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Cover -- Title page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- 1 Navigating Uncertainty -- Introduction -- Centring uncertainty -- A risk society? -- Locating uncertainties -- Risk, uncertainty and ignorance: what do we mean? -- Diverse perspectives -- What about politics? -- Themes and questions -- 2 Finance: Real Markets as Complex Systems -- A complex, opaque and poorly regulated financial system -- Models and mayhem -- Regulatory manoeuvres -- Political economies -- Real markets in pastoral areas -- The human touch -- Conclusion -- 3 Technology: What Is Safe and for Whom? -- Introduction -- Risk assessment and management: attempts at control -- What about uncertainty? -- Biotechnology battles -- Regulatory contexts -- Science and the law -- Regulation, precaution and ethics -- Science, technology and society -- Conclusion -- 4 Critical Infrastructures: How to Keep the Lights On and the Animals Alive -- Introduction -- Normal accidents -- Electricity systems: keeping the lights on in California -- Pastoral systems: responding to drought and disease -- Beyond the politics of design and control -- Conclusion -- 5 Pandemics: Building Responses from Below -- Epidemiological certainties? -- Complexity, uncertainty and grounded experiences -- Zimbabwe: where there are no models -- Unsung heroes -- The politics of pandemics -- Rethinking pandemic preparedness -- 6 Disasters: Why Prediction and Planning Are Not Enough -- Introduction -- From Sendai to southern Ethiopia -- Techno-managerial solutions -- Preparing for the worst -- Insuring against disaster -- The politics of disasters -- Conclusion -- 7 Climate Change: Multiple Knowledges, Diverse Actions -- Introduction -- Promises of prediction -- The social and political lives of climate models -- Adapting to climate change -- Local responses.

"Over the past decade, substantial resources have been spent on tackling avian influenza and building a global capacity for a pandemic response. The catastrophic costs of the 1918 influenza pandemic are well documented, and the swine flu pandemic of 2009-10 has raised the alarm yet again. Across the world, surveillance systems have been upgraded, stockpiles of antiviral drugs and influenza vaccines have been created, veterinary and public health systems have been improved and poultry production and marketing has been dramatically restructured. What are the lessons from this experience? And what does this suggest for the future? This book explores how virus genetics, ecology and epidemiology intersect with economic, political and policy processes in a variety of places - from Bangkok to Washington, to Jakarta, Cairo, Rome and London. It focuses on the interaction of the international and national responses - and in particular the experiences of Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. It asks how effective is the disease surveillance and response system - can it respond to a new pandemic threat? The comparative analysis reveals the challenges and limitations of a technocratic, centralised response, and the need to take seriously local contexts. Drawing from these experiences, the book concludes with a discussion of future prospects and challenges, examining in particular what a 'One World, One Health' approach - where approaches to animal, human and ecosystem health are integrated - would look like in practice."--Publisher's description.

For many years, studies of peasants and pastoralists have run in parallel, creating mutual blind-spots. This article argues that, despite contrasting research traditions and conceptual framings, there are many commonalities. The classic problematics of agrarian studies – around production, accumulation and politics – apply as much to pastoralists as they do to peasants. Processes of social differentiation and class formation, the role of wage labour and questions around mobilisation and politics are consistently relevant. However, a reflection on a large literature on pastoralism across nine world regions reveals that there are nevertheless some important contrasts with classic representations of a settled peasantry. These are: living with and off uncertainty; mobility to respond to variability; flexible land control and new forms of tenure; dynamic social formations; collective social relations for a new moral economy; engaging with complex markets and a new politics for a transforming world. The article concludes by arguing that, under contemporary conditions, these are all important for understanding settled agrarian systems too, as today pastoralists and peasants face many of the same challenges. These seven themes, the article argues, offer a new set of lenses for examining pastoral and peasant settings alike, helping to expand perspectives in agrarian studies.

This article focuses on the methodological lessons from Sam Moyo's scholarship. Sam's research is characterised by a combination of detailed empirical investigation, deep knowledge of the technical and practical aspects of agricultural production and farming livelihoods, and bigpicture political economy analysis and theory. Sam's method is an insightful contemporary application of the method originally set out in Marx's Grundrisse. Many contemporary explorations of agrarian political economy fail to sustain the important tension and dialectical debate, between diverse empirical realities and their 'multiple determinations and relations' and wider theorisation of the 'concrete' features of emergent processes of change. The implications of Sam's methodological approach for the analysis of Zimbabwe's land reform are discussed, especially in relation to the land occupations and the politics of agrarian reform since 2000.

This article focuses on the methodological lessons from Sam Moyo's scholarship. Sam's research is characterised by a combination of detailed empirical investigation, deep knowledge of the technical and practical aspects of agricultural production and farming livelihoods, and big-picture political economy analysis and theory. Sam's method is an insightful contemporary application of the method originally set out in Marx's Grundrisse. Many contemporary explorations of agrarian political economy fail to sustain the important tension and dialectical debate, between diverse empirical realities and their 'multiple determinations and relations' and wider theorisation of the 'concrete' features of emergent processes of change. The implications of Sam's methodological approach for the analysis of Zimbabwe's land reform are discussed, especially in relation to the land occupations and the politics of agrarian reform since 2000.