In Who Gets to Go Back-to-the-Land? , Valerie Padilla
Carroll examines a variety of media from the last century that
proselytized self-sufficiency as a solution to the economic
instability, ...environmental destruction, and perceived
disintegration of modern America. In the early twentieth century,
books already advocated an escape for the urban, white-collar male.
The suggestion became more practical during the Great Depression,
and magazines pushed self-sufficiency lifestyles. By the 1970s, the
idea was reborn in newsletters and other media as a radical
response to a damaged world, allowing activists to promote the
simple life as environmental, gender, and queer justice. At the
century's end, a great variety of media promoted self-sufficiency
as the solution to a different set of problems, from survival at
the millennium to wanderlust of millennials. Nevertheless, these
utopian narratives are written overwhelmingly for a particular
audience-one that is white, male, and white-collar. Padilla
Carroll's archival research of the books, newspapers, magazines,
newsletters, websites, blogs, and videos promoting the life of the
agrarian smallholder illuminates how embedded race, class, gender,
and heteronormative dogmas in these texts reinforce dominant power
ideologies and ignore the experiences of marginalized people.
Still, Padilla Carroll also highlights how those left out have
continued to demand inclusion by telling their own stories of
self-sufficiency, rewriting and reimagining the movement to be
collaborative, inclusive, and rooted in both human and ecological
justice.
Resumen Objetivo: Analizar el aporte de la agricultura familiar en el diseño de estrategias alimentarias campesinas, como respuesta a los problemas socio-productivos en comunidades de los municipios ...Tenejapa y San Juan Cancuc, en la región tseltal de Los Altos de Chiapas. Metodología: La investigación es un estudio de caso para caracterizar las estrategias de reproducción social en una economía rural de autosubsistencia. Los datos se obtuvieron a partir de técnicas de investigación cualitativas entre las que destacan entrevistas, recorridos en parcelas, análisis de los sistemas productivos maíz, café, miel y hortalizas y discusión con grupos focales. Resultados: La diversidad agroalimentaria es la principal estrategia de reproducción social entre los campesinos de autosubsistencia y que los bienes más preciados son las tierras, las semillas nativas y las técnicas de producción, así como el carácter multifuncional de la agricultura. Limitaciones: El estudio y su método puede ser un referente para análisis de estrategias de reproducción social en familias campesinas de pueblos indígenas, específicamente en contextos de economía de autosubsistencia. Para analizar estrategias de familias campesinas con poca diversificación económica o agrícola, se requiere considerar otras variables y posiblemente complementar el método de investigación cualitativo con otros métodos cuantitativos que permitan cuantificar los ingresos, por ejemplo, una encuesta socioeconómica. Conclusiones: La diversificación de la agricultura y de la alimentación familiar es un método viable para fortalecer las estrategias de reproducción social entre las familias campesinas en contexto económico de autosubsistencia. Las políticas públicas para fortalecer la agricultura familiar campesina podrían adoptar un enfoque multi-escalar.
In the first political analysis of unemployment in a socialist
country, Susan Woodward argues that the bloody conflicts that are
destroying Yugoslavia stem not so much from ancient ethnic hatreds
as ...from the political and social divisions created by a failed
socialist program to prevent capitalist joblessness. Under
Communism the concept of socialist unemployment was considered an
oxymoron; when it appeared in postwar Yugoslavia, it was dismissed
as illusory or as a transitory consequence of Yugoslavia's
unorthodox experiments with worker-managed firms. In Woodward's
view, however, it was only a matter of time before countries in the
former Soviet bloc caught up with Yugoslavia, confronting the same
unintended consequences of economic reforms required to bring
socialist states into the world economy. By 1985, Yugoslavia's
unemployment rate had risen to 15 percent. How was it that a
labor-oriented government managed to tolerate so clear a violation
of the socialist commitment to full employment? Proposing a
politically based model to explain this paradox, Woodward analyzes
the ideology of economic growth, and shows that international
constraints, rather than organized political pressures, defined
government policy. She argues that unemployment became politically
"invisible," owing to its redefinition in terms of guaranteed
subsistence and political exclusion, with the result that it
corrupted and ultimately dissolved the authority of all political
institutions. Forced to balance domestic policies aimed at
sustaining minimum standards of living and achieving productivity
growth against the conflicting demands of the world economy and
national security, the leadership inadvertently recreated the
social relations of agrarian communities within a postindustrial
society.
"You're either buried with your crystals or your shotgun." That laconic comment captures the hippies-versus-hicks conflict that divides, and in some ways defines, modern-day homesteaders. It also ...reveals that back to-the-landers, though they may seek lives off the grid, remain connected to the most pressing questions confronting the United States today.Jason Strange shows where homesteaders fit, and don't fit, within contemporary America. Blending history with personal stories, Strange visits pig roasts and bohemian work parties to find people engaged in a lifestyle that offers challenge and fulfillment for those in search of virtues like self-employment, frugality, contact with nature, and escape from the mainstream. He also lays bare the vast differences in education and opportunity that leave some homesteaders dispossessed while charting the tensions that arise when people seek refuge from the ills of modern society-only to find themselves indelibly marked by the system they dreamed of escaping.
Poorly implemented energy subsidies are economically costly to taxpayers and damage the environment. This report aims at providing the emerging lessons form a representative sample of case studies in ...20 developing countries that could help policy makers to address implementation challenges, including overcoming political economy and affordability constraints. The sample has selected on the basis of a number of criteria, including the countrys level of development (and consumption), developing country region, energy security and the fuel it subsidies (petroleum fuel, electricity, natural gas). The case studies were supported by data collection related to direct budgetary subsidies, fuel and electricity tariffs, and household survey data.The analysis provides strong evidence of the success of reforms in reducing the associated fiscal burden. For the sample of countries, the average energy subsidy recorded in the budget was reduced from 1.8% in 2004 to 1.3%GDP in 2010. The reduction of subsidies is particularly remarkable for net energy importers. Pass-through of international fuel prices was also notable in the case of electricity generated by fossil fuel. For the sample of countries, the average end-user electricity tariff increased by 50%, from USD 6 cents in 2002 to USD 9 cents per kWh in 2010.In spite of the relatively price inelastic demand for gasoline and diesel, fossil fuel consumption in the road sector (per unit of GDP) declined in the 20 countries examined from 53 (44) in 2002 to about 23 kt oil equivalent per million of GDP in 2008 in the case of gasoline (Diesel). The most notable decline in consumption was recorded in the low and lower middle income countries. This reflects the much higher rate of growth in GDP in this group of countries and underlines the opportunities to influence future consumption behavior rather than modifying
the existing consumption patterns, overcoming inertia and vested interests. Similar trends are recorded for power consumption.While there is no one-size-fits-all model for subsidy reform, implementation of compensatory social policies and an effective communication strategy, before the changes are introduced, reduces helped with the implementation of reforms.
The fragmentation of international law has led to the emergence of specialized and (quasi) autonomous legal regimes – the “self-contained regimes” or special regimes. This article aims to investigate ...the degree to which European Union law could be a potential candidate for a “selfcontained regime” and questions the relationship between this special regime and general international law. The methodological approach consists in providing a critical analysis of the Report on Fragmentation of International Law of the International Law Commission, concluded in 2006 and the ECJ case law in order to identify and explain pro et contra arguments regarding the following assertion: although EU law is not totally decoupled from general principles of international law, the new legal order of the EU has taken a historical turn towards selfcontainedness. Embracing the European legal perspective, this inquiry will advocate a presumption in favor of the self-contained character of the EU legal order, based on the EU sui generis modus operandi, the establishment of its own constitutional legal order, accommodating its own norms, techniques and features of modern law-making within its sphere of application, albeit the possible fallback on general international state responsibility and countermeasures mechanisms in case the mechanisms inherent in the EU system fail.
Die heimischen Körnerleguminosen Ackerbohne, Körnererbse und Süßlupine verlieren in Anbau und Züchtung immer mehr an Bedeutung. Die Fläche ist seit Jahren rückläufig und Züchtungsprogramme werden ...eingestellt. Weder die bislang noch gekoppelte Eiweißpflanzenbeihilfe noch die Anreize im Rahmen von Agrarumweltprogrammen reichen aus, um diese Entwicklung aufzuhalten oder umzukehren. In der Folge ist die Situation bei diesen Kulturarten von diversen limitierenden Faktoren bestimmt, die durch fehlende Masseflüsse im System noch verstärkt werden. Dem gegenüber sind Ackerbohnen, Körnererbsen und Süßlupinen aber auch zahlreiche Vorteile anzurechnen. Dazu gehören die Selbstversorgung mit Stickstoff und damit ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Einsparung von fossiler Energie sowie die Auflockerung von Fruchtfolgen und damit eine Erhöhung der Biodiversität im Ackerbau. Heimische Körnerleguminosen sind wertvolle Futtermittel und können mit hohen Anteilen in der Nutztierfütterung eingesetzt werden. Eine Betrachtung, Verfolgung und Förderung der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette von Anbau, Handel und Verarbeitung im engen Schulterschluss von Züchtung und Landwirtschaft einschließlich Verbänden, Wissenschaft sowie Politik erscheint als einzig erfolgversprechende Option in der Sache. Festzuhalten gilt dabei, dass zunächst und sehr schnell der weitere Rückgang im Anbau gestoppt und eine nachhaltige Ausdehnung der Ackerbohnen-, Körnererbsen- und Süßlupinenflächen erreicht werden muss.
Integral Economics Lessem, Ronnie; Schieffer, Alexander
2010, 20160523, 2012, 2010-11-01, 2016-05-23, 2016-05-27
eBook
There are real, and many, alternatives to the economic mainstream. The trouble is, of course, that they are hidden from us. In Integral Economics, Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer pave the way ...for a sustainable approach to economics, building on the richness of diverse economic approaches from all over the globe. They introduce the most evolved economic perspectives and bring them into creative dialogue to produce an integral, dynamically balanced approach. They argue that neither individual enterprises nor wider society will be transformed for the better without a new economic perspective. Here, they introduce a comprehensive framework based on the same 'Four Worlds' model that is applied to enterprise and research in their earlier works.
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