In this study I investigate the significance of climate variability and extremes (and by analogy, climate change) for human security in an African context of multiple risks, shocks and stresses. I consider the sociocultural dynamics of people’s responses to these diverse threats and their implications for climate adaptation. The location is a poor hillside village in Uganda. Its Gisu inhabitants rely on subsistence farming and are exposed to climate variability and extremes as well as acute land scarcity and environmental degradation. I interviewed over 80 men and women in different structural positions and with different social identities. Destructive rainfall destroys food crops, erodes soil and triggers landslides. Analysing these impacts helps to build understanding of the possible context-specific consequences of climate change in East African highland communities. Villagers’ ability to cope with and adapt to destructive rainfall is socially differentiated, with gender relations an important influence. The impacts of destructive rainfall contribute to a complex cycle of human insecurity, which needs to be viewed as an integrated whole. Hunger and poverty are at the core; but tensions, contestations and conflicts among differently-placed social actors are also prominent. Some of these socially-constructed threats are associated with unequal power relations and maladaptive responses to deteriorating environmental and economic conditions. The metaphor of ‘threat landscapes’ is useful for explaining differences and changes in individuals’ awareness of threats and the epistemic limitations of subjective accounts. Responses to climate and non-climate threats alike are shaped by cultural norms, values and traditions. They can be undermined, as well as supported, by conjugal, kin and community relations and by governance institutions and actors. Sociocultural issues such as these should be at the centre of climate adaptation narratives because they are critical to adaptive capacity.

This thesis is about pro-poor agricultural innovations and smallholder development in Amazonia. The focus is on aquaculture in the Bolivian Amazon, with particular reference to indigenous territories. An Innovation Systems framework is used to analyse aquaculture Research and Development at a national level and its relevance to small farmers. The analysis of poverty-focused technology development at the project and farm levels is aided by a Knowledge Engineering Approach for agricultural research management and Livelihoods perspectives. The data comes from interviews with fish farmers and other actors, on-farm and on-station research and livelihoods surveys. Indigenous-species aquaculture can help integrate conservation and development efforts in the region. Nevertheless, a weak innovation system, with limited participation of the public sector, and underdeveloped markets greatly limit poorer farmers’ access to aquaculture technologies. Furthermore, low-external-input systems often promoted as ‘pro-poor’ have limited growth potential whilst requiring considerable skills and labour, both of which tend to be in short supply in Amazonia. Development and poverty reduction objectives might be best met by supporting small and medium-scale commercial aquaculture in areas with access to input/output markets, developing institutional innovations in the provision of inputs and credit and building producer associations for bulk marketing. Given limited resources, priority should be given to reinforce existing innovation networks, largely within the private sector. Indigenous farmers with access to markets can also benefit from aquaculture with a commercial approach. There is considerable evidence of farmers in indigenous territories diversifying their production to include more market-oriented farming, as well as activities in the non-farm sector and wage labour. Here, interest in and access to aquaculture is influenced by location (access to markets and environmental settings), income portfolio and type of livelihoods diversification. The research has important implications for rural aquaculture development in the Bolivian Amazon and provides relevant data about livelihoods and change in indigenous communities and their implications for Conservation and Development Projects in Amazonia.

Governance theory emerged in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been seen as an approach to unveil the existing relationships in systems of management with two often-conflicting governing systems, namely formal and informal. Governance theory attempts to understand the implications of decisions made by formal and informal institutions in order to find suitable ways of management. The theoretical problem this thesis responds to embraces water institutions governing and managing the DWSS. This thesis contributes to conceptualise drinking water governance as the rules, decision making and the plurality of actors interacting to provide the DWSS and recognising customary water institutions and authorities in the management, operation and maintenance of the DWSS at community level. This research uses the concept of governance defined by Chhotray and Stoker (2009: 3) as ‘the rules that guide collective decision-making in settings where there are a plurality of actors or organisations’. This concept is systematically applied in an analytical framework taking into account three main components of governance namely rules, collective decision-making, and plurality of actors to analyse water governance with a focus on the drinking water supply service (DWSS) in three peri-urban communities in Mexico’s central highlands: San Mateo, San Francisco and Santiaguito. The principal research question this thesis aims to answer is how do customarilyorganised institutions address water governance to manage the DWSS at community level? Using qualitative methods and techniques this research explores the interactions between formal and informal institutions and actors when managing drinking water at community level. Informal institutions and actors are water committees, water vendors, and domestic water users. Formal institutions are decentralised water institution and well proprietors. This research highlights the importance of legal plural institutions involvement in the governance and management of drinking water and its interaction at community level. This thesis contributes to better understanding of rules, decision making and the plurality of actors interacting within the governance and management of the DWSS. It highlights the importance of the legal plural institutions involved in the governance and management of water and the way in which they are legitimised either by formal or informal institutions. This thesis also contributes to recognising customary water institutions in the governance of water resources. I approach water governance and analyse society participation, water markets and customary and official institutions involved in the DWSS provision. Theoretical insights are also provided into the on-going dynamic of drinking water access by domestic water users and actors. Finally, the thesis is also rich in contributing with substantial empirical information collected through semi-structured interviews, deep interviews, focus groups, observation and informal talks with domestic water users and vendors.

The stigma attached to HIV/AIDS remains a pervasive problem, despite the progress that has been achieved in the global response and the expectations that universal access to treatment will reduce it. This thesis explores how HIV-related discourses are shaped and how people living with HIV (PLHIV) experience and manage stigmatization in Turkey, where HIV prevalence is low and the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS is powerful and widespread. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the social construction and management of stigma, by offering an empirically informed discussion of the management of the biological body and social identity in relation to broader discursive power relations. Self-management of HIV and its stigma is considered in this thesis as a process of identity construction in which actors are constantly negotiating with the discursive power relations that exercise control over them. The roles of patriarchal and medical discourses are discussed as the main components of the power structure underlying HIV-related stigma in Turkey. Exploring the ways in which PLHIV manage physical health, social relationships and social identity, the thesis focuses on the potential of PLHIV as active agents, who react to, resist or challenge HIV-related stigma. Primary data were generated through biographical narrative interviews with PLHIV. Participant observation in the networking activities of PLHIV and non-governmental organisations provided additional data. Semi-structured interviews with key informants were conducted, to explore the power structure underlying stigma further. Additionally, HIV-related policy documents and statements were reviewed. The research provides data to contribute to the development of HIV-related stigmareduction policies in Turkey. Considering criticisms of the dominant conceptualisation of stigma addressed in the existing literature, the main theoretical contribution to the overall literature on chronic illness and stigma management is the investigation of the link between social identity and discursive power relations, with a specific focus on the active role of the individuals in negotiating and challenging stigma.

This thesis is a study of Kamaiya masculinities in the context of the Kamaiya recently having been freed from a system of bonded labour, in Kailali district of Nepal’s far-­‐ western Terai. The Kamaiya are a sub-­‐group of the wider Tharu indigenous ethnic group. Prior to 2000, the majority of the Kamaiya were bonded labourers. In 2000 the Kamaiya system of bonded labour was formally ended. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore various aspects of Kamaiya masculinities as they are changing as a consequence of the transition to freedom. This is a context shaped to a great extent by the recent Maoist People’s War (1996-­‐2006). The main contribution this thesis makes is to scholarship on masculinities in South Asia as well as transitions from bonded labour to modernity. In focusing on Kamaiya masculinities following freedom, this thesis contributes to research that explicitly considers masculinities in development studies research. Considering masculinities as the focus of study illustrates how men’s gendered experiences of bondedness and freedom constitute an illuminating perspective on these transitions and modernity more broadly. Centrally, this thesis responds to the question: what happens to masculinities following freedom from a system of bonded labour? This is not a question that appears to have been asked within existing research on bonded labour generally, as well as research on the Kamaiya system specifically. This question is answered by exploring a variety of ethnographic material collected through two periods of fieldwork in Kailali district in 2009 and 2010. Fieldwork was focused generating the material for analysis through ethnographic methods, principally interviews and participant observation. These methods were focused on men’s experience and testimony of the Kamaiya system, the transition to freedom and post-­‐freedom experiences. This thesis is based on in-­‐depth studies of six Kamaiya men and their narratives of these transitions.

China’s decentralization has been recognized internationally, as it has arguably made significant contributions to rapid economic growth and social development in the past three decades. However, the impact of decentralization on resource management is more ambiguous and less studied. Given the largely negative environmental outcomes of economic growth, it is critical to ask why decentralization has not fostered environmental sustainability in China, even as it has facilitated socio-economic development. This research aims to improve theoretical and empirical understandings of natural resource decentralization by taking forest decentralization reform in China as a case. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, it examines the effects of decentralization on forest management as well as the interactive processes between policies and local institutional dynamics which have shaped decentralization and conditioned its outcomes. By an interdisciplinary strategy, the study employs a multi-scale approach that includes the collection of data from a wide range of involved actors extending from the central government to local communities and from multiple sectors to generate a holistic picture of forest governance in China. From the research findings, it is clear that forest decentralization in China has been established in law but not in practice. Governance reforms set up a wide range of governance constraints which limit downward accountability and sufficient power transfers to lower-level administrative bodies. The research also argues the critical role of the local state, which plays not only mediator role between state and society, but also struggles with the central state for power. Meanwhile, the exercise of knowledge-based power in the form of scientific forest management undermines the possibility of potential power transfers to local people. These findings carry important implications for policy and further research on decentralization in theory and practice.

The principal drivers of modern irrigation development in tropical Asia are widely understood to be political economy related factors such as demographics, changing diets, international food prices, globalization, urbanization, national food and energy policies, and increasingly, climate change. Such standard drivers of change tend to dominate mainstream water resources development discourse, embedded in instrumental and functional modes of thought and practice. Contrary to the dominant tendency in professional irrigation literature to rely on engineering or managerialist paradigms to conceptualize the field of water resources development, this thesis takes as its starting point an inherent recognition of the political and ideological nature of irrigation development, seen as an organizational tool for state control of people, society and water. This study is concerned with understanding the exercise of power and authority in societal irrigation development, through the analysis of a complex, cross-scalar, multi-actor case study in the context of Thailand, conceived of as an exemplar of a modern hydraulic society. Examining a single river basin case study (the Nam Songkhram) in Thailand’s marginal Northeast and based on a mixed methods, inter-disciplinary approach, the empirical evidence suggests that a number of powerful actor groups in society, including hydraulic bureaucracies, the military, the private sector, national politicians and the monarchy, form alliances or “strategic groups” that compete to control the process of irrigation development at multiple scales and draw upon a range of material practices and discursive processes to further their individual and collective interests. The research contends that irrigation development is justified by socially constructed narrative framings located within the cultural and historical milieu of Thailand, understood to form part of a resilient and rather static nationalist-linked ideology (termed irrigationalism), employed in the reproduction and outward expansion of state power from the Bangkok-centric core to the periphery.

This study examines gender relations within a highly dynamic social and ecological context. It focuses on how men and women use marine resources for their livelihoods and how the rise of seaweed farming and its decline due to plant disease have affected intra-household gender relations on Songo Songo Island in Tanzania. Little is known about the effect on coastal people of micro and macro forms of social institutions in terms of class, gender and other factors, or of how they affect their rights to access, control and use marine resources. This thesis contributes to social-ecological understanding of the crossing point between natural environment and social processes by showing the relationship between temporality and gender relations in the context of marine resource utilisation in Tanzania. Following a case-study approach, field research was conducted on Songo Songo Island using qualitative and quantitative techniques such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, household surveys and participant observation. The main research question asks: How does the rise and decline in seaweed farming affect intra-household gender relations on Songo Songo Island? This was guided by three themes: gendered livelihood strategies, gendered access to marine resources and intra-household gender relations. The study finds that Songo Songo households engage in a number of livelihood activities including fishing, fish processing and marketing, seaweed farming, octopus collecting and formal employment (both skilled and unskilled at the gas plant, hospital, airstrip, and primary school). Within the frame of the socio-cultural patterns of the fishing village, Songo Songo women perform both reproductive and productive roles. The structured social differences among Songo Songo men, according to the category of fishers to which they belong, and women, according to their marital status, determine their access to marine resources. The decline of seaweed farming has created a vacuum for women with no alternative income, forcing them to shift their farms from one place to another in search of areas around the island where seaweed might thrive. Access to marine resources is also influenced by temporality such as tidal changes and trade winds. These temporal variations affect female seaweed farmers‟ contribution to household income, which in turn affects intra-household gender relations. The overall decline in seaweed farming has reduced their income and limited their economic activity, affecting their power to bargain and negotiate with men. The women‟s degree of power also depends on several other factors that influence perceptions of their contributions including cultural norms, gender ideology and social networking. This thesis calls for gender analysis of coastal livelihoods to reveal the multiple forms in which gender relations are exercised, negotiated and understood in the utilisation of marine resources. It is hoped that the key information presented in this case study and its recommendations for the use of the marine resources in the Songo Songo archipelago will make a significant contribution to development sector understanding of intra-household gender concerns and power relations.

This thesis examines how climate change is being integrated within India's national and state government water policy and management practices. Climate change poses significant challenges to the management of non-stationary hydro-meteorological conditions, whilst meeting rising water demand. The nature and orientation of the Indian government's water institutional approach compounds this challenge, due to the1r focus on large-scale infrastructure-based supply-side water management. This research takes an interdisciplinary political ecology approach to examine the Indian hydrocracy's response, namely, the Ministry of Water Resources' (MWR) policy response to climate change, and the state level response by the Andhra Pradesh (AP) Irrigation Department. The analysis is based on policy documents and other government reports, interviews with policy makers and water managers, and non-government water experts 1n India, conducted between 2008 and 2011. The research draws on theoretical groundings of the linear and interactive models to understand public policy processes, water management paradigms including the hydraulic mission, river basin trajectory and institutional reform theory to understand the process and pace of government change. The Indian water policy experience will generate insights into the use of water policy to respond to climate change. The results indicate that climate change is being integrated within policy and water management practices as a continuation of infrastructure-based supply approaches to water management. This approach is facilitated by the uncertainty of climate change projections and impacts, which provide plasticity for it to be used to strengthen a sanctioned 'water for food' government discourse and hence continue India's hydraulic mission. The MWR and AP Irrigation Department appear resistant to change their strategic approach to water management. However, certain reformist actors within the margins of government are endeavouring to operationalise demand management strategies and institutional reform measures, broadly representing a reflexive modernity stage of water management. Insights into the Indian water policy process highlight numerous challenges to implementation, consistent with an interactive theoretical model of public policy. Implementation challenges of paramount importance include the politically contested nature of water management which serves vested political and financial interests, and the inertia of government, characterised by centralised and hierarchical structures and procedures. The government appears to be operating within the limits of a linear theoretical model of public policy, recommending demand management and institutional reform 'statements of policy intent', but without offering a suitable institutional approach to address implementation challenges. The hydrocracy is largely permitted to continue its approach within the wider political context in India, with other actors implicitly supporting and benefiting from large-scale water infrastructure. In conclusion, this research finds that both continuity and change co-exist within government water management in India. Resistance to change endures, whilst at the same time, certain reformist actors are intent to navigate the complex and uncertain nature of institutional reform.

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