12 pages, via online journal, This paper charts two exploratory practices of rural transformation in the Yangtze River Delta that began around 2008, aimed at revitalising villages and exploring new urban-rural interrelationships while simultaneously expanding the knowledge base on possible development opportunities, risks and existing diversities in rural China. Using a comparative case study, the study shows that both practices promoted a redefinition of urban-rural relationships, a reconnection of rural networks, and the introduction of alternative spatial intervention methods. However, they also led to the intrusion of certain social values which were alien to the local population and resulted in the further exclusion of rural residents. By revealing the substantial changes and analysing the interactions of actors involved in the practices according to actor-network theory, this paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the new initiatives and thus allows for a more rigorous understanding of how emerging bottom-up and top-down initiatives affect rural transformation. The paper argues that the inclusion of the locals primarily in the form of land-leasing contracts and a limited number of job opportunities are far from sufficient to stimulate sustainable development processes and to address the major social challenges facing rural areas. It further identifies 23 key factors distilled from the empirical evidence that closely related to rural sustainable development and proposed to constitute a checklist for assessing the sustainability of emerging rural practices. The practical insights from the study thus enrich the theory of sustainability with regard to rural development by expanding the scope and dimension.
9 pages, via online journal, Rural communities are not restricted to bounded territories but increasingly reproduced by intensified rural connections with the outside. Extant research tends to suggest that the production of rural community unbound relies on the movement and activities of mobile groups while ignoring the trans-local practice of community-making by local villagers who stay in the countryside. This paper draws on ethnographic insights on the formation of inter-regional surname associations in contemporary China, a contemporary form of Chinese lineage communities which is relatively unknown both in and outside China. By adopting a trans-local approach, it explores how rural lineage members and groups initiate the alliance with their same surname fellows in different rural localities to forge trans-local communities. Such rural-to-rural alliance is consolidated through various meanings and practices, producing the idea of a big ‘family’. This trans-local community not only enables rural members to enhance their mobilities and cultural and socio-economic capital but is also grounded in lineage groups' assertion of territorial identity, power, and social status. With a nuanced analysis of the trans-local agency of local villagers, this paper contributes to understanding the production of trans-local communities and trans-local rurality based on rural-to-rural connections. It also offers insights into the reconstruction of rural people's identities in contemporary China.
11 pages, Sustainability has become a key term for linking environmental, economic and social issues, in both the sciences and politics. Conceptions and frameworks of sustainability have thus arisen to evaluate agricultural systems on their sustainability. Within these conceptions and in political and scientific discourses, what can be understood as the social pillar of sustainability in agriculture varies greatly, especially in regards to the scope and the sustainability standards applied. While rural inhabitants have been subject of various ‘sustainability studies’, the
consideration of the social dimension in agriculture is still rather underrepresented. Our conceptual framework can contribute to enhance the understanding of the social dimension of sustainability by utilizing a social science-based approach to comprehend the complexity of social interaction in agriculture: Based on Parsons' system approach, we capture the components of a social system that encompasses agriculture and its embeddedness in society. This includes all major actors, their interactions and institutions. Further, we develop Maslow's hierarchy of needs as well as the rights approach into a sustainability scale. We call the conceptual framework the sustainable agricultural social system. This general framework can later be adapted to local cultural and social settings, serving as a more comprehensive and flexible sustainability framework.
12 pages., Because of concerns about human health, the environment, and animal welfare, meat is a highly contentious food. Accordingly, a broad range of alternative, small-scale practices for raising livestock and producing non-industrial meat are in the spotlight. While scholars have examined consumer perspectives on “ethical” meat, less is known about producers' perceptions of how small-scale meat production fits into the broader food system, and how their perceptions relate to broader sustainability debates surrounding meat. We explore producer perspectives on small-scale “ethical” meat production and its role in a sustainable food system. We do so through interviews and site visits with 74 people working within alternative meat production in four Canadian provinces, a sample that includes farmers, ranchers, butchers, and meat-focussed chefs. We find that, in the face of practical challenges linked to small-scale production, producers are passionately committed to the project of small-scale animal rearing that they regard as humane and sustainable. Despite these similarities, producers have radically different ideas about the purpose and potential of ethical meat. We observed major differences among producers' cultural imagination of meat, exemplifying varied ideas for fitting meat into a sustainable food system. Our findings underscore the importance of charting not only producers’ practices, but also their cultural orientations.
11 pages, via online journal, Land fragmentation is an interesting physical character in some developing countries, especially China. This study aims to discover the direct and mediated effects of land fragmentation on collective action in China based on an empirical test and the social-ecological system framework. We introduce three innovations to the literature on collective action in the commons. First, we focus on the mechanism of land fragmentation on collective action in the commons, which has been largely ignored in the literature. Second, building on the social-ecological system framework, we use structural equation modeling, which is robust to endogeneity and latent variable problems. Third, we use original survey data from 3895 households and 284 villages from 17 provinces/regions in China, a critical case because China has some of the most fragmented farmland use in the world. We find that land fragmentation has a direct negative effect on irrigation collective action. And besides the direct negative effect, there are four indirect factors: dependency on farming, irrigation rule-making, economic pressure and land circulation. Of these, the first three have a negative effect, and the last one, a positive effect. Our findings add to the theoretical literature on collective action in the commons and suggest new policy handles for more efficient land and labor markets in China.
10 Pages, As Thai farmers get older they need to plan what to do with their farm business and land given younger people tend to out-migrate to urban areas and shift their interests away from farming. Such demographic trends may reduce agricultural productivity and increase food insecurity, both among farmers and in the region. Using data collected through interviews with 368 farmers in the Prachin Buri province of Thailand, this research aims to examine how ageing is affecting farm activities of older farmers (60 years and older) and how they are adapting. We found that, while a small percentage of older farmers intended to continue farming without making any changes over the next five years (~9%), most were concerned about their health and farm work capacity, and were looking to leave farming and implement strategies to reduce both work intensity and time. Most farmers intended to stop farming and transfer farmland to their children (~40%), or continue farming while making some changes (~30%), such as employing additional workers or switching to less labour intense crops. Some intended to stop farming altogether and dispose of farmland outside their family (~21%; e.g. leasing out or selling or returning farmland to owner if leased). As expected, the chosen strategy depended on personal (old-age income security and gender) and farm characteristics (e.g. successor, farm activities, and subsidy). Having a dedicated successor had a substantial impact on transferring land to the children, reflecting the importance of commitment for farming by the next generation, which will be challenging. A pension higher than the widely available old-age allowance could support farmers in maintaining a better living standard after retiring. However, only a fraction of farmers currently had access to a pension. Both short- and long-term policies are, therefore, needed to support elderly farmers, improve their living standards after retirement, and attract young people back to farming.
10 pages, via online journal, Under China's “Western Development” plan, inland China has witnessed massive urban expansion and land development, but little is known about the consequent stratification among relocated communities. This study examines the urbanization process on the outskirts of the Municipality of Yinchuan in northwestern China. Previous studies have focused on how urbanization impoverished or enriched rural communities, while this study examines how relocated communities (or teams) were differentiated in their compensation and relocation outcomes, as a combined outcome of policies and resource structures. Quantitative evidence suggests that urbanization has led to both between-team and within-team variations, and qualitative analyses illustrate why even the “lucky” teams always had “unlucky” villagers in compensation outcomes. Between-team variations were often used to mobilize collective resistance to strive for better compensation, but the rise of within-team variations has undermined the grassroots alliance against “unfair” policies. Villagers were more obsessed with individual competition of property investment based on their wealth and self-financing capabilities, but they also complained about “unjust” competition, such as the appropriation of resources based on cadres' privileges and connections. Although individual competition was celebrated under the official neoliberal market-oriented narratives, the decline of collective patronage and the resentment toward cadres' rent-seeking behaviors have added to tensions within relocated communities and contributed to their fragmentation.
