Suchergebnisse

Verlagsinfo: In the nineteenth century, the reading public expanded to embrace new categories of consumers, especially of cheap fiction. These new lower-class and female readers frightened liberals, Catholics and republicans alike. The study focuses on workers, women and peasants, and the ways in which their reading was constructed as a social and political problem, to analyse the fear of reading in nineteenth century France. The author presents a series of case-studies of actual readers, to examine their choices and their practices, and to evaluate how far they responded to (or subverted) attempts at cultural domination.

An exploration of the complex & contradictory relationship between neoliberalism & subsistence economies focuses on peasant women who design & work kitchen gardens. These women have their own unique understanding of biodiversity & "the seed" as their means of production. Men are responsible for cash crops grown for income while women's kitchen gardens produce crops that secure the food supply. This dual agricultural production system relies on a gender-specific division of labor even though the women perform much of the work on men's cash crop fields & often produce vegetables, fruit, or flowers for export. It is argued that neoliberal policies that emphasize industrial agriculture & the commodification of nature have served to undermine these practices. Special attention is given to the role in advancing neoliberal policies played by such global environmental governance as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Alternatives that open up possibilities for developing postneoliberal alternatives are described, including those that come from below, like seed movements in India & South Africa. J. Lindroth

This paper examines the current state and socio-ecological implications of the alternative agri-food movement organized by the Korean Women Peasant Association (KWPA) in South Korea. In the process of rapid industrial development, South Korean farm sector has suffered from serious environmental problems, depopulation, and poverty. Food production itself has become mostly industrialized using abundant amount of chemical input. This, along with mass consumption system relying on large supermarkets, has led to an unsustainable food system. In this situation, there has been a rise of alternative agri-food movement by the KWPA. We have focused on the influence of agroecology in the KWPA's activities, which might bring about a more sustainable food system. Under the dominant paradigm of agro-industrialism, farm production inevitably depends on outside resources. This de-contextualizes and disconnects farming from local ecosystems and social relations. Agroecology has emerged in recent years as an alternative paradigm, which can reconnect farming, nature, and society. We have analyzed the KWPA's programs, such as the indigenous seed preservation movement (ISPM) and Sisters' Garden Plot (SGP). We have found that agroecology plays an important role in the KWPA's programs, which involve sharing indigenous farm knowledge; preserving and finding indigenous seeds; and providing seasonal, local, and organic food to the public. These activities have also led to the empowerment of female peasants. These as a whole could be important social resource for a transition to a more sustainable food system.

"Since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the concept of sustainable development has become the basis for a vast number of "green industries" from eco-tourism to carbon sequestration. In The "Greening" of Costa Rica, Ana Isla exposes the results of the economist's rejection of physical limits to growth, the biologist's fetish with such limits, and the indebtedness of peripheral countries. Isla's case study is the 250,000 hectare Arenal-Tilaran Conservation Area, created in the late 1990s as the result of Canada-Costa Rica debt-for-nature swaps. Rather than reducing poverty and creating equality, development in and around the conservation area has dispossessed and disenfranchised subsistence farmers, expropriating their land, water, knowledge, and labour. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork in these communities, Isla exposes the duplicity of a neoliberal model in which the environment is converted into commercial assets such as carbon credits, intellectual property, cash crops, open-pit mining, and eco-tourism, few of whose benefits flow to the local population." --publisher's website

Kay Ann Johnson provides much-needed information about women and gender equality under Communist leadership. She contends that, although the Chinese Communist Party has always ostensibly favored women's rights and family reform, it has rarely pushed for such reforms. In reality, its policies often have reinforced the traditional role of women to further the Party's predominant economic and military aims. Johnson's primary focus is on reforms of marriage and family because traditional marriage, family, and kinship practices have had the greatest influence in defining and shaping women's place in Chinese society. Conversant with current theory in political science, anthropology, and Marxist and feminist analysis, Johnson writes with clarity and discernment free of dogma. Her discussions of family reform ultimately provide insights into the Chinese government's concern with decreasing the national birth rate, which has become a top priority. Johnson's predictions of a coming crisis in population control are borne out by the recent increase in female infanticide and the government abortion campaign.

Using a wide array of archival documentation, including Inquisition records, wills, dowry contracts, folklore, and court cases, Poska examines how early modern Spanish peasant women asserted and perceived their authority within the family and community and how the large numbers of female-headed households in the region functioned in the absence of men. - ;While scholars have marvelled at how accused witches, mystical nuns, and aristocratic women understood and used their wealth, power, and authority to manipulate both men and institutions, most early modern women were not privileged by money o