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Over 250,000 farmers have committed suicide across India since 1995, the majority of deaths concentrated in central India’s cotton belt. Scholarly consensus views suicides amongst the peasantry as debt-induced: transgenic cotton cultivation imprisons producers in downward monetary debt spirals. Based on two years of fieldwork in rural Vidarbha, my dissertation, ‘The Life of Debt in Rural India,’ examines the proximate entanglements of debt and techno-material transformations in cotton cultivation. It demonstrates that with the emergence of cash-debt as an essential component of the productive process, differentiated interest rates have become the medium of negotiating social and familial proximity. From a formerly caste-specific proscribed activity, the generalization of usurious lending has made monetary debt the language of social prestations (of gifts, grain and labour), reshaping customary understandings of status, honour and obligation. This project contributes to the anthropology of South-Asia, the peasantry and debt in two ways. In ethnographically tracing the force of debt as social obligation and the imbrication of modes of production with symbolic cultural life, I demonstrate the inadequacy of an economistic obsession with debt as monetary liability. Accordingly, against characterizations of the ‘risk-averse’ peasant in a customary moral economy, I describe an emergent ethical economy centered on uncertainty as risk becomes a structural precondition of peasant life.

Thesis (PhD. (Agricultural economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2013 / Declining rural livelihood and coping strategies in the Caprivi region have for some time been blamed on climate risk factors alone. Prominent climate risk factors are drought and floods. While the indignation of many speculators about the devastating effects of climate risk factors on annual harvests may be valid, the truth is that there are now new constraints on the livelihoods of rural households. Multi-stage cluster and stratified random sampling were used in identifying respondents. Data was collected by means of face-to-face interviews with a structured questionnaire that was applied on a sample of 253 respondents. The respondents resided in three constituencies, namely Kabbe, Katima Rural and Linyanti, which are classified as floodplains. With regards to the analytical framework, the thesis used descriptive statistics, factor analysis, a logistics regression model, as well as an unconstrained multivariate regression model. The objective of the thesis is to suggest mitigating strategic policy prescriptions that will enhance the livelihoods of rural communities in the Caprivi region. The results revealed that albeit agriculture is the main livelihood strategy, it is on a declining path in the context of livestock numbers (cattle, goats and chickens) and crop harvest (maize, millet and sorghum). Of the respondents, a substantial number (31%) of rural households are headed by people who are ≥ 56 years of age. Notwithstanding the damage caused to crop fields by other factors, the main causative factor to the poor harvest in 2007 was wild animals. The biannual harvesting approach has been abandoned for a single approach owing to climate risk factors and changes in the natural environment attributed to climate change and destruction of crop field by wild animals. The average annual rainfall at Katima Mulilo is 653 mm, but volatility in annual rainfall often results in drought or floods. Malaria, Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome are to blame for reduced availability of labour to maintain livelihood activities that sustain rural households. The results further show that five factor components make rural households eligible for receiving food aid. The first is the capacity to farm, the second is climate risk awareness, the third is household economic status, the fourth is past economic opportunities, and the last factor is household labour fitness. Salient to a rural farming household’s decision to farm are three variable, namely food cost, age of the head of the household and the value of food aid. Using income as a proxy to the de factor inadvertent climate risk occurrences and damage to crops by wild animals, pension in the hands of heads of rural households, the value of livestock owned by rural households and, the value of food aid provided to rural households proved to have a significant relationship with rural household income. In order to enhance rural livelihoods in the study area, the government and development partners should work towards establishing a repository for indigenous knowledge which rural communities have employed in the past. This knowledge should be improved on in order to use it in tackling related challenges in future. There is a need to invest more in agricultural infrastructure such as water-catchment facilities and irrigation infrastructure to assist communities to embark on irrigated vegetable farming in dry seasons; establish health facilities close to rural communities that are remote; address the lack of access to finance in the study area; and as an illustration of the lack of government projects in the study area, the green scheme should be rolled out in the area. The opening up of conservancies in areas where rural communities eke out their living from the agricultural livelihood strategy has caused unintended consequences for farming rural households. Thus the policy interface gap between the opening up of community conservancies and the agricultural policy affecting the agricultural livelihood strategy need to be addressed.

Includes bibliography.

The study is concerned with the history of black and white women in Australia during the colonial period. Particular emphasis is on the variety of cross-cultural relationships which developed between women during that time. As a starting point, male frontier violence is discussed and compared with the more moderate approach taken by women faced with threatening situations. Among Europeans, women are revealed as being generally less racist than men. This was a significant factor in their ability to forge bonds with black women and occasionally with black men. The way in which contacts with Aborigines were made is explored and the impact of them on the women concerned is assessed, as far as possible from both points of view. Until now, these experiences have been omitted from colonial history, yet I believe they were an important element in racial relations. It will be seen that some of these associations were warm, friendly and satisfying to both sides, and often included a good deal of mutual assistance. Others involved degrees of exploitation. Both are examined in detail, using a variety of sources which include the works of modern Aboriginal writers. This study presents a new aspect of the female experiences which was neglected until the emergence of the feminist historians in the 1960’s. It properly places women, both black and white, within Australian colonial history.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2007 Jun 15

Increased domestic and international demand for aquatic foods have greatly enhanced aquaculture practices and production in Bangladesh, which is reflected in the national economy. However, the impacts of a fast growing aquaculture sector through the involvement of stakeholders, poorer sections throughout the value chain and broader rural livelihoods are largely underdeveloped and have frequently been ignored. The present study explores the impacts of dynamic aquaculture sector on stakeholders at production level and supply chain and test the hypothesis that aquaculture is enhancing rural livelihoods and benefiting the poor. Three aquaculture production systems in three areas of Bangladesh were selected for the study. These were prawn production in gher system in Jessore, pond fish culture in Mymensingh and rice-fish farming in Dinajpur. This selection allowed analysis both the impacts of domestic and export marketing of aquaculture products. Participatory research data collection tools; focus group discussions and participatory mapping were commonly used along with questionnaire surveys to ensure participation of stakeholders. Aquaculture, in general, found to have had significant impacts on rural livelihoods. The greatest effect of aquaculture on farming households were observed in income and consumption. Integrated aquaculture systems were the regular source of fish and vegetables and constitute more than half of the fish and vegetables consumed by farming households. While income from aquaculture was the highest among the several household income sources, the main cash crop differed between the systems studied. Prawn, fish and rice was the main cash earning crops for gher farming, fish farming and rice-fish farming respectively. Qualitative investigation suggested that aquaculture not only increased income through greater production volume, but also improved farmers’ assets through income diversification to farm and non-farm sources. The other important outcomes of aquaculture were the enhancement of social safety nets through increased sharing of inputs and labour among farmers. Commonly the aquaculture systems were found to be more intensive with an increasingly commercial attitude over the last ten years, which affected the intra-household labour distribution leading to a greater role for women in production management. While the three activities; fish feed preparation, feeding and growing vegetables performed by vast majority of women could be attributed to their inherent involvement with agriculture, hard physical work like harvesting ponds and pond construction were mostly carried out by the women from poor households as a strategy to reduce hired labour cost. The women’s’ increased involvement in aquaculture not only increased their overall workload, but also empowered them in household decision making to some extend. However, involvement in decision making was related to the level of involvement in production activities. The impacts of aquaculture spread beyond the farming households to the broader rural livelihoods. Wage labourers and fishers (harvesting teams) two of the poorest groups of people directly involved were benefited most over the last ten years. Intensification of aquaculture increased the demand for hired labour leading to a structural shift in the agricultural wage labour market in farming communities. About half of the agricultural labourers were found part-time employed in aquaculture activities in Jessore and Mymensingh. In Dinajpur intensification of rice cultivation had a much higher effect on the demand for labour than aquaculture. Increased employment in rural areas increased real labour wages by about one fifth over the last ten years and subsequently improved livelihood outcomes. Declining fish catch due to both decreased natural fish stocks and more restricted property rights, professional fishers benefited by diversifying their livelihoods into the aquaculture sector. While, many of the fishers permanently changed their profession to prawn marketing in Jessore, the rest were full-time or part-time employed in harvesting ponds and/or retailing fish in markets. Such diversification of income greatly reduced seasonal vulnerability and improved livelihood outcomes. The role of fish marketing, which is a critical institution in rural livelihoods, was found to facilitate the growth of the aquaculture sector. High demand of aquatic products and the diverse options of marketing fisheries enabled farmers to meet their initial requirements. More commercial operations of aquaculture increased farmers’ awareness and linkages to markets. However, typically the worse-off farmers were the slowest to capture new market opportunities, often due to their poor resources and human capital. Fish marketing was found to be run by the private sector and government provided the infrastructure facilities, except prawn processing plants, which were developed by private sector. While the fish market transactions were fairly efficient, markets facilities and infrastructure were commonly poor and need of government investment for improvement. A gradual growth of fish and markets in the rural areas was observed in the study; this was driven by the increased demand for fish through increased population and supply from aquaculture. The marketing intermediaries provided important services despite their small share of consumers’ price and ensured a fair share for farmers. The auctioneers provided a vital role in running the supply chain with investment and credits, which ensured fair competition in the pricing process. Marketing of aquatic products was not only a mechanism of product transaction, but also provided critical livelihoods for rural poor. On average about one hundred people, including retailers were involved in auction markets and eight people in prawn depots. Importantly the number of people in marketing was found to have increase over the years. Access for different groups of poor people to marketing jobs was found to be significant in rural livelihoods. The asset base and daily earning indicates that more than three quarters of the marketing intermediaries were poor; some of them were from poorest and low cast Hindu society. Greater flexibility of entry and exit to the jobs enabled the poorer sections to diversify their livelihoods, which enabled to cope with seasonal variability of opportunities and stable income. The marketing employment provided then increased livelihood welfare and social security. Finally, it can be concluded that the promotion of aquaculture not only increased much needed food availability but also generated critical livelihoods and marketing is not just a mechanism of product flow, but also providing livelihoods welfare to poorest sections of the society. The micro level findings of the study regarding impacts of aquaculture indicate that aquaculture production and marketing have significant impacts on enhancing rural livelihoods in Bangladesh.

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This is an anthropological study of peasant economy and culture, derived from field research on patterns of social organization and production of two ethnically different rural communities (Han and Mosuo) in northwest Yunnan, China. Its aim is to explore the local contexts for understanding the changes that recent economic reforms have brought to peasant life, and the cultural as well as ecological factors that constrain peasant economic activities. Current economic reforms have been accompanied by institutional changes, of which the most important for this research is the change in political relations between local and central governments. The expansion of local autonomy has had significant implications for the management of resources. The study shows that the behavior of the two local governments has had remarkably different economic consequences. The most noteworthy policy change in the economic reforms affecting rural society has been the implementation of the household responsibility system which brought down the twenty-year old collective system and has since altered the economic landscape of the countryside. This study emphasizes how kinship systems affect the form of household organization in both Han and Mosuo communities, and how existing social relationships are manifest in economic activities. "Rice Ears" and "Cattle Tails" are images drawing attention to the culturally salient differences in the patterns of production of the two communities. Rice ears constitute a cultural image of subsistence security in the Han community; and cattle tails constitute a cultural image of prosperity and development in the Mosuo community. Apart from the ecological factors which give rise to the particular patterns of livelihood in each community, cultural values associated the particular pattern of production account for many of the economic choices of the peasants and the persistence of economic forms.