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The diversity of plants and animals in agriculture is a social-ecological artefact per se and the result of long-term interaction between humans and agrobiodiversity, displaying the material resistance of the latter. The conceptual framework intraface aims at the analysis of the gendered organization of varieties in an inter- and transdisciplinary research setting. The "negotiations at the intraface" contribute to synthesizing disciplinary perspectives and life-worldly knowledge with a focus on sustainability outcomes with special emphasis on gendered power and interests. The eminent loss of agrobiodiversity requires transdisciplinary knowledge integration for sustainable transformation. The procedure of intraface analysis is illustrated on the case of paddy-rice diversity in Kerala, South India.

Transdisciplinarity is a new way of scientifically meeting the challenges of sustainability. Indeed, interdisciplinary collaboration and co-operation with non-academic `practice partners' is at the core of this; creating contextualised, socially relevant knowledge about complex real-world problems. Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability breaks new ground by presenting transdisciplinary research in practice, drawing on recent advances by the vibrant transdisciplinary research communities in the German-speaking world. It describes methodological innovations developed to address wide-ranging contemporary issues including climate change adaptation, energy policy, sustainable agriculture and soil conservation. Furthermore, the authors reflect on the challenges involved in integrating non-academic actors in scientific research, on the tensions that arise in the encounter of theory and praxis, and on the inherently normative, political nature of sustainability research. Highlighting the need for academic institutions to be transformed to reflect transdisciplinarity, this timely volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Sustainability Science, Transdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy of Science.

AbstractRising opportunity costs for continuing to grow and conserve traditional plant varieties has led to an erosion of agrobiodiversity. This study compares two institutions of collective biodiversity management in Kerala, India. The traditional mechanisms of a scheduled tribe, the Kurichyas, are contrasted with the new institution of the People's Biodiversity Register (PBR) under the local form of governance, the panchayat. Collective action is analysed for the core variables of reputation, trust and reciprocity. In the tribal institutions, traditional seed exchange rests on reputation and gender complementarities, which are eroded by a diminishing degree of trust and dissolving property rights for women and weakened by failing norms of reciprocity. The new institution of PBR threatens tribal women's reputations and their knowledge by reducing it to a bureaucratic register, the disembodiment of knowledge into information reduces trust and unpredictable returns diminish reciprocity. A massive public investment in strengthening women's capabilities for a transformation from conservers and users to advocates, managers and decision‐makers regarding biodiversity might halt the loss. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

"Collective action aims at the joint management of common pool resources. Agrobiodiversity at the community level is conceptualized as a collective resource requiring the management of varieties, species and their interrelations within a farming-system. In the rice dominated agriculture in the uplands of Kerala, India, few community groups continue maintaining and thus conserving their high diversity in landraces. Faced with the challenges of devastating prices for rice, their traditional system of collective action to exchange seed material and knowledge is endangered. A new institutional mechanism to manage biodiversity is the People's Biodiversity Register, a mandatory documentation procedure to enable cost and benefit sharing under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The comparative analysis of these contrasting cases of an indigenous and an administered effort is concerned with the importance of the analytical category of gender for the rules structuring the actions of the groups. Gender is perceived as an institution, constructing regulations of access and conduct for its members, shaping the room to maneuver. Do the core elements constituting collective action, namely reputation, trust and reciprocity imply different consequences for men and women? Do the rules structuring group mobilization imply different consequences for men and women in the same given context and regarding the management of the same resource? Where do we observe differences and to which effect? Since action resources are very much determined by the existing construction of gender, the question is how does collective action enlarge or inhibit the choices of men and women. Based on 2005 empirical data, the paper analyzes the tribal community of Kurichyas and the People's Biodiversity Register with special emphasis on the analytical category of gender concerning the core elements trust, reciprocity and reputation of collective action." -- Author's Abstract ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; Environment and Natural Resource Management; CAPRi ; EPTD

"Zwei feministische Ansätze zur geschlechtsspezifischen Analyse der Ökonomie und theoretischen Beschreibung ökonomischen Handelns, 'Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften' und 'Frauenökonomie', werden hier diskutiert. Beide Herangehensweisen verstehen Wirtschaft als geschlechtsspezifisch strukturiert und machen dies zum Zentrum ihrer Analyse. Die gegenseitige Ergänzung der ökologischen Perspektive des Konzeptes 'Versorgendes Wirtschaften' mit dem Blickwinkel der Frauenökonomie auf Differenz und autonome Frauenräume verspricht eine gegenseitige Befruchtung, um das Analysepotenzial für das ökonomische Handeln von Frauen und Männern sowohl in der westlichen Welt als auch in den Ländern des Südens zu erweiterten." (Autorenreferat)

In this chapter we discuss two cases of pastoralist involvement in agriculture and investigate the challenges and opportunities of this transition. We focus on the drivers of crop production from a dual perspective: first, as an outcome of state coercion and, second, as a voluntary response to natural calamities. Specifically, the chapter addresses the following questions: (1) Why was the Ethiopian government interested in transforming traditional communal rights at the beginning? How smooth or how rough was the process of change? (3) What are the outcomes in terms of property rights arrangements and pastoral livelihoods? (4) What factors explain pastoralists' responses to drought-induced changes? The first case portrays the conflictive transformation of the traditional land use arrangements of Afar pastoralists, which resulted from coercive state intervention aimed at expanding commercial farming, while the second case shows a nonconflictive change induced by recurrent droughts in the presence of support from the state. ; PR ; IFPRI2; CAPRi ; EPTD

"Die Unternehmensberater gehören zu den "Treibern" der Informationalisierungsprozesse, und sie selbst werden durch eben diese Prozesse geprägt. Es handelt sich um ein Berufsfeld, das sehr um seine Professionalität kämpft, d.h. um die Anerkennung seiner Zuständigkeit für die Lösung bestimmter gesellschaftlicher Probleme. Ausgehend von Abbots (1988) dynamischem Professionskonzept werden in diesem Beitrag Verbände als Akteure der Professionalisierung in der Arena Öffentlichkeit begriffen. Welche Rolle spielt in den Verbandspolitiken das wachsende Potenzial qualifizierter Frauen? In der Art der Wahrnehmung der "Feminisierung" durch die Verbände der Unternehmensberatung kommt das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen deren Innen- und Außenorientierung zum Ausdruck (Schmitter/Streeck 1999). Unser Erkenntnisinteresse richtet sich auf die Vorstellungen vom sozialen Ort für Frauen einerseits in der Organisation Verband, andererseits in der Branche. Auf der Basis themenzentrierter Interviews mit Vertretern der sechs in Deutschland für UnternehmensberaterInnen relevanten Verbände wird die Dynamik zwischen Lobbying und mitgliederzentrierter Arbeit untersucht. Welche beruflichen Gestaltungsräume werden dadurch für Frauen eröffnet (oder auch nicht)?" (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)

Die Unternehmensberatungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zeichnen sich durch boomende Umsätze, zunehmende Internationalisierung, wachsenden Konkurrenzdruck und durch eine niedrige, aber steigende Frauenquote unter den Beschäftigten aus. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob die Professionspolitiken der Verbände den Interessen von Frauen an guten Positionen und Karrieren in diesem Tätigkeitsfeld förderlich sind. Die Leithypothese geht davon aus, dass sich die Verbände auf Grund ihrer Handlungslogiken nicht am Ziel gleicher beruflicher Chancen für Frauen orientieren. Zunächst werden Konzepte zur Rolle von Verbänden im Professionalisierungsprozess diskutiert. Die Beschreibung der Struktur und die Entwicklung des Sektors Unternehmensberatung und seiner Verbände in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bildet den Hintergrund für die Analyse von Verbandspositionen zur "Frauenfrage". (ICA)