Engaging Indigeneity in Development Policy

This article explores how development programming in rural poverty and the environment can work with indigenous peoples. It draws on research conducted in Asia and Latin America to suggest how indigeneity can be understood as specific kinds of marginalisation intersecting with self‐identification and recognition as indigenous. Current obstacles to effective engagement with indigenous peoples are outlined, and suggestions are offered for pro‐actively addressing their experience. Two critical areas where there are opportunities for donors to support indigenous peoples' priorities include ‘FPIC’ (Free Prior and Informed Consent) and a careful consideration of the implications of niche‐market engagement.     

Changing Indigeneity Politics in Indonesia: From Revival to Projects

Through the discourse of indigeneity, rural communities around the world are joining a global network of rural justice seekers. By articulating grievances collectively, they demand state recognition while seeking support from NGOs and international development organisations. In Indonesia, the manifestation of indigenous ‘adat’ politics is no longer confined to the national struggle for the recognition of land rights, but instead, has proliferated into many localised short term ‘adat projects’. This introduction to the TAPJA special issue on adat demonstrates that both the rural poor and local elites can be the initiators or recipients of these adat projects but, at the current juncture, the latter are better positioned to benefit from such projects. The special issue shows that in Indonesia, where adat is often firmly entrenched in the state, the promotion of indigeneity claims can work in contradictory ways. Findings from across the special issue show that adat projects tend to reinforce the power of the state, rather than challenging it.     

The Role of Indigeneity NGOs in the Legal Recognition of Adat Communities and Customary Forests in Indonesia

The main assumption of indigeneity NGOs in Indonesia is that state recognition will strengthen indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and forests against ongoing or future dispossession. In Indonesia, legal recognition has become central to the approaches of indigeneity NGO campaigns, while the local realities and problems among indigenous communities seem to receive less attention. Has legal recognition of indigenous communities turned into a national NGO project that does not solve the communities’ land and forest-related problems? In this article, we compare two locations where communities have succeeded in obtaining state recognition. By focusing our analysis on the steps in the recognition process, from articulating community problems to eventually solving them, we show how indigeneity NGOs have had a dominant role, but achieved limited success. Instead of resulting in community autonomy and tenure security, the legal recognition process reproduces state territorialisation over customary forests and communities.     

Amazonian Native Youths and Notions of Indigeneity in Urban Areas

The indigenous presence in urban areas of Amazonia has become more visible as Indian populations have negotiated their own spaces and acted in new contexts previously reserved for the dominant society. This article looks at ways in which today's young Indians in an urban area define and interpret their new cultural and social situations, drawing from research conducted with Apurinã, Cashinahua and Manchineri youths in Rio Branco, a city in Acre state, Western Brazil. These young people occupy a variety of “native” and “non-native” habituses and develop their notions of indigeneity within complex social networks as part of their strategy for rupturing the otherness associated with indigeneity. The text contributes to the discussion on the theory of practice and identity politics, as well as embodiment. Young Indians in urban Amazonia constitute their agencies in multiple ways and use various embodiments based in the practices and knowledge of their native groups and those of urban national and global society. The young natives break with the image of Lowland South American Indians as peoples uncontaminated by urban influences and help promote new interactions between native populations in the reserve and the city.     

Planning Other Families: Negotiating Population and Identity Politics in the Peruvian Amazon

This article examines the ways in which globally driven population policies are experienced by rural, indigenous women in Amazonian communities on the periphery of formal, political power. As with other global development processes, population programs are actively resisted, accepted, and modified by the women who are their intended "targets." Through a nuanced exploration of the interface of indigenous identity with the discourse of empowerment and reproductive rights, this article traces the impact of internationally funded population and development programs on local identity politics in the Peruvian Amazon.     

Reconciling Children's Policy and Children's Rights: Barriers to Effective Government Delivery

Countries which have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have committed to implementing its principles in law and policy. This article explores the challenges for securing children's rights through policy, drawing on a research project conducted for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, which sought to identify barriers to effective government delivery for children and young people from the perspective of key stakeholders. The research concluded that, while some barriers (such as delay and availability of data) are not child‐specific, they can be accentuated when children and young people are the main focus of policy development and more so when seeking to adopt a child rights‐compliant approach to policy development and implementation.     

Breaking down rural and urban bias and interrogating spatial inequality,evidence from South Africa

This article investigates current socioeconomic disparities within rural and urban areas. The empirical analysis is grounded in an examination of urban and rural bias theories, which have often underpinned poverty analysis. This article suggests that poverty analysis can be improved by moving beyond the rural–urban binary and investigating differences across all geographical types (when data are available). Using 2012 household survey data on South Africa, the article sheds lights on substantial differences—in household composition and access to services and assets—that are likely to make households located in particular geotypes far more vulnerable to poverty. Finally, the article discusses how development policy can better address the specific income‐generating constraints that disadvantaged areas face.     

Indigenous Immigrants from Latin America (IILA): Racial/Ethnic Identity in the U.S.

In recent decades, migration from all corners of the world has created one of the most racially/ethnically diverse immigrant populations in the history of the United States. While today migratory flows are predominantly from Asia, immigrants from Latin America continue to make up the largest immigrant group in the United States. The influx of this group reflects the heterogeneity of the Latin American region, including Latin American immigrants who identify as indigenous in their countries of origin. Through a brief overview of how indigeneity, race, and ethnicity have been historically framed in Latin America, I discuss how Indigenous Immigrants from Latin American (IILA) position their indigeneity within their racial/ethnic identity in the United States. I consider how migration shapes indigenous identity and propose the use of Social Identity Theory (SIT) to explore how IILA negotiate a racial/ethnic identity while maintaining their indigeneity in a U.S. context.     

Performing the ‘wounded Indian’: a new platform of democracy and human rights in Bolivia’s autonomy movement

This article examines Right-wing political performances in the Bolivian Eastern lowlands where regional elites claim to be living under the authoritarian dictatorship of Left-leaning President Evo Morales. We analyse how regional elites advocate for political autonomy through embodied and spectacular performances linked to discourses of indigeneity, human rights and democracy. Right-wing leaders try to legitimise their claims for justice and territorial control by strategically aligning themselves with lowland ‘Indians’ – who are equally wounded by Morales’s plan to run a massive highway though their communities and territories. Through theatrical exhibits in the plaza and a spectacular assembly spotlighting an indigenous representative as an emblematic hero of TIPNIS, regional elites perform a shared history of marginalisation, while simultaneously presenting themselves as ‘saviors’. We argue, however, that there is a dark side to these performances, as they elide long histories of racialised labour and economic injustice in the region.     

上海城乡统筹发展的路径和突破口研究

上海城乡二元结构的深层次问题突出表现为:城乡居民收入差距仍然明显,促进农民增收的难度加大;郊区人口持续导入,对公共服务和社会管理的要求提高;农村土地和产权制度改革滞后,深化改革的条件尚不成熟;郊区城市化进程加速,管理体制和管理模式亟待转变;新城和小城镇等城乡统筹载体建设有待加强。上海城乡统筹发展要牢牢把握公共服务均等化、发展成果共享化、发展权利平等化内涵,坚持以城带乡、城乡一体、互动发展,以推进新型城市化战略为主攻方向,以加强城乡规划一体化为前提,以加快新城开发建设为突破口,以土地管理、集体产权、社会管理制度改革为支撑,以基本公共服务均等化为着力点,大力推进工业向园区集中、居住向社区集中、农业向规模经营集中,努力实现优化农村土地资源配置方式、优化城乡资源要素流动方式、优化城乡统筹发展方式,推进城乡一体化发展。     

Stuck on a Muddy Road: Frictions of Mobility amongst Urban Toba in Northern Argentina

This article explores how the Toba, an indigenous group in the North of Argentina, shape places and an urban subjectivity in the frictions of their mobility between villages, the urban barrio (neighborhood), and the periurban bush. I argue that the experience of Toba moving to the city is better understood as frictions between the Toba desire to progress in the city, the organization of difference in space, and their multiple movements “back” to the villages. In addition, I analyze their contemporary hunting trips, which take urban Toba to the nearby bush, as a mobility that shapes a form of indigeneity engaged with access to both the city center and the bush. This practice confronts them with ranch owners and police but reconnects the barrio and the bush by traversing them. If frictions emerge between forces that trigger movement and forces that slow that movement down, in the frictions of mobility the Toba have at once shaped their position in the city and overflowed its limits.     

Caregiving and long-term health care in the People's Republic of China

The growing proportion of frail elderly in the People's Republic of China has necessitated policy of the state toward their long-term care. In this decade, there has been an increase in the amount of data available on the care and needs of Chinese frail elders. This article synthesizes these data and traces the patterns of care of frail elders. It distinguishes between urban and rural patterns, and identifies the increasing role of the family and community in the caregiving of elders. State policy, evident from the data, suggests that the state's role in direct care of elders is minor but that it continues to influence and support eldercare as part of its policy of promoting the one-child per couple policy. This process can be seen in support programs for the childless elder, who symbolizes the expected condition of a large number of future elders under the one-child policy. The article identifies four factors that are influencing the changing patterns of long-term care of elders in China: (1) economic reform programs; (2) the political agenda of the Chinese Communist Party; (3) differences in urban and rural economic conditions; and (4) policy directed at long-term investment in health care technology.     

Indigenous land rights and dynamics of the land market in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This paper raises a number of important issues relating to legal and economic development concepts. It concentrates on the supply constraints affecting land development decisions of both private and public landowners in releasing land for development purposes. With reference to the indigenous land rights in Kuala Lumpur, this paper focuses on the restrictions in interest, which may limit the land from being transferred in the open market. With a limited market, the indigenous land achieves a lower value in the market place because transactions are limited within a particular group of people only. As a result, the market forces are restricted and the land development process for urban regeneration often comes to a halt. In examining the role of the indigenous land market in the redevelopment process of Kuala Lumpur, the study uses an institutional analysis to show the way in which these restrictions in interest affect landowners’ decisions and, thus, restrict the supply of land to real estate redevelopment. In conclusion, the paper shows various causes for land supply constraints and ways to improve these with the aim to undertake urban redevelopment initiatives considering pressure for more land in the market.     

Some reflections on contemporary writing in the indigenous languages of America

Abstract

This article surveys recent literatures in the indigenous languages of Latin America. The past decade has witnessed a continent-wide rise in indigenous-language publications – a rise calling for a reevaluation of the critical state of indigenous rights and language policies that was expressed in the context of protests around the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas. The new wave of indigenous literatures has arisen in the wake of dramatic acts of violence, such as military repression and neoliberal economic restructuring. However, the large-scale displacement of indigenous peoples that has resulted from these processes has also provoked a desire among indigenous writers to utilize print media in order to preserve knowledge and communal memory. Drawing on specific examples from contemporary indigenous poetry of Peru and Mexico, the article argues that indigenous literature challenges conceptions of indigenous expressive culture as inherently oral, traditional, rural, and communitarian.     

Bridging identity divides in current rural social mobilisation

The shift from a corporatist citizenship regime to a neoliberal one has adversely affected Latin American rural communities and led to widespread social mobilisation and organisation in the countryside. The struggle of such marginalised communities has been often framed by stressing their indigenous collective identity over the previously prevalent class-based peasant identity. This article focuses on the role of identity and the negotiation of different identities in the struggle of two rural organisations in Northwest Argentina for securing land tenure and improving their standards of living. Argentinean society, in contrast to some other Latin American societies, is often imagined as ‘white,’ but in recent decades many peasant, or campesino, communities have rediscovered or reaffirmed their indigenous origin. This article therefore deconstructs rural collective identities in Argentina and analyses how class and ethnic identities are negotiated in struggles of grassroots social organisations in the countryside of this predominantly urban country.     

The new rural-urban labor mobility in China: Causes and implications

As the Chinese economy reforms, a huge new floating population of rural-urban migrants is transforming the urban labor force. This article explores some of the most important reasons for the emergence of the floating population in China. We argue that the neoclassical model alone is not adequate to explain the massive rural-urban internal migration underway in China. Instead, ideas drawn from both sociological theories of segmented markets and institutional economics are used to supplement the standard neoclassical explanation. We found that Chinese policy reforms in both rural and urban areas decreased the balkanization of labor markets and opened up employment opportunities for many rural-urban migrants. In rural areas, a set of agricultural market reforms, starting in 1978, increased farm incomes and simultaneously produced a large surplus labor supply. In urban areas, reforms beginning in the 1980s created an effective demand for rural migrants. Of particular importance was the development of a contract labor system and the emergence of a private sector.     

Income expectations,rural-urban migration and employment in Africa

This article develops a theoretical framework explaining the influence of economic conditions on rural-urban migration in tropical Africa. The model explains the continued process of migration despite high levels of urban unemployment. A lengthy discussion is devoted to short-, intermediate-, and long-term policies for relieving the urban unemployment problem. It is argued that efforts must be made to reduce the differences between the expectation of urban income and real rural income. No one single policy will slow rural-to-urban migration. The author suggests policies that would eliminate factor-price distortions, restrain urban wages, redirect development toward concentrated and comprehensive programs of rural development, resettle and repatriate unemployed urban migrants, and establish capital-goods industries. The capital-goods industries would develop labor-intensive technologies for agriculture and industry. The theoretical model assumes that migrants make decisions about moving on the basis of an expected income and the expectation of an urban job. It is argued that the urban-rural income differences and the probability of securing an urban job determine the rate and extent of rural-urban migration in Africa. If the migrant has a low probability of finding regular wage employment in the short term, but expects the probability to increase over time, the migrant would make a rational decision to migrate. Policies that operate solely on urban labor demand are considered unlikely to reduce urban unemployment. This model better estimates the shadow prices of rural labor.     

Rural poverty

Abstract

This paper examines rural poverty indicators arguing that governments have failed to provide the equitable access to resources needed to empower rural people to address their poverty. The paper illustrates how the decline in the fortunes of agriculture has led to a rapid disintegration of rural communities and to human rights concerns in relation to rural people. On quality of life indicators such as health and education, rural people are seriously disad-vantaged by comparison with urban Australians. Yet, the failure of governments to develop integrated rural policy frameworks that deliver equitable resources and their reliance on market forces is leading to the destruction of rural communities. For social workers, the challenge is to provide advocacy and policy leadership.     

我国生育政策城乡一体化方案与配套支持

我国生育政策城乡一体化是人口转变与社会发展之必然。一方面,城乡二元的生育政策很难体现城乡公平,用生育政策的优惠来弥补社会保障功能的匮乏这一做法已越来越不符合社会发展趋势;另一方面,二元生育政策本身的复杂性增加了政策执行过程中的成本与困难。生育政策城乡一体化应以城市与农村均实行一孩半政策作为既简化又稳妥的改革方案。生育政策城乡一体化还应配备配套措施,完善生育政策的评估指标,将少生与不生纳入评估范畴,促进城乡医疗、养老、教育等公共服务机会均等化、户籍管理动态化,还要正确理解人口老龄化,为生育政策城乡一体化提供良好的执行环境。