11 research outputs found
Written with seed: the political ecology of memory in Madagascar
In this article, I bring together work in political ecology and environmental anthropology to examine how smallholder farmers in Madagascar articulate and embody political and economic histories through the everyday interactions with the commodities cultivated in their fields and forests. I ask: how does the work of cultivating land connect with the art of cultivating memory? In considering this question, I draw from ethnographic research in the agrarian village of Imorona, located in Northeastern Madagascar. In Imorona, smallholder farmers turn towards the materials in their agroforestry fields to reference the more painful political epics of their collective pasts â memories that otherwise remain largely silent within everyday realms of Malagasy culture. I show how the stories people tell of their shifting relationships to commodities including rosewood, vanilla and cloves bring together political and economic 'histories writ large' with more personal and intimate 'histories writ small.' Overall, I argue that the analytical approach of a 'political ecology of memory' offers the productive capacity to look both outward towards others, and inwards towards self. In the process, it elucidates the ways that people render global histories personal.
Key words: Political ecology; memory; agroforestry; commodities; Madagascar; Indian Ocean
Mob Justice and âThe Civilized Commodityâ
Our theory of âthe civilized commodity' examines âmob violence' affecting high-value commodities, including the vanilla boom of Madagascar. We illustrate producers' labor under fraught conditions of violence and contradictory claims of âstreet justice.' Specifically we ask, what counts as justice and to whom? We highlights broader arguments around âmoral hyper-proximity' of producer-consumer relations, and the strategies of state and market actors to circulate âcivilized' visions for systemic and future governance over commodity landscapes. State and market calls for âlaw and order,' however, obscure the structural inequities faced by smallholders in their âeverydayâ production of commodities under periodic crisis
A New Sustainability Model for Measuring Changes in Power and Access in Global Commodity Chains
High-value agricultural commodities face substantial economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. As a result, commodity industries are adopting sustainable supply- and value-chain models to make production more efficient, traceable and risk-averse. These top-down models often focus on giving higher prices to smallholder producers. While an important component of sustainability, this focus on farm-gate prices has shown mixed results in part because they are less effective in highlighting the asymmetrical power relationships and the socio-economic and ecological complexity in high-value commodity production. Here, we use a novel method to measure and visualise changes in smallholder power in Madagascarâs northeast âvanilla triangleââhome to about 80% of the worldâs high quality vanilla. Our results reveal the paradox that during the recent price surge an overall increase in smallholdersâ multi-dimensional power to access economic benefits was accompanied by a decrease in many other equally important measures of sustainability. This illustrates how effective models for understanding global sustainable commodity chains should incorporate smallholders' perspectives that often emphasise complexity and uncertainty, and which aims to increase power and access for producers across both high and low price points
MISSIONARY AS PLAGIARIST - David Griffiths and the Missionary âHistory of Madagascarâ. By Gwyn Campbell. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012. Pp. xxii + 1177. $318,00/âŹ232,00, hardback ( isbn
Remembered resilience: oral history narratives and community resilience in agroforestry systems
Disaster, Degradation, Dystopia
In this chapter we examine the contributions that the field of political ecologyââwith its focus on the mutually constitutive relationships between environments, cultures, politics and powerââhas made, and can continue to make, to a more nuanced understanding of disasters. Disaster research also contributes to political ecology insofar as it illuminates the complexity of relationships between environments and societies over space and time. Drawing from ethnographic examples and historical analysis, we situate epistemologies of disasters within broader analyses of scale-making, natureâculture dichotomies, the classification of disasters as ânaturalâ or âsocialâ, the interpretive dimensions of identity and the construction of self. The very definition of a situation as âdisastrousâ or not varies with oneâs political resources. Overall, we argue that political ecology frameworks pose new questions about the operation of power and politics in contexts of disasters, resulting in enriched understandings of the social experience of disasters. Ethnographic examples, such as those presented in this chapter, illustrate the rich promise of continued work at the confluence of the fields of political ecology and disaster studies