Playing development roles

The Political Ecology of Performance in Agricultural Development

Bibliographic Data

ID4302199
AuthorsA Flachs (0000-0002-8754-2050, Purdue University West Lafayette, corresponding author), P Richards (0000-0001-5813-0228, Njala University)
Year2018
Volume25
Issue1
Publication date2018-01-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Ecology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1073-0451 • E-ISSN: 1073-0451
PublisherUniversity of Arizona (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2458/v25i1.23089
OpenAlexW2901870661
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited58

Performance is a useful lens through which to analyze agrarian life, as performance illuminates the ways that farmers manage the complex socioecological demands of farm work while participating in social life and in the larger political economy. The dialectic of planning and improvisation in the farm field has produced scholarship at multiple scales of political ecology, including the global ramifications of new technologies or policies, as well as the hyper-local engagements between farmers and fields in the context of modernity and development. Political ecologists are also beginning to understand how affects, such as aspirations and frustrations, influence agriculture by structuring how farmers and other stakeholders make decisions about farms, households, capital, and environments. To understand farm work as a performance is to situate it within particular stages, roles, scripts, and audiences at different scales. The articles in this Special Section ask how farmers have improvised, planned, and performed in response to agroecological challenges, bridging scholarship in political ecology, development studies, and the study of agrarian landscapes through new empirical case studies and theoretical contributions. Agriculture both signals social values and fosters improvisations within farming communities' collective vulnerability to weather and the political economy. We argue that the lens of performance situates the political ecology of agriculture within the constraints of the political economy, the aspirations and frustrations of daily life, and the dialectic between improvised responses to change and planning in the field

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Dialectic · Economic growth · Economics · Political ecology · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Organic Food and Agriculture · Ecology

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Open DOISci-HubOpen Access