Children's traditional ecological knowledge of wild food resources: a case study in a rural village in Northeast Thailand

Consuming wild foods is part of the food ways of people in many societies, including farming populations throughout the world. Knowledge of non-domesticated food resources is part of traditional and tacit ecological knowledge, and is largely transmitted through socialization within cultural and household contexts. The context of this study, a small village in Northeast Thailand, is one where the community has experienced changes due to the migration of the parental generation, with the children being left behind in the village to be raised by their grandparents

Alpine home gardens in the Western Italian Alps: the role of gender on the local agro-biodiversity and its management

Home gardens are reservoirs of biodiversity, promoting food security and maintaining farm ecosystem processes. A study on alpine home gardens was conducted in two valleys in Piedmont, north-western Italy. Forty semi-structured interviews with garden managers were gathered. We analysed if gender roles affect the agro-biodiversity and the management of home gardens in the Western Italian Alps. The results show that mixed couples (consisting of men and women) present higher diversity of management practices and a higher number of taxa detected: 138 taxa were detected and out of that 138 taxa were found among mixed couples, 82 among male gardeners and 69 among female gardeners. Indeed, when vegetable gardens are managed by men only, more than half of the taxa are represented by horticultural species. On the other hand, when vegetable gardens are managed by women only, flowering species, wild and semi-wild species representing a relevant percentage of the total number of mentioned taxa. Despite most of the literature emphasising the role of women in biodiversity conservation and traditional ecological knowledge keeping, this study seeks to demonstrate that the joint presence of men and women appears to increase the levels of biodiversity and diversity in management practices within alpine home gardens

Generating Power: debates on development around the Nepalese Arun-3 hydropower project

Contested since 1990, the Arun-3 dam in Nepal has so far generated more heat than hydropower involving a host of complex negotiations between its advocates and critics on the local, national and transnational levels. Cancelled after a complaint before the World Bank Inspection Panel in 1995, work is soon to be resumed. An Indian public sector company interested in exporting the electricity to India will finance it. This paper focuses on how local communities have experienced the decade-long uncertainties concerning the project and the approach road to be built. Their hopes of access to markets, electrification and a modern lifestyle will be explored in the context of an understanding of development as a desiring machine and governmentality studies. I will argue for a parallel application of the two approaches to conceptualize the entanglement of desires for development and a deep sense of local powerlessness vis-a-vis external actors. Keywords: Nepal; hydropower; development; governmentality; desir