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Agricultural Societies (agricultural + society)
Selected AbstractsWhen Land Was Cheap, and Labor Dear: James Madison's ,Address to the Albemarle Agricultural Society' and the Problem of Southern Agricultural ReformHISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2008Lynn A. Nelson James Madison's 1818 Address to the Albemarle Agricultural Society offers new insight into the diverse historiography of agricultural reform in the American South. Madison described a planet with limited resources, accused Virginia farmers of wasting what little they had, and offered suggestions for ways to intensify cultivation. Many scholars have analyzed the southern agricultural reform crusade, but differ widely on whether it was successful, and the reasons why. Madison tried to balance high farming with southern independence. Southern farming could not imitate modern agriculture from England and the Northeastern states because of the region's ecological distinctiveness. Madison was reluctant to risk tested adaptations by importing to crops, animals, and fertilizers. Southern farmers reflected his ecological conservatism, and the movement for reform stalled. [source] Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River BasinTHE GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010JULIE A SILVA This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors , and the interaction between the two , affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Our findings indicate that economic change brought about by structural adjustment policies pressures rural people to alter their approach to farming, which makes it more difficult for them to respond to environmental change. For example, smallholder farmers find it difficult to make a transition to commercial farming within the Limpopo Basin, in part because farming techniques that are well adapted to managing environmental variability in the region , such as seeding many small plots , are not well suited to the economies of scale needed for profitable commercial agriculture. People use a variety of strategies to cope with interactive environmental and economic stressors and shocks, but many face considerable constraints to profitably exploiting market-based opportunities. We conclude that economic stressors and shocks may now be causing small-scale agriculture to be less well adapted to ecological and climate variability, making smallholders more vulnerable to future climate change. Some local level policy interventions, including those that support and build on local environmental knowledge, could assist rural agricultural societies in adapting to future environmental change in the context of economic globalisation. [source] Colonialism and Health Policy Affecting Workers in Sri Lanka's Plantation SectorANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 3 2006Ramani Hettiarachchi Abstract One of the major problems that European colonizers faced in Asia was the reluctance of indigenous agricultural societies to respond to their large-scale labor requirement. This article focuses on plantation owners and managers in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) during the height of nineteenth-century coffee plantation production, and the strategies they used to control indentured workers from India in Ceylon. In particular, caste distinctions were perpetuated among the workforce; this legacy has implications for social life on the estates in current Sri Lanka, engaged in an ethnic conflict between the political minority Tamil and political majority Sinhala populations. This article focuses especially on health and sanitation issues for workers during the colonial plantation era, and the need for government intervention,that was not forthcoming,on behalf of the workers. This research is part of a larger project (cf. Hettiarachchi 1989) drawing on the archival methods of history and the ethnographic methods of anthropology to document conditions for plantation workers. Attention to historical strategies of worker control can provide insights into the current relationship between states, low-wage labor forces, and health care policies. [source] US bombing and Afghan civilian deaths: the official neglect of ,unworthy' bodiesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002Marc W. Herold This article outlines the ways in which the US and allies' bombing campaign in Afghanistan has resulted in well over 3,000 civilian deaths due to bombing impacts, the indirect deaths of tens of thousands of internally displaced persons, and thousands of injured in an agricultural society where limbs are crucial. In addition, the landscape and environment have been polluted with cluster bombs and depleted uranium. The intense bombing campaign destroyed urban and village residences, bridges, mosques, electricity and water supplies, communication systems, cratered roads etc. In contrast to the victims of September 11th, the dead Afghan civilians remain largely uncounted, faceless, de facto unworthy bodies. Cet article expose comment la campagne de bombardement des Etats,Unis et des alliés en Afghanistan s'est traduite par plus de 3,000 morts civils sous les impacts de bombes, par le décès indirect de dizaines de milliers de personnes déplacées sur le territoire, et par des milliers de blessés dans une société agricole où l'usage d'un membre est crucial. De plus, paysage et environnement ont été pollués par des bombes à fragmentation et de l'uranium appauvri. Les bombardements intenses ont détruit les habitats urbains et villageois, les ponts, les mosquées, les réseaux d'alimentation en électricité et en eau, les systèmes de communication, les routes défoncées, etc. Par rapport aux victimes du 11 septembre, les civils afghans morts restent pour beaucoup non dénombrés, dans l'anonymat, de facto des corps indignes. [source] | ||||||||||