34 pages, A growing body of research lends support to opportunity theory and its variants, but has yet to focus systematically on a number of specific offenses and contexts. Typically, the more crimes and contexts to which a theory applies, the broader its scope and range, respectively, and thus generalizability. In this paper, we focus on agricultural crime victimization— including theft of farm equipment, crops, livestock, and chemicals—an offense that opportunity theory appears well-situated to explain. Specifically, we examine whether key dimensions of the theory are empirically associated with the likelihood of victimization and also examine factors associated with farmers’ use of guardianship measures. In contrast to much previous research, we combine multiple individual-level measures of these dimensions. We conclude that the theory partially accounts for variation in agricultural crime victimization, depending on the type of crime, and that greater work is needed investigating how key dimensions of opportunity theory should be conceptualized and operationalized in rural contexts. The study’s implications for theory and practice are discussed.
37pgs, With agriculture considered key to generating jobs for Africa's growing population, several studies have explored youth aspirations toward farming. While many factors explaining aspirations have been well studied, little is known about the actors' shaping aspirations. We developed a novel framework that focuses on the factors and actors shaping the formation and actual aspirations of rural youth and applied a unique “whole-family” approach based on mixed-methods data collection from adolescents (boys and girls) and corresponding adults. We applied this approach in rural Zambia, collecting data from 348 adolescents and adults in 87 households. The study finds that parents strongly shape youth aspirations—they are much more influential than siblings, peers, church, and media. Male youth are more likely to envision farming (full or part-time) than female youth. The male preference for farming reflects their parent's aspirations and is reinforced by the patriarchal system of land inheritance. Parents' farm characteristics, such as degree of mechanization, are also associated with aspirations. We recommend a “whole- family” approach, which acknowledges the influential role of parents, for policies and programs for rural youth and a stronger focus on gender aspects.
35pgs, The idea that citizens' support for environmental policies depends on their economic interest and the community that one lives in, has been debated extensively in the environmental attitudes literature. However, this literature has not differentiated between separate policy dimensions that concern measures that affect specific groups in different ways. This paper differentiates between a nature/agriculture dimension that divides those who prioritize the agrarian interest from those who prioritize the protection of nature and a climate/energy dimension that divides those who prioritize industrial interest from those who prioritize fighting climate change, using a new survey in the Netherlands (N = 11,327). This two-dimensional model meets three criteria: scalability, validity, and utility. Scalability is shown by factor analysis and Mokken scaling. Validity is shown by regression analyses that show that whether one lives in a rural or an urban community predicts one's position on the nature/agriculture dimension and that one's financial security predicts one's position on the climate/energy dimension. The utility is shown by regression analyses where the two dimensions are used to predict voting behavior. The Green Party voters favor nature and climate protection, the Liberal Party voters have the opposite views, the Christian-Democrats favor agricultural interests and the Freedom Party favor industrial interests.
21 pages, This paper examines (1) the role of professional journals in research and (2) the perceived criteria for journal publication in the sciences utilizing national surveys of agricultural journal editors and agricultural scientists in thirteen disciplines. Results indicate that agricultural scientists view professional journals as the most important published resource in their research, the major outlet for their findings, and a key criterion in their choice of research problems. In addition, both journal editors and scientists generally agree that scientists' submitted articles are primarily judged against the normative criteria of scientific craftsmanship rather than by particularistic standards. The most important criterion for journal publication as seen by both editors and scientists is the value of the author's findings to the field. However, unlike other scientists, agricultural scientists appear to associate this universalistic criterion of value to the field with (1) the potential contribution of the article to increased agricultural productivity and (2) the value of the article's findings to clientele groups. Furthermore, these two criteria of productivity and clientele needs that stress the practical value of the research are more important for publishing decisions among journals reporting applied emphases and to scientists in applied disciplines.
31 pages, Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.
"The argument advanced here is that actor-network theory is useful in analyzing conservation agriculture as a radically different agriculture: a new paradigm with new beliefs about soils, plants, and environment, and farmers themselves as well as new crop production systems."
Parents shape children's social choices through their social and economic actions. Parental social participation connects children to a civic culture and encourages involvement in civic groups. Parents' ties to farming in farm-dependent communities furuther enhance children's civic orientations by providing added opportunities and incentives for social participation. Data from Iowa Youth and Families Project confirm these hypotheses, showing that the children of farmers and of rural leaders are more likely to participate in civic groups. These results establish parental social involvement as a source of social capital and demonstrate the importance of farm incluences for understanding the social involvement of youth in rural society.
We argue that attempts to superimpose park regulatory regimes on existing land uses in the tropics represent conflicts between alternative cultural models of natural resource management. The results of such conflcits are unique regulatory regimes emerging from distinctive processes that redefine the terms and limits of natural resource use. In creating scarcity of available resource, parks encourage social diffrentiation and greater awareness of societal patterns of inequality, establishing a potential for the articulation of demands for social and environmental equity. We evaluate these claims with a case study of the Cerro Azul Meambar National Park in Honduras. We base our analysis on 54 in-depth interviews of Park residents and five Park communities.
