SUBSISTENSI BUDAYA: STRATEGI SURVIVAL MASYARAKAT TERDAMPAK KEBIJAKAN SOCIAL DISTANCING DI PERBATASAN INDONESIA-MALAYSIA

This research is intended to reveal the survival strategy of communities affected by the social distancing policy in border areas, especially Sambas Regency. The study was conducted using qualitative method, and field data collection with interviews and field observations (observations). The goal was to be able to explain the object of research intensively and precisely, namely the survival strategy taken by people on Sambas region border in facing pandemic, especially with their local culture. The subjects of research were Sambas people, especially workers, both local and migrant workers, as well as several related stakeholders. The results of study indicate that the survival strategy taken is a subsistence approach, generally manifested into: (1) subsistence bonds, in the form of forming and maintaining communal cohesiveness and kinship, (2) subsistence ethics, which is strengthening helpful behavior or solidarity, and (3) subsistence production in the form of productivity in the consumptive sector, the result of which is for their own use.

Against Single Stories of ‘Left Behind’ and ‘Triple Win’: On Agricultural Care Chains and the Permanent Subsistence Crisis

The single story of Moldova as the “country without parents” is unsettling. While it is true that villages in Moldova, as in other post-Soviet regions and global peripheries, are affected by intensive outmigration and labor mobility, the image is incomplete. In this article, I propose a different telling of this story: one that looks at and challenges the structural power relations visible in people’s lives in rural Moldova. It is a telling that points to the overall subsistence crisis in Europe and the relationship between neocolonial entanglements and agricultural care chains. As such, this article aims to bring together reflections on labor migration, well-being in rural areas and the global care economy while seeking to decolonize subsistence production through the abolition of the international division of (re)productive labor.

Samburu Pastrolists’ Utilization of Vital Resources for Survival in Colonial Kenya.

This study examined the resources vital for the survival of the Samburu pastoral people in pre-colonial Kenya and their use. The study covers the period from 1895 to 1961. The study discussed the Samburu traditional land tenures systems and exploitation of resources. It examined Samburu subsistence production. This study used two theories to achieve the set objectives. It utilized Carl Marx’s theory of political economy, which postulates that it is common ends that governs human relations. It is economic structure also referred to as substructure that provides the basis for the society on which the superstructure is built upon. The constituents of the superstructure are found on the analysis to reflect the interest of the dominant class. The study also uses Articulation theory of producing modes of production as advanced by Lonsdale and Bruce. Articulation theory is relevant to the study as it links the Samburu pastoralist pre-capitalist subsistence system of production to British Colonial State capitalist system of production. This study used both primary and secondary sources. The method selected to carry out this study was qualitative research method. The semi-structured questions were used in the interview. Data was analysed, categorized according to topics and subtopics. It was interpreted, written down and finally presented. The research findings will contribute to the historiography of pastoralism in Kenya.

Emerging from Below? Understanding the Livelihood Trajectories of Smallholder Livestock Farmers in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

In the context of current agrarian reform efforts in South Africa, this paper analyses the livelihood trajectories of ‘emergent’ farmers in Eastern Cape Province. We apply a rural livelihoods framework to 60 emergent cattle farmers to understand the different capitals they have drawn upon in transitioning to their current class positions and associated vulnerability. The analysis shows that, for the majority of farmers, no real ‘transition’ from subsistence farming has occurred. However, they draw limited resilience from increased livestock holdings, continued reliance on social grants and connections with communal villages. A transition into small-scale commercial farming is apparent for a small number of farmers through the deployment of financial, human and social capitals. However, in following these trajectories, most of these farmers have been made more vulnerable to shocks and stresses than previously. We suggest that key to mitigating this vulnerability will be access to low-risk financial capital, more targeted support, and strategies to support farmers that might not transition from subsistence production.

Precolonial States and Development: Evidence from Agriculture in Africa

Low agricultural productivity is a major source of poverty in Africa, where much of the population works in agriculture, yet subsistence production and food insecurity are widespread. However, some pockets of agriculture in Africa are highly productive. In this paper, we assemble a geospatial dataset of all pre-colonial African states in existence between 1500 and 1850, and utilize remote-sensing data based on satellite imagery to show that areas (pixels) in proximity to the location of pre-colonial state capitals display higher levels of contemporary agricultural output. This relationship exists across and within countries, agro-ecological zones, and river basins. We rule out spurious correlation with spatial randomization tests. We argue that via path-dependence and spatial agglomeration effects, pre-colonial states transmitted the territorial reach that was critical for state-led agricultural modernization in the twentieth century. The findings support a growing literature linking contemporary economic development to state capacity transmitted from pre-colonial political institutions.

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in East Africa

The sty of women in East Africa did not begin until the 1970s and 1980s. Knowledge of times past comes from colonial records, filtered through the lenses of late Victorian-era men and from casting back the structures of early colonial years to create imaginaries of preexisting realities. Living in age-grade social systems that featured gendered lines of authority, men occupied societal institutions of power while women were informal political actors. Women were highly subordinated to their menfolk in some societies but held positions as chiefs in others. A gendered division of labor confined females to the domestic sphere, including subsistence production. We know little about intergender relationships, less about sexuality—studied in those eras almost exclusively in terms of the physical desires and behaviors that were morally right, appropriate, and “natural” and how those ideas were used to create unequal access to status, power, privileges, and resources. The extractive focus of the colonial era transformed women’s lives and relationships as taxation and wage labor incrementally located and oriented males outside family and community spheres. Colonists dealt mainly with men, rendering women mostly silent. Missionaries taught a new morality and way of life that framed the concepts of marriage, family, and sexuality, and provided openings into unknown spaces as well as new possibilities. The trajectory of women’s lives, gender, and sexuality in East Africa is shaped by the continuation of policies and forces set in motion during the colonial period. Some, particularly the educated, have been able to pursue careers and become producers and consumers. Immersed increasingly in the social values of individuality and personal satisfaction, women are expanding their horizons to control their own lives. Their sexuality is increasingly considered as a dimension of personhood, rather than as a domain of externally imposed social control.

Explaining the spatial scale of campesino agriculture in Mexico: Implications for the supply and conservation of native maize

Mexico is the center of domestication and a center for diversity of maize. Area planted with maize is the country’s largest agricultural land use, mostly planted by smallholder family farmers known as campesinos. Due to the large area they plant with saved seed from native varieties in a wide variety of environments across the country, maize evolution under domestication continues today at a very large scale and under a multiplicity of selection pressures. Campesinos have been considered mainly subsistence farmers. Here we show that subsistence production is insufficient for explaining the scale of the area they plant with maize and on which its contemporary evolution under domestication depends. Our hypothesis is that beyond supplying their own consumption needs, campesinos across Mexico collectively produce maize to respond to the demand of non-maize producing local consumers. Here we quantify the extent of subsistence versus surplus production among campesinos, showing that subsistence production cannot explain the scale of their maize cultivation. Then, we test statistically the association between the scale of maize cultivation and socioeconomic variables that link campesino production to the demand by other consumers and examine the implications of the results for the supply and conservation of native maize in the country. Our results suggest that maize trading linking campesinos to other consumers may be important and widespread. We conclude that there are important opportunities for maintaining maize evolution under domestication at large scale by strengthening local maize markets.

Never Seen So Much Hair in Your Life

The third of three chapters exploring the history of homesteading, this chapter analyzes the counterculture back-to-the-land movement in the area around Berea, Kentucky. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter illustrates that this is a major social movement, far more enduring and robust than stereotypes of “hippie” back-to-the-landers would suggest. The chapter shows that participants represent a multistranded left with diverse backgrounds, including a high proportion who are from rural Appalachia; that they take subsistence production seriously; and that homesteading represents a specific, “prefigurative” form of social activism. The chapter also explores the complex relationship between counterculture homesteaders and their rural neighbors, and argues the former are unified as a group by high levels of literacy and educational attainment; they represent, in effect, a rural intelligentsia.