Latin American Women's Protection after Adjustment: A Feminist Critique of Conditional Cash Transfers in Chile and Argentina

This paper analyses conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies in Argentina and Chile from a gender perspective. Policy advocates maintain that, through the income provided by CCTs, women acquire some economic autonomy and empowerment within the household. This positive analysis is, however, tempered by gender-based concerns about the developmental value of conservative appeals to women as “mothers”, founded on traditional cultural norms, in regional policy design. Drawing on these two country examples, the objective of the paper is to assess the terms and conditions of women's inclusion as “conduits of policy” in CCTs in the Southern Cone. Findings indicate that the continuity of policy in Chile's anti-poverty strategies locates women as being accountable for family well-being within a multidimensional and psychological vision of poverty. Chile constitutes a radical example of the extension of women's individual responsibilities in managing household poverty with no collective component. By contrast, in Argentina the role of women appears to be dictated more by continuous changes in the state's definition of poverty alleviation, rather than the developmental objective of empowering women. Women's positioning in CCTs could be labelled as bearers of politics, in a context that transfers to women the duty of socially assisting others while rendering their personal needs progressively less visible.     

Research performance,academic promotion,and gender disparities: Analysis of data on agricultural economists in Chinese higher education

This paper provides an overall picture of women's representation and gender parity in the field of Agricultural Economics by constructing and analyzing a database of agricultural economists in China. We find that female scholars “occupy half the sky” in number, but not all the way up to the higher-ranking academic positions. Women lag behind men in terms of research performance and academic promotion; even more so, gender disparity becomes more prominent when moving up the ranking ladder. A closer examination of agricultural economists of different age cohorts indicates that the gender gap, both in numbers engaged in the profession and academic performance measured by Chinese paper publications and nation-level projects chaired, is narrowing. However, gaps in the number of high-quality paper publications and the time span before promotion, alongside the phenomenon of a “leaky pipeline” in academia, are growing significantly over time. The representation of “star scientists” shows similar, yet steeper trends. In the absence of detailed studies, the paper explores possible explanations of the converging gender gap in scale but increasing gender disparity that is termed a “leaky pipeline.” It concludes that the Policy of Enrollment Expansion in Higher Education provides vulnerable young females with more opportunities to access higher education, which increases both the number and proportion of women in the profession.     

The complexity of exchange: Wheat markets,petty‐commodity producers and the emergence of commercial capital in colonial Punjab

This paper questions the orthodox Marxist view of merchant capital as “unproductive,” by highlighting the importance of traders in subsuming the countryside to the logic of capital. However, it also argues that in order to properly understand the role played by traders in agrarian change, critical Marxist scholarship on merchant capital needs to recognize the complex marketing systems in which traders and farmers operate. These markets have their own internal relations, organizational and institutional logic which in turn is tied to the specificity of the commodity. Using wheat markets in colonial Punjab as a case study, it then utilizes the framework of complex marketing systems to highlight the range of firms and farms that operated in these markets; the importance of personal relations and informal institutions of family, caste, and religion for establishing trust; and the class stratified nature of market participants. It was from within these informally organized markets that commercial capital first emerged in colonial Punjab. By creatively combining the concept of commercial capital with markets as complex systems, it hopes to provide a richer framework for the study of agrarian change in diverse contexts.     

Constructing and Contesting a Gujarati-Hindu Ethno-religious Identity Through Development Programmes in an Indian Province

Through a case study of Hindu nationalism in India, this paper explores how development programmes serve as the site of construction of, as well as contestation over, religious identity. The participation of low-caste Dalits and tribal Adivasis in the mass violence perpetrated against Muslims in the Indian province of Gujarat in 2002 conveyed the impression that Hindu nationalists had achieved one of their key objectives of creating “Hindu unity”. Cutting across social and status divisions in the local Hindu population, the Hindu nationalist party's constituency today includes its traditional upper-caste supporters, as well as lower castes. While “the other” in the Hindu nationalist conception of community included Dalits and Adivasis as well as Muslims and Christians until the mid-1980s, the recent “Hindu unity” agenda has seen the boundaries of “the other” closing in around Muslims and Christians only. Despite these developments, this paper argues, continuing attempts at the construction of a unified ethno-religious identity are circumscribed and complicated by processes of contestation. Through village-level research, it shows how government actors are involved in simultaneous processes of construction as well as contestation over a Gujarati-Hindu identity through development programmes.     

Labour reserves and surplus populations: Northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa

This article is focused on the political economy of two of Africa's “labour reserve” regions, northern Ghana and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The majority of residents in these regions are taken as paradigmatic examples of “surplus populations.” They exemplify a main feature that has been used to theorize the concept of surplus populations today, namely, that their labour is surplus to the needs of capital accumulation. We follow the method of Arrighi and Piselli, tracing the political economic transformations of these regions from the turn of the 20th century until the present in order to ground the concept of surplus population in a specific historical context. We argue that it is limiting to think about these populations' utility or uselessness only in relation to capital. To understand the political implications of “surplus populations,” we must think about the interrelation between the political and economic roles that they play and how these developed within specific historical contexts.     

Dealing with Dirt and the Disorder of Development: Managing Rubbish in Urban Pakistan

This article unveils the different “thought worlds” that inform urban development policy and the reality of urban service delivery in Faisalabad, Pakistan's third largest city. Focusing on changing patterns of residential waste removal and based on ethnographic work among minority Christian street sweepers, the “little sub-worlds” involved in domestic rubbish collection are explored, showing how these articulate with larger “thought worlds” about dirt and disorder. The symbolic meanings of dirt across public and private spheres are examined alongside efforts by development practitioners and donors to impose generic policy solutions related to privatized delivery. Drawing on Mary Douglas's insights about how ritual pollution or danger-beliefs serve generally to maintain social categories and hierarchies, the article nevertheless points to the historically contingent specificities of caste-like relations in urban Pakistan and how these have been constructed. It shows how, under increasing competition for scarce jobs, entitlements associated with hereditary status-based occupations are once more appealed to and reconstructed by these vulnerable waste workers, shaping in the process urban service delivery and the relations that underpin it. The disjuncture born of diverse logics about dirt and disorder reveals an institutional multiplicity and messy social reality that sits uneasily with development as an ordering and unidirectional process.     

“Keep a sinking boat afloat”: Class contradictions in a nascent shrimp farmers' cooperative in South China

Whether producer cooperatives could serve as a stepping stone leading to socialism is a much debated issue in Marxian scholarship. It has now been recognized that producer cooperatives might possess paradoxical potentials of promoting egalitarian economy and democratic management whilst at the same time constructing class hierarchies. So far, agrarian scholars have already identified how pre-existing social differentiation facilitated privileged members to exploit the marginal non-members. However, they have not explored how members exercise their agency in challenging the class division. In summer 2013, at the height of China's cooperatization movement, I embarked on a project of “engaged anthropology” to mobilize shrimp farmers in South China to establish a cooperative so as to challenge agribusinesses that squeeze farmers' returns, but members ended up hiring outside labour. However, members tried hard to bridge the hierarchy between investors and workers as well as between managers and labourers in order to expand its membership and build the village's reputation. This paper traces how cooperative members deal with the dilemmas between profit maximization and egalitarian distribution, highlighting the importance of class analysis for a pro-poor cooperative movement.     

How poor are women in rural India?

The assessment of poor women in India as dependent and exploited regardless of poverty focused strategies is reflected in this review of relevant literature. The scholarly approaches to the problems of poor women involve redirection and expansion of resources to women (increase bank credit) through policy and institutional changes, and involve improving women's welfare through changes in class and gender hierarchies; both pertain to restructuring power groups. A little ascribed to belief is that the organization of women's numbers will empower women; the constraints are stated. There is also some argument over whether to design women-specific programs or integrate women into existing programs; some examples are given of successes and difficulties. The regionalization of poverty in eastern and central India is discussed. The growth of the poor has been among the landless, wage-dependent households. 9.6% of households (7.5 million) are headed by women. Women work fewer hours and at lower wage scales and have fewer employment opportunities. Lower earnings are coupled with differentials in demand for female and male labor in agriculture and a crowded labor market. There is a concentration of women in less visible, nonmonetary subsistence production and domestic work. Women are undercounted in employment studies. Women predominate in agricultural activity. Women's status is influenced by economic status, caste, and ethnic background. Domestic work increases status for women and households. The poorer households have greater labor force participation, particularly as wage laborers rather than unpaid family workers. Regional factors affecting rural household strategies are factors affecting the economy (topography, rainfall, climate) and the degree of development, plus sociocultural variables (kinship and religious beliefs which affect the social domain of women), and the degree of dependence on hired vs. family labor. There are sharp contrasts in the value and survival of women regionally. Female labor force participation is low in all regions; the nature and distribution of agricultural laborers is discussed followed by examples from 3 different regions (east, south, and north). The gender inequalities in access to basic needs are reviewed for sex ratio, mortality, and nutrition, and education. The preference is for gender-based policies targeting women.     

An application of von Thünen's model of agricultural location

Based on quantitative and qualitative fieldwork, this paper analyses how internal and international out-migration of men has affected the position of women left behind in a rural area in southern Morocco. The results generally refute the hypothesis that migration changes gender roles. Although international migration and remittances enable women and their families to live more comfortable and secure lives, internal migration often coincides with increasing workloads and uncertainty. Although their husbands' migration leads to a temporary increase in the tasks and responsibilities of women, this new role is generally perceived as a burden and should therefore not be equated with emancipation in the meaning of making independent choices against prevailing gender norms. In a classical “patriarchal bargain”, women prefer to avoid overt rule-breaking in order to secure their social position. Significant improvements in the position of rural women are primarily the result of general social and cultural change, although migration might have played an indirect, accelerating role in these processes.     

An Assessment of Gender Discrimination in Household Expenditure on Education in India

Gender discrimination in household expenditure on education has led to unsatisfactory progress in educational attainment for women in many countries across the world. It has been observed that households across different states in rural and urban India prefer to incur more expenditure on education for male members than for females. Kingdon (2005) [Where has all the bias gone? Detecting gender bias in the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 53(2), 409–452] has observed significant gender bias in household educational expenditure in a number of Indian states utilizing the household survey data of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. Other researchers, such as Chaudhuri & Roy (2006) [Do parents spread educational expenditure evenly across the two genders? Evidence from two North Indian states, Economic and Political Weekly, 41, pp. 5276–5282] and Lancaster et al. (2008) [Household expenditure patterns and gender bias: evidence from selected Indian states, Oxford Development Studies, 36(2), 133–157], have also confirmed the presence of significant gender bias in the expenses incurred on education by households in India. However, few of these studies are based on the analysis of sufficiently large, contemporary datasets, and hence they are unable to provide a picture of gender discrimination at the disaggregated level, i.e. at the state level. Since there is wide variation in social, cultural, anthropometrical, economic and many other factors among Indian states, it is important to analyse gender disparity in India at the level of the state. Here, utilizing individual-level data on educational expenditure from the 64th round of the National Sample Survey, an attempt is made to assess the current scenario in gender inequality in household educational expenditure in India at both the national and state level. It is observed that significant gender disparity exists in intra-household educational expenses and that this discrimination is not confined to the “backward” or developing states in India.     

Land use,the environment and development in post-socialist Mongolia

This paper describes the economic policies that have transformed the pastoral sector in post-socialist Mongolia, and their impact on pastoral land use. These policies reflect the influence of development economists from the Asian Development Bank who have been advising the Mongolian government, and their conviction that exclusive private rights to land are a necessary precondition of an efficient rural market economy. These assumptions stand in marked contrast to indigenous Mongolian conceptions of rights over land, and the policy debate reflects the contested nature of knowledge of the Mongolian environment. However, far from preventing damage to the resource base, evidence suggests that these policies of land allocations may actually be exacerbating problems of pasture degradation. This paper argues that policies of this kind reveal a misunderstanding of the nature of Mongolian pastoralism and the conditions that have made it viable in the past. Although international development agencies lionize a romanticized notion of Mongolian “traditions” as reflecting a “respect for nature”, there is little appreciation of the actual institutions that successfully conducted pastoralism until recently, the concrete embodiment of Mongolian pastoral knowledge. Environmentalist agendas reflect a familiar western interest in promoting western conservationist ideology and establishing and expanding protected areas to harbour wildlife and biodiversity. Mongolian practices tend to be cast as “traditions” to be utilized for the greater goal of conservation as conceived of in western terms, rather than seen as part of wider social and political institutions of land use.     

Investigating the gender wealth gap in Ghana

This article explores the determinants of the substantial wealth gap between married men and women in Ghana across the wealth distribution. The data is part of the multi-country project, The Gender Asset Gap Project, and is unique in that it contains information on asset ownership at the level of the individuals within households. The study finds a large gender wealth gap at the top of the wealth distribution and that gender differences in inheritance and educational attainment contribute to a substantial part of the gap. While several studies have explored gender earning gaps, few have looked at the composition of the gender wealth gap across the distribution at the national level. This is the first study of its kind to investigate the components of the gender wealth gap within an African country context.     

Inter-state Competition,Land Conflicts and Resistance in India

Literature on fiscal federalism has long debated whether inter-jurisdictional competition between subnational units encourages a “race to the bottom”, with competition to attract mobile capital leading to lower taxation and expenditure, and, consequently, the under-provision of public goods. The principal concerns of this literature have been taxation and expenditure, but the ability of state governments to acquire land for industry is also critical in the context of subnational competition. In this article, the authors ask how Indian state governments resolve the tensions arising from their dual role as both wooer and regulator of capital, as they simultaneously facilitate land acquisition and engage with movements that challenge it. The authors demonstrate that there is no simple “race to the bottom”. Inter-state competition has not produced a simple equation in favour of capital and a side-lining of the concerns of those displaced. Subnational approaches to land acquisition must be understood within local political, social and economic contexts.     

Central versus local states: Which matters more in affecting China's urban growth?

To date, many geography studies have identified GDP, population, FDI, and transportation factors as key drivers of urban growth in China. The political science literature has demonstrated that China's urban growth is also driven by powerful economic and fiscal incentives for local governments, as well as by the political incentives of local leaders who control land use in their jurisdictions. These parallel but distinct research traditions limit a comprehensive understanding that can result in partial and potentially misleading conclusions of urbanization in China. This paper presents a spatially explicit study that incorporates both political science and geographic perspectives to understand the relative importance of hierarchal administrative governments in affecting urban growth. We use multi-level modeling approach to examine how socio-economic and policy factors – represented here by fiscal transfers – at different administrative levels affect growth in “urban hotspot counties” across three time periods (1995–2000, 2000–2005, and 2005–2008). Our results show that counties that are more dependent on fiscal transfers from the central government convert less cultivated land to urban use, controlling for other factors. We also find that local governments are becoming more powerful in shaping urban land development as a result of local economic, fiscal, and political incentives, as well as through the practical management and control of capital, land, and human resources. By incorporating fiscal transfers in our analysis, our study examines a factor in the urban development of China that had previously been neglected and provides an improved understanding of the underlying processes and pathways involved in urban growth in China.     

Adapting to the gender order: Voluntary conservation by forest owners in Finland

In this article we explore the hidden gender order of the biodiversity policy and, in particular, the social and societal positions offered to male and female forest owners in voluntary conservation. Two studies were conducted in the region where the National Biodiversity Program for Southern Finland (“METSO”) has been implemented. Study 1 focused on forest owners’ discursive practices that construct different actor positions to female and male forest owners; 27 interviews with forest owners were analyzed. Three discourses – “conservation threatens forestry,” “forestry threatens conservation,” and “good forestry is conservation” – were identified. Forest owners typically described themselves as “loggers” who were explicitly described as masculine. This was paired with the feminine position of “bystander.” The other two positions found, “protectors” and “political agents”, by contrast, were discussed as non-gendered positions. In Study 2 we examined quantitatively how individual forest owners’ nature conservation preferences and willingness to conserve forests is mediated by gender. The responses of 965 owners were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The endorsement of nature conservation preferences was found to increase willingness to conserve forests only among male owners. The results illustrate how individual forest owners adapt their nature conservation preferences to forestry's masculine socio-cultural context.     

Eliciting citizen preferences for multifunctional agriculture in the watershed areas of northern Thailand through choice experiment and latent class models

Multifunctional agriculture is increasingly discussed as an alternative to conventional, mono-functional farming and its negative environmental impacts. This study aims at determining Thai society’s demand for agri-environmental services offered by a multifunctional agricultural system using two models, i.e. a Choice Experiment Model and a Latent Class Choice Model. The Choice Experiment Model (CEM) is employed to assess citizens’ willingness to pay for various attributes of multifunctional outputs. Extending from the CEM, the heterogeneity of citizens’ preferences across environmental attitudes and knowledge is captured through the Latent Class Choice Model (LCCM). Survey data was obtained from structured interviews with 373 respondents in the country’s two largest cities, namely Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The results of the CEM suggest that urban Thai citizens are willing to pay for changes toward multifunctional agriculture, as expressed in an increase of their monthly food expenses. Among the attributes of agri-environmental practices, “organic agriculture in combination with agro-biodiversity conservation” garnered the highest preference, followed by “organic farming as single practice” and “Good Agricultural Practice combined with agro-biodiversity conservation”. Income, gender, agri-environmental knowledge and environment-conscious attitude are important factors determining urban citizens’ support of multifunctionality. Findings of the LCCM revealed a strong heterogeneity in attribute valuation across three different classes of respondents, suggesting that policy-makers need to be aware of diverse preference patterns among Thai citizens with regard to specific attributes of multifunctional agriculture. We further conclude that enhancing environmental literacy and consciousness is a key determinant in gaining citizens’ support for multifunctional agriculture.     

基于SWOT分析的五台县红色旅游开发对策研究

作为世界文化遗产、四大佛教名山之首五台山所在地,山西省五台县宗教旅游发展相对成熟,而红色旅游发展却相对滞后,存在一些亟待解决的问题,经过实地调研和问卷调查,运用SWOT方法分析总结出了发展五台县红色旅游的优势、劣势、机遇和威胁,并在此基础上有针对性地提出了相关开发对策,以期为五台县红色旅游的发展提供一些参考和借鉴。     

From organized to disorganized capitalism? Market versus nonmarket coordination in Spain's dairy chain

Conventional wisdom has it that the food economy has transitioned from organized to disorganized capitalism. An era of extensive state intervention between around 1930 and 1980 would have been followed by an era of deregulation and increasing coordination through markets after around 1980. This article uses the case of Spain's dairy chain to propose an alternative view. In the case under study, there certainly were elements of state‐coordinated capitalism between 1952 and 1986, as well as elements of deregulation and liberalization from 1986 onwards. However, the structure of economic coordination involved some combination of market and nonmarket mechanisms all the way through. The organized capitalism of the first period was not really so tightly organized, whereas much of its later “disorganization” was in fact a transition towards a different mode of “organization”: one in which the control of nonmarket coordination shifted from political to corporate hierarchies.     

Gender and conservation agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review

Conservation agriculture (CA) involves the practice of concurrent minimum tillage, permanent soil cover using crop residue, and crop rotation. Evidence indicates that CA increases agricultural productivity, reduces farming labour requirements, and improves soil quality. While CA is practised in several African contexts, little is known about its interaction with gender. This review synthesized knowledge on the interplay of gender and CA in sub-Saharan Africa. The review highlighted the relative neglect of gender issues in research on CA in SSA. Existing research was limited both in quantity and to a few countries in the region. There was also little critical focus on gender as a social phenomenon: a few of the studies conceptualized gender in terms of the socially constructed roles of men and women while the majority framed it in terms of the sexual categories of male and female. Compared to men, and due largely to gendered barriers, including lack of access to land; machinery; inputs; extension services; and credit facilities, women farmers adopted CA less and dis-adopted it more. CA increased women’s incomes, labour involvement, household food security, as well as risks for land and crop dispossession by men when farming becomes lucrative. It also increased workloads, employment opportunities and health risks for women. CA positively altered gender relations, boosting women’s participation in agricultural decision-making at the household level. Deliberately enlisting women as beneficiaries; working with men to advance their understanding of women’s needs in agriculture; and offering agricultural inputs directly to women are some strategies that enhanced women’s participation in CA. Gaps in current research on gender and CA include: critical focus on and understanding of gender as a social construct in relation to CA; the long-term impacts on CA for gender relations, incomes for men and women, and women’s empowerment; the sustainability of strategies for supporting gendered participation in CA; and the dynamics of gendered access to local farmland markets for CA.