ဖော်ပြချက်/အကြောင်းအရာ:
"The process of coercing or persuading farmers
to transition from shifting agriculture to more
sedentary agricultural practices, a process I refer
to as ?de-swiddening,? has been well documented
for many decades. Most often this process takes
place in the political context of a state?s attempt
to make an agricultural system more ?legible,? as
Scott (1998) has aptly described it.
In a more recent context, de-swiddening
has actually been taken under the banner of
environmental protection. In both instances,
institutional bodies which design de-swiddening
policies rarely consider its unintended
consequences. In China, to prevent erosion
in upland regions of the country, the Ministry
of Forestry and the Ministry of Agriculture
established the Sloping Land Conversion
Program (SLCP) in 1998 to pay households not
to cut down timber. At the local level, this has
effectively created an altitudinal boundary
preventing households from cutting any trees
above 2000 meters where swiddening practices
would traditionally take place.
In this paper I plan to show that the policy
itself was part of a historical process of the
de-swiddening of various ethnic groups in
Western China. Such a policy did not develop
in a vacuum of knowledge but is connected
to a Chinese understanding of intensified
agriculture. To demonstrate this I show how
the ethno-agricultural system in an Ersu
Tibetan community, has been undermined by an
adherence to the Chinese state?s interpretation
of ?scientific agriculture? over the past 80 years.
Yet, I also argue that Ersu villagers engage
directly with these changes as their own desire
to obtain economic wealth has increased in
recent decades.
Keywords: swidden, anthropology, Sichuan, Ersu, history..."
ရင်းမြစ်:
Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: (vol34/iss2)
Date of Publication:
2014-12-19
Date of entry:
2015-03-09
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
အကြောင်းအရာ/အမျိုးအစား:
Language:
English
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