We consider a fishery model with two sites: (1) a marine protected area (MPA) where fishing is prohibited and (2) an area where the fish population is harvested. We assume that fish can migrate from MPA to fishing area at a very fast time scale and fish spatial organisation can change from small to large clusters of school at a fast time scale. The growth of the fish population and the catch are assumed to occur at a (...) slow time scale. The complete model is a system of five ordinary differential equations with three time scales. We take advantage of the time scales using aggregation of variables methods to derive a reduced model governing the total fish density and fishing effort at the slow time scale. We analyze this aggregated model and show that under some conditions, there exists an equilibrium corresponding to a sustainable fishery. Our results suggest that in small pelagic fisheries the yield is maximum for a fish population distributed among both small and large clusters of school. (shrink)

Environmental change requires individuals and institutions to facilitate adaptive governance. However, facilitating adaptive governance may be difficult because resource users' perceptions of desirable ways of life vary. These perceptions influence preferences related to environmental governance and may stem from the ways individuals subjectively value their work and their connections to their environment. This paper uses a value-based approach to examine individual and institutional preferences for adaptive governance in Carelmapu, Chile. We show that two groups had different value frames rooted in (...) divergent ontologies which influenced their actions related to adaptive governance, creating conflict. (shrink)

Deliberative and participatory approaches to democracy seek to directly include citizens in decision-making and agenda-setting processes. These methods date back to the very foundations of democracy in Athens, where regular citizens shared the burden of governance and deliberated every major issue. However, thinkers at the time rightly believed that these methods could not function beyond the scale of the city-state, or polis. Representative democracy as an innovation improved on the scalability of collective decision making, but in doing so, sacrificed (...) the extent to which regular citizens could participate in deliberation. Modern technology, including advances in computational power, machine learning algorithms, and data visualization techniques, presents a unique opportunity to scale out deliberative processes. Here we describe Polis, an open source web application capable of collecting and synthesizing feedback from people in a scalable and distributed fashion. Polis has shown itself capable of building shared understanding, disincentivizing counterproductive behavior, and cultivating points of consensus. It has done this in the context of journalistic and academic research, and directly as part of decision-making bodies at local and national levels, directly affecting legislation. These results demonstrate that deliberative processes can be scaled up beyond the constraints of in-person gatherings and small groups. (shrink)

This paper is based on the findings of research into the attitudes towards business ethics of a group of business students in Western Australia. The questionnaire upon which the research was based was originally used by Preble and Reichel (1988) in an investigation they undertook into the attitudes towards business ethics held by two similar groups of United States and Israeli business students. The specific purpose of the current investigation was to administer the same questionnaire with one minor modification to: (...) (1) two groups of Curtin University students; (2) a group of Asian students from the Australian Institute of Business and Technology (AIBT), a privately funded tertiary institution affiliated with Curtin University; and (3) a group of managers from the Australian Institute of Management (AIM), many of whom would not have been university graduates. The questionnaire was preceded by a profile inventory to establish the participant''s age, sex, occupation, course of study, whether or not they were born in Australia, their attitudes towards religion, and whether or not they saw themselves as ethically minded persons. In the original questionnaire, Preble and Reichel had asked the US and Israeli students to indicate on a five point scale, their attitudes towards a selection of business ethics situations by reflecting on thirty statements. In the replicate study, the means and standard deviations of each response of the four groups of Western Australian students were calculated and then compared with the means and standard deviations of the US and Israeli students. In summary, statistically significant differences in the scores of the original study were noted between nineteen out of thirty of the US and Israeli students in their attitudes towards business ethics. However, a closer examination and interpretation showed several of these differences to have little meaning. (p. 946) The purpose of this current study therefore, was to see if the Curtin, AIBT and AIM students'' results were statistically significant (different) to the US and Israeli student scores. The implications of understanding the way a selected group of business students in Western Australia react towards a range of ethical issues ought to have relevance for those involved in developing management education courses, particularly in view of the current economic and business climate. Studies into attitudes towards ethical issues in business have, as yet, received little attention in Australasia. This present study will hopefully lead to more thoughtful discussion of these issues. (shrink)

This work presents a mathematical model describing the interactions between the cross-shore structure of small pelagic fish population an their exploitation by coastal and offshore fisheries. The complete model is a system of seven ODE’s governing three stocks of small pelagic fish population moving and growing between three zones. Two types of fishing fleets are inter-acting with the fish population, industrial boats, constrained to offshore area, and artisanal boats, operating from the shore. Two time scales were considered (...) and we use aggregation methods that allow us to reduce the dimension of the model and to obtain an aggregated model, which is a four dimension one. The analysis of the aggregated model is performed. We discuss the possible equilibriums and their meaning in terms of fishery management. An interesting equilibrium state can be obtained for which we can expect coexistence and a stable equilibrium state between fish stocks and fishing efforts. Some identification parameters are also given in the discussion part of the model. (shrink)

This work presents a mathematical model describing the interactions between the cross-shore structure of small pelagic fish population an their exploitation by coastal and offshore fisheries. The complete model is a system of seven ODE’s governing three stocks of small pelagic fish population moving and growing between three zones. Two types of fishing fleets are inter-acting with the fish population, industrial boats, constrained to offshore area, and artisanal boats, operating from the shore. Two time scales were considered (...) and we use aggregation methods that allow us to reduce the dimension of the model and to obtain an aggregated model, which is a four dimension one. The analysis of the aggregated model is performed. We discuss the possible equilibriums and their meaning in terms of fishery management. An interesting equilibrium state can be obtained for which we can expect coexistence and a stable equilibrium state between fish stocks and fishing efforts. Some identification parameters are also given in the discussion part of the model. (shrink)

Despite the evidence showing the promise of HIV treatment as prevention (TasP) in reducing HIV incidence, a variety of ethical questions surrounding the implementation and “scaling up” of TasP have been articulated by a variety of stakeholders including scientists, community activists and government officials. Given the high profile and potential promise of TasP in combatting the global HIV epidemic, an explicit and transparent research priority-setting process is critical to inform ongoing ethical discussions pertaining to TasP.

What is the relationship between biotechnology employees’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of a controversial transgenic research project and their attitudes of acceptance towards the project? To answer this question, employees (n=466) of a New Zealand company, AgResearch Ltd., were surveyed regarding a project to create transgenic cattle containing a synthetic copy of the human myelin basic protein gene (hMBP). Although diversity existed amongst employees’ attitudes of acceptance, they were generally: in favor of the project, believed that it should be (...) allowed to proceed to completion, and that it is acceptable to use transgenic cattle to produce medicines for humans. These three items were aggregated to form a project acceptance score. Scales were developed to measure respondents’ beliefs about the moral outcomes of the project for identified stakeholders in terms of the four principles of common morality (benefit, non-harm, justice, and autonomy). These data were statistically aggregated into an Ethical Valence Matrix for the project. The respondents’ project Ethical Valence Scores correlated significantly with their project acceptance scores (r=0.64, p<0.001), accounting for 41% of the variance in respondents’ acceptance attitudes. Of the four principles, non-harm had the strongest correlation with attitude to the project (r=0.59), followed by benefit and justice (both r=0.54), then autonomy (r=0.44). These results indicate that beliefs about the moral outcomes of a research project, in terms of the four principles approach, are strongly related to, and may be significant determinants of, attitudes to the research project. This suggests that, for employees of a biotechnology organization, ethical reasoning could be a central mechanism for the evaluation of the acceptability of a project. We propose that the Ethical Valence Matrix may be used as a tool to measure ethical attitudes towards controversial issues, providing a metric for comparison of perceived ethical consequences for multiple stakeholder groups and for the evaluation and comparison of the ethical consequences of competing alternative issues or projects. The tool could be used to measure both public and special interest groups’ ethical attitudes and results used for the development of socially responsible policy or by science organizations as a democratizing decision aid to selection amongst projects competing for scarce research funds. (shrink)

International agencies have contributed significantly to the promotion of capital-intensive fisheries development programs in many Third World nations. Activities of both bilateral and multilateral development assistance agencies are examined and shown to have certain common features, notably production-oriented programs typified by the introduction of powerful new fishing technologies, and the promotion of fishery exports as a means of increasing foreign exchange earnings. The argument is advanced that these programs have been largely detrimental to the best interests of recipient nations (...) because they have ignored both resource limitations and the distributional consequences of such development.Fisheries development programs in the Third World are seen as being shaped by a convergence of institutional and class interests between national and international agencies. The perspective of political economy is used to examine these interests and explain their relation to policy outcomes. Evidence is presented to show that international agencies have contributed to dualistic patterns of industry growth which have skewed development benefits towards a narrow urban elite. Rural small-scale fishers have been increasingly marginalized as a result of their inability to compete over a limited and, in some cases, depleted resource.Fisheries development and resource management need to be seen as complementary aspects of a single process rather than as separate activities. Central to fisheries management is the question of resource allocation between competing users. Suggestions are offered by which international development agencies can play an important role in encouraging resource use patterns which are both biologically sustainable and socially just. (shrink)

The global seafood industry is a vital source of food, income, livelihoods, and culture. Seafood demand is steadily rising due to growth in the global human population, affluence, and per capita consumption. Seafood supply is also growing, despite declining wild fish stocks, with phenomenal advances in aquaculture, that is, the cultivation of aquatic organisms. Aquaculture supplied 42 % of the world’s fish in 2012 and is forecast to eclipse capture fisheries production by 2030. The balance between these two seafood (...) production systems has profound implications for global food security, income distribution, and ecological sustainability. Here, a qualitative analysis of the ethics and sustainability of capture fisheries and aquaculture is presented. An innovative practical ethics approach is introduced which adapts the ethical matrix, a conceptual tool for analyzing the wellbeing, autonomy, and justice of different interest groups, and Rapfish, a rapid appraisal technique used to evaluate the sustainability of fisheries along six performance modalities, including ethics. Using case studies of global large- and small-scale capture fisheries and generalized carnivorous and omnivorous aquaculture systems, I show that human institutions and social actors interact in complex governance processes to influence seafood ethics and sustainability. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and (...) mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

Women in Ndau communities, like in many African communities, are the fulcrum of household economies that ensure improved livelihoods of their communities. Thus, they are an indispensable factor in the sustainable development equation of their communities. It is sadly true that women do not own land in most African societies. Consequently, most studies analyse the realities of gender inequality in the distribution of resources that include land. However, very few studies recognise, appreciate and amplify the role of women in reproducing (...) and transforming the society through their participation in agricultural activities even on pieces of land that they do not call their own. In this article we examined the power and influence that women derive from their agricultural activities, especially their association with the cultivation of crops that have often been labelled as feminine. We sought to recognise the agency of women not only in transforming livelihoods, but also gender inequalities in terms of control and influence on the use, valorisation and sale of agricultural produce. We examined the phenomenon of the crops associated with female gender from a new perspective that compels a rereading of the narratives that often dwarf women’s agricultural activities and crops associated with them. This article focussed on the production of uninga [sesame] amongst the Ndau of Musikavanthu and Chipinge South Constituencies covering areas that include Rimbi, Manzvire, Mwanyisa, Rimai, Rukangare and Garahwa in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The article’s overall theoretical framework is the African women theology that emphasises on African women as agents, not subordinated and passive subjects of history. The study is qualitative, and it used interviews, focus group discussions and observations as instruments for gathering data.Contribution: The study amplified the transformative role of women in society through their participation in agricultural activities. The findings acknowledged the complementarity of women and men in uninga production in a religio-cultural setting that has often shown biases towards patriarchy. The results are in sync with the reconstructive and liberative motif of the African women theology, which envisage a transformed African society that celebrates gender inclusivity through facilitation of dialogue between the two genders. (shrink)

I identify three lessons from Kenneth Craik’s landmark book “The Nature of Explanation” for contemporary debates surrounding the existence, extent, and nature of mental representation: first, an account of mental representations as neural structures that function analogously to public models; second, an appreciation of prediction as the central component of intelligence in demand of such models; and third, a metaphor for understanding the brain as an engineer, not a scientist. I then relate these insights to discussions surrounding the representational status (...) of predictive processing – which, I argue, provides a contemporary vindication of Craik’s extremely prescient “hypothesis on the nature of thought.”. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the role of new urban agriculture models to increase local food production capacity in cities of the Global North. Urban rooftop greenhouses and hydroponics are examples of such models receiving increasing attention as a technological approach to year-round local food production in cities. Yet, little research has addressed the unintended consequences of new modes of urban farming and food distribution, such as increased competition with existing peri-urban and rural farmers. We examine how small-scale (...) farmers perceive and have responded to a recently established rooftop greenhouse and online marketplace enterprise in Montréal, Canada. Drawing on interviews with key informants and small-scale farmers, we find that peri-urban and rural producers have been affected in three key ways that represent tensions, adaptations, and synergies arising from this new urban agriculture and food distribution enterprise. First, many farmers are concerned about increased competition and value conflation with the ideals of community supported agriculture and organic farming. Second, some farmers have adapted by developing novel marketing strategies and working with local bridge organizations to collectively market their produce to urban consumers. Third, a few farmers have decided to wholesale their produce to this new enterprise, allowing them to specialize production and avoid marketing their produce directly to urban consumers. Our study suggests that the emergence of a new form of alternative food network in Montréal has created both positive and negative disruptions for existing small-scale producers. Advocates for the expansion of new urban food production and distribution models should therefore give greater consideration to the effects on other actors in the local food system. (shrink)

This paper explores small-scale farmers’ cultural beliefs about the causes of drought events and the reasoning behind their beliefs. Cultural beliefs vary across countries, regions, communities, and social groups; this paper takes the case of farmers from Gaza Province in southern Mozambique as its focus. Findings show that the farmers have a limited knowledge and understanding of the scientific explanation about drought. Thus, farmers’ beliefs about the causes of drought are strongly based on the indigenous and Christian philosophies (...) that attribute drought to supernatural forces, such as ancestors or God, and as a punishment for wrongdoings. Farmers have a distinct and under-explored repertoire of possible wrongdoings to justify the punishments driven by those cultural beliefs. Some of their reasoning is static, while some is mutable, and is based on their observation and perception of the negative, unexpected, or harmful recent or current events which happen in their surrounding environment, and which they believe could be avoided or prevented. Farmers’ beliefs about drought causes, and their underlying reasoning for those beliefs, are what will primarily influence their perception of their own capacity to adapt, their motivation to respond, and their behavioral responses. Yet, their social groups exert a great influence on their choices of response. The paper concludes that more context-specific investigations into the socio-psychological nature of farmers’ beliefs are required prior to interventions in order to better help farmers to respond to future drought risks. (shrink)

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments?Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of (...) human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced.The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. (shrink)

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of (...) small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life. Key Words: altruism; cooperation; cross-cultural research; experimental economics; game theory; ultimatum game; public goods game; self-interest. (shrink)

_In this paper, we support the adoption of an empirical approach in development ethics research and show that the theoretical insights and methodological guidelines in Sen’s capability approach can offer helpful guidance to development ethicists on designing and execution of such research. To this end, we show how specific insights in the CA guide one to identify and engage with relevant stakeholders in extensive dialogues about the ethical issues underlying their development practices and in gathering empirical data for further ethical (...) reflections. Drawing on an empirical development ethics research project we conducted in the fisheries sector of Ukerewe District in Tanzania, we illustrate how the CA supported us in identifying 310 representatives of various categories of small-scale fishers and stakeholders, and in designing and executing empirical development ethics research in the form of progressive stages of dialogues in stakeholder groups. The participants in these stakeholder groups reflected on and assessed their individual and collective values, capacities, roles and interests in the fisheries sector. In turn, we gathered empirical data on the nature and causes of the poverty of small-scale fishers and ways to overcome it, the __moral roots of the prevalence of institutional and professional apathy, and stakeholders’ motivations and concrete actions to support the redressing of the challenges facing small-scale fishers. Later, we used these empirical data to theorise about moving small-scale fishers from poverty to prosperity, and about the development ethic best suited to guide future initiatives in combatting poverty and generating wealth through the fisheries sector in Ukerewe District._ _Keywords: _Empirical Ethics, Development Ethics, Capability Approach, Small-scale Fisheries, Poverty, Ukerewe District, Tanzania. (shrink)

Some farmers in the Central Finger Lakes Region of New York balance their production between principles of peasant farming and capitalist farming. They struggle to extend their sphere of autonomy and subsistence production, while extended commodity production is often a response to external forces of the state and capital. This struggle, together with a quantitative increase of small farms, can be described as an instance of repeasantization. Based on inductive, empirical qualitative social research, this case study describes the economy (...) and social organization of six farms in the area under investigation and explores the applicability of the rich theory of peasant farming to agriculture in this community. Besides selling commodities to pay for many farming inputs and consumer goods, the farms produce for their subsistence and that of their community. They exchange products and services with other farms, they build networks of mutual provisioning, support, and mentorship, and try to take good care of the land. This paper shows that subsistence production and peasant culture are not restricted to the past or the Global South, but also exist as pockets of peasantness on six New York farms. The perspective applied in this paper suggests that principles of peasant farming may shape farming on other US farms, too, if we accept that these principles intersect with constrains of the larger capitalist market society in which they are embedded. (shrink)

Interactions with global markets offer development opportunities for Indigenous communities. They also place pressure on the natural resources that communities depend upon for their livelihood and, in many cases, their political and cultural autonomy. These markets often interact with family-based enterprises embedded within commons, with important implications for the social relationships and shared territorial resources that characterise such regimes. In this paper, we analyse the relationships that exist between commons, global markets, and small-scale family enterprises, using the case (...) of mezcal production—an alcoholic beverage made from agave—in an Indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico. Most mezcal production is organized at the family level; yet the raw materials and inputs necessary for making mezcal are held communally and regulated by locally-crafted institutions. Empirical data show that as family enterprises engage with an emergent global market for mezcal, the commons become essential for not only protecting territorial resources but also maintaining a degree of autonomy from powerful global markets and value chains. However, this requires substantial investment in monitoring and enforcement, and for community members to value sustainable commons management over short-term economic self-interest. To seek autonomy while participating in global markets, producer families also join together to develop cooperative strategies to access markets on better terms. (shrink)

The nature of temporal experience is typically explained in one of a small number of ways, most are versions of either retentionalism or extensionalism. After describing these, I make a distinction between two kinds of temporal character that could structure temporal experience: A-ish contents are those that present events as structured in past/present/future terms, and B-ish contents are those that present events as structured in earlier-than/later-than/simultaneous-with relations. There are a few exceptions, but most of the literature ignores this distinction, (...) and silently assumes temporal experience is A-ish. I then argue that temporal character is not scale invariant, but rather that temporal experience is A-ish at larger scales, and B-ish at smaller scales. I then point out that this scale non-invariance opens the possibility of hybrid views. I clarify my own view as a hybrid view, according to which temporal experience is B-ish at small scales – and at this scale my trajectory estimation model applies – but A-ish at larger scales, and at the larger scale my TEM does not apply. I then motivate this hybrid position by first defending it against arguments that have tried to show that the TEM is untenable. Since the hybrid view has TEM as its small-scale component, it must address this objection. I then put pressure on the main alternative account, extentionalism, by showing that its proponents have not adequately dealt with the problem of temporal illusions. The result is a new theory motivated by i) explaining its virtues, ii) showing that objections to it can be met, and iii) showing that objections to its main competitors have not been met. (shrink)

Although inclusion in formal value chains extends the prospect of improving the livelihoods of rural small-scale producers, such a step is often contingent on compliance with internationally-promoted food safety standards. Limited research has addressed the challenges this represents for small rural producers who, grounded in culturally-embedded food safety conceptions, face difficulties in complying. We address this gap here through a multiple case study involving four public school feeding programs that source meals from local rural providers in the (...) Bolivian Altiplan. Institutional logics theory is used to describe public food safety regulations and to compare them to food safety conceptions in the local indigenous Aymara rural setting. We identify a value-based conflict that leads to non-compliance of formal food safety rules that jeopardizes the participation of small farmers in the market. These include: partial adoption of formal rules; selective adoption of convenient rules; and ceremonial adoption to avoid compliance. Decoupling strategies allow local actors to largely disregard the formal food safety regulations while accommodating traditional cultural practices and continuing to access the market. However, these practices put the long-term sustainability of the farmers’ participation in potentially favorable opportunities at risk. (shrink)

An individual can interact with the same set of people over many different scales simultaneously. Four people might interact as a group of four and, at the same time, in pairs and triads. What is the relationship between different parallel interaction scales, and how might those scales themselves interact? We devised a four-player experimental game, the Modular Stag Hunt, in which participants chose not just whether to coordinate, but with whom, and at what scale. Our results reveal coordination behavior (...) with such a strong preference for dyads that undermining pairwise coordination actually improves group-scale outcomes. We present these findings as experimental evidence for competition, as opposed to complementarity, between different possible scales of multi-player coordination. This result undermines a basic premise of approaches, like those of network science, that fail to model the interacting effects of dyadic, triadic, and group-scale structures on group outcomes. (shrink)

Recent research on agricultural innovation has outlined social networks’ role in diffusing agricultural knowledge; however, so far, it has broadly neglected the socio-spatial dimensions of innovation processes. Against this backdrop, we apply a spatially explicit translocal network perspective in order to investigate the role of migration-related translocal networks for adaptive change in a small-scale farming community in Northeast Thailand. By means of formal social network analysis we map the socio-spatial patterns of advice sharing regarding changes in sugarcane and (...) rice farming over a period of five years. We find that, in translocally connected and mobile rural communities, a substantial share of advice originates from translocal levels. Translocal advice is dominantly provided through weak and formal ties with extension agencies and shared by few highly central larger-scale farmers within sparse local networks. This draws the picture of top-down translocal innovation flows driven by extension agencies and brokered through elite farmers. A closer look on institutional context and key actors of particular changes, however, suggests the potential of migration-related translocal networks and migration experience in fostering bottom-up innovations. Migration-related innovations transfers can promote adaptive capacity also among less favorably connected actors, especially if changes are geared towards limited household resources and are compatible with social practices of small-scale farming. We conclude that a translocal network perspective is instructive for research and extension interested in leveraging more inclusive agricultural innovation. (shrink)

In both radical and mainstream environmental discourses, anthropocentrism (human centredness) is inextricably linked to modern industrial society's drive to control and dominate nature and the generation of our current environmental crisis. Such environmental discourses frequently argue for a retreat from anthropocentrism and the establishment of a harmonious relationship with nature, often invoking the supposed ecological harmony of indigenous peoples and/or other small-scale societies. In particular, the beliefs and values of these societies vis-à-vis their natural environment are taken to (...) be instrumental in their low environmental impact. Here it is argued that, aside from the empirically problematic nature of such claims, the beliefs of small-scale societies have been seen through an ethnocentric discursive framework which bifurcates belief systems into anthropocentric and ecocentric. Taking a meta-theoretical approach informed by Strong Structuration Theory, it is argued that the beliefs of small-scale societies about their relationship with nature should be recognised as lying on a continuum of anthropocentrism and understood in the context of their attempts to establish ‘environmental ontological security’ in the face of natural uncertainty. (shrink)

This article tries to seek a solution to the problem of NPA in the small scale industries under the present circumstances of banking and insurance working together under the same roof. What is stressed in this article is the pressing need of the small-scale entrepreneur for becoming aware and educated in modern business management holding a professional attitude toward rational decision-making and banks have to facilitate that process as a part of the credit policy sold by (...) them. (shrink)

How do firms make sense of creating shared value projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of (...) improved economic competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame, economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from growth first to humanizing the business. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, Volume 33, Issue 1, Page 38-62, Spring 2022.

Food insecurity and the loss of soil nutrients and productive capacity in Africa are serious problems in light of the rapidly growing African population. In semi-arid central Tanzania currently practiced traditional crop production systems are no longer adaptive. Organic crop production methods alone, while having the capacity to enable food security, are not feasible for these small-scale farmers because of the extra land, skill, resources, and 5–7 years needed to benefit from them—particularly for maize. Maize, grown by 94 (...) % of farmers, has substantial nitrogen needs. The most practical ways of satisfying maize nutrient needs is via integrated soil fertility management, a combination of organic and Green Revolution methods. Maize has been shown in research to outyield the indigenous crops millet and sorghum in nearly all situations including drought. Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Africa has two main categories—organic and herbicide-mediated. The organic version of CA, despite years of promotion, has had a low rate of adoption. Herbicide-mediated zero tillage CA via backpack sprayer can substantially increase conventional maize yields while at the same time nearly eliminating erosion and increasing rainwater capture up to fivefold. Glyphosate herbicide is a non-proprietary product produced in Africa and approved for small farm use. The systemic nature of glyphosate allows the killing of perennial grasses that would otherwise need deep plowing to kill. The rooted weed residues protect the soil from erosion. The risks of glyphosate use are substantially outweighed by the benefits of increased food security and crop system sustainability. (shrink)

Recent investigations have uncovered large, consistent deviations from the predictions of the textbook representation of Homo economicus (Roth et al, 1992, Fehr and Gächter, 2000, Camerer 2001). One problem appears to lie in economists’ canonical assumption that individuals are entirely self-interested: in addition to their own material payoffs, many experimental subjects appear to care about fairness and reciprocity, are willing to change the distribution of material outcomes at personal cost, and reward those who act in a cooperative manner while punishing (...) those who do not even when these actions are costly to the individual. These deviations from what we will term the canonical model have important consequences for a wide range of economic phenomena, including the optimal design of institutions and contracts, the allocation of property rights, the conditions for successful collective action, the analysis of incomplete contracts, and the persistence of noncompetitive wage premia. Fundamental questions remain unanswered. Are the deviations from the canonical model evidence of universal patterns of behavior, or do the individual’s economic and social environments shape behavior? If the latter, which economic and social conditions are involved? Is reciprocal behavior better explained statistically by individuals’ attributes such as their sex, age, or relative wealth, or by the attributes of the group to which the individuals belong? Are there cultures that approximate the canonical account of self-regarding behavior? Existing research cannot answer such questions because virtually all subjects have been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the range of all social and cultural environments. To address the above questions, we and our collaborators undertook a large cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public good, and dictator games.. (shrink)

The article Do translocal networks matter for agricultural innovation? A case study on advice sharing in small scale farming communities in Northeast Thailand, written by Till Rockenbauch, Patrick Sakdapolrak and Harald Sterly, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 10 April 2019 without open access.

Diverse agricultural technologies are promoted to increase yields and incomes, save time, improve food and nutritional security, and even empower women. Yet a gender gap in technology adoption remains for many agricultural technologies, even for those that are promoted for women. This paper complements the literature on gender and technology adoption, which largely focuses on reasons for low rates of female technology adoption, by shifting attention to what happens within a household after it adopts a technology. Understanding the expected benefits (...) and costs of adoption, from the perspective of women users in households with adult males, can help explain observed technology adoption rates and why technology adoption is often not sustained in the longer term. Drawing on qualitative data from Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania, this paper develops a framework for examining the intrahousehold distribution of benefits from technology adoption, focusing on small-scale irrigation technologies. The framework contributes to the conceptual and empirical exploration of joint control over technology by men and women in the same household. Efforts to promote technology adoption for agricultural development and women’s empowerment would benefit from an understanding of intrahousehold control over technology to avoid interpreting technology adoption as an end in and of itself. (shrink)

This paper presents research conducted during two coffee farming seasons in Costa Rica. The study examined coffee farmers’ weed management practices and is presented in the form of a case study of small-scale farmers’ use of labor and herbicides in weed management practices. Over 200 structured interviews were conducted with coffee farmers concerning their use of hired labor and family labor, weed management activities, support services, and expectations about the future of their coffee production. ANOVA and regression analyses (...) describe the relationships between farm size, labor, and herbicide use, and three farm types (i.e., conventional, semi-conventional, and organic). Based on findings regarding the amount of labor used to manually control weeds on different types of farms (large farms, small conventional, semi-conventional, and organic farms) I am able to challenge small conventional farmers’ perceived need for herbicide use. Semi-structured interviews of coffee farmers and extension workers further revealed a dominant role played by agro-chemical companies in assisting farmers with production problems, and documented a high transaction cost for information provided from elsewhere. Chemical companies hire extension workers to visit farmers at their farms, free of charge, to offer recommendations on how to treat different pest problems, while government and cooperative extension agents charge for the service. There is a need to increase the amount of resources available to the National Coffee Institute to fund one-on-one farmer support services in order to balance the influence of agro-chemical company representatives and allow farmers to make better decisions regarding weed management. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the positioning of animals other than human in the texts and practices of two versions of small-scale food "self-sufficiency" in Britain. The paper discusses the writings of Cobbett and Seymour on self-sufficiency, suggesting that livestock animals are central, in a number of ways, to the constitution of these modes of self-sufficiency. First, animals are situated in both the texts and in the practicing of self-sufficiency regarded as essential parts of the economies and ecologies of (...) small-scale food production. Second, animals' parts in these authors' criticisms of wider social, economic and political conditions supplement their role in small-scale domestic food supply. Animals become associated with a morality of human behavior and lifestyle and are part of the broader social critiques that the writing and practicing of these modes of self-sufficiency imply. These historically and geographically specific versions of self-sufficiency are valuable in defining and enacting possible alternative modes of human-animal relation in the context of food production. (shrink)

Though full of promise, Big Data research success is often contingent on access to the newest, most advanced, and often expensive hardware systems and the expertise needed to build and implement such systems. As a result, the accessibility of the growing number of Big Data-capable technology solutions has often been the preserve of business analytics. Pay as you store/process services like Amazon Web Services have opened up possibilities for smaller scale Big Data projects. There is high demand for this (...) type of research in the digital humanities and digital sociology, for example. However, scholars are increasingly finding themselves at a disadvantage as available data sets of interest continue to grow in size and complexity. Without a large amount of funding or the ability to form interdisciplinary partnerships, only a select few find themselves in the position to successfully engage Big Data. This article identifies several notable and popular Big Data technologies typically implemented using large and extremely powerful cloud-based systems and investigates the feasibility and utility of development of Big Data analytics systems implemented using low-cost commodity hardware in basic and easily maintainable configurations for use within academic social research. Through our investigation and experimental case study, we found that not only are solutions like Cloudera’s Hadoop feasible, but that they can also enable robust, deep, and fruitful research outcomes in a variety of use-case scenarios across the disciplines. (shrink)

The research described in this paper was designed to identify the factors that influence the importance small-scale farmers place on different marketing channels of short food supply chains. The focus concerns two entirely different types of market that are present in the bigger cities in Hungary: ‘conventional’ markets where there are no restrictions on locality but the farmer-market relationship is based on binding contracts, and newly-emergent farmers’ markets at which only local growers can sell ad hoc, using their (...) own portable facilities. Results are based on a survey that was conducted in 2013 among 156 Hungarian market oriented farmer-vendors at different types of market and confirm that different markets are visited by different types of farmers. Farmers who favour conventional markets are typically less educated, operate on smaller scales and are more committed to their chosen markets via long-term contracts. The preference for farmers’ markets is stronger with farmers who are more open to cooperation, have specific investment plans for developing their farms and among those who are specifically looking to directly interact with their customers to avoid middlemen. The relevance of the findings is highlighted by the ongoing Short Food Supply Chain Thematic Sub-programme in the present European Union financing period; farmers’ profiles in any given marketing channel must be understood if short food supply chains are to be effectively promoted. Different types of small-scale farmers will benefit from different supporting frameworks, interventions, and initiatives. (shrink)

Women’s empowerment is often an important goal of development interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana and the pathways through which small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers contributes to women’s empowerment. Using qualitative data collected with 144 farmers and traders through 28 individual interviews and 16 focus group discussions, this paper innovates a framework to integrate the linkages between small-scale irrigation and three dimensions of women’s (...) empowerment: resources, agency, and achievements. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. This shows that many women face serious constraints to participating in and benefitting from small-scale irrigation, including difficulties accessing land and water and gender norms that limit women’s ability to control farm assets. Despite these constraints, many women do benefit from participating in irrigated farming activities leading to an increase in their agency and well-being achievements. For some women, these benefits are indirect—these women allocate their time to more preferred activities when the household gains access to modern irrigation technology. The result is a new approach to understanding women’s empowerment in relation to irrigation technology. (shrink)

Helping behavior is likely to have evolved to increase summary chances for survival of an individual and their group. Nevertheless, populations differ significantly in their eagerness to help, and still little is known about populational and inter-individual determinants of these differences. Previous studies indicated that economic and physiological factors might influence helping behavior. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of approach to resource management of a society (immediate-return economy vs. delayed-return economy), prenatal androgenization (based on (...) second-to-fourth digit ratio), and physical strength (based on hand grip strength) on helping behavior towards others. Helping was assessed in terms of both general eagerness to help and differential helping towards: (1) kin, (2) other group members indiscriminately, (3) friends, and (4) those from whom help was obtained in the past. Based on data collected in two small-scale societies, we found that people in the egalitarian immediate-return society (the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania) engaged in helping behavior significantly more often than representatives of a more stratified delayed-return economy (Yali horticulturalists of Papua). Additionally, our results revealed that physical strength was a significant predictor of helping behavior in women but not in men. We discuss our findings in the light of the adaptive value of helping behavior. (shrink)

Structural interventions to historic stone masonry buildings require that both structural and heritage values be considered simultaneously. The absence of one of these value systems in implementation can be regarded as an unethical professional action. The research objective of this article is to prepare a guideline for ensuring ethical structural interventions to small-scale stone historic masonry buildings in the conservation areas of Northern Cyprus. The methodology covers an analysis of internationally accepted conservation documents and national laws related to (...) the conservation of historic buildings, an analysis of building codes, especially Turkish building codes, which have been used in Northern Cyprus, and an analysis of the structural interventions introduced to a significant historic building in a semi-intact state in the walled city of Famagusta. This guideline covers issues related to whether buildings are intact or ruined, the presence of earthquake risk, the types of structural decisions in an architectural conservation project, and the values to consider during the decision making phase. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo aborda uno de los modos de localización de entidades en situaciones espaciales estáticas: la deíxis espacial. Nuestro objetivo principal es describir la estructura y uso del sistema demostrativo en espacio de escala menor en la lengua hablada por los gitanos de Chile: el rromané jorajané. Para la obtención de los datos se utilizó The 1999 Demonstrative Questionnaire: ‘THIS’ and ‘THAT’ in comparative perspective. Los resultados del análisis destacan que los demostrativos espaciales del rromané jorajané constituyen un grupo (...) altamente simétrico, que combina un componente semántico deíctico, junto con contenidos gramaticales. Se trata de un sistema demostrativo binario en cuanto a la categoría de distancia respecto del centro deíctico. Se concluye también que la selección del demostrativo apropiado obedece al siguiente patrón: el demostrativo proximal tiene su área focal en la zona próxima al hablante, mientras que el demostrativo distal incluye en su campo de aplicación tanto la zona próxima al oyente como la zona distante al hablante.: This paper addresses one way of locating entities in static spatial situations: the spatial deixis. Our main purpose is to describe the structure and use of the demonstrative system in small-scale space in the language spoken by Gypsies in Chile: the rromané jorajané. Data collection was performed with “The 1999 Demonstrative Questionnaire: ‘THIS’ and ‘THAT’ in comparative perspective”. The analysis results highlight that spatial demonstratives in rromané jorajané are a highly symmetrical group combining a deictic semantic component with grammatical contents. It is a binary demonstrative system in terms of the category of distance from the deictic center. Additionally, it is concluded that choice of the suitable demonstrative proceeds according to the following pattern: the proximal demonstrative has its focal area in the speaker’s zone of proximity, while the distal demonstrative includes both the addressee’s zone of proximity and the speaker’s distal zone within its application field. (shrink)

. Practitioner as researcher: Some techniques for analysing semi‐structured data in small‐scale research. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 251-261.