The Agricultural Settlement of the Arabah and the Political Ecology of Zionism

Agricultural settlement geared to capitalist commodity production and accompanied by massive ecological interventions has historically been central to the Zionist colonial project of creating a permanent Jewish presence in the “Land of Israel.” The hyperarid southern region known as the Central Arabah is an instructive edge-case: in the 1960s, after the expulsion of the bedouin population, cooperative settlements were established here and vegetables produced through “Hebrew self-labor,” with generous assistance from the state. In the 1990s the region was again transformed as the importation of migrant workers from Thailand enabled farmers to expand cultivation of bell peppers for global markets. But today ecological destruction, depletion of water resources, and global warming cast doubt over the viability of settlement in this climatically extreme region. I locate the settlements of the Arabah within the historical political ecology of the Zionist movement, arguing that their current fragility exposes the essential precarity of capitalist colonization.

The Inductiveness of Agricultural Village-Type Cluster Creation in Developing Countries

The assessment of emerging risks is substantial risk in implementing and creating various types of clusters used in the agricultural sector of the economy. In this regard, the goal is to develop practical measures to ensure the creation of a cluster of an agricultural settlement at the regional level, taking into account various types of risk that directly affect its creation and development. The study revealed that within the framework of the policy of substitution for domestic production and marketing of agricultural products during the formation of a cluster, it would allow combining more into a standard established system from production, processing to the sale of finished agricultural products both at the local level and at the federal level. This approach will significantly harmonize the interests of all participants of the agroindustry, as well as significantly simplify and expand access to external export markets, thereby reducing the cost of marketing research. At the same time, clustering will increase the overall economic impact on individual farmers, which will have a more significant impact on the development of non-resource zonal territories employed to produce agricultural products. Therefore, it will affect the increase in jobs in small villages.JEL Classification: F63, O13, Q18How to Cite:Petrova, L. I., Glubokova, N. Y., Akhmadeev, R. G., Bykanova, O. A., Artemova, E. I., & Gabdulkhakov, R. B. (2021). The Inductiveness of Agricultural Village-Type Cluster Creation in Developing Countries. Etikonomi, 20(2), xx– xx. https://doi.org/10.15408/etk.v20i2.22014

Post-war Agriculture in Żuławy versus Changes in the Region’s Cultural and Social Landscape in Source Materials, Diaries and Farmers’ Narratives

On the example of Żuławy, the paper discusses questions connected with postwar migrations to the Polish Western and Northern Territories, and their consequences for agriculture. It focuses on issues related to the development of the region by new settlers and the changes taking place in the cultural and social landscape. The text highlights the region’s character and its economic conditions before 1945, and considers agricultural settlement and the agrarian and social structure after 1945. Post-war agriculture in the region is presented in the light of the cultural heritage described in scientific literature, the first settlers’ recollections written in the form of diaries in the early 1970s, and biographical accounts that the author recorded in Żuławy in 2018.

At the end of the world? Settlement in the Šumava mountains and foothills in later prehistory

The aim of this paper is to explore and define the boundary of the zone of inland, mainly agricultural settlement in southern and western Bohemia, Czech Republic in the later prehistory, and to try to determine why such settlement appears not to have spread further into the Šumava foothills and mountains. With the help of predictive MaxEnt modelling – used in ecology to determine the degree of uncertainty in the geographic distribution of species – and using a comparison with data on soil productivity, we explore whether in later prehistory the agricultural settlement was limited by unsuitable natural conditions or by other factors. The boundaries of the territory suitable for agropastoral farming most probably moved in time with technological advances, increases in population density, and the changing preferences of inhabitants of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The margin of agricultural settlement in the foothills describes a line beyond which agriculture had become unprofitable; a similar boundary existed throughout the Early Middle Ages. At the same time, there was a good deal of contact across the mountains with Bavaria and Upper Austria, as is shown by archaeology both in the form of similarities between the prehistoric typo-chronological complexes and by finds of bronze and iron items along presumed routes of access. There were also montane sites (whose function is still unknown) situated beyond the margin of the agricultural zone, such as the recently discovered settlements on the Křemelná river. Apart from prospection, a wide range of other activities could have taken place, including those connected with communication and routes of access to Bavaria and Upper Austria, with which Šumava formed a common typo-chronological group.

Meaningful Clearings: Human-Ant Negotiated Landscapes in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

This article explores the conflicts between people and Atta leafcutter ants over the meaning of anthropogenic deforestation in nineteenth-century Brazil. As human agricultural settlement advanced, ants followed in its wake, harvesting leaves, flowers, fruits, and other plant parts from crops to supply their underground fungus gardens. In so doing, the ants, as semiotic selves, interpreted what humans had done and acted accordingly, producing historically consequential environmental change in the process. An examination of primary sources such as legislation, travel journals, agricultural manuals, government administrative documentation, and newspapers for human-ant conversations demonstrates how interspecies sense making has fueled social innovations and rearrangements, shaping technical developments, legal-administrative practices, parliamentary discussions, and even local electoral arenas. By taking written documents as surviving structures of embodied, more-than-symbolic conversations, this analysis both takes its cue from, and helps substantiate, what Ewa Domanska has termed a “multispecies co-authorship” approach to human-animal relations. It argues that such a theoretical-methodological stance helps environmental historians account for nonhuman agency by allowing the exploration of animals’ truly creative, rather than merely resistive, behavior.