Suchergebnisse

Two conceptual tools in historical analyses of environmental issues and political ecologies have gained much attention in recent years: ecologically unequal exchange and landesque capital. The former narrows in on how societal relations of power allow for the physical transfer of environmental degradation—upon which our daily consumption rests—to places far away from our environmentally clean (and therefore often presumed sustainable) homes, cities and regions. The latter focuses instead on the power of human activity to improve environmental conditions, commonly in terms of soil fertility, biodiversity, land cover, carrying capacity, resilience vis-à-vis ecological degradation, or other dimensions of sustainability. One draws attention to the geographically uneven and ecologically detrimental consequences of human activities, while the other draws attention to the potential of human activities to reinforce the resilience and sustainability of social-ecological systems. There is an interesting tension between these processes which calls for closer inspection. The purpose of this paper is to bring them together in the same empirical analysis.

1. Economics and the process of making farmland / William E. Doolittle -- 2. Capital-esque landscapes : long-term histories of enduring landscape modifications / Kathleen D. Morrison --- 3. Taro terraces, chiefdoms and malaria : explaining landesque capital formation in Solomon Islands / Tim Bayliss-Smith and Edvard Hviding -- 4. World systems terraces : external exchange and the formation of landesque capital among the Ifugao, the Philippines / N. Thomas Hakansson -- 5. Large scale investments in water management in Europe and China, 1000-1800 / Janken Myrdal -- 6. Stonescape : farmers' differential willingness for investment in landesque capital / Henrik Svensson -- 7. The social life of landesque capital and a Tanzanian case study / Michael Sheridan -- 8. The temporality of landesque capital : cultivation and the routines of Pokot life / Matthew I.J. Davies -- 9. Irrigated fields are wives : indigenous irrigation in Marakwet, Kenya / Wilhelm Ostberg -- 10. Correlating landesque capital and ethno-political integration in pre-Columbian South America / Alf Hornborg, Love Eriksen and Ragnheiour Bogadottir -- 11. From terraces to trees : ancient and historical landscape changes in southern Peru / Gregory Zaro -- 12. The antithesis to degraded land : towards a greener conceptualization of landesque capital / Lowe Borjeson.

This review takes as its starting point the relationship between landscape history and environmentalpolicy. Landscape historians now face the same problem that social scientists have long faced, i.e., how torelate to values and to the political use of scientific results, which demands greater conceptual andtheoretical rigour from integrative landscape studies. The concept of socialeecological systems is criticisedfor its reduction of the complexity and human agency involved in land use; in contrast, ClarkErickson's concept of domesticated landscapes offers an approach that can incorporate humanist as wellas scientific considerations. The roles of surplus production and labour allocation in early societies areseen as crucial for understanding early domesticated landscapes. Different social formations result indifferent landscapes, but landscapes also have an earthly inertia. Investments in land govern, steer,impede, or inspire land use in subsequent social formations. This specific understanding of time andplace is shared by Quaternary geology, landscape archaeology, and historical geography, and distinguishesthem from both history and physics.

This volume examines the economic, political, social and environmental challenges facing rural communities in the Asia-Pacific region, as global issues intersect with local contexts. Such challenges, from climatic change and volcanic eruption to population growth and violent civil unrest, have stimulated local resilience amongst communities and led to evolving regional institutions and environment management practices, changing social relationships and producing new forms of stratification. Bringing together case studies from across mainland Southeast Asia and the Island Pacific, an expert team of international contributors reveal how communities at the periphery take charge of their lives, champion the virtues of their own local systems of production and consumption, and engage in the complexities of new structures of development that demand a response to the vacillations of global politics, economy and society. Inherent in this is the recognition that 'development' as we have come to know it is far from over. Each chapter emphasizes the growing recognition that ecological and environmental issues are key to any understanding and analysis of structures of sustainable development. Providing diverse multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical perspectives, Environment, Development and Change in Rural Asia-Pacific makes an important contribution to the revitalization of development studies and as such will be essential reading for scholars in the field, as well as those with an interest in Asia-Pacific studies, economic geography and political economy.

This paper investigates the interrelations between social metabolism and socio-ecological sustainability in the Faroe Islands in a long-term perspective. It traces the trajectory and changes in socio-metabolic configurations from the time of settlement until today and shows how social metabolism has increased to very high per capita levels during the past century. The analysis departs from the recognition that a decrease in social metabolism, i.e., a net reduction in throughput of natural resources in human economies, is necessary in order to curb the impending ecological crisis. It is argued that parallel to the growth oriented formal Faroese economy, economic food-provisioning practices rooted in the traditional, and ecologically sustainable, land management system continue to be practiced by Faroese people. These practices can be conceptualized as practices of so-called &ldquo ; quiet sustainability&rdquo ; and their contribution is estimated in bio-physical metrics of weight. The analysis shows that practices of &ldquo ; quiet sustainability&rdquo ; contribute significant quantities of certain food items to the local population thereby enhancing food security and food sovereignty. Moreover, these practices are an integral element in the biocultural diversity, which has constituted the Faroe Islands for close to two millennia. Therefore, they should be considered real alternatives to import-based consumption and taken into account in sustainability discourse and policy to a higher degree than is currently the case.

The relation between social and economic inequality and the environment is one of the most central research questions in historical political ecology. This chapter addresses the issue from the perspective of a specific social form (slave soci­ eties), with a focus on a specific environmental issue (soil degradation). It discusses the measures that people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took to ensure sustainable yields through investments in landesque capital. The central question is how slavery was related to soil and water conservation in West Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and its aftermath. There are two underlying arguments. First, while we have indisputable examples of how exploitative social and economic systems have led to degraded environments and to environmental load displacement, this relation needs to be examined critically and empirically, rather than taken for granted. Second, in the current urge to highlight "traditional" soil and water conservation practices for development purposes, there is a need for a better understanding of the political economy and social structures in which these practices once developed.

This paper reviews the boundary concepts that have emerged in interdisciplinary irrigation studies in South Asia, particularly India. The focus is concepts that capture the hybridity of irrigation systems as complex systems, and cross the boundaries of the natural and social sciences. Concepts capturing the materialisation of rights, design-management relations and the social construction of technology, the notions of landesque capital and (the valuation of) ecosystem goods and services, and finally the broader issues of space-time relations and a cultural politics of water, are explored. The paper takes the analysis forward by suggesting starting points for more comprehensive interdisciplinary social theory on irrigation. On the side of formal theory a focus on a combination the emerging concept of hydrosocial cycle with structure-agency theorisation as morphogenesis is proposed; on the side of substantive theory three avenues for investigation of the materiality of the social process of irrigation are proposed in the commodity form, a materialist institutionalism and the embodiment of agency. The paper concludes by listing five further research activities.

Making human space : the archaeology of trails, paths, and roads / James E. Snead, Clark L. Erickson, and J. Andrew Darling -- Kukhepya : searching for Hopi trails / T.J. Ferguson, G. Lennis Berlin, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma -- Trails of tradition : movement, meaning, and place / James E. Snead -- O'odham trails and the archaeology of space / J. Andrew Darling -- Reconstructing Southern Paiute-Chemehuevi trails in the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada and California : ethnographic perspectives from the 1930s / Catherine S. Fowler -- From path to myth : journeys and the naturalization of territorial identity along the Missouri River / María Nieves Zedeño, Kacy Hollenback, and Calvin Grinnell -- A road by any other name : trails, paths, and roads in Maya language and thought / Angela H. Keller -- When the construction of meaning preceded the meaning of construction : from footpaths to monumental entrances in ancient Costa Rica / Payson Sheets -- Emergent landscapes of movement in early Bronze Age northern Mesopotamia / Jason Ur -- Agency, causeways, canals, and the landscapes of everyday life in the Bolivian Amazon / Clark L. Erickson -- Precolumbian causeways and canals as landesque capital / Clark L. Erickson and John H. Walker -- Routes through the landscape : a comparative approach / Timothy Earle -- Appendix 1. Coding of the cases of paths, trails, and roads discussed in the conference / Timothy Earle -- Appendix 2. Comparative variables for trails, paths, and roads