Land

Where did your roving researcher come across this stark landscape? Rock remaining where trees once stood. Hills stained by sulphur.Soil mostly eroded away. A desolate scene of bare hills surrounding a former mining town.Which country could possibly allow such poor environmental management to continue until this point was reached?

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Maybe a simple question with which I am currently dealing but for which I find contradictory answers in the literature…

To set the scene: 19 century Bali, the highly sophisticated irrigated rice terraces have long been established.

But were it the kings who invested into large dam structures to enable such systems and benefit from the usufruct or were it the farmers all by themselves, everynow and then paying some tribute to the(ir) lords?

And what about the trade in those days: Were it only the elites who engaged in such activities (after 200 years of successful slave trade), selling the little surplus that pawns made on royal land, or were it farming communities who actively participated not only in the local but regional and even inter-island trade to sell their produce from their own fertile lands?

Those who argue for the former it seems then are kind of saying that these communities serving the lord have no thinking of their own, they are mere pawns on a chessboard awaiting the orders from somewhere above to move. ‘Inward’ people as Geertz called it focusing on subsistence only. On the other hand, the latter argument of an almost acephalous organisations of farmers that manage it all by themselves purposfully cultivating goods for the market is somewhat unimaginable too.

So finally, it probably comes back(at least partially) to the question of equality or hierarchy? Both Geertz and Lansing have attempted to answer this (among many other issues) in their respective books Negara (Geertz 1980) and Perfect Order (Lansing 2006). I can’t make up my mind yet…

Mike Bourke (Argument Moderator)

This was an excellent Argument with all speakers making compelling cases. As well as the panel, Janelle McGufficke, Manager of Environmental Programs at Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia and Deborah Kerr from the National Farmer’s Federation, gave short presentations, making a strong case for irrigated rice production in Australia. The event was recorded and is available as podcast, if you were not able to be there.

From left: Barney Foran, Eric Craswell, John Angus and Mike Bourke.

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Fancy a bit of arm-chair activism anyone?

There is an online petition currently underway to stop land grabbing in Cambodia, while it may have no effect whatsoever, it won’t hurt to type your name and press send, to email this message to Hun Sen

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This is my last in a series of posts from the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. The final session, a roundtable discussion on Authority, Property and Democracy, was facilitated by Ashwini Chatre and included Jesse Ribot, Andy White, Anne Larson, Melissa Leach and Elinor Ostrom as panelists.

Ribot challenged researchers to move on from discussions on the ‘tragedy of the commons’, which he said was a dead horse, to examine and better understand the dynamic, contested nature of the commons within their larger political economy. A few speakers from the floor responded that the ‘tragedy’ is very much alive and well in the minds of policymakers, leading to related policies of ‘enclosure’, and therefore could not be walked away from just yet.

Leach set out two main challenges for researchers in this field. Firstly, she saw a need to shift global and national institutions towards more deliberative and reflective governance where powerholders understand their own subjectivities. Secondly, related to the first point, we need to bring local knowledge and perspectives into debates - not in a glorified sense, but for their substance and to enable social justice. Read the rest of this entry »