Proefschrift--Letteren--Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 1992.

Zugl.: Paris, Univ. Cath., Diss., 2006

<p>In the village'of Citing in the northern highlands of Tanzania, the factors: social stratification, land tenure, production strategies, investment patterns and the economic uncertainties of society are studied and their relationship to land degradation is examined. The main assumption of the study is that the causes of land degradation are so complex that a methodology that emphasises contextualisation has to be used. A methodological framework that considers inter-linkages between all these factors is developed and tested. The result of the test shows that contextualisation gives a more in-depth and complex explanation than conventional, positivist research. The study gives a detailed account of the relationship that various wealth groups have to land and land degradation in the village. It is found that all wealth groups are destructive to the land but in varying ways. The rich farmers are over-cultivating land marginal to agriculture, the middle peasants have too many cattle in the village while the poor peasants are so marginalised socially that they hardly influence land management. Those identified as having economic as well as social incentives to maintain soil fertility are the middle peasants, while the rich farmers are shown to be consciously soil-mining the former grazing areas.</p>

In the village'of Citing in the northern highlands of Tanzania, the factors: social stratification, land tenure, production strategies, investment patterns and the economic uncertainties of society are studied and their relationship to land degradation is examined. The main assumption of the study is that the causes of land degradation are so complex that a methodology that emphasises contextualisation has to be used. A methodological framework that considers inter-linkages between all these factors is developed and tested. The result of the test shows that contextualisation gives a more in-depth and complex explanation than conventional, positivist research. The study gives a detailed account of the relationship that various wealth groups have to land and land degradation in the village. It is found that all wealth groups are destructive to the land but in varying ways. The rich farmers are over-cultivating land marginal to agriculture, the middle peasants have too many cattle in the village while the poor peasants are so marginalised socially that they hardly influence land management. Those identified as having economic as well as social incentives to maintain soil fertility are the middle peasants, while the rich farmers are shown to be consciously soil-mining the former grazing areas.

Child vulnerability is a complex human phenomenon that varies contextually. This thesis explores the views of Iraqw and Datoga residents of Haydom village relating to child vulnerability using a concept analysis. The study is a mixed methods study carried out in three stages. The first stage is a non-empirical qualitative literature review; findings from this stage were used to construct questions for the subsequent stage of the study. The second stage of the study is empirical and qualitative, using a focused ethnographic approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two adults of the Iraqw and Datoga ethnic groups. Five main themes emerged from a thematic analysis of these interviews; 1) antecedents: lack of resources, 2) contributing antecedents: intentional mistreatment, 3) defining attributes: deprivations in a young individual, 4) consequences: losses suffered, and 5) strategies: dealing with deprivation. Informants’ views were used to construct items for a questionnaire, which was administered in the third stage of the study. This quantitative stage involved eighty young adult respondents of the Iraqw and Datoga ethnic groups. The data in the third stage of the study was analysed statistically, and generally supported the findings of the second stage of the study. Significant Haydom findings congruent with the literature include that poverty and parental alcoholism are antecedents for child vulnerability, that fathers may be unreliable and that some children cope by persevering and working hard. Findings in Haydom that differ from the literature include the following: some people perceive large family size as a protective factor handicapped, illegitimate and foster children may be mistreated former wealth may predispose to lacking coping skills children as a resource child vulnerability has potential for deterioration, stasis or improvement informants suggested a limited range of strategies, including institutional care, with little stress on volunteerism unrelated fostering is unusual but acceptable to many people. This study recommends local identification of and advocacy for vulnerable children’s rights, and planning of evidence based but culturally acceptable strategies to help them. / Health Studies / (D.Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies))

This doctoral thesis examines the history of the Iraqw’ar Da/aw area in the Mbulu Highlands of northern Tanzania. Since the late nineteenth century this area has been known for its intensive cultivation, and referred to as an “island” within a matrix of less intensive land use. The conventional explanation for its characteristics has been high population densities resulting from the prevention of expansion by hostility from surrounding pastoral groups, leading to a siegelike situation. Drawing on an intensive programme of interviews, detailed field mapping and studies of aerial photographs, early travellers’ accounts and landscape photographs, this study challenges that explanation. The study concludes that the process of agricultural intensification has largely been its own driving force, based on self-reinforcing processes of change, and not a consequence of land scarcity.

Child vulnerability is a complex human phenomenon that varies contextually. This thesis explores the views of Iraqw and Datoga residents of Haydom village relating to child vulnerability using a concept analysis. The study is a mixed methods study carried out in three stages. The first stage is a non-empirical qualitative literature review; findings from this stage were used to construct questions for the subsequent stage of the study. The second stage of the study is empirical and qualitative, using a focused ethnographic approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two adults of the Iraqw and Datoga ethnic groups. Five main themes emerged from a thematic analysis of these interviews; 1) antecedents: lack of resources, 2) contributing antecedents: intentional mistreatment, 3) defining attributes: deprivations in a young individual, 4) consequences: losses suffered, and 5) strategies: dealing with deprivation. Informants’ views were used to construct items for a questionnaire, which was administered in the third stage of the study. This quantitative stage involved eighty young adult respondents of the Iraqw and Datoga ethnic groups. The data in the third stage of the study was analysed statistically, and generally supported the findings of the second stage of the study. Significant Haydom findings congruent with the literature include that poverty and parental alcoholism are antecedents for child vulnerability, that fathers may be unreliable and that some children cope by persevering and working hard. Findings in Haydom that differ from the literature include the following: some people perceive large family size as a protective factor handicapped, illegitimate and foster children may be mistreated former wealth may predispose to lacking coping skills children as a resource child vulnerability has potential for deterioration, stasis or improvement informants suggested a limited range of strategies, including institutional care, with little stress on volunteerism unrelated fostering is unusual but acceptable to many people. This study recommends local identification of and advocacy for vulnerable children’s rights, and planning of evidence based but culturally acceptable strategies to help them. / Health Studies / (D.Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies))

The development of human societies rests on functioning ecosystems. This thesis builds on integrated theories of linked social-ecological systems and complex adaptive systems to increase the understanding of how to strengthen the capacity of ecosystems to generate services that sustain human well-being. In this work, I analyze such capacity in human-dominated production ecosystems in Tanzania and Madagascar, and how this capacity is related to local management practices. Resilience of social-ecological systems refers to the capacity to buffer change, to re-organize following disruption, and for adaptation and learning. In Papers I and II, qualitative interview methods are used for mapping and analyses of management practices in the agroecosystem of the Mbulu highlands, Northern Tanzania. Practices such as soil and water conservation, maintenance of habitats for pollinators and predators of pests, intercropping, and landscape diversification, act to buffer food production in a variable environment and sustain underlying ecological processes. The practices are embedded in a decentralized but nested system of institutions, such as communal land rights and social networks, that can buffer for localized disturbances such as temporary droughts. Paper II compares these findings with practices in a farming system in Sweden, and suggests that similar mechanisms for dealing with uncertainty and change can exist in spite of different biophysical conditions. In Papers III and IV, interviews are combined with GIS tools and vegetation sampling to study characteristics and dynamics of the dry forests of Androy, southern Madagascar. Paper III reports on a previously underestimated capacity of the dry forest of southern Madagascar to regenerate, showing areas of regeneration roughly equal areas of degenerated forest (18 700 ha). The pattern of forest regeneration, degradation, and stable cover during the period 1986-2000 was related to the enforcement of customary property rights (Paper III). Paper IV reports on a network of locally protected forest patches in Androy that is embedded in a landscape managed for agricultural or livestock production and contributes to the generation of ecosystem services and ecosystem resilience at a landscape scale. Forest protection is secured by local taboos that provide a well-functioning and legitimate sanctioning system related to religious beliefs. In Paper V, two spatial modeling tools are used to assess the generation of two services, crop pollination and seed dispersal, by the protected forest patches in southern Androy. The functioning of these services is dependent on the spatial configuration of protected patches in the fragmented landscape and can be highly vulnerable to even small changes in landscape forest cover. In conclusion, many of the identified practices are found to make ecological sense in the context of complex systems and contribute to the resilience of social-ecological systems. The thesis illustrates that the capacity of human-dominated production ecosystems to sustain a flow of desired ecosystem services is strongly associated with local management practices and the governance system that they are embedded in, and that, contrary to what is often assumed, local management can and does add resilience for desired ecosystem services. These findings have substantial policy implications, as insufficient recognition of the dynamics of social-ecological interactions is likely to lead to failure of schemes for human development and biodiversity conservation.