Contested Dam Development in Iran: A Case Study of the Exercise of State Power over Local People

In this article, we address the interaction of the Iranian State, an agent of power, with affected village residents, as four dam projects are planned and implemented. Dams, recently positioned as a green energy source, are a central component to Iran’s national development strategies; yet historically their construction has been a source of significant conflict and resistance around the world. We focus on ten villages facing displacement or partial loss of lands at the time of the research, and we answer the question: During dam building and resettlement processes, how have residents experienced their role in decision making and the exercise of state power over them? Through a lens of political ecology, we engage with Lukes’ theory of power to interpret data from 18 focus group discussions and 20 in-depth interviews with residents, as well as from 10 interviews with local and state authorities. This case study illustrates how, from the perspectives of residents of rural communities, the Iranian State applies its power over them through multiple, simultaneous means. Coercion, non-decision making, and the withholding of information emerge from analysis as the primary successful mechanisms, while discursive consent-production emerges as largely unsuccessful. We demonstrate how lack of data or other information provision for natural resource development projects can be an important lever the state uses to exercise power, especially when combined with non-decision making. Although all Lukes’ dimensions of power apply to this case, non-decision making was most severe in its experienced effects, as residents suffered from uncertainty and an inability to move forward with individual plans. Our research provides insight into how conflicts over state-sponsored dam building can embody the contest between a sustainable development centered on justice/equity and one centered on economic growth

Migration and Gender: The Case of a Farming Ejido in Calakmul, Mexico

As one of Mexico’s last agricultural frontiers, southern Mexico’s rural farming municipality of Calakmul has long been marked by rural in-migration. In the last few years this process has given place to an explosive growth of primarily male labor out-migration, particularly to the United States. The authors trace the outlines of the migration process from the perspective of one rural Calakmul community, to explore effects of men’s transnational migration on the household and community status of the women remaining behind. Analysis is based on quantitative data collected in 2004 from 25 households, and on in-depth qualitative interviews in 2005 with women whose husbands engage in transnational migration. The authors find preliminary evidence for changes in gender roles and responsibilities, as these adjust to accommodate men’s absences. The evidence for women’s increased participation in household decision-making is much less clear. This, combined with the words of the women, suggests that gender ideology is defended even as gender responsibilities flex. Women’s spatial mobility also appears to improve, but this must be weighed against greater gains in migrating men’s mobility, as well as some women’s unhappiness with the lack of livelihood improvements

Comment

Brosius raises a series of questions that emanate from recent encounters between critical anthropology and environmental discourses and movements. Drawing upon insights from feminist theory, we propose to expand and enrich these questions as they relate to intersections of identity and environmental movements, policy, and positionality. Brosius’s analysis of research on environmental social movements, discourse, and images repeatedly touches on the complex processes of identity and representation. Perhaps most striking is his implicit dichotomization of essential and strategic identities. Our comments first focus on the issue of environmental essentialisms, their deployment by various actors, and their potential unmasking by researchers. We then raise the issue of researcher positionality in terms of purpose, policy engagement, and relationship to the researched

Justice and Immigrant Latino Recreation Geography in Cache Valley, Utah

Latinos are the largest U.S. non-mainstreamed ethnic group, and social and environmental justice considerations dictate recreation professionals and researchers meet their recreation needs. This study reconceptualizes this diverse group’s recreation patterns, looking at where immigrant Latino individuals in Cache Valley, Utah do recreate rather than where they do not. Through qualitative interviews and interactive mapping, thirty participants discussed what recreation means to them and explained their recreation site choices. Findings suggest that recreation as an activity done outside the home, for fun with others, leads participants to seek spaces with certain characteristics. Reconceiving recreation more broadly and framing it from the perspective of participants’ choices can facilitate clearer understanding of differences and promote greater justice in resource provision and management

The Slow Displacement of Smallholder Farming Families: Land, Hunger, and Labor Migration in Nicaragua and Guatemala

Smallholders worldwide continue to experience processes of displacement from their lands under neoliberal political-economic governance. This displacement is often experienced as “slow”, driven by decades of agricultural policies and land governance regimes that favor input-intensive agricultural and natural resource extraction and export projects at the expense of traditional agrarian practices, markets, and producers. Smallholders struggle to remain viable in the face of these forces, yet they often experience hunger. To persist on the land, often on small parcels, families supplement and finance farm production with family members engaging in labor migration, a form of displacement. Outcomes, however, are uneven and reflect differences in migration processes as well as national and local political economic processes around land. To demonstrate “slow displacement”, we assess the prolonged confluence of land access, hunger, and labor migration that undermine smallholder viability in two separate research sites in Nicaragua and Guatemala. We draw on evidence from in-depth interviews and focus groups carried out from 2013 to 2015, together with a survey of 317 households, to demonstrate how smallholders use international labor migration to address persistent hunger, with the two cases illuminating the centrality of underlying land distribution questions in labor migration from rural spaces of Central America. We argue that smallholder farming family migration has a dual nature: migration is at once evidence of displacement, as well as a strategy for families to prolong remaining on the land in order to produce food

Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating a No-Child-Left-Inside Pilot Program

We describe experience with a pilot week-long, No-Child-Left-Inside (NCLI), outdoor program implemented in Cache Valley, Utah, in 2012. Through response analysis of a “pre-then-post” children\u27s survey and a parent-completed demographic survey, we assess program effectiveness in raising children\u27s enthusiasm for nature-related behaviors and in reaching a target audience of all local families. The program reached many families with low participation in other conservation programs but failed to reach families from the growing Latino population. Participating children experienced increased excitement to spend more time outdoors exploring and learning, accomplishing NCLI goals of laying a groundwork for children\u27s enhanced environmental literacy

The Uneven Influence of Climate Trends and Agricultural Policies on Maize Production in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Maize is an important staple crop in Mexico, and the recent intensification of climate variability, in combination with non-climatic forces, has hindered increases in production, especially for smallholder farmers. This article demonstrates the influence of these drivers on maize production trends in the three states of the Yucatan Peninsula using a mixed methods approach of climatic analysis and semi-structured interviews. Climate trend analysis and generalized additive models (GAMs) demonstrate relationships between production and climatic variability, using 1980–2010 precipitation and temperature data. Data from forty interviews with government officials and representatives of farmers\u27 associations (gathered in 2015 and 2016) highlight the influence of agricultural policy on maize production in the region. The climate trend analysis yielded mixed results, with a statistically significant negative rainfall trend for Quintana Roo and variability in maximum temperature changes across the region, with an increase in Yucatan State and Quintana Roo and a decrease in Campeche. Climate and production GAMs indicate a strong significant relationship between production and climate fluctuations for Campeche (79%) and Quintana Roo (72%) and a weaker significant relationship for the Yucatan State (31%). Informants identified precipitation variability and ineffective public policies for smallholder agricultural development as primary obstacles for maize production, including inadequate design of agricultural programs, inconsistent agricultural support, and ineffective farmers\u27 organizations. Quantifying the influence of climate change on maize production, and the amplifying influence of national and regional agricultural policy for smallholder farmers, will inform more appropriate policy design and implementation

The border-development-climate change nexus : precarious campesinos at the Selva Maya Mexico–Guatemala border

Funding: RMW, SC and BS were recipient of funding from Scottish Funding Council through the Global Challenges Research Fund (2017-18 and 2018-19). SM received a Postdoctoral Research Grant, CVU 292956, from CONACYT, BS participated and received funding from a CONACYT- FORDECYT project with grant number 281987 (Mexico).Borderlands can be places of socio-economic tensions, development challenges and ecological risks, now exacerbated by climate change. We investigate the border-development-climate change nexus using research from Calakmul, Mexico and Petén, Guatemala, to detail the lived experiences and vulnerabilities of campesinos in the Selva Maya cross-border region. Our mixed methods approach combines historical analysis and ethnographic interviews with 70 campesinos. We demonstrate how large scale development approaches result in local and specific policy interventions, but produce mixed outcomes for campesinos, neglecting the most marginalized. Despite the absence of any major border crossings, a porous border in this area allows flows of people, goods, and services to connect the region, but there are differential national outcomes. In Peten, many campesinos suffer from ‘irregularity’ (lacking rights to the lands where they live and cultivate), preventing access to state development benefits. In Calakmul greater climate change demands adaptations beyond the scope of recent policy interventions. We consider how the border region includes biophysical processes as well as socio-political and cultural ones, and we argue that policy interventions are required at global, national, and local scales to address structural inequalities and co-create local solutions to development, migration and climate change challenges.Peer reviewe

The (In)Visible Health Risks of Climate Change

This paper scrutinizes the assertion that knowledge gaps concerning health risks from climate change are unjust, and must be addressed, because they hinder evidence-led interventions to protect vulnerable populations. First, we construct a taxonomy of six inter-related forms of invisibility (social marginalization, forced invisibility by migrants, spatial marginalization, neglected diseases, mental health, uneven climatic monitoring and forecasting) which underlie systematic biases in current understanding of these risks in Latin America, and advocate an approach to climate-health research that draws on intersectionality theory to address these inter-relations. We propose that these invisibilities should be understood as outcomes of structural imbalances in power and resources rather than as haphazard blindspots in scientific and state knowledge. Our thesis, drawing on theories of governmentality, is that context-dependent tensions condition whether or not benefits of making vulnerable populations legible to the state outweigh costs. To be seen is to be politically counted and eligible for rights, yet evidence demonstrates the perils of visibility to disempowered people. For example, flood-relief efforts in remote Amazonia expose marginalized urban river-dwellers to the traumatic prospect of forced relocation and social and economic upheaval. Finally, drawing on research on citizenship in post-colonial settings, we conceptualize climate change as an ‘open moment’ of political rupture, and propose strategies of social accountability, empowerment and trans-disciplinary research which encourage the marginalized to reach out for greater power. These achievements could reduce drawbacks of state legibility and facilitate socially-just governmental action on climate change adaptation that promotes health for all

Wirtschaft hacken: Von einem ganz normalen Unternehmer, der fast alles anders macht

Was wäre, wenn man alles ganz anders machen könnte? Seit beinahe zwei Jahrzehnten ist dies für den Unternehmer Uwe Lübbermann keine theoretische Frage mehr, sondern ein anhaltendes soziales und ökonomisches Experiment. Erstmals hat er es umgesetzt zusammen mit seinem "Getränke-und-mehr"-Kollektiv Premium: Rabatte für diejenigen, die nur geringe Mengen abnehmen; gleiches Gehalt für alle; im Internet frei verfügbare Rezepte für die hergestellten Getränke; keine schriftlichen Verträge und die Klärung sämtlicher Unternehmensbelange in einer konsensdemokratischen Struktur. Ausgehend von dem Willen, der unsozialen Dynamik des kapitalistischen Systems eigene Werte entgegenzusetzen, hat Premium über viele Jahre nicht nur ein krisensicheres, sozial orientiertes Unternehmen aufgebaut. Es ist vielmehr selbst zum anhaltenden Motor von Veränderung geworden - eine Software, die die Menschen, Unternehmen und Systeme, mit denen sie arbeitet, verändert, indem sie grundlegende Mechanismen außer Kraft setzt und durch andere ersetzt. Denn das Engagement für soziale und ökologische Fragen beeinflusst nicht nur Geschäftsentscheidungen, Abläufe und Kommunikationsweisen - es überträgt sich auf alle, die mit Lübbermann zusammenarbeiten und verwandelt sie. "Wirtschaft hacken" beschreibt diese Veränderungsmaschine erstmals ausführlich. Von innen und von außen, parteiisch und kritisch, zum Inspirieren und zum Nachbauen