https://thesis.eur.nl/col/7002/ List of Publications en https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33324/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Chademana, Talent Trishdar</div> This paper is a study of the state-capital-society relationship in an effort to unpack the most actor in development. The rapid expansion of capital over the last decade with a growing presence in the agrarian sector has been a focus of several studies. The pervasiveness of land grabbing has led many to theorize on the state-capital alliance, but the tensions in Zimbabwe provide a unique site for analysis. The Chisumbaje Green Fuel project was sanctioned 9 years after the largest state led land reform process in sub-Saharan Africa had commenced. The evident tensions in policies between the land reform and the allocation of 45,000ha of land to a single enterprise provide a site for in depth analysis on whether the state is truly an instrument of capital or if it can serve the interests of the poor peasant classes as well. The class conflict over land and property has strong historical roots and by critically analysis the evidence as well as the discourse of land reform and land grabbing, a deeper understanding of the position of the state can be found. The framework of state theory of a strategic paradigm that allows the discussion to not only engage with the material issues but also engage the ideational debates in an effort to contribute to the body of literature on land reform and biofuel exploration, and also to stimulate further discussions on the state. This paper will question some of the dominant assumptions and positions that make arguments without a critical consideration of the role and position of the state. Such uncomplicated analysis can therefore lead to misleading hypothesis that then obfuscate the real issues by omission. Using the strategic relational approach and the Gramcian concept of hegemony, this paper will attempt to problematize and unpack the dominant perception of the state project to show that though accumulation is a permanent interest of the state, the interest of capital and the lower classes are not mutually exclusive. The assumption that in pursuing one, the other is abrogated is problematic and this thesis will challenge and examine this view to present a more assiduous analytic lens. Though it is an attempt to answer the question of whether the state can pursue both interests simultaneously, this paper does not presume to categorically answer the question, but rather it is an effort to contribute an alternative perspective on understanding the state that may provide a richer insight into the ultimate answer. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33306/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Gebre, Bedada Beyene</div> The research deals with political economy of planation agriculture with the main focus on land and labour relation in flower sector. It includes the process and mechanisms of enclosure, dispossession and transformation of land use rights of famers and the labour regime following land dispossession in flower growing area in Ethiopia. The study adopted a comprehensive approach by taking into account local and international issues and the political/economic context under which flower sector is carried out. The Marxist political economy theory of class and class analysis is used to analyze nature of transformation and class relation on land and labour as well as understand the level/structure/ of accumulation. The research findings show that domestic and international institutions (state and financial) as well as foreign and local investors played a role in establishing and strengthening flower sector investment in Ethiopia. The finding also shows that the control of land through enclosure and dispossession, changed land property relations (use rights in the case of Ethiopia) and labour relations. Land dispossession led to land concentration in the hand of capitalist investors to make profit/surplus for accumulation and reinvestment. Flower sector is a capital and labour intensive sector and has become globally competitive. Flower sector investors employed more unskilled and non-skilled workers per hectare than other plantation crops. Flower sector created employment opportunity but did not offer decent working and living conditions for workers. Workers live in the state of insecure income, poverty and precarious working conditions; low wages, absence of leaves, forced overtime work and freedom of association and bargaining. Low wages and poverty forced workers to engage in other activities such as farming and self-employment for survival. Flower investment created smallholders famer (dispossessed) who are struggling to continue farming by engaging in sharecropping and rent as well as other wage and self–employment. As a result, wage workers consisting flower workers, dispossessed people and other famers created in flower growing area. Landless and unemployed youth whose parents land is dispossessed by investors subsequently could not inherit land as well as found job as their place is occupied by migrant low wage workers emerged in flower growing area. Power relationship between classes determined the share of benefits from flower farm and the amount of accumulation. Not all groups are equally benefited from flower farm as different class has as difference experiences. Flower investment enhanced surplus value and accumulation for the capitalist investors and benefitted few part-time and seasonal workers. However, the sector dispossessed small farmers their land and exploited flower sector wage workers. Finally, flower investment is challenged by environmental pollution, absence of farmers’ integration, inefficient utilization of land and bad working condition of labours. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33316/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Lumingkewas, Lucky Ferdinand</div> More and more rural young people have left their farming work to go to cities. Access to farming land is indicated as one of the major drivers for young people to leave farming work. Higher income, easier access and flexible work mobility particularly in urban informal sectors are indicated as the allure. Their decision to leave their farming work will weaken the country food security in the future. The Indonesian government under the transmigration programme has a plan to return these people back to rural farming work but not in their origin village. The plan is to resettled these people to outer islands of Sumatera, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua which located thousands kilometers away from their own village. This research investigated why these young farmers rejected the transmigration programme. The researcher interviewed 20 young people of ages between 19 and 29 years old who mostly work as informal workers (porter) at a vegetables and fruits wholesale market in Kramat Jati East Jakarta, Indonesia. One empirical findings from this research is that all 20 young people interviewed (all of whom lack access to land in their respective villages) rejected the transmigration programme mostly because the transmigration are too far and too remote from their villages in Java that would make the transportation cost very high if they want to return to their respective villages. Another empirical finding also shows found out that these young people re-ceived better income in Jakarta, above city’s minimum wages of formal work-ers – which is one the highest minimum wages in Indonesia. They also enjoyed their work due to its flexible working hours and work mobility, and easiness to secure employment and resign that will help them a lot whenever they want to return to meet their families. Those factors are believed to contribute to the rejection of the transmigration programme. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33323/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Gausu, Soburu</div> Climate change adaptation is critical to achieving food production goals in Ghana. Using a political economy approach this study explores the ways in which the adoption of ‘effective’ climate change adaptation strategies by smallholder farmers is impeded in the West Mamprusi district of Ghana. I argue in this paper that farmers’ adoption of agro-ecological and organic agricultural practices is fundamentally affected by the promotion of the use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers as adaptation measures. This has implications for the preservation of local indigenous knowledge and practice since farmers are caught in a web of having to depend hybrid seeds and agro-chemicals every cropping season. It was also found that there exist several institutions including MDAs and NGOs which promote several adaptation programmes to farmers. The lack of collaboration amongst this institutions in the implementation of their programmes poses challenges to farmers’ adoption levels. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33319/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Phyo, May Zune</div> This paper presents the interaction of state and society around a land policy formulation in a country where the government is in transition towards a democratic system and, the civil society is composed of strong professional advocacy organizations and weak social movements. It finds that “political space” by state reformists and the capacity of policy advocacy to work with and influence on both sides of state and society are necessary for mutually empowering interaction between state reformists and pro-reform social actors to-wards pro-poor land policy formulation. The interaction between state and society is political dynamic and not static. This paper uses state-society interaction approach and pro-poor land policy concepts as analytical lens to research into the interaction of state and society around National Land Use Policy formulation in Myanmar which is still in process. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33313/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Sozzi, Giulia</div> https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33311/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Simula, Giulia</div> The ‘middle farmer’ is a key figure within the food sovereignty debates. Powerful actors within commodity chains exploit middle farmers globally while centralizing high profits and reducing small farmers’ autonomy. Yet despite this exploitative relationship, many farmers do not have the capacity to distantiate from the production of export commodities. The struggle for better terms of inclusion in commodity chains is largely unexplored by the food sovereignty movement where autonomy is largely understood in terms of partial delinking. This paper problematizes the idea of autonomy understood as either partial delinking from capital and market forces or as complete subordination to global commodity chains. By grounding the analysis on an empirical case, it is argued that struggles for autonomy are better understood on a practical level as they are intrinsically correlated to context specific constraints and opportunities for action. I have analysed an agrarian movement’s autonomy and capacity vis-à-vis industrial and financial capital in upstream and downstream markets throughout the current important period of agricultural restructuring. This theoretical framework moves beyond binaries and looks at demands for higher autonomy as dynamic and fluid processes rather than static goals. The movement taken into consideration frames its struggles in terms of delinking when it has the capacity to do so and when this will result in higher relative autonomy. At the same time, they also negotiate for better terms of integration in the dairy chain to increase their relative autonomy. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33315/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Mtocha, Isaac Master</div> This research aimed at exploring the nature and prevalence of non-farm income in rural Malawian communities. It also examined endogenic factors and motives for non-farm income (NFI) and how it affected livelihoods of different types of households. The study was conducted at Kachigwada village in Mzimba, Northern Ma-lawi and at Liwonde village in Chiradzulu in Southern Malawi. The study used the Sustainable Livelihood Framework and took the qualitative perspective with acceptance of quantitative data. A total of 47 household interviews, 2 focus group discussion and 3 key informant interviews were done. The results showed an increased dependence on NFI with 89% of house-holds benefiting from at least one form of NFI. The most dominant forms were business income and wage labor constituting 79% and 23% of household participation respectively. Few households about 9% depended on remittances and only 4% were salaried employees. The distressful conditions ‘pushed’ most of the poor households into NFI. Poor households had so many subsistence needs, hence it was very difficult for them to accumulate. However, the drive to accumulate motivated the ‘better off’ households to enter NFI. The poor households who had some forms of NFI were able to smoothen consumption needs. The poorest of the poor who needed NFI most faced so-cial and financial exclusion based on age, health and economic status. Local councils can enhance NFI by improving physical assets through in-frastructural development. Adopting the sustainable Livelihood framework as a planning tool may also help to cultivate synergies among various actors. The poorest of the poor households would need consistent external support to be lifted out of poverty and break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33320/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Nasution, Zulfadhli</div> This research paper has attempted to examine how and to what extent urban farming communities and food sovereignty in Indonesia engage each other. It is done by two ways: 1) examination of two pillars of food sovereignty practised among urban farming communities namely localisation of food system and nature stewardship; 2) examination on how peasantry-based food sovereignty movements see the significance of urban farming communities in applying food sovereignty concept and to build mutual linkage between them. Case study from three cities – Jakarta, Bandung and Bogor – shows that food sovereignty discourse has not (yet) much exposed the urban farming communities because, 1) urban farming as movements has different historical background and root of emergence with food sovereignty concept that was brought by rural peasantry-based movements, and 2) so the both also have different social characters and political views. On the other hand, the representatives of food sovereignty movement suggest at least two important prerequisites to strength-en the construction of food sovereignty among urban food advocates specifically 1) building consumer conciousness on food system among urban groups, and 2) building urban and rural solidarity. I argue that the emergence of urban farming movements can be a sign of the beginning and transition phase of food movement into urban setting that further can be a great chance for food sovereignty to fulfill the discourse on more sustainable and just food activism. For this, it needs more inclusive food sovereignty movements toward urban population, yet the urban communities should frame their activism to be critical to the existing industrialized food sys-tem. As initial research on this issue in Indonesia, this hopefully can bring in-sight and reflection – including for the global South – to enrich food sovereignty discourse as different context, setting, and geography perhaps should have different strategy and entry point. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33322/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Magufuli, Ruth John</div> Recent Tanzania government has adopted Joint Forest Management as a participatory program which emphasizes the active participation of communities in forest management by cooperating with the state to achieve both improvements of forest and community livelihoods. However the program has introduced restrictions in reserve forest which it has resulted in profound effects on community livelihoods. This Paper seeks to assess the effects of restrictions access on the community livelihoods and responses towards these reactions. The methods used for collecting data were structured interview, Focus Group discussion and observation. The research uses political ecology of forest as a theoretical framework to critically analyze how the politics of forest around the management of forest plays role in influencing community access to forest resource. The paper argues that the introduction access restrictions have affected social, economic aspect of community life around the forest. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33325/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Woo, Wei-Li</div> In this paper, I examine the relationship between inside and outside meanings of organic agriculture in Jamaica to understand how they constrain, complicate and sometimes contradict each other and contribute to some of the tensions present in the envisioning and practice of alternative food initiatives in Jamaica. These contestations arise from differing interpretations of who organic is or should be for and differing understandings of what organic is an alternative to. I use these juxtapositions to highlight some of the possible implications this has for the re-working of production and consumption relationships around food. I also show how various actors’ deployment of the different meanings of organic leads to an uneven distribution of benefits from the material and cultural economies associated with organic provisioning. Finally, I examine how the diverse meanings of organic agriculture in this Global South context, further complicate a straightforward, already problematized, reading of organic provision as active opposition to the problems associated with industrialized food provisioning, derived mainly from Global North contexts such as the US or Europe. Broadly-speaking, this framing associates organic food provisioning with local resistance, and pits it against global forces of neoliberal capitalism. The different meanings of organic agriculture in Jamaica, however, highlight that in many respects the global and local are mutually constitutive in the process of shifting food production and consumption relations. This raises questions about whether the Global North/South dichotomy is appropriate as scholars and activists seek to envision more equitable alternatives to the conventional food system. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33309/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Nyamadi, Esia Kobla</div> Electronic products improve and intensify our lives in diverse ways, but their afterlives remain to an enormous point perceived to be an unsolved predicament. This study pursues to explore the travels of used e-waste imported into Ghana seeking to what extent they are reduced, reused and recycled? While seeking the social processes that determine these outcomes as well as contribute to the emerging literature in the field e-waste. The central goal of this study is to examine the nexus of whether sending used electronics to developing countries is often hailed to reduce the wide gap of technological advancement between the global north and the south or they are rather finding dumping sites to dispose of their used electronics. The study uses the theoretical framework of commodity chain analysis to conceptualize the study. The study helped unpacked e-waste revealing that, it was not easy to tell what the clear cut of waste and value embedded in the nodes of the study. This study however, revealed the employment e-waste trade generates in the informal sector at different nodes of the electronic chain. The findings also noticed the socio-economic factors embedded in the e-waste trade. Furthermore, it discloses interestingly, the precious minerals and the value embedded in the chain. In conclusion the paper highlights the crucial role of e-waste in the informal sector and opportunities for further research on the subject. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33317/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Khachatryan, Meline</div> This study examines the link between official development assistance (ODA) and economic growth with particular reference to donor policy and industrial policies of aid recipient countries. It first outlines the historical basis of economic growth in the post-Second World War period in Japan and adopts a strategy of comparison of economic development strategies and patterns of two countries – Japan, as one of the first aid recipients and a prominent example of a late-industrialized country with a ‘miracle’ economic growth, and Ghana, as a country with one of the highest levels of aid inflows from one side and economic stagnation from another. The research analyses the necessary conditions for assuring long-term economic growth for aid recipient countries. And finally it concludes that for aid to be effective for economic growth, a proper donor policy and industrial policies have a considerable role to play. In particular, crucial structural changes in economy which emphasize growth of manufactural production along with the increasing rate of manufactured exports are very likely to help the economy to grow. In a word, it is the appropriate donor policy which will assure the necessary level of independence for aid recipient countries to choose the export-led industrialization route that would help aid to be effective for long-term economic growth. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33314/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Saputra, Heru</div> The decentralization forest management emerges as an alternative in managing forest since the centralized model shows the inability to reduce deforestation. Holding the decentralization prepositions such as encouraging local participation and transparency, it is assumed that the new approach will be able to create social justice for the forest fringe people and sustain the forest resources as well. This study takes a case in Indonesia, the deforestation of Semidang Bukit Kabu forest, where the decentralization forest management has been practiced since 1998. Focusing on the institutional perspective and analysing the relation between the state and the community during the decentralized regime, this study reveals that the main issues causing the failure of decentralization forest management in halting deforestation are the inability in providing clear regulation and reducing the conflict, and the inconsistency in addressing the issue of rural livelihood. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/33305/ Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:00:01 GMT <div>Komuhangi, Allen</div> https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/37258/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:01 GMT <div>Okwor, David</div> The violent clashes between Fulani herdsmen and sedentary farmers in Nigeria do not constitute an alien phenomenon in Nigeria; it is a phenomenon that has been in existence for decades which have resulted in the extensive loss of lives and property. The constant clashes have threatened the security of the State, reduced its economic productivity, and deepened food crisis. While there have been several clashes between the Fulani herdsmen and the farming communities for more than two decades, the escalation reached another level in 2014 with the Fulani herdsmen killing 1,229 people in comparison with 63 deaths in 2013. With more than 500 death by July 2016, the conflicts have been commonly credited to Fulani herdsmen expanding from the traditional grazing routes into the agricultural land which in turn always results into conflict over access to pasture. The escalation of the crisis has made many Nigerians and international observers including the United States to consider Fulani herdsmen as the second most dangerous group in Nigeria after Boko-Haram group. Therefore, there is a need for the critical assessment of the underlying factors responsible for the escalation of conflicts between the Fulani herdsmen and farmers to untangle the various important but conflicting narratives that have been used in explaining the reason behind the recent escalation of the conflict. To achieve this, the areas that have witnessed the escalation in conflicts are narrowed down to Berom community in Riyom and Bassa Local Government Area in Plateau state in the middle belt region of the country where qualitative methodology of data collection (interviews and focus group discussions) was carried out to examine the perspectives of the Fulani herdsmen, Berom Farmers, minority Ethnic groups, NGOs and government institution representatives. With the help of the analytical framework embedded in theory of access, political economy, and political ecology. The findings of the study reveal that the escalation of the conflict is more of political economy, access and criminality of cattle rustling from on the one hand. On the other hand, climate change, urbanization and population surge plays a significant role in escalating the conflict. The implication of the findings of this study is that the Nigeria government should look beyond adopting a response strategy that focus much on the narratives of climate change as the escalating factor. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/37257/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:01 GMT <div>Ardila Vargas, Diana Stella</div> Using ethnographic methods examining the case of the Natural Park Sumapaz, the research delves into the analysis of how conservation in those restricted areas could be more a matter of a daily construction rather than a hegemonic tactic for state expansion. In the Colombian case, where protected areas management occur in the middle of territorial conflicts and warfare, coercive conservation tactics are devoid of enough power, making negotiation strategies more feasible to be applied in contested territories. Coercion and Negotiation are two elements that help to understand how state, particularly its conservation project is locally and daily made. The research uses actor oriented approaches to highlight the importance of local bureaucrats in the process of state formation. Those actors, in charge to materialize state projects in field, could use their own meanings, motives and power sources in response to the local reactions that emerge when conservation policies are tried to be implemented. Those local actions and interactions contribute to determine how state is locally configured and conservation project is territorialized. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/37259/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:01 GMT <div>Pedraza Isaza, Daniel</div> Using historical and political economy frameworks, this research argues that after three agrarian reforms, Colombia continues to have a debt with its rural poor. Findings suggested that this debt is fueled by internal policy elements as well as external factors vis-a-vis their link to the reform. Therefore, these elements are (re)defined as challenges to be faced in the implementation of a new land reform. Finally, this research unpacks the new agrarian reform through these challenges, and propose a shift in the hierarchy to approach the reform. Overall, this research’s results aim towards a new reform that both benefits the rural poor and serves as a mechanism to reduce inequality in Colombian rural areas. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/37255/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:01 GMT <div>Sandow, Baba</div> As climate change in the savanna belt of Ghana poses great limitations on rain-fed agriculture, governmental and non-governmental agencies turn to irrigated agriculture to provide employment and food for the growing population. Gendered analyses of the Bontanga irrigation project reveal that in many cases women’s participation in irrigated agriculture has been limited due to lack of access to land. Past research suggests that variables other than access to land condition low women’s participation in irrigated agriculture. Fully understanding women’s participation in terms of their access to irrigated land demands the examination of how intra-household dynamics and the market, as well as the state, interplay as constraints to women access to irrigation land. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/37256/ Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:01 GMT <div>Voletta, Cisma Tami</div> This research paper provides an understanding about current debate related to food discourse, especially referring to the debate that contradicts the concept of food security and food sovereignty as the only solution above every food problems underneath. Rather than separating the two concepts even further, this research aims to seek the middle way on questioned whether two concepts can be integrated in the sense of theoretical and empirical sphere. The motivation behind this research was a missing clarification about linkage between the two main concepts in food discourse. Often, the discussion of one concept makes the other concept looks wrong, failed or irrational. This research examines the new perspective on how to look each concept separately from the intervention of other factors, then mapped out the concept and see it through for a chance of complimentary space for each other. To support the research, first step needed was to build a solid analytical framework by taking food paradigm theory in relation with the two concepts, then applying the theoretical concept into a particular place of Indonesia where the government has just adopted food sovereignty concept into a policy document and claimed to emphasize it in order to achieve food security.