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- Alarcón Ferrari, Cristián, et al.
(författare)
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Agricultural Livelihoods, Rural Development Policy and Political Ecologies of Land and Water : exploring new agrarian questions
- 2023
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Ingår i: The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South. - London : Routledge. - 9780367856359 ; , s. 284-301
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter examines some of the key links between agricultural livelihoods, rural development policy and agrarian change through the lens of a political ecology of land and water use. In doing so, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the external and internal processes defining prospects and barriers for agricultural livelihoods. The chapter pays special attention to labour and gender relations in the understanding of agricultural livelihoods. The chapter focuses on 1) the role of control over land and water and labour in defining paths of agrarian change and their relation to different forms of agricultural livelihoods in the context of the sustainability crisis and climate change, and 2) how agricultural livelihoods interact with the wider processes of rural transformations premised on national rural development policies. In conceptual terms, the chapter develops perspectives from an agrarian question framework to offer theoretical and empirical insights into agricultural livelihoods in rural contexts of South America and Africa.
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| 4. |
- Gonda, Noemi, et al.
(författare)
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Critical Reflexivity in Political Ecology Research: How can the Covid-19 Pandemic Transform us Into Better Researchers?
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Human Dynamics. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-2726. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contributed to and failed to address the systemic challenges laid bare by the pandemic. Political ecologists tasked with knowledge generation on vulnerabilities and their underlying power processes are particularly well placed to envision such emancipatory processes. While pausing physically due to travel restrictions, as researchers in political ecology and rural development at the same university department, we want to make a stop to radically rethink our intellectual engagements. In this article, we aim to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which our own research practices hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. We do so through affective autoethnography and resonances on our research encounters during the pandemic: with people living in Swedish Sapmi, with African students in our own “Global North” university department and with research partners in Nepal. We use a threefold focus on interconnectedness, uncertainty and challenging hegemonic knowledge politics as our analytical framework. We argue that acknowledging the roles of emotions and affect can 1) help embrace interconnectedness in research encounters; 2) enable us to work with uncertainty rather than “hard facts” in knowledge production processes; and 3) contribute to challenging hegemonic knowledge production. Opening up for emotions in research helps us to embrace the relational character of vulnerability as a pathway to democratizing power relations and to move away from its oppressive and colonial modes still present in universities and research centers. Our aim is to contribute to envisioning post-Covid-19 political ecology and rural development research that is critically reflexive and that contributes to the emergence of a new ethics of producing knowledge.Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. (Roy, 2020)
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| 5. |
- Hajdu, Flora, et al.
(författare)
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Cash transfers for sustainable rural livelihoods? Examining the long-term productive effects of the Child Support Grant in South Africa
- 2020
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Ingår i: World Development Perspectives. - : Elsevier BV. - 2452-2929 .- 2468-0532. ; 19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cash transfers have received increased scholarly and policy attention, as a means of reducing poverty in the global South. While cash transfers are primarily intended to prevent impoverishment and deprivation, several studies suggest they can have 'productive' impacts, contributing to building sustainable livelihoods. However, pilot projects of unconditional cash transfers have often been too brief or too recent to determine how small, but regular, transfers can improve rural livelihoods over time. This paper explores potential long-term productive effects of cash transfers on rural household's livelihoods. This is done through revisiting, after 14 years, all (273) households in two South African villages included in an extensive livelihood and asset survey in 2002. That survey predated the phasing in of the Child Support Grant (CSG), targeted at impoverished children. When re-surveyed in 2016, some households had cumulatively received significant, while others little or no CSG income. Multivariate regression analysis shows how households that received more CGS income were more likely to invest in productive assets (e.g. small ploughs), and engage in poultry, staple crop and vegetable production. We also found a statistically significant correlation between CSG incomes and growing a larger variety of crops, in an environment generally marked by deagrarianization. However, correlations between receiving more CSG and employment or engagement in informal small-scale trade were not significant. We use data from interviews and observations to explain these processes further. Compared with the paucity of outcomes from other concurrent and costly development interventions in the focal villages, cash transfers have improved livelihoods and living conditions significantly. However, the structural and contextual factors that cause and reproduce poverty remain unaltered, limiting the effects of comparatively small cash transfers. While we show that the cash transfers generate productive livelihood-enhancing effects, they remain insufficient to lift most households out of poverty without further structural changes and developmental interventions. © 2020 The Authors
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| 6. |
- Hajdu, Flora, et al.
(författare)
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Problems, causes and solutions in the forest carbon discourse: a framework for analysing degradation narratives
- 2017
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Ingår i: Climate and Development. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1756-5529 .- 1756-5537. ; 9, s. 537-547
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The term degradation' is often used in the current discourse on carbon forestry. Tree planting projects primarily aimed at mitigating climate change frequently claim that they simultaneously reduce degradation. However, despite the centrality of degradation' in the forest carbon discourse, reference is rarely made to the significant body of literature questioning generalizations about degradation in Africa since the mid-1990s. Many studies have exposed biases and problematic underlying motives in claims of degradation in various African regions. Combining this literature with discourse analysis, we present a framework for analysing degradation narratives in order to explore the extent to which these are based on evidence or opinion. We acknowledge that environmental change is complex, and increasingly so today in the face of climate change, and we stress that narratives cannot be pinned down as true or false'. However, unconfirmed truths' about degradation being acute have resulted in significant, costly and far-reaching actions to halt it. Thus there is a need to scrutinize the empirical evidence using the best available knowledge. Our framework, designed to be easily applicable for practitioners, could facilitate increased engagement with and scrutiny of degradation claims in forest carbon interventions.
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| 7. |
- Hajdu, Flora, et al.
(författare)
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Questioning the use of 'degradation' in climate mitigation: A case study of a forest carbon CDM project in Uganda
- 2016
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Ingår i: Land Use Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 0264-8377 .- 1873-5754. ; 59, s. 412-422
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An urgent need to stop degradation is frequently cited as support for climate mitigation efforts involving forests. However, lessons learnt from social science research on degradation narratives are not taken into consideration. This creates a risk of problematic degradation narratives being used to legitimise forest carbon projects. This study examined a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forest plantation in Uganda, where incomplete and partly contradictory evidence on land use change was interpreted in a way that overemphasised degradation. This interpretation was in line with the interests of the forestry company proposing the CDM activity and with national interests in Uganda, and was stimulated by CDM guidelines and regulations. Our investigation revealed a more complex picture of land cover change in the area that did not support the narrative of an area undergoing continuous degradation. We therefore recommend that close scrutiny of the degradation narrative presented be included in every type of forest carbon project. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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| 9. |
- Lund Christiansen, Kirstine, et al.
(författare)
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“Our burgers eat carbon”: Investigating the discourses of corporate net-zero commitments
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Policy. - : Elsevier BV. - 1462-9011 .- 1873-6416. ; 142, s. 79-88
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Corporate net-zero emission pledges have multiplied in recent years, with estimates suggesting that more than 1000 companies have made such commitments. While seemingly indicative of companies stepping up to address climate change, critics have argued that pledges may be mere greenwashing if they rely on excessive offsetting and legitimise business-as-usual. Considerable grey and academic literature has debated the problems of net-zero and explored the integrity and transparency of net-zero plans. We add to this literature by investigating discursive aspects of net-zero logics through an in-depth case study of the Swedish fast food chain MAX Burgers AB. Through a textual analysis of MAX’s communication of its ‘climate-positive’ – or net-negative – burgers, we explore the narratives underpinning its net-zero work and how these serve MAX’s interests. Our investigation shows that MAX’s net-zero claim justifies its existing business practices and directs focus away from actions that could directly reduce its emissions. Thus, we show that MAX is pushing non-transformative solutions, such as offsetting and voluntary corporate action, while shifting responsibility for climate action onto others, such as consumers and smallholder farmers in the global South. We conclude that even seemingly progressive corporate net-zero pledges and claims become problematic if they distract from real reductions and justify carbon-intensive lifestyles.
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| 10. |
- Eriksson, Camilla, et al.
(författare)
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"You have to focus all your energy on being a parent" : Barriers and opportunities for Swedish farmers to be involved fathers
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Rural Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0743-0167 .- 1873-1392. ; 83, s. 88-95
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Swedish farming fathers are facing new expectations about their level of involvement in their children?s upbringing ? expectations of their own, but also arising from gender equality policy and shifting societal norms. A gender-neutral parental leave scheme has been in place in Sweden since 1974 and gives parents a generous opportunity to take paid time off work to stay at home with their children. Generally, however, fathers tend to take only a small share of the days allotted for parental leave, with farming farmers among those making least use of this opportunity. In this paper we explore farmers? expectations of fatherhood and how different types of farm management can be combined with parenting. The paper draws on qualitative interviews conducted with three generations of farmers. Our results indicate that the notion of involved fatherhood, i.e. being emotionally present and nurturing, is identified by farmers as a societal norm laid on farming fathers today, and that farmers indeed want to pursue involved fatherhood. We conclude that farm operators face several barriers to fulfilling the ideal of involved fatherhood, especially related to the difficulties of being able to afford and find a competent replacement during long periods of parental leave. However, two types of farms stand out as offering opportunities to overcome these issues: farms run as corporations where the farm operator is employed, and small farms with a high degree of flexibility in how time is spent during the day or over the year.
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