an Age of Cheap Oil: Community Capitals and Motivations to Participate in Biodiesel Value Chains
No full textIn this article we analyze the community capital implications of an emerging canola biofuel value chain within wheat-producing regions of the United States as radical changes are taking place in energy markets and prices drop. We analyze the intersections of the motivations that encourage and sustain value chain participation and stocks and investments of community capitals. We use the Community Capitals Framework (Flora et al. 2016) to analyze the ways that new biofuel value chains affect various types of capital within rural communities, and to understand the context, processes, and impacts of decision-making within the biofuel value chain. Interviews and focus groups with actors along the value chain including farmers, processors, transporters, plant breeders, extension professionals, and farm service suppliers identify motivational factors and how community resources affect participation decisions.</jats:p
The structural organization of CBNRM in Botswana
No full textThe devolution of natural resource management to local community groups is a dominant theme in contemporary discussion of common property natural resource management. Throughout much of Africa and other parts of the developing world Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programs are being implemented. Though governments in Africa and other parts of the developing world embrace the idea of CBNRM, the actual process of devolution of natural resource management to local community groups is problematic. In some countries, like Zimbabwe for instance, the central government devolved natural resource management to district councils which are themselves arms of the central government operating at the district level. In Botswana, the central government issues usufruct rights to local community groups and retain ownership of natural resources. These usufruct arrangements are often susceptible to cancellation and therefore do not provide sufficient incentives for local community groups to invest in long-term sustainability objectives. My study utilizes the advocacy coalition framework and social capital theories to understand how local community groups could through coalitions and networks with other local, national and international CBNRM stakeholders influence government CBNRM policy towards approaches favoring devolution and participation as opposed to centralization and regulation.</p
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