The Origins and Influence of Land Property Rights in Vietnam

Vietnam's 1993 Land Law was intended not only to increase the security of farmers’usage rights to their land, but also to facilitate land transfers. Despite potential benefits, the actual issuance of land‐use rights certificates to farmers (as specified by the law) proceeded rather slowly in some regions. This article seeks to identify factors that explain the emergence of this form of property right as well as to measure its effect on agricultural production. The results suggest that the certificate's direct contribution may be rather small in the absence of the appropriate supporting conditions and institutions.     

Taking Things Personally,and Publicising the Private: Encountering Erasure on the Frontlines of Academia

To understand the purpose of the Kunene hydro‐electic schemes in Angola one must examine the pattern of land settlement in Namibia established during the Herero‐German war of 1904–1908. At that time the White groups settled on the rich central pastoral land and also controlled the coast line. However the White south has three missing commodities which must be imported from the north: water, electricity, and labour. Thus it is the White groups who benefit most from the Kunene schemes. The profits from mining are accumulated in Johannesburg, New York, and London, while White mine workers receive high returns and Black workers receive low returns. The White farmers no longer face competition from the mines for water. The fishing and secondary industries receive relatively cheap power and water. Black farmers and herdsmen receive water, but the problem of irrigated farming in the ‘home‐lands’ has still to be solved.     

Injecting social psychology theory into conceptualisations of agricultural agency: Towards a post-productivist farmer self-identity?

Macro-scale changes to Western agricultural regimes have led to recent debates on the theoretical conceptualisation of agricultural change, particularly regarding the appropriateness of the productivist/post-productivist/multifunctionality (P/PP/MF) model. Within these debates concern has recently arisen as to whether the contemporary perspective, which derives largely from macro-level structural analyses (such as political economy), is compatible with the grassroots ‘agency’ perspective—i.e. whether our conceptualisations of agricultural change follow the Giddensian notion of structure/agency consistency. In this paper we contribute to this debate by investigating the extent to which farmers’ self-concepts and attitudes towards post-productivist approaches are compatible with the current structural changes in agriculture. By introducing the notion from social psychology of a complex self-structure comprised of multiple and hierarchically organised identities, and by investigating the structure of these identities in farmers’ idealised P/PP/MF selves, the study questions the idea that any transformation from productivism to post-productivism/multifunctionality will be in the form of a simple linear transition. Results from a survey of farmers in Bedfordshire (UK) and evidence from other studies throughout Europe and Western agricultural regimes demonstrate that—despite much talk of an increasing ‘conservationist’ component to farming—farmers’ self-concepts are still dominated by production-oriented identities. The study concludes that there is a temporal discordance between the macro- and micro-structural elements of transition implied in the P/PP/MF model, and that we are witnessing at most a partial macro-structural driven transition towards a post-productivist agricultural regime.     

Processes of countryside change in lowland England

After a period in which academic interest has been confined to documenting the pattern of countryside change, interest is beginning to focus on understanding the decision-making processes which underlie it. This comes at a time of potentially rapid policy change for European agriculture and rural land use, when it is essential that the behaviour of farmers as change agents and policy operatives is fully understood. However, a lack of empirical work means that the process of change ‘from below’ is still under-researched. This paper reports on a farm survey conducted in lowland England which examines farmers' investment decisions in land improvement and landscape maintenance. Countryside change is found to be both ‘determined’ by policy, institutional and family influences and ‘intentioned’ by the farmer acting as a problem-solving individual. The survey discriminates different investment styles which can usefully express this interactive relationship.     

A Regional Multiplier Approach to Estimating the Impact of Cash Transfers on the Market: The Case of Cash Transfers in Rural Malawi

This article analyses the impact on the local economy of an emergency cash–transfer programme in rural Malawi. The results are of interest, given the growing use of cash transfers as development aid as well as the increasing popularity of such transfers as a form of social protection across sub–Saharan Africa. It uses a form of social accounting matrix to show that there are widespread benefits for the regional economy as a whole (with multiplier estimates of 2.02 to 2.45), especially during the most ‘lean’ periods of the year, and for small farmers and small businesses in particular, as this is where poorer households' purchases are focused; education and health also benefit.     

W(h)ither the academy? An exploration of the role of university social work in shaping the future of social work in Europe

A controversial proposal to pilot the training of child protection social workers through an intensive work-based route in England is being supported and funded by the UK Government. Frontline, the brainchild of a former teacher, locates social work training within local authorities (‘the agency’) rather than university social work departments (‘the academy’) and has stimulated debate amongst social work academics about their role in shaping the direction of the profession. As a contribution to this debate, this paper explores the duality of social work education, which derives its knowledge from both the academic social sciences and the experience of practice within social work agencies. While social work education has traditionally been delivered by the academy, this paper also explores whether the delivery of training in the allied professions of probation and nursing by ‘the agency’ is equally effective. Finally, this paper explores the Helsinki model which achieves a synergy of ‘academy’ and ‘agency’. It suggests that there are alternative models of social work education, practice and research which avoid dichotomies between the ‘academy’ and the ‘agency’ and enable the profession to be shaped by both social work academics and practitioners.     

Modelling Mindsets of an Agency

Abstract

This article introduces a culturally based socio-cognitive agency meta-model built from ‘living systems’ theory. The agency is adaptive. It has a normative personality with an epistemic state determined by its three formative traits, which have a control function and can take bi-polar epistemic values (‘enantiomers’). Combined together, they give eight different cognitive types, i.e. eight different types of personality mindset. These personality mindset types are influenced by the culture and the social environment to which the agency is bound. The traits can be used to explain the what, why, and how of dynamic agency behaviour in complex situations.     

Farm-level constraints on agri-environmental scheme participation: a transactional perspective

Voluntary agri-environmental schemes based on management agreements characterise much agri-environmental policy across the EU at present, and have expanded following the implementation of Regulation 2078/92 in all member states. Schemes generally motivate individual farmers to contract with government agencies to produce countryside goods in return for compensatory payments. Hence, farmers’ decisions to participate are central to achieving policy objectives. An enhanced understanding of farmers’ attitudes to and perceptions of schemes and their implementation would be of value for policy development. Recent transactions-cost research has observed that such schemes involve potentially heavy transactions costs, for both the state and farmers. In addition to reducing scheme cost-effectiveness, the transactions costs incurred by farmers can form a significant constraint on participation in schemes, with adverse effects on the supply of conservation goods. This paper considers behavioural and transactional perspectives on scheme participation. Some new data on the transactional burdens experienced by farmers when participating in schemes is examined from the perspective of identifying ways to improve policy transacting to ease constraints on participation where these exist. At the level of the individual participant, the development of agri-environmental one-stop-shops in member states for all schemes would allow transactions-cost economies, saving on the overhead costs of applying to different schemes with different objectives, as well as allowing a more integrated, less confused approach to participation. The longer-term value of farmer networks and capacity-building for agri-environmental management is important too.     

Freedom or happiness? Agency and subjective well-being in the capability approach

Human agency is a pivotal part of freedom and happiness. This article outlines two aspects of agency – power and control and self-establishment of goals – and situates it in the capability approach and vis a vis SWB. One can view the CA as an integration of ‘agency’ and ‘outcome’ oriented approaches. When agency is possible, it has primacy. When not, it is valued achievements (among others SWB) that acquire importance. Therefore agency is key for understanding how SWB fits in the general policy framework as a valued outcome. Two important functions of SWB information in this respect are outlined: as a frame of problem and as a signalling device on the effectiveness of policy.     

‘Bring down the controlled movements!’ – exploring the possibilities of and limitations on achieving embodied agency in ballet and fashion

This paper explores the subtleties of exercising embodied agency within two contexts shaped by ideals and norms: ballet and fashion. Here, we focus on how dancers and models rehearsing offstage towards onstage performances negotiate their potential and limitations for achieving agency over and over. Whereas a ‘turn to embodiment’ has occurred within organization studies, less is known about how embodied agency is choreographed and practised between visible front stages and ‘hidden’ offstages, or in relation to the various human and non-human agents present in the field. The empirical material of this paper is derived from two separate ethnographic studies. By combining insights from the two contexts, we make a joint effort to explore a complex phenomenon in more detail. This paper develops our micro-level understanding of embodied agency as a relational endeavour, and offers insights into the surprisingly ‘a-mobile’ discussion of embodied practices within organization studies.     

Sharecropping,Insecure Land Rights and Land Titling Policies: A Case Study of Lac Alaotra,Madagascar

Sharecropping between poor landlords and rich tenants has hitherto been the subject of very little academic scrutiny. Given that such ‘reverse share tenancy’ contracts are mostly at odds with the canonical risk‐sharing explanation for sharecropping, this article discusses a rationale for them that relies on weak property rights as well as the legal doctrine of adverse possession, and tests it using data from Lac Alaotra, Madagascar, where this type of tenancy accounts for one‐third of land rentals. The empirical findings are discussed in relation to recent land‐reform policies by the Government of Madagascar, the World Bank, IFAD, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.     

Flex crops neverland: finding access to large-scale land investments?

This paper explores a neglected aspect of the financialization of land grabbing. Whereas financialization is a multifaceted phenomenon, a straightforward link has been established between financialization and land grabbing. On the one hand, market-oriented views claim that large-scale land investments benefit both the agrifood industry and small-scale farmers. On the other hand, structuralist scholarship explains how financialization creates new ways to accumulate profits by dispossessing small-scale farmers. We build on the call for a more nuanced account of large-scale land investments’ impact on land access by considering the crops involved. While finance’s attraction for flex crops has already been touched upon, we reverse the perspective by exploring whether flex crops influence the way financialization in agriculture unfolds in three areas: megamergers, contract farming, and land commodification. Building on Allaire’s concept of quality, we argue that flex crops can exacerbate unequal power relations and limit access to land for small-scale farmers.     

Broadening the Land Question in Food Sovereignty to Northern Settings: A Case Study of Occupy the Farm

Abstract

Land access is an accepted corollary to food sovereignty, long promoted by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC). LVC's land access politics have evolved with increased incorporation of diverse perspectives, but remain largely focused on achieving ‘integral agrarian reform’ in the global South. Here, I take a case where food sovereignty activists (‘Occupy the Farm’ (OTF)) occupied land owned by a public university in California, the USA, in order to broaden food sovereignty's land access considerations beyond the South, and to analyze conditions where political actions (including occupations) can help achieve changes in land access regimes. The OTF action was successful in challenging cultural norms about property and achieving access, partly due to the occupation having foregrounded multiple appealing narratives that invited participation and wider support. These narratives included agroecology versus biotechnologies; community/public access versus privatization; participatory versus bureaucratic governance structure; and green space/food production versus urban development. The article tests the use of the ‘land sovereignty’ frame in expanding food sovereignty's land politics, to encompass land contestation contexts globally and deal with the particular conditions surrounding lands. The case indicates that land occupations in the North are potentially useful—but uncertain, and very context-dependent—tactics to promote land and food sovereignty.     

Farmer participation in voluntary land diversion schemes: Some predictions from a survey

National and European agricultural policy schemes are now coming forward which rely on land diversion to achieve a variety of supply control, social and environmental policy goals. Operating on a voluntary basis, these will depend for their success on sufficient numbers of farmers agreeing to enrol land in sufficient quantities and in the right localities. Participation is thus a crucial variable in any assessment of land diversion policies. This paper draws on the results of a farm survey to make some predictions about the level and pattern of uptake of a range of such schemes, identifying the characteristics of resistors and adopters and exploring the motives of participants. It is concluded that land diversion will have most appeal to well-placed farmers who are able to justify the diversion of land out of an agricultural use in terms of forestry and conservation plans which have already been laid. The implication is that voluntary schemes may not be especially powerful instruments for bringing about land use changes on the large number of holdings in the U.K. which presently lack any history of conservation or forestry management, at least not without accompanying reductions in the level of market support for agriculture.     

Agency and clientship in public encounters: co‐constructing ‘neediness’ and ‘worthiness’ in shelter placement meetings

This article seeks to develop our understanding of the agency of vulnerable groups who at first sight may not seem to have much agency in their lives. It explores the co‐constructed nature of agency in three Danish homeless shelters. Unlike earlier interview‐based studies, our research is based on naturalistic data drawn from 23 video‐recorded placement meetings. Using concepts from Goffman, we examine how versions of the neediness and worthiness of homeless people are negotiated verbally and bodily between staff and clients. We find that homeless people have to juggle two partly contradictory roles when they are given or take the roles of either a (active) citizen or a (passive) client. Clientship is actively negotiated by both parties and demonstrates the agency of homeless people: they can collaborate with (as clients) or challenge (as citizens) the staff’s attempts to formulate solutions to their troubles. We further examine how the professional ideology of client centredness affects the meeting between the two parties. However, we show that, like any discourse, client centredness has no intrinsic meaning and is played out by actors in very different ways. In work with the homeless, the discourse of client centredness is related to discourses of ‘neediness’, ‘worthiness’ and ‘value for money’ that define agency in different ways and make three different client positions available: the resolute client, the acquiescent client and the passive client.     

The Reflexive Producer: The Influence of Farmer Knowledge Upon the Use of Bt Corn*

Abstract This paper examines the influence of farmer knowledge upon decision making processes. Drawing upon the sociological debates around the ideas of reflexive modernity and biotechnology as well as from classic adoption and diffusion studies, I explore the influences upon farmers' use of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn. Utilizing survey data gathered from corn farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, I argue that farmers are ‘reflexive’ actors who actively negotiate between ‘expert’ and ‘local’ knowledges when deciding to plant Bt corn. Furthermore, I hypothesize that farmers are more likely to be influenced by their first‐hand or local experiences than by state or expert observations.     

Literate Technologies and the Science of Man

This paper attempts to map the groundwork for a theory of ‘literate technologies’ – that is, the treatment of reading/writing process that devolve upon a materialist conception of agency. The basic premise is that such sign operations are essentially technical and not founded in either a transcendental ego or genetic faculty – such as, for example, Chomsky’s ‘universal grammar’. This approach is only peripherally concerned with so‐called reading machines or artificial intelligence, except to the extent that such machines pose the question of the definability of such terms as ‘intelligence’. The technical status of literacy, moreover, is viewed as being contiguous with the advent of language as such, and not as a ‘technologisation’ of language. By recognising within this status the fundamentally ambivalent, probabilistic character of ‘agency’, it is argued that a condition of literacy may be said to obtain not only in terms of human systems of communication, but in the general terms of a base materiality, wherever ‘dynamic systems’ may arise.     

Youth,presence and agency: the case of Kigali’s motari

This paper concerns young men who drive motorcycle taxis in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda. Through an ethnographic account of the livelihoods of these motari, it seeks to account for their continued presence in a city whose authorities are openly hostile to their business, yet in which they remain a significant social force. I argue that it is not either by the exercise of ‘agency’ that motari achieve a social presence in Kigali, but through the social relations in which they are engaged. These relations immobilise them and effectively prevent them from mounting any concerted political challenge to hostile city authorities. However, I suggest that this lack of agency is one reason for their significance, since it makes them available as a resource for the schemes of others. I use this case study to argue for a rethinking of the notion of agency in the anthropology of youth. Rather than celebrating autonomous action or the creative, subversive play of the young, I propose instead a relational understanding in which the capacities and opportunities presented by groups of people in social relations grounds their social significance. It may be the very fact of young people’s domination that makes them socially significant.     

Ritual,and child sexual abuse,but not ritual child sexual abuse

Central to the controversy over ritual (satanic) child sexual abuse have been claims concerning agency ‘diagnoses’ of cases. Specifically, it has been alleged that agency findings of ritual abuse have been erroneous and are the product of poor practice. There is, though, little systematic information regarding agency assessment of suspected ritual abuse cases. This paper presents two cases where there was evidence both of child sexual abuse and ‘ritual’ but where agencies adjudged that these aspects occurred independently of one another and were not indicative of ritual child sexual abuse. The existence of these cases underlines the need for a broader and more balanced debate in respect of ritual abuse in general and the agency handling of these cases in particular. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wind,coal, and copper: the politics of land grabbing,counterinsurgency, and the social engineering of extraction

ABSTRACT

The multiplicity of violent techniques employed to impose land control and extraction remains under acknowledged. This article reviews research conducted between the years 2014 and 2018 and draws on three case studies: wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany, and copper mining in Peru. The idea of 'engineering extraction' is advanced through counterinsurgency to acknowledge the extent of extractive violence, arguing that the term ‘land grabbing’ is indeed a more appropriate term than ‘land deals’. Engaging with the land grabbing literature, the three cases seek to advance discussions around ‘the political reactions “from below”’ by emphasizing ‘insurrectionary’ positions with resistance movements fighting land deals and extractive projects. This is followed by offering a typology of ‘hard’ coercive techniques and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification that surfaced in each case. The conclusion reflects on the social technologies of resource extraction, recognizing how social discord, ecological and climate crises are engineered and enforced.