A guest blogger from Burma

In this blog we host Emelie Svensson who is a MA student at LUMID at Lund University and received a MFS scholarship to do her research in Burma. Here are some of her reflections. 

Burma is often called ‘the land of the golden pagodas’, even though I have not visited any of them; it is certainly true, as there is a golden stupa at every mountaintop and city corner. I often think about the far better use this gold could have done if it was sold and the money used for hospitals, roads and education for the people. Burma has since the coup in 1962 been ruled by an authoritarian military junta, now lead by the ‘civilian’ president U Thein Sein. Both political freedoms and ethnic minorities have been heavily supressed during this long period of ruthless dictatorship, which have been using the so-called ‘dived and rule’ principle instituted by the former suppressors, the British Empire. However, reforms have been visible in the political system in Burma during at least the last six years. The military junta changed their uniforms into suits and began with what they call the ‘Seven-step roadmap to democracy’. Ceasefire agreement and peace negotiations between the national military and armed ethical minority groups have been initiated. These changes have open up the country to both curious tourists, international investments, and it has enabled both press and parts of the democracy movement to return from years in exile.

It might sound like a saga were the bad guys finally realise that their actions have been bad and now are trying to genuinely change the situation. Thus, this is not the case. Burma is still very unstable and the power remains solely within the government and the military, and the changes mostly benefit the government and it’s crony’s. Journalists are continually being imprisoned (and there have recently been cases of extra-judicial execution) for writing about issues that are sensitive to the government. Members of the student movement get imprisoned for protesting and demanding their rights. In addition to this, several fighting between the military and ethnic armed groups are currently on-going both in the north of Shan state, in Kachin state and in Karen state.

So what am I doing in Burma if I am not visiting temples and pagodas (which seem to be the main destination of most tourist that are visiting the country)? Currently I am collecting data for my Master thesis in development studies. I have had the opportunity to do this, as I got a MFS (Minor Field Study) scholarship from the department of human geography at Stockholm University.

In this study I am looking deeper into young women’s participation in the Burmese student and youth movement to understand how these women perceive the current political situation in Burma. This study is especially relevant as Burma is undertaking this democratisation process, or at least this is what the international community seems to believe even if the national opposition, the Burmese civil society together with many scholars are sceptical toward the direction of this process. The civil society, especially the student and youth movement, are important actors in the political landscape in Burma. I will look at the participation and role of women in the civil society using feminist democracy theory, which discuss on the importance of bringing women’s (and other marginalised groups) experiences to the arena to make an inclusive community democratic dialogue.

So how is my study going? I have travelled across the country to meet with youth organisations and the young women working in them. I started in the very south of the country in Dawei and I have travelled to Lashio the north of Shan stat (close to the Chinese border) and tomorrow I am taking a 17 hour bus to the town of Kalay in the north east, close to the Indian border. The women that I have talked to have very interesting both horrifying and more hopeful stories including everything from imprisonment, working underground, having babies, taking important steps toward democracy, war, people fleeing, and loud protest against the new education system. Even though a new night-bus awaits, and my stomach is grumpy as a 5-year old, I am loving this amazing experience and the opportunity to meet so many smart, brave and hard working women in this intriguing and important movement!

  

Canals and furrows now published in Azania

Furrow irrigation

In the summer 2013 I posted a comment on terminology on the Farmlands blog Furrows in Africa -- canals in the Americas ? With some additional comments and references it is now published in Azania;

Abstract _This brief comment argues that the use of the term furrow system for locally developed irrigation in Eastern Africa is misleading in an international comparative perspective. It is at odds with the terminology in irrigation engineering and also with the archaeological terminology used outside Eastern Africa. Internationally, the term canal is used for the artificial watercourses that bring water from the source to the field, while furrow irrigation refers to one specific way of applying water to the individual field.

Find the published version at this link. Do not hesitate to write to mats.widgren@humangeo.su.se if you want a digital offprint.

In response to an earlier blog post

Last week Prof. Martin Jones published a blog post on food plants in Marakwet. He writes about the market in Kolowa in East Pokot "A link between cash crops and men as posited by recent writers such as Caretta and  Börjeson (2014) was not as immediately evident, as the market and other places contained many entrepreneurial women." and then he adds " Caretta and  Börjeson detail a series of crop varietal names which overlap with, but do not entirely match the longer list compiled by Helena.  This is unsurprising as all parties are recalling varietal names, sometimes from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.  Further enquiries would clarify these, and indeed some terms may have multiple usages." 

In response to Prof. Jones´ statements I would like to add two points. First of all, our article referred mostly to women´s and men´s labor as in cultivation, not in trading. However, it is true that women are the principal, if not the sole, sellers at market, especially at the one in Kolowa and at Tot centre. This circumstance however does not mean that women have control over cash crops or, if you like, more recently introduced crops that have brought about livelihood diversification through sale. Women in fact sell minimal quantities in these local markets, while men deal directly with wholesalers. Yet another instance in which local patriarchal structures are manifested. This power configuration points also to the fact that the informal economy is often feminized and feeds off the care economy i.e. unpaid work. Moreover, as showed by Carney (1993) in The Gambia, markets risk being saturated by women selling vegetable decreasing their returns.  

Secondly, Prof. Jones correctly states that crop names have changed through generations and that the ones mentioned in our articles constitute a partial listing. In fact, while I never heard some of the name mentioned in his blog post, I could remember other ones. Indicative of this multiplicity of names is the fact that once when I was carrying an interview, also with the assistance of Helena Chepto, a lady who was originally from a Chesongoch used a different name than Helena to indicate the same long term millet seeds that we were looking at. Hence, crop varietal names are not only generation specific, but also place specific within Marakwet. As Prof Jones indicates, it is high time to record and archive seeds and crops varieties in Marakwet. This cultural richness risks being lost with the commercialization of seeds which the new Red Cross-sponsored Tot-Kolowa irrigation project could be the dawn of. A forthcoming publication by me and Wilhelm Östberg will discuss this project and the projects in the last 40 years by of Kerio Valley Development Agency more in depth. 

Finally, I welcome Prof. Jones´ blog post because I think it is the perfect examples of how academic communication and debate can be enhanced through new and quicker forums, such as blogs. While articles drafts are not often shared among academicians hence, missing an opportunity to improve a colleague´s work, blogs can be useful straightforward and easy means to make early work visible and open up for comments. 

Bill Gates and innovations in African agriculture

I am not very well informed about Bill Gates activities concerning the development of African agriculture. I am aware of the recent critique from GRAIN, but this is not the reason for this blog post. Before that critique was published Bill Gates tweeted the following (Oct 28th).

"Most poor farmers’ tools haven’t changed in ages. These 4 inventions are making a difference: http://b-gat.es/1wA8DRB   "

He illustrated his tweet with this picture:

I replied in a tweet

Mats Widgren ‏@MatsWidgren  28 okt

@BillGates @erleellis Do not know how Bill Gates counts ages, probably the great grandmother used a different hoe, not industrially made

The reason I answered was that this misconception, that no technological innovations have happened in African agriculture "in ages", is so common. It is not strange that Bill Gates also has this misconception. What worries me is that so many development "experts", philantropic billionaires, not to talk of agro-business directors and land grab promoters are led by this total lack of understanding of the role of innovations in the history of African agriculture and in what small-holders do to today. If you do not know the history of what you want to change, how can you be credible then? How is it possible to argue that African farmers need innovators mainly from outside?

First: the picture shows a woman carrying a steel hoe of the kind that you can buy on markets and in hardware shops all over Africa. It does not represent an implement that has not changed in ages. It is most likely a recent industrially produced hoe.  I own two such hoes - a small one produced in South Africa and a bigger one produced in China, but bought in Tanzania. I later bought hoe handles on a market in Chesoi in Marakwet and was happy to see them fit like IKEA pieces into my two hoes once I brought the handles back to Sweden. The spread of such hoes certainly makes the local innovations less visible. I do not know how long such industrially produced hoes have been on sale in Africa.  But what I know is that there are lots of places where locally developed hoes are still the rule. And I would bet that the great grandmother of the woman on the picture used a locally produced hoe. Such hoes were developed for different kinds of work and were the result of a series of innovations by farmers and local blacksmiths. African agricultural technology does not lack innovations and innovators.

The historical study of agricultural technology in Africa is not very well developed so perhaps Bill Gates can be excused. Even the academic literature on farming in Africa abounds with similar misconceptions. The works on the history African farming implements are few and off the cuff I can only suggest two readings on the tilling implements. This is the first point of departure:

Marzouk, Yasmine, Seignobos, Christian & Sigaut, François (ed.), Outils aratoires en Afrique: innovations, normes et traces, Karthala, Paris, 2000 

Already the cover of that book gives you an idea of the enormous variation of tools. Roger Blench has contributed a geographical broader overview in his chapter African agricultural tools: implications of synchronic ethnography for agrarian history from which an inspiring agenda for further research  is also developed. It is published in the edited volume Archaeology of African plant use (2013). The manuscript is available at Roger Blenchs own website  http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu/IWAA/Blench.pdf

In Mpumalanga in South Africa the intensive and terraced agriculture c. 1500 to 1850s was accompanied by a special heavy type of hoe with a bored stone as a weight. A replica is here tested in the field.

From the enormous variation of African tools we can draw the conclusion that they were the result of several phases of innovative change all of which must be understood in the context of innovations in farming systems and social factors.  An extreme case is illustrated above. Bokoni farmers in South Africa developed intensive and terraced agriculture long before colonialism. In the same area large bored stones are found and it has been shown that the stones functioned as weights for very large hoes. These probable reflect both the farming systems and the gendered division of labour with men taking a larger share of the tilling than in more extensive forms of agriculture.

If Bill Gates can be excused for not knowing the history of tilling implements in Africa, it is however a well-established and widespread fact that African farmers has shown innovation in other fields -- that of crop development and that of investments in terracing, irrigation and and other forms landesque capital.   The standard "common-sense" view of African agriculture as characterised by inertia and lacking innovative capacity is (as I argue in a recent paper) one of the Four myths in global agrarian history.

Does Agribusiness Contribute to Rural Development?

I will again summarize an article from Zerkalo Nedeli, again written by Elena Borodina, but this time not dealing with small-scale producers, but the largest producers in Ukraine. The article with the title “Unequal Marriage without Government Oversight” was published on August 21 and can be found here (in Russian). The point of the article is to question the degree to which the super large agroholdings will really contribute to national and/or rural development, which is sometimes claimed by advocates of agroholdings (including even the World Bank).

Borodina first gives an account of the polarization of the agrarian sector towards either really small or really large farms, where many people in rural areas are becoming landless while land is being concentrated more and more under agroholdings. At the beginning of 2014, she states, the number of agroholdings approached 140, which controlled 6000 separate farming enterprises (40% of the total), on about 8 million ha of land (40% of the land cultivated by farming enterprises). Of all registered farming operations, these agroholdings harvest about 50% of Ukrainian winter wheat, more than half of the corn and rapeseed, a third of the sunflower seeds, and over 80% of chicken meat. Because land reform has not been completed (among other things, agricultural land sales are as yet not allowed in Ukraine), a “shadow” land market has arisen, which these companies benefit from, and it helps them attract capital.

So these companies do attract capital, which they invest in operations, but, as Borodina points out, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the growth of investment in the agrarian sector and the number of people employed in the agrarian sector. Below I have reproduced a graph using the same data as in her diagram in ZN (note: the original graph measured investment in Ukrainian Hryvnia, but I changed that into dollars using the average annual exchange rate for that year. Export sales and many inputs are often dominated in USD so this makes sense, especially considering the devaluation of the UAH in 2008).    

Borodina also points out that the agroholdings are very good at attracting capital either through IPOs and stock emissions or thanks to their access to inexpensive credit from international financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is part of the World Bank, and export credit agencies of different countries like Austria and Denmark. For example, the Danish Export Credit Agency, from 2003 to 2011, insured the export of livestock products valued at 154 million Euro, from Ukraine. The International Finance Corporation has since 2010 provided financing in support of Ukrainian agribusiness to the tune of 282 million dollars, while the EBRD, over the last 5 years, has presented credits totaling 55 million Euro to some of the largest agroholdings in Ukraine.

The larger point that Borodina seeks to make is that all this support to large-scale agribusiness in Ukraine will not lead to the development of the countryside, but is rather a factor contributing to the ongoing distortion and polarization of the agrarian sector in Ukraine. 

A genuine proposal for formalization of rural household farms in Ukraine or its opposite?

There was a really interesting article recently in Zerkalo Nedeli, a highbrow newspaper in Ukraine, about a proposal to formalize those small-scale household farms in Ukraine that are really operating as commercial farms. There are no numbers on how many households this is. It is certainly not a majority of rural households, but it is an important minority. The article (here in Russian) was written by Elena Borodina and Igor Prokopa, two agricultural economists who frequently write illuminating articles about Ukrainian agriculture for ZN.

This  topic is close to my research, so in this blog post, I will summarize the article. Basically, the proposed law – it is actually proposed changes to the law on fermeri (family farmers) – would allow physical persons who farm relatively small (for Ukraine) plots of land to register as subjects of entrepreneurial activities. In essence this would create a new farm category – Physical Person Entrepreneur (FLP to use the Russian acronym) and the goal is that it would encourage a rather large group of active, commercial farmers who have anywhere from a couple of thousand square meters to 10 ha (or in some cases more) to come out from the informal economy. A common vernacular name for such farmers is odnoosibniki, which means “single person” in Ukrainian and generally refers to a person who cultivates by themselves the 4 to 5 ha of land they received in the privatization of the local collective farm. Many odnoosibniki also cultivate the land of relatives who received land allotments during the privatization reforms. Even people who did not receive any land in collective farm privatization or people who lease out their land to another farm, can still have access to up to 2 ha somewhere, often close to the home, that they can cultivate very intensively.

The incentive for such people to register as subjects of entrepreneurial activity is that they would be able to participate in state support programs intended for family farmers and also there is a promise of a special social insurance program. The costs however – as Borodina and Prokopa detail – appears to be very high, perhaps too high. The proposed changes to the law envisage a rather cumbersome registration process, requiring that these farmers, many of whom would not have a car, travel 10 to 40 km to the local district center. It would further entail paying pension fund taxes, registration with the tax authorities, and the obligation to regularly answer statistical surveys from district statistical departments.

Borodina and Prokopa estimate that a household with 2 ha and 3 cows, which would have an estimated annual income of 30,000 UAH (about 1826 Euro in today’s crashing exchange rates), would go from paying 40-50 UAH in land tax today to somewhere between 300 and 900 UAH in annual tax, plus around 400 UAH a month in social taxes, plus still VAT. Then there is the amount of time one would have to spend. Private households wishing to register as FLP would have to travel, not just once, but regularly to the district center to pay taxes and submit reports on their activities.

At the same time as this possibility is now being proposed, there is another proposed law change that would forbid households from selling surplus produce on markets in an attempt to push every household that is to some extent commercial to be in the formal economy.

Borodina and Prokopa argue that it is important to try to formalize the activities of the active rural households engaged in commercial agriculture, but that these proposals will do the opposite – push active farming households deeper into the shadows.

Instead they argue that farms in the informal sphere should be formalized as family farmers without having to register as a legal person (or a FLP). One should recognize, they argue, that farming is a special activity and should not face the same demands placed on other economic actors. Second, the registration procedures and accounting obligations for family farmers should be greatly simplified and the tax obligation lightened. Finally, reforming family farming should only take place within the context of a comprehensive reformation of agrarian policy with respect to all categories of farms, a reformation that would define and accept family farming as an essential element in ensuring the functioning of the agro-food sector.   

This was a good article and I recommend those who can read Russian to read Borodina’s and Prokopa’s other material on ZN.  

Interim Results from current agricultural season of the Swedish Agroholdings in Russia and Ukraine

Originally, I wanted to blog about how the current crisis in Ukraine is affecting or not affecting the "Swedish" investments in Ukrainian and Russian agriculture -- such as Black Earth Farming, etc... However their recently posted half year results (see below) do not give an indication of much of anything, and that points to a completely different problematique, i.e. the special problems agricultural firms face in reporting results, which itself can be said to be part of a larger problem concerning the degree to which corporations can optimally conduct farming compared to family (or peasant) owned and operated farms.

The diagram below shows the relationship between net profit/loss as published in the half year results of  four "Swedish" firms between 2006 and 2013 and the final annual result for net profit (Note that data for the entire period 2006 to 2013 was not available for all the firms, for example for Grain Alliance (GA), there was only data for 2013). The x-axis is net half year profit/loss in kr, and the y-axis is net annual profit/loss. BEF posts their results in dollars, while Trigon posts their results in Euro, so I have used the average annual exchange rate from dollar or euro to Swedish kronor, which are published by the Swedish Central Bank. Arrayed on the x-axis in blue are the half-year net profit/loss results for 2014 in kr (annual results for the year have not yet of course been published). Note that Agrokultura has posted an interim net profit of 47.7 million kr, for 2014, which however becomes a net loss of 48 million kr when taking into account the sharp decline in value of the Ukrainian Hryvnia. I have chosen to use the latter figure in this diagram. In any case, as shown in the diagram there is only a loose correlation between half year net profit/loss results and annual profit/loss results (r2 = 0.0305).   

Generally speaking, interim results are a good indicator for annual results, at least according to an article published in 1972 by Reilly, Morgensen and West in the Journal of Accounting. OK, that's a rather old article, but this is just a blog. (It would be interesting to see how agricultural firms compare to non-agricultural firms in terms of the relationship between interim and annual results, and how vertically integrated food processors compare with “pure play” companies such as the Swedish agricultural companies in the former Soviet Union) Obviously firms in sectors that experience a lot of seasonality will see more fluctuation in interim results in relation to annual results, and agriculture is definitely a sector with a lot of seasonality. The problem here however is not the seasonality per se, but the way in which international accounting principles stipulate that crops growing in the field should be valued for the purposes of financial reporting.  IAS 41 Agriculture, which are the international accounting principles that all the Swedish listed firms use, state that, after enough “biological transformation,” the crops should be valued according to “fair value,” less cost of sales, and, importantly, that the fair value of the crops should appear in the income statement as revenue. That is how we can talk about these firms being profitable before they have sold any of the harvest. The problem is that fair value depends on yield and prices, both of which are constantly moving targets. The basis for “fair value” for the first half of the year is generally taken to be the yield estimate and prices on 30 June, but even this close to the harvest of winter wheat, when one should have a good idea of what the harvest will be and what price it will fetch, small adjustments in either can have a big impact on the bottom line. A second factor affecting quarterly results is how slow or fast companies sell their harvest. Generally the largest part of the harvest is sold in Q4 of the year of that harvest, the second largest part of the harvest is sold already in Q3 of the same year and then the third largest part is sold in Q1 of the next year. But depending on storage capacity and what they think future prices will be, companies can keep crops in storage hoping that the prices will be better in the future or they can sell them relatively fast, believing that prices will only go down in the future. The first scenario will make a farming company’s bottom line look worse for the calendar year in which the harvest was gathered, but better during the next calendar year. At times, companies can still be selling crops into the second quarter of the following year. Finally, it has to be mentioned that late summer crops (corn, sunflower, soy) have an increasingly large impact on the annual result -- something that would not be visible in the 1H / 2Q reports because not enough biological transformation has happened to make a fair value assessment. 

To go back out to the big picture, firms listed on the stock exchange are obligated to publish interim and annual results (though auditing requirements are stricter for annual results). For agricultural firms, this in turn requires that the firms account for the value of crops growing in the field. Internationally accepted accounting principles state that crops growing in the field should first be valued at cost, but then, after enough biological transformation has occurred, they should be valued at fair value, and posted in the income statement as revenue, despite it being unrealized. This can be and often is the  largest item on the revenue side in interim results. (For more on IAS 41 Agriculture and how fair value is arrived at, see Fischer and Marsh 2013) The firms have not come up with this by themselves, and if anything, we – coauthors and I – have heard a fair amount of criticism about the fair value exercise coming from representatives of these firms in ongoing research we are conducting. Black Earth Farming's 2Q 2014 results are interesting in this regard. In what can only be described as a good faith effort to really arrive at a fair value, they explain in some detail how they are changing their fair value accounting. One of the main points to make about this is this is not something that a family farmer would have to go through. 

Is there another way to tell half way through the year, if it will be a good year? The answer is not really -- because it is too early to  make an assessment of the late summer crops. One can say at this point that, however, just as the spring was favorable in terms of weather in Ukraine and Russia, the fall is shaping up to be hot and dry, so the yield of summer crops will be negatively affected, even as prices, at least according to this article, continue to fall. 

Third quarter results are a better indicator of the final annual result, since as assessment of the summer crop outcome is possible. The diagram below is the same as above, but for 9 month results as reported in the 3Q reports. Note that Agrokultura does not publish 3Q reports, and Trigon did not publish 3Q figures in 2007, so there are a few missing data points. Even here though there is a lot of variation where 9M net result is -60 million kr or more (i.e. from -60 million kr towards 0): at this level of net loss 9 months into the calendar year, annual results have varied from -150 million kr to +50 million kr. So, there are some question marks here as well (and not enough data points).

So we'll have to wait until November, when companies post 3Q results, before we can get a somewhat better sense of how 2014 will be for these companies. This year, probably the biggest impact will be how currency exchange rates affect the bottom line. If I read Agrokultura’s 2Q report correctly, they would have been profitable if the Ukrainian Hryvnia had not lost 50% of value. For the next crop year however, these firms will face tighter credit and more expensive input prices (since many inputs are imported).

Publication in Swedish on Fieldwork in Human Geography

Following our discussion at the Dept. of Human Geography about the characteristics and challenges of extended residential fieldwork outside Sweden, our paper was recently published in Geografiska Notiser. It is titled "Praktiska, metodologiska och emotionella utmaningar i fält – mot ärligare diskurser om fältarbete inom kulturgeografi" and you can find it here.

In the paper we give a brief background about how fieldwork is discussed within the discipline and we then move on to present the results of a short survey carried out within our department. The three elements that emerge are:

- fieldwork is on average 6 months long. This aspect indicates that there is a certain praxis within human geography regarding fieldwork, even though it is not clearly spelled out (as in the case of anthropology that assumes/expects PhD fieldwork to be 1 yr long on average);

- fieldwork has been challenging for PhD candidates at our department. Power relations, security and ethical issues have been brought up in the survey and some quotes are detailed in the article;

-  fieldwork doesn´t end in the field. Issues and difficulties are rarely discussed when back at the department, but they are nevertheless reflected in the uncertainty some of us experience when it comes to coding and analyzing data;

As the title indicates, our work aims at initiating a discussion about fieldwork within Human Geography departments in Sweden in order to recognize strenghts, limitations and possible improvements that can made to facilitate the work of PhD candidates.

Call for Abstracts: Feminist participatory methodologies: Creating spaces of inclusion or exclusion?

We are looking for possible contributors to a special issue on the topic detailed below. We have had preliminary contacts with the editors of The Professional Geographer and Qualitative Research, who expressed their initial interest on the topic and have asked us for an overview of potential papers to be included in the special issue. If you are interested in contributing please send your 200-300 words abstract to us martina@humangeo.su.se and  Yvonne Riano: riano@giub.unibe.ch by Monday 22^nd September. 

Feminist epistemology aims to subvert the power-loaded research relationships by engaging in a process of knowledge co-production between researcher and participants (Maynard 1994). This point is also addressed by post-colonial critics, who raise the question of how researchers represent the studied "other", and with what consequences (Tuhiwai Smith 1999). Despite an intense theoretical discussion on these issues, the literature on how to operationalize the former principles is quite limited. Arora – Johnson states (2014; 11): “feminist participatory research that has sought to collaborate with local communities has brought about meeting spaces that have shown to make a difference and have given rise to new questions” However, we ask: how do we carry out a socially responsible research that aims at "investigating with the participants rather than about theresearch subjects" (Riaño 2012)? What forms of inclusionary spaces can be created to co-produce knowledge with the research participants? These are the crucial challenges for contemporary feminist scholars and post-colonial critics that we would like to address in our special issue.
Participation and dialogue have become buzzwords and they have come to mean many different things (Chilvers, 2009). Dialogue, in social science, is conceived as communication among participants that sparks the process of collaborative process of knowledge co- production. Communication is not intended as a one way street from the researcher to the research subject. It is rather the main trigger of a process of co-determination where an array of contingent and experiential types of knowledge is discussed in order to create an inclusive space which reflects all subjectivities involved. This process has the potential to empower both the individual and the group and can lead to a more balanced relation between power and knowledge (Phillips et al. 2013).

Whereas a corner stone of feminist critical thinking is that knowledge is not objective, scientific validity is still an ideal which we strive forward. To be able to reach this goal we must be clear about the unspoken procedures that we as researchers put in place to create participation (Baxter & Eyles 1997). How do we ensure transactional validity through participation (Cho & Trent 2006)? Scientists turn into facilitators (Chilver 2009), but continue to enact power in an attempt to prompt collaboration among participants. However, often participation remains an ideal: scientists in fact hold power over knowledge production in the writing process and participants are not acknowledged as co- authors. Moreover, a space aimed at mutual learning and co-determination can be encompassed by conflicting interests and can set off tensions. The “co” part of co-production, co-determination, and collaboration can constitute a space of frictions and strains (Kristiansen and Bloch-Poulsen 2013). Research partners and gatekeepers are however, not "powerless" as they control access to the field and are able to negotiate the conditions of their participation (Riaño 2012). How do we as scientists, facilitators and participants enact counter – power? How do we resolve these challenges through collaboration? And most importantly, in which ways and in which levels do we perform disruptive change in our research milieu?

In this spirit, we invite conceptual and empirically grounded papers on new emerging approaches, tools and methods intended to build dialogue, communicative interaction, trust, mutual learning, and co-determination, giving “an accurate reflection of reality (or at least, participants ‘construction of reality)” (Cho and Trent 2006: 322) while at the same time facilitating a less hierarchical relationship between the researcher, the gatekeepers, and the research participants (Riaño 2012).

New publication on researcher, assistant and participant subjectivities

Situated knowledge in cross-cultural, cross-language research: a collaborative reflexive analysis of researcher, assistant and participant subjectivity 

Martina Angela Caretta 

This article analyzes situated knowledge through the lens of the author and her three field assistants. This work is written self-reflexively and is based on geographical fieldwork in Eastern Africa. It seeks to capitalize on the personal and professional relationships of the researcher and her field assistants to improve both research outcomes and working arrangements. Reflecting on episodes of failure, anxiety and misunderstanding, it disentangles the power geometry of situated knowledge and sheds light on the vital role played by the assistant/interpreter and by his/her positionality ‘in the making’ of cross-cultural, cross-language research. Grounded in a feminist epistemological perspective, this article shows that methodological reflexivity should engage not only the researcher or the participants but also the field assistants. This praxis is crucial to enhancing the validity of studies conducted in a cross-cultural, cross-language environment across social science.

Read the full article here doi:10.1177/1468794114543404

Frosty and cold winter .. . .

July 11th  at 0730. A frosty morning the Witwatersrand University research station at Komati Gorge.

For a Swede it does not really make sense to leave for 25 degrees South and 1600 m above sea level in the middle of July, when summer finally has come to the northern hemisphere. But the attraction, in spite of cold mornnings and cold lecture halls, is the combination of a meeting in Komati Gorge and surrounding Bokoni area with the network "African Farming: an interdisciplinary pan-African perspective on farming" and the long row of papers presented on the "Farmers" session of the combined meeting in Johannesburg of The 14th Congress of Pan African Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies & The 22nd Biennial Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. Four papers and two poster presentations report on work in the interdisciplinary Bokoni research programme, where one component has been the cooperation (2010 to 2012) between South African archaeologists and Swedish geographers under Swedish-Research Links programme.  New to me this time were the commendable efforts to make Bokoni sites accessible for the general public and to cooperate with local communities in this. This webpage is an example of this. It provides a good overview of the fascinating history of the Bokoni people and their system of intensive and terraced agriculture.

Hydropatriarchies and landesque capital.

2014 is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ year of family farming.Moreover, the African Union designated 2014 the year of agriculture and food security. Family farming, and hence food security, in Africa would not be possible without the contribution of women, who make up for circa 50% of small holder farmers. The majority of agricultural production in Africa is in fact in the hands of smallholders. Nevertheless, women´s role in agricultural production is still somehow not at the forefront of the debate on food security, as it should be. Continue here...

This is the blog post I wrote on the RGS-IBG journals blog Geography Directions to advertise my recent publication on The Geographical Journal titled 

Hydropatriarchies and landesque capital: a local gender contract analysis of two smallholder irrigation systems in East Africa

Here is the abstract: 

Water is a natural resource whose control for productive purposes is often in the hands of men. Societies grounded on such unequal gender relations have been defined ‘hydropatriarchies’. Against this background, this paper presents a gender analysis of landscape investments, conceptualised as landesque capital in smallholder irrigation farming in East Africa. Based on the analysis of how local gender contracts are negotiated, I argue that as processes of landesque capital formation are often explicitly gendered, attentiveness to gender dynamics is required to fully understand such practices. Moreover, as investments in landesque capital, for example, irrigation, terracing and drainage systems, have primarily been conceptualised as the result of men's systematic work, this study highlights women's contributions to the creation of landesque capital, taking smallholder irrigation as an example. Findings show that a distinction between ‘incremental’ and ‘systematic’ change (Doolittle 1984; Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74 124–37) is central to understanding the gender dynamics of landesque capital investment, but it is not sufficient. As women's work processes are typically not systematic, possibly promoting incremental change, they contribute to the production of landesque capital by supporting and facilitating men's work. However, the work of women is, as a rule, homogenised and stereotypically rendered as reproductive and secondary, due to the underlying cultural norms that limit, control or exploit women. This conceptualisation, or rather lack of, I argue, risks leading to a gender-blind analysis of land use intensification processes. Building on the gendered and symbolic nature of landesque capital, I propose a local gender contract analysis that integrates the cultural, symbolic and physical dimensions of the local gender division of labour into agricultural work and landscape change processes.

Read the full article here

Reading suggestions for the summer

The summer is approaching and (hopefully) you will have enough time available to read some popular/fictional literature. Here comes my suggestion! 

I just finished reading the memoir One day I will write about this place by Binyavanga Wainaina a Kenyan writer who is a contributor to several international magazine as the Guardian and has been recently nominated by the TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in 2014. With both parents from Uganda in his memoir Wainaina writes about growing up in Nakuru and recalls the political development of his country - and to some extent of South Africa where he attended university - from the Moi regime until the 2010 elections. I found it a fascinating and illuminating piece of work reflecting both on personal and national struggles. It gives an insider look on Kenyan societal issues in the last 30 years, but it also contains great descriptions of landscapes: personal favorites the bus trips he took to Pokot and Uganda. 

Now, going back to the more academic focus of this blog and adding to the reading suggestions: check out the blog post I recently got published in the London School of Economics and Political Science "Field research lab" blog about member checking! 

Shutting off Crimea's Water Supply?

According to various sources, Crimea had had its water supply cut-off (See this and this). Crimea receives 80% of its water (drinking and irrigation water) from the Northern Crimean Canal which, despite its name, begins in Kherson Oblast on the Ukrainian mainland. The source of the water is the Dnipro river. The Ukrainian authorities appear to have either completely cut off the water or significantly reduced the flow -- sources are somewhat contradictory here. 

Former Prime Minister and current presidential candidate Julia Timoshenko herself said in March that, if Kyiv wants to consider Crimea a part of Ukraine, Kyiv should not shut off their water and electricity, which also comes from the Ukrainian mainland. I wonder then if cutting off water is a small indication that Kyiv sees Crimea as lost. In either case, I'm not sure this is a good idea. 

Anyway, I have produced a quick map of the canals in southern Ukraine based on information from openstreetmap.org, which is an open source mapping site. You can see how Crimea is connected in terms of water to the Ukrainian mainland. Note that, as openstreetsmap relies on volunteers to upload their local maps, the accuracy cannot be guaranteed. However, in my experience with openstreetmap, the accuracy is pretty good, and as good as or better than a lot of other map layers available out there. 

A gender perspective on the upcoming Tanzanian constitution in light of the recent legislative developments in Kenya

Tanzania is to have a new constitution by the end of the year, President Kikwet stated recently. The official enactment was originally planned for the end of this month. The new constitution is set to limit the power of the central government (reducing its areas of responsibility from 22 to 7; the number of ministers to 15; the MPs from 300 to 75) and to move to a three-tier federal government. This will be composed by Tanganyika, the federal government and Zanzibar, trying to put to an end the Zanzabari claim that the central government is caring most for the interests of the mainland.

The unveiling of the new constitution comes at the end of a two years constituent process during which the Constitutional Review Commission has toured the country and sat with interests groups. Among which women´s groups. The most apparent gain for women with this new piece of law is the 50% guarantee of parliament representation as opposed to the current 30%. Yet, there is no consideration on the same quota to applied in presidential appointments. As in the international debate, the idea of quota based on gender has been widely contested both by the general Tanzanian men public and most notoriously by the Charles Kitima, the vice chancellor of Saint Augustine University, who claimed such quota would be unnecessarily costly and that qualification should override gender in appointing officials. This last statement could be widely agreed upon whether Tanzanian women would have equal access to qualifying education as men have, but in the current situation women are starting the race from the back row.

Accordingly, Tanzanian women´s organization have been critical about the upcoming constitution for several reasons. First, they say that the term "person" should be defined in the constitution as it is commonly interpreted as meaning only men, which is the case in the current constitution which reads i.e. "every person is entitled to respect and protection of HIS person". Secondly, art. 46 on the rights of women currently states that women are free to participate in politics and governance, but it does not assert the right to be protected from marginalization and oppression or the right to equal pay, which is stated in the Ugandan and Zimbabwan constitutions, for instance. Finally, the text is also missing references to a minimum age for child marriage, which is an ever worrying topic in Tanzania. World Bank data shows that 22.8 % of girls aged 15 to 19 in Tanzania had children or were pregnant in 2010 and that Tanzania has the highest adolescent fertility rate in the world (129). These two facts are directly linked with early marriage and a high school dropout rate.

As for the Kenyan constitution, which entered into force in 2010, women in Tanzania will be given equal inheritance rights and access to land and property during marriage, after the termination of marriage or the death of their husband. The battle for equal land rights was fought by the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers during the constituent process. Nevertheless, such provision should stop the countless cases of widows who are taken away their land, but it does not necessarily ensure that in case of divorce women are recognized any right. In fact, as stated in the Kenyan constitution, litigation should be resolved by "local community initiatives", which are often composed by village elders who tend to go with the traditional norms that land should not be given to women.

Following the traditional norms is also what the Kenyan parliament is aiming at with the bill passed last month giving leeway to polygamy. The text of the bill recites that a man is allowed to take as many women as he can support. No reference is made to a prior agreement with the first wife, if there has ever been one. This bill, who is to be signed by President Kenyatta to enter into force, has sparkled a great divisive debate in Kenya, which prided itself on a more gender equal constitution. Hopefully, lawmakers and women organizations in Tanzania will make sure that the new constitution results in a tangible advancement of women´s condition and will not suffer any future step-back as in Kenya.

More iconic farming images

One observant reader of the last blog post   reminded me that the man with the pitch-fork is probably a conscious or unconscious reference to the iconic painting American Gothic by Grant Wood.


Yes of course!! And that raises the issue why Eco-energy´s artist decided to exclude the woman... a thought I was struggling with before I realised the connection to this serious American couple.. Image-google "American Gothic" and you will find more artists using this iconic image to convey other messages. But they seem all to have the woman there, all except Eco Energy...

Funny pictures about farming

I have previously commented on the naive image-language of the Swedish company SEKAB, now Agro Eco Energy. which is displacing small-holders in Tanzania to create a sugar plantation.   See my blog in Swedish from 2009.

This is even more funny. It is supposed to illustrate inclusive growth and can be found on the now updated webpage of  EcoEnergy. The way I read this picture is that a Swedish farmer (with a typical Swedish red house, and a pitchfork) can easily become an African businessman...

see more on http://www.ecoenergy.co.tz/sustainability/social-development/inclusive-growth/

Landesque Capital book now published

Landesque Capital
The Historical Ecology of Enduring Landscape Modifications
Editors: N.Thomas Håkansson & Mats Widgren

Read some comments:

"This book, representing fresh work from several academic disciplines, on case studies from several continents, brings readers up to date with the current debates on the concept of 'landesque capital.' It shows convincingly how the features of an agrarian landscape — terraces, irrigation ditches, and so forth — are embedded both in social systems and in nature simultaneously. The book realizes the potential of historical ecology to illuminate both past and present, both locally and globally."

- J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University

" Landesque Capital is a delightful, diverse and invaluable book offering a detailed analysis of investment by rural people in their land to meet economic, cultural and spiritual needs. The book tests and demonstrates the value of the concept of landesque capital in theory and in practice, through case studies of landscape and agricultural history from Sweden to Solomon Islands, via Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is scholarship of a high order: theoretically sharp, empirically deep and highly relevant in a world searching for sustainability. "

- W. M. Adams, University of Cambridge

"Håkansson and Widgren consider well landesque capital, an underused concept critical for scholars studying the political economy and ecology of traditional societies. They show how an approach deriving broadly from landesque capital is vital to issues of sustainability and control."

- Dr. Timothy Earle, Northwestern University 

More at Left Coast Press

'Balancing Ecosystem Services and Disservices: Smallholder Farmers’ Use and Management of Forest and Trees in an Agricultural Landscape in Southwestern Ethiopia'

Below is an abstract of our: Tola Gemechu Ango, Lowe Börjeson, Feyera Senbeta and Kristoffer Hylander, recent paper in 'Ecology and Society'.


Abstract

Farmers’ practices in the management of agricultural landscapes influence biodiversity with implications for livelihoods, ecosystem service provision, and biodiversity conservation. In this study, we examined how smallholding farmers in an agriculture-forest mosaic landscape in southwestern Ethiopia manage trees and forests with regard to a few selected ecosystem services and disservices that they highlighted as “beneficial” or “problematic.” Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from six villages, located both near and far from forest, using participatory field mapping and semistructured interviews, tree species inventory, focus group discussions, and observation. The study showed that farmers’ management practices, i.e., the planting of trees on field boundaries amid their removal from inside arable fields, preservation of trees in semimanaged forest coffee, maintenance of patches of shade coffee fields in the agricultural landscape, and establishment of woodlots with exotic trees result in a restructuring of the forest-agriculture mosaic. In addition, the strategies farmers employed to mitigate crop damage by wild mammals such as baboons and bush pigs, e.g., migration and allocation of migrants on lands along forests, have contributed to a reduction in forest and tree cover in the agricultural landscape. Because farmers’ management practices were overall geared toward mitigating the negative impact of disservices and to augment positive services, we conclude that it is important to operationalize ecosystem processes as both services and disservices in studies related to agricultural landscapes.


Full text can be freely retrieved from:
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06279-190130

“Credit plus” microcredit schemes: a key to women's adaptive capacity

Here´s an article by me published this week on "Climate and Development" 

Abstract
This paper presents the provision of “credit plus” training activities, conditionally and jointly with microloans by Equity Bank and by Swedish non-governmental organization Vi-Skogen in the area of Kisumu, Kenya to women's groups as a key to improving women's capacity to adapt to climate change. Groups received training in small business administration and agroforestry, which produced positive outcomes or a virtuous spiral in their families' economy, well-being and in their intra-household bargaining power. In agroforestry and new farming practices, group training enhanced the women's set of planned adaptation strategies. In a context where formal financial institutions are still reluctant to provide credit to subsistence farmers, this case study shows the beneficial effects that credit would generate for women's adaptive capacity.

Find the full text here http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17565529.2014.886990#.Uw-LD_l5Mb0 

Local gender contract and adaptive capacity in smallholder irrigation farming: a case study from the Kenyan drylands

Here´s an article by Lowe Börjeson and I recently published in Gender, Place and Culture. 


Abstract 
This article presents the local gender contract of a smallholder irrigation farming community in Sibou, Kenya. Women's role in subsistence farming in Africa has mostly been analyzed through the lens of gender division of labor. In addition to this, we used the concept of ‘local gender contract’ to analyze cultural and material preconditions shaping gender-specific tasks in agricultural production, and consequently, men's and women's different strategies for adapting to climate variability. We show that the introduction of cash crops, as a trigger for negotiating women's and men's roles in the agricultural production, results in a process of gender contract renegotiation, and that families engaged in cash cropping are in the process of shifting from a ‘local resource contract’ to a ‘household income contract.’ Based on our analysis, we argue that a transformation of the local gender contract will have a direct impact on the community's adaptive capacity climate variability. It is, therefore, important to take the negotiation of local gender contracts into account in assessments of farming communities' adaptive capacity. 

Download text online at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2014.885888#.Uwofq_l5Mb0  

The socioenvironmental state:

Invitation to Guest Lecture

The socioenvironmental state: Towards a political ecology of state formation and environmental change

Thursday 27 February 2014, 13.15-15.00.
Venue: De Geersalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Stockholm University.

Dr Andrea Nightingale, School of Global Studies, Univ. Gothenburg

In her presentation, Andrea Nightingale develops the idea of the ‘socio-environmental state’ to understand how ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ is an active agent in state formation. She begins with the question what is ‘the state’? How does it operate, and most importantly, how do resources and their ‘nature’ shape the possibilities of state transformation not only ecologically but also politically? The presentation takes the case of forests in Nepal to probe how environmental governance is bound up in state ambitions of conflicting groups. The kinds of relationships believed to be required for good environmental management are absolutely fundamental to how states and state-like actors seek to promote particular ideas of citizenship and to unite and control their populations. The argument builds from four core literatures: work on state formation in geography and anthropology; new work in development studies on property, authority and citizenship; political ecology; and feminist theory. This theoretical synthesis helps capture the emergence of political subjectivities, imaginaries and biophysical-ecological transformations from projects intended to improve the material base of the state. As such, these projects serve to quite literally build the state, offering important insights into processes of state transformation.

Convenor: Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet. www.humangeo.su.se

Dr. Andrea Nightingale is an Associate Professor in the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She was previously the Director of the MSc in Environment and Development and a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography at the University of Edinburgh (2002-2012). Her PhD from the University of Minnesota in Geography was based on work done in Nepal since 1987 on questions of development, natural resource management, community forestry, gender, social inequalities and governance.

Reflections on Human Geography Fieldwork

At a recent lunch seminar in our department, we, (Martina Caretta, Natasha Webster, and Brian Kuns) prepared a presentation about how we do fieldwork abroad in our department, with the intent of having a self-critical dialogue with colleagues. Ethnographically flavored fieldwork is an important tool in the Human Geography method tool kit, though it certainly is not as prevalent in Human Geography as in Anthropology, and it is even less reflected upon in Human Geography than it is in Anthropology. Fully a third of current and former PhD students in our department (going back 16 years) have done fieldwork outside Sweden. If you count those who have done extended fieldwork inside Sweden, one can only come to the conclusion that we are an empirical department, and indeed this is one of our strengths. But we have not been so good in recent years in reflecting on this experience. The three of us, then, sent out a questionnaire to current and former PhD students in our department who have done field work abroad asking them to reflect on our fieldwork experiences.  

The responses were interesting, to say the least, and we identified the following themes to focus on: (1) how much time we spend in the field and why; (2) what are the obstacles and challenges we meet while in the field and; (3) what issues or challenges end up coming home with us from the field. A brief summary of these points is given in the following bullets:

·         On average we spend half a year doing field work abroad with some spending a year and others spending about a month. The standard in Anthropology is of course one year in the field, which anthropologists say is needed to achieve the kind of ‘thick description’ of social relations they aspire to. Our research is not necessarily as inductive as Anthropology tends to be so we do not need to spend as much time in the field – at least that is what Human Geographers would cite as one reason why we do not (need to) spend a year in the field. At the same time, we tend to defer to Anthropology –as the fieldwork experts – in terms of our training in fieldwork methods and in terms of reflecting on fieldwork in general. 

·         It was all in the course of a “normal” fieldwork that PhD students in our department experienced various logistical difficulties, problems with housing, and, perhaps most important, difficulties adapting fieldwork plans to unexpected events. In other words, it is a regular experience that fieldwork plans do not survive first contact with reality. This could be weather related delays, problems getting access to interview subjects, etc… Problems with housing and logistics can be overcome, but it is more problematic to have concerns about the data one has gathered.  

·         Another very serious issue concerned how common it was that PhD students in our department either were witness to unpleasant events and/or were concerned about their own safety at one point or another. Fieldwork still tends to be seen as the Male solo adventure, and the culture in our department (and most likely not just here) is to remain silent about these issues.

The discussion was very interesting and we got a lot of interesting comments from colleagues. Among other things we do not in fact want to reify notions of the “brave, adventurous geographer” venturing far abroad. Important fieldwork happens here in Sweden and can entail some of the same problems and risks.

In any case we will be working further on these questions so we hope to report more about this in the near future.