This article provides ethnographic insights into the Southeast Asian peasantry’s engagements with agrarian change. It speaks both to Southeast Asian studies’ longstanding interest in the dynamics of ...socio‐economic transformation, and to anthropology’s burgeoning focus on how future‐oriented aspirations are produced, negotiated and enacted under specific socio‐political, material and historical conditions. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnic Khmu hamlet in northern Laos, I show upland peasants on the cusp of agrarian transition engaging aspirational migration through ‘controlled experiments’: pioneering pursuits of betterment, crucially buttressed by multiple, locally specific factors. These factors include a still largely intact peasant natural economy, historically endowed intimacy with the modernising state and, not least, a precariously persistent ‘intergenerational contract’ in which youthful mobility and parental stability remain ambiguously yet irreducibly intertwined. Notably, whereas much research on Laos has focused on communities (adversely) impacted by transition, this article discusses a community that is both politically connected and, concomitantly, still relatively unscathed by the (transitory) detriments of commodification, enclosure and dispossession. In sum, this article confirms that while striving for a better future is probably a basic aspect of the human condition, definitions and pursuits of such futures are contextually contingent, not least along generational lines.
Expériences contrôlées: migration intergénérationnelle dans les hauts plateaux du Laos – notes sur les aspirations et le changement agraire
Cet article donne un aperçu ethnographique de l’engagement de la paysannerie d’Asie du Sud‐Est dans le changement agraire. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’intérêt de longue date des études sur l’Asie du Sud‐Est pour la dynamique de la transformation socioéconomique et de l’intérêt croissant de l’anthropologie pour la manière dont les aspirations orientées vers l’avenir sont produites, négociées et mises en oeuvre dans des conditions sociopolitiques, matérielles et historiques spécifiques. S’appuyant sur douze mois de travail sur le terrain dans un hameau de l’ethnie Khmu au nord du Laos, l’essai montre que les paysans des hautes terres, à l’aube de la transition agraire, s’engagent dans une migration aspirationnelle par le biais « d’expériences contrôlées » : des recherches pionnières d’amélioration, façonnées de manière cruciale par de multiples facteurs locaux spécifiques. Ces facteurs comprennent une économie naturelle paysanne encore largement intacte, une intimité historique avec l’État en cours de modernisation et, surtout, un « contrat intergénérationnel » persistant et précaire. Dans ce cadre, la mobilité des jeunes et la stabilité parentale restent ambiguës mais irréductiblement liées. Notamment, alors que de nombreuses études sur le Laos se concentrent sur les communautés défavorablement marginalisées par la transition, je révèle une situation contraire – une communauté qui est à la fois politiquement liée et, simultanément, encore relativement indemne des prejudices (transitoires) de la marchandisation, de l’enfermement et de la dépossession. En bref, l’article confirme que si la recherche d’un meilleur avenir est cruciale pour la condition humaine, les définitions et la poursuite d’un tel avenir dépendent du contexte, notamment des générations.
The transfer of farmland is an important area of rural development research; however, the impact of rural social networks has been neglected in studies. The aim of this study is to explore the ...effects, mechanisms, and heterogeneity of neighbors’ behavior on the process of land renting by farmers. Based on the data of the China Family Panel Studies in 2018, this research empirically analyzes the impact of community-level, local social interactions on the land rental behavior of farmers and its mechanisms using a spatial probit model. The results of this study indicate that neighbors’ land rental behavior positively and significantly affects that of other farmers in the same village. In addition, neighbors’ land rental encourages other farmers in the same village to follow suit through an increase in the perceived importance of the Internet among the farmers. In addition, there is heterogeneity in neighborhood influence. Notably, the impact of social networks on the renting out of the land by farmers, as evidenced in this study, is a key factor in accelerating the circulation of rural land and promoting rural development, thus contributing to the process of rural revitalization and its recording in the literature.
The Peasant Household are the most important actors in rural areas, their living consumption pattern has significant impact on the environment, however, the difference of farmer's living consumption ...pattern and other factors led to the difference of the environmental impact in space. In order to alleviate the impact of household's living consumption on environment, it is necessary to research the spatial difference of the environmental impact of the household' s living consumption. Based on the survey data in Zhangye, this paper analyzes the impact of household consumption on the environment and the reasons for spatial differences. Among them the impact the peasant household's living consumption on the environment in Ganzhou is the biggest difference, Theil index is 0.078; Increasing household living consumption, family size and per capital income will exacerbate the environmental impact, however, improving the labor's education level, social capital and non-agricultural level will mitigate the environmental impact.
Grassland ecosystems play an important role in human society,providing a large number of livestock products and plant resources for economic development,and also the basic production and living ...materials to farmers and herdsmen.Moreover,grassland ecosystems provide many ecosystem service functions. Accordingly,grassland ecosystems have both economic and ecological value,and are recognized as strategic economic,social,and ecological resources. However,grassland ecosystems have been degraded as a consequence of climate change and human activities. Located in the existing farming-pastoral transitional zone,Yanchi County implemented a grazing prohibition policy on November 1,2002 to deal with grassland ecosystem destruction. Through 10 years of efforts,the grazing prohibition policy has achieved a certain effect. Peasant households are the main participants in grazing prohibition policy; their adaptive behavior affects not only living standards but also the performance of the policy and the sustainable development of the social economy. The adaptive strategies of peasant households include all types of adaptive change,particularly the change of livelihood to deal with the interventions. We obtained data from field investigations,and compared the change in household livelihood and the grazing and cultivation situation at the beginning of the grazing prohibition policy and 10 years after its implementation. The peasant household capital was designed as an independent variable,and Logistic regression models was used to identify the factors that affected the changes in peasant households' adaptive strategies,including the change in peasant households' livelihood diversity,scale of grazing,and grazing methods. The results showed the following.( 1) The current household adaptive strategies include a preliminary non-agriculture tendency of their livelihood,an increase in livelihood diversity,and a decrease in the farming scale. The adjustment of peasant household production structure includes an increase in food crop planting area,a decrease in the economic crop planting area,and an increase in grazing cost.( 2) Peasant household livelihood capital level has important effects on their adaptive strategies: the main factors that influence farmers' livelihood diversity are human capital,financial capital,and social capital; The factors influencing the change in farming scale mainly include natural capital,physical capital,financial capital,and social capital,and the factors affecting breeding method selection are physical capital and financial capital.
As participants and beneficiaries in the construction of beautiful rural countryside, peasant households could make important effects on the performance of the new countryside construction policy ...greatly, especially through their responses toward policy implementation. As a result, their individual behavioral responses have become a much-studied research topic in international rural studies. Starting from the concept of âput people firstâ and adopting the peasant household symbiotic system, this study analyzed the elements, mechanisms, and operations of peasant household symbiotic systems in the process of rural settlement restructuring by taking Fengsi village in Chongqing, China as an example. The results inherited a lineal, collateral, and terrain relationship and realized a symbiotic relationship; that is, resources, benefits, and responsibility for environmental construction were shared. Accordingly, the spatial pattern developed into âthe axis-line-distribution along the roadâ, which included one living-oriented functional group and three production-oriented functional groups. The one living-oriented functional group was located at the junction of roads and rivers in the southeast of the village with three different types of peasant household, including the non-agricultural diversification type, the non-agricultural specialization type, and the part-time development type of peasant households. The three production-oriented functional groups situated along country roads in the middle and east of the village had three different types of peasant household, including the agricultural diversification type, the agricultural specialization type, and the part-time development type. In such a way, this study provided theoretical support and methodological guidance for the construction of rural human settlements that are âsuitable for living in, convenient for employment, and pleasant to travel aroundâ in China in the future.
The efficiency of small gardening is considered in this paper. The importance of peasant households for the Ukrainian village is justified. The necessity measures facilitating the efficiency of ...family agricultural production was proved. The international practices of the functioning of peasant households were analyzed. The recommendations such as the assessment of small agricultural development were proposed. The marketability level, its share in the revenue is the important criteria. The necessity of the peasant households unions on cooperatives was proved. The servicing cooperative model was proposed. Its mission is a provision of sale of production. Amendments in the efficiency of the economic activity, in budget of the farming families were determined. The recommendations proposed enables to improve the peasants' well-being level, to influence positively on the vegetables market. Transition of peasant households to the entrepreneurial basis develop of servicing cooperation in small agricultural is presented as well.
The authors assess the contemporary Russian historiography on serfs’ economic conditions before the abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire. They concentrate on studies published in the Soviet ...Union and Russia from the mid-twentieth through the early twenty-first centuries. The authors conclude that, after a ten year lull in scholarship, there has been a recent revival of interest in the serf village during the first half of the nineteenth century, although it has not reached the scale characteristic of Soviet historiography in the 1950s through 1970s.
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