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- de Bont, Chris, 1990-
(författare)
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Modernisation and farmer-led irrigation development in Africa : A study of state-farmer interactions in Tanzania
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- After years of relatively low investment, irrigation development in Africa has been put back on the policy agenda as a way of increasing agricultural productivity. In spite of existing evidence of farmers’ irrigation initiatives across the African continent, current policy prescriptions still revolve around (large-scale) state intervention. Farmers’ irrigation initiatives are generally considered traditional, backward, and unable to contribute to the agrarian transformation that many African nations are after.This study aims to problematize this narrow notion of farmers’ irrigation initiatives, and explores how underlying ideas of modernity/modernisation influence irrigation policies and interactions between farmers and the state. Focusing on Tanzania, this thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three separate studies.The first study is a historical analysis of the state’s attitude towards irrigation development and farmers’ irrigation initiatives in Tanzania. It shows how historically, the development narrative of ‘modern’ irrigation as a driver for agricultural transformation has been successful in depoliticizing irrigation interventions and their actual contribution to development.The second study engages with a case where farmers have developed groundwater irrigation. The study analyses how differentiated access to capital leads to different modes of irrigated agricultural production, and shows the variation between and within farmers’ irrigation initiatives. It also illustrates how an irrigation area that does not conform to the traditional/modern policy dichotomy is invisible to the government.The third study concerns a farmer-initiated gravity-fed earthen canal system. It shows how the implementation of a demand-driven irrigation development policy model can (inadvertently), through self-disciplining by farmers and a persistent shared modernisation aspiration, turn a scheme initiated and managed by farmers into a government-managed scheme, without actually improving irrigation practices.Together, these studies show how modernisation thinking has pervaded irrigation development policy and practice in Tanzania, influencing both the state’s and farmers’ actions and attitudes, often to the detriment of farmers’ irrigation initiatives.
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| 2. |
- Kuns, Brian, 1973-
(författare)
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Peasants and Stock Markets : Pathways from Collective Farming in the Post-Soviet Grain-Belt
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What happened in the post-Soviet, European grain-belt after collective farms were dissolved and in what way can we say that collective farm legacies influence agrarian developments in this region today? These are the main questions of this thesis, which is a work of critical human geography, but is also inspired by theories, methods and approaches from the social sciences, broadly defined. Territorially, the focus is Ukraine, but several articles in this thesis take a wider geographic perspective beyond Ukraine, in particular taking into account the role of Nordic investors in the agrarian sector in Ukraine and Russia. The main aim of this thesis is to examine how farms of different sizes – from small peasant farms to super large corporate farms – develop and change in post-communist circumstances. Another purpose is to reinterpret Soviet agrarian history, in light of what happened after the collapse of communism, in order to incorporate the Soviet experience in a global historical narrative, and to better understand the legacy of collective farming today.These issues are explored in four papers and a comprehensive summary. The first article examines small-scale, household “peasant” agriculture in southern Ukraine and shows the conditions and factors, which have contributed to an impressive intensification of farming in certain villages. The second article investigates large-scale, Nordic investments in Ukrainian and Russian agriculture, with the aim of explaining why many (but not all) such investments have not succeeded to the degree that investors hoped. The third paper focuses on the legacy and afterlife of Soviet-era investments in large-scale irrigation in southern Ukraine, and uses the post-Soviet reincarnation of irrigation in this region to problematize traditional narratives on Soviet environmental management in a global context. The fourth paper, with a wider historical lens, explains the link between collective farms and today’s agroholding agriculture in much of the region, while also discussing the sustainability crisis in agriculture both in a Soviet and post-Soviet context, concluding with a description of a possible and ironic (but by no means inevitable) scenario whereby post-Soviet agriculture saves global capitalism. Theoretically, this thesis is informed by agrarian political economy; related, contemporary debates on the financialization of agriculture; and critical human geography discussions on uneven development and the geographies of difference. This thesis also is inspired by Actor Network Theory, and the view that reality is constituted by hybrid subject-objects, which are instantiated through the agency of an assemblage or network of different actors, material things, discourses, institutions, etc... While such Actor Network approaches are certainly not new, their application to Soviet and post-Soviet change is relatively new. The source material, which is the basis for the empirical approach of this thesis, is eclectic, and produced via mixed methods from different locations. Analysis is based on interviews (75 interviews in southern Ukraine, in Kyiv, and in Stockholm, plus 28 visits to household farms in one study village in southern Ukraine); participant observation (carried out in the study village in southern Ukraine and in corporate shareholder meetings mostly in Stockholm); various texts, such as corporate documents and newspaper commentary; agricultural statistics; and satellite data. Among other conclusions, this thesis argues that, given certain factors, small-scale, household agriculture can be viable, at the same time that the concentration and consolidation of agriculture into large-scale holdings is likely to continue, at least in the short term. This thesis also highlights similarities between Soviet and capitalist agriculture in a global historical context, which is one reason that the transformation from Soviet to capitalist agriculture could occur so fast in some areas.
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