PhD defense November 6th "East African Hydropatriarchies: An analysis of changing waterscapes in smallholder irrigation farming"

On November 6th in William-Olssonsalen, Geovetenskapens hus, Svante Arrhenius väg 14, Stockholm, 14:00 Martina Angela Caretta will defend her PhD thesis titled:

 

"East African Hydropatriarchies: An analysis of changing waterscapes in smallholder irrigation farming"


Opponent Zwarteveen, Margreet, Professor
Supervisor Börjeson, Lowe, Doktor

Abstract 

This thesis examines the local waterscapes of two smallholder irrigation farming systems in the dry lands of East African in a context of socio-ecological changes. It focuses on three aspects: institutional arrangements, gender relations and landscape investments. 

This thesis is based on a reflexive analysis of cross-cultural, cross-language research, particularly focusing on the role of field assistants and interpreters, and on member checking as a method to ensure validity.

Flexible irrigation infrastructure in Sibou, Kenya, and Engaruka, Tanzania, allow farmers to shift the course of water and to extend or reduce the area cultivated depending on seasonal rainfall patterns. Water conflicts are avoided through a decentralized common property management system. Water rights are continuously renegotiated depending on water supply. Water is seen as a common good the management of which is guided by mutual understanding to prevent conflicts through participation and shared information about water rights.

However, participation in water management is a privilege that is endowed mostly to men. Strict patriarchal norms regulate control over water and practically exclude women from irrigation management. The control over water usage for productive means is a manifestation of masculinity. The same gender bias has emerged in recent decades as men have increased their engagement in agriculture by cultivating crops for sale. Women, because of their subordinated position, cannot take advantage of the recent livelihood diversification. Rather, the cultivation of horticultural products for sale has increased the workload for women who already farm most food crops for family consumption. In addition, they now have to weed and harvest the commercial crops that their husbands sell for profit. This agricultural gender divide is mirrored in men´s and women´s response to increased climate variability. Women intercrop as a risk adverting strategy, while men sow more rounds of crops for sale when the rain allows for it. Additionally, while discursively underestimated by men, women´s assistance is materially fundamental to maintaining of the irrigation infrastructure and to ensuring the soil fertility that makes the cultivation of crops for sale possible.

In sum, this thesis highlights the adaptation potentials of contemporary smallholder irrigation systems through local common property regimes that, while not inclusive towards women, avoid conflicts generated by shifting water supply and increased climate variability.

To be able to assess the success and viability of irrigation systems, research must be carried out at a local level. By studying how local water management works, how conflicts are adverted through common property regimes and how these systems adapt to socio-ecological changes, this thesis provides insights that are important both for the planning of current irrigation schemes and the rehabilitation or the extension of older systems. By investigating the factors behind the consistent marginalization of women from water management and their subordinated role in agricultural production, this study also cautions against the reproduction of these discriminatory norms in the planning of irrigation projects.

This link provides access to all published papers included in this compilation thesis. 

Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology - Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography - Volume 69, Issue 4

In december 2013 a meeting was held in Trondheim organised by the Norwegian network for political ecology. I contributed with a presentation on my experience and thoughts of differences and common themes between Nordic landscape geography and Political Ecology. I also drew some lines back in time to the postwar European landscape research and the strong, mainly German tradition of historical landscape research.

Here is an abstract

Three related schools of landscape and land use studies are described and analysed: European post-war landscape history, Political Ecology and Nordic landscape geography. For each of them their social and political context, their main study objects and their position towards a normative vs. value-free scholarly work is analysed. I suggest that the success of European post-war landscape history was partly based on its strive for a value-free science and against previous ideological misuse of settlement history. Political ecology on the other hand took an open normative stand and developed in the context of the Sahel crisis where it provided a radical answer to Malthusian simplifications. In contrast to that Nordic Landscape Geography grew as an intellectual reaction to emerging European landscape policies and against an Anglophone understanding of landscapes as scenery. The paper finally speculates on challenges ahead and suggests an agenda for studies of labour and landscapes.

and here the link:

Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology - Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography - Volume 69, Issue 4

If you cannot access the article  please send me a mail (mats.widgren@humangeo.su.se.se) and I will send you the article

The Norwegian network will this year have its third meeting -- in Bergen. The theme this year is Power in Political Ecology.

CfP ENTITLE conference "Decolonizing methods: disseminating research results beyond academy"

Panel proposal for the International Conference of the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE) : UNDISCIPLINED ENVIRONMENTS  - Stockholm, 20-23 of March 2016

Decolonizing methods: disseminating research results beyond academy

Martina Angela Caretta, Human Geography Dept., Stockholm University

Paola Minoia, Geosciences and Geography Dept., Helsinki University 

Participatory methods are increasingly used in the social sciences. Research participants are called to make contributions to the research process by engaging through participatory methods in the creation of situated knowledge.

In this panel we go one step further: how to ensure that the knowledge gathered goes to the benefit of the local participants? It has been said that participants are often deprived of the knowledge they contributed in co-producing. Researchers take the information with them back to their universities and publish it in scientific journals and reports that are not only physically inaccessible to participants, but they are often using obscure terminology.

How do we move beyond this unjust hierarchical research relationship? How do we ensure that research results are comprehensively disseminated outside the academia? Which methods do we employ to decolonize knowledge construction and translation? How do we create spaces of inclusion for participants and research assistants in the process of reporting back research results?

We welcome contributions on (but not limited to): dissemination of results, knowledge translation, participatory processes of knowledge construction and dissemination, ethical aspects and dilemmas in communicating research results, participatory feedback sessions and member checking.

Useful references:

MacKenzie et al. 2015. Advocating beyond the academy: dilemmas of communicating relevant research results. Qualitative Research 2015, Vol. 15(1) 105–121

Whittle, R, Marion Walker, and W Medd. 2011. Suitcases, Storyboards and Newsround: Exploring Impact and Dissemination in Hull. Area 43(4): 477–487.

Oldfield, Sophie. 2008. Who’s Serving Whom? Partners, Process, and Products in Service-Learning Projects in South African Urban Geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 32(2): 269–285.

Fitzgerald, Tanya. 2004. Powerful Voices and Powerful Stories: Reflections on the Challenges and Dynamics of Intercultural Research. Journal of Intercultural Studies 25(3): 233–245.

Blerk, Lorraine Van, and Nicola Ansell. 2007. Participatory Feedback and Dissemination with and for Children: Reflections from Research with Young Migrants in Southern Africa. Children’s Geographies 5(3): 313–324.

Send a 200 words abstract to Martina Angela Caretta martina@humangeo.su.se and Paola Minoia paola.minoia@helsinki.fi by Wednesday 7^th October at latest. 

Twenty years of water grabbing dynamics: water sharing between agribusinesses and local communities in Tanzania

Is it beneficial to development if foreign agribusinesses start cultivating in an African country? Or is it an example of resource grabbing and unfair competition over scarce land and water? Although difficult to answer, these are the questions underlying the new paper "The fluid nature of water grabbing: the on-going contestation of water distribution between peasants and agribusinesses in Nduruma, Tanzania" (now available online). 

Three distinct zones in Nduruma: upland bananas, midland greenhouses, lowland fallow

The paper describes the water struggles between local irrigation communities and horticultural companies in northern Tanzania, exploring how the larger debates on land grabbing and development play a role in this. Ultimately, it emphasises that water grabbing is not a one-time event, but rather an on-going struggle over different water resources. In addition, it shows how a perceived beneficial development of agribusinesses switching to groundwater allows them to avoid peasant-controlled institutions, avoiding further negotiation between the different actors and improving their image among neighbouring communities. This development illustrates how complex and obscured processes of water re-allocation can be without becoming illegal per se. 

Reference: de Bont, C., Veldwisch, G., Komakech, H.C. and Vos, J. 2015. The fluid nature of water grabbing: the on-going contestation of water distribution between peasants and agribusinesses in Nduruma, Tanzania. Agriculture and Human Values, DOI: 10.1007/s10460-015-9644-5.

Audioslide presentation on the latest publication on Engaruka

The paper published recently on Agricultural Water Management titled "Managing variability and scarcity.  Ananalysis of Engaruka: a Maasai smallholder irrigation farming community" is presented in the audioslide format here. Check it out if you want a quick summary of what the paper is all about!  

Field Diary, Issue 1, July 2015
Geert W van der Plas, Annemiek Pas Schrijver and Colin Courtney Mustaphi (eds)

The first issue of the Field Diary is out. The Field Diary is a compilation of stories from PhD students working all over the world sharing their field experiences.

Welcome to the first edition of Field Diary!
Many of us are out in the field and busy doing our research. Each of us lives through different experiences while we’re out there, trekking across the African landscape and elsewhere in the world. There are good times and difficult times, and sometimes we can feel a little disconnected from the rest of the world. That is why we introduce the field diary. We can all share our experiences from the field, the joys, the discoveries, but also the frustrations. And by writing and reading these stories we can share these feelings, and be a little bit more connected again.
We will try to release a field diary at least twice a year, and give each edition a different flavor by giving it a theme that relates to field work. The field diary is an initiative of the REAL project, and everyone is welcome to contribute.
From the editorial team, we hope that you enjoy these stories from the field. We wish you an amazing time in the field and don’t forget to look up from your work once in a while and realize how lucky we are to be able to do this amazing work!

The editorial team

Click on Field Diary if you want to access the full version.

First publication on contemporary smallholder irrigation farming in Engaruka, Tanzania is now available!

The article titled "Managing variability and scarcity. An analysis of Engaruka: A Maasai smallholder irrigation farming community" is now available at Agricultural Water Management online platform. 

This article examines the common-pool regime of Engaruka, a smallholder irrigation farming community in northern Tanzania. Irrigation is a complex issue due to water asymmetry. Water use is regulated in Engaruka through boundary, allocation, input and penalty rules by a users’ association that controls and negotiates water allocation to avoid conflicts among headenders and tailenders. As different crops – maize and beans, bananas and vegetables – are cultivated, different watering schemes are applied depending on the water requirements of every single crop. Farmers benefit from different irrigation schedules and from different soil characteristics through having their plots both downstream and upstream. In fact, depending on water supply, cultivation is resourcefully extended and retracted. Engaruka is an ethnically homogeneous and interdependent community where headenders and tailenders are often the same people and are hence inhibited to carry out unilateral action. Drawing on common-pool resource literature, this study argues that in a context of population pressure alongside limited and fluctuating water availability, non-equilibrium behavior, consisting in negotiating water rights and modifying irrigation area continuously through demand management, is crucial for the satisfaction of basic and productive needs and for the avoidance of water conflicts.

This link gives access for free to the fulltext until August 24th.