Environmental Action,Gender Equity and Women's Participation

For poor households, and especially for the women who own little private land, forests and village commons have always been critical sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation and to shifts in property rights away from community control and management to State and individual control and management. More recently, though, we are seeing small but notable reversals in these processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups have emerged, initiated variously by the State, by village communities, or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity, especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men? Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male centred? What is women's participation in these initiatives? What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered responses to the environmental crisis. 1 Abbreviations used in this article: FPC=Forest Protection Committee (under JFM); JFM=Joint Forest Management; NGO=Non-Governmental Organization; VCs=Village Commons; VP=Van Panchayat (forest council).
     

空心村整治意愿及其影响因素——基于宁夏西吉县的调查

基于宁夏西吉县空心村问卷调查数据,研究村民对空心村整治规划的意愿及其影响因素。研究发现,目前多数公共设施在空心村中处于缺失状态;村民希望空心村整治能解决村庄的道路交通、自来水供应、垃圾处理等问题,能满足文化教育、就医和垃圾回收等方面的基础设施需求;希望村庄整治能考虑农业生产的便利性,能提高经济和社会保障水平。模型回归结果表明,家庭常住人口数量、家庭接受9年义务教育的人数、对当前住房的满意度、对本村小学满意度和对村庄生态环境满意度等因素对村民是否支持空心村整治具有重要影响。     

Women's Property,Women's Agency in China's ‘New Enclosure Movement’: Evidence from Zhejiang

Who gets what, why and how, when Chinese villagers' land is enclosed? Focusing specifically on changes in women's property rights and drawing on data from Zhejiang province, this article shows that state, village and household institutions interact to produce significant gender disparities in both the compensation paid to expropriated villagers and the registration of ownership of household assets. Yet it would be incorrect to conclude that, dispossessed, women thereby lack agency. Analysis of women's responses to expropriation suggests that by selectively deploying laws, rules and norms in different settings, women are influencing not only compensation distribution, but also the terms under which the state compensates villagers for their expropriation and the gender relations in which property is embedded.     

市场资本驱动下的乡村空间生产与治理重构——对婺源县Y村的实证观察

乡村振兴不能回避资本，然而资本下乡会改变乡村内部治理结构，如何善用资本以实现乡村善治成为一个难题。文章以江西省婺源县Y村作为典型案例，基于空间生产理论视角，深度剖析资本介入后村庄治理主体的关系转换和资本运行的内在机制，并揭示资本介入后乡村善治面临的难题。文章认为，市场资本介入乡村重构了空间生产主体，并倾向于构建符合自身需求的新空间形态。新空间形态进一步形成了新社会关系网络，新社会关系网络在市场资本的助推下稳固，并逐步将村民主体排挤出村庄，导致资本下乡后空间非正义等问题凸显。未来的乡村治理模式应当发挥资本的触媒作用；维持政府公正性角色，保持乡村空间正义；明确村民主体地位，鼓励村民作为村庄营建的主体；强化集体力量，保持村集体对空间的有效控制权。     

空心村村民居住生活空间特征及其优化重构——对河南邓州市8个村庄的调查

在空心村整治过程中,地方政府普遍重视通过土地整理和迁村并点实现用地集约,而忽视对村庄内部村民居住生活空间的优化。本文以邓州市桑庄镇8个村作为调研区域,对当地村民进行问卷调查和深度访谈,归纳出空心村背景下乡村居住生活空间的形态变化和利用模式,分析其反映出的乡村生活中的矛盾与问题,并在此基础上提出对乡村居住生活空间的重构思路,为空心村整治过程中乡村社区的重建与优化提供参考。     

Exclusion and Counter‐exclusion: The Struggle over Shrimp Farming in a Coastal Village in Bangladesh

This article explores the processes whereby control over land and water is exercised in the context of commercial shrimp cultivation in coastal Bangladesh. The authors draw on the insight that the exercise of control over resources implies both inclusion for some and exclusion for others, and that shifting the boundary between the two involves the deployment of four interacting ‘powers of exclusion’ — regulation, the market, force and legitimation — the effectiveness of which depends on specific historical conjunctures. The article uses a case study of a village in Khulna District to explore: (a) the processes by which poor farmers were excluded from their land by large shrimp farmers; (b) the ways in which villagers experienced the changes in land use and social relations associated with the shrimp boom; and (c) the conjunction of internal and external factors that enabled smallholders to collectively mobilize to reverse their exclusion from the land. Understanding these messy and contingent processes of exclusion and counter‐exclusion helps to inform strategies aimed at securing the property rights and livelihoods of the rural poor.     

Modernizing Insecurity: The Land Titling Project in Honduras

The Honduran land titling project (the Proyecto de Titulación de Tierra para los Pequeños Productores), initiated in 1982, was intended to enhance security in land rights, to facilitate credit and to improve agricultural productivity. This study explores how the project has operated in one village, and concludes that it has attained none of its objectives; instead, it has triggered new sources of land conflicts, thus adding to the existing complex of local rules and laws. The authors argue that the failure of the project is not solely a consequence of the organizational incapacity of the bureaucracy, as some evaluations suggest, but that it is rooted in mistaken assumptions about the social organization of property rights and the causes of insecurity. The land titling project is founded on a contradiction: although based on the ideology of the capitalizing family farm in the context of a withdrawing state, its implementation actually requires strong and repressive state intervention. Rather than reducing insecurity in property rights, the project has merely ‘modernized’ the sources which can be used to contest rights in land.     

From Tongbo Village to Widow Village—The Legacy of the Chinese Civil War

Located on Dongshan Island,off the coast of Fujian province,is a typical rural village called Tongbo.On May 10,1950,147 men were abducted by the KMT army on its way to Taiwan.Since a majority of the men were already married,overnight,their wives became "widows," and most would remain so for the rest of their lives.Consequently,Tongbo village became more widely known as Widow Village.The first objective of this paper is to document the tragic experiences of men and women in Tongbo village,focusing on these forced separations in 1950,the possibility of reunion after 1987,and the struggle to cope with the difficulties in between.The second objective of this paper is to argue that while heartbreaking,the experiences of this village are not extraordinary in the context of the Chinese Civil War.What made the men and women in Tongbo extraordinary is not their collective suffering,but how these villagers suffered less,not more,than in many other places,because of the actions of three key figures.     

Land acquisition induced conflicts in suburban China: a procedural perspective

Protests and opposition to land acquisition from displaced peasants for fair compensation occur on a daily basis in China and have become the most prominent social problem in rural parts of the country. Employing a procedural perspective on conflict, this paper aims to uncover the complexities and tensions that are triggered in the process by drawing on a case of a land confiscation in Jining City, a medium‐size city in Shandong Province, China. Our research shows that conflicts exist at various scales: both between the local governments and rural households and between the village officials and villagers. The paper argues that ambiguity in de jure and de facto land acquisition procedures has resulted in both an escalation of conflict and increasing inequality in the outcomes and benefits of the process. We discuss and conclude that the differences between de jure and de facto procedures in the process of land acquisition are a significant institutional barrier in the resolution of conflict in this important issue for rural China.     

旅游发展对乡村社区人际关系的影响研究——以丹霞山为例

随着旅游业的发展,一种以经济为纽带的新型乡村邻里关系正在建立,但国内学界对此缺乏关注。本文以丹霞山旅游区内的瑶塘村和断石村为案例,在确定了人际关系的衡量框架并对其可能的变化作出假设后,通过深度访谈、问卷调查的方法进行实地调研并检验假设,探讨旅游业所起的作用和影响。研究发现:除了一般认识上的负面影响,如交往时间减少、当地村民淳朴性下降等,旅游发展对人际关系还有较大正面作用,如提高了当地的文明程度、减少了村民日常交往中的摩擦、增加了新型的集体活动等。     

城镇化背景下村落神圣空间政治性的建构——以广州A村宗祠为例

文章以广州某古村落的改造为例,关注宗祠的神圣性建构以及其面对快速的现代化和城市化等世俗力量时的政治响应。通过微观研究,发现:1宗祠政治性来源于其服务村民的世俗功能;2在宗祠受到外界世俗力量的侵占时,村民通过运用特定时空条件来施行"避让但不逃离"的巧妙战术进行抵抗,从而实现自身权力的宣示和表达。本文旨在从日常生活和空间政治性的角度重新认识处于快速城市化进程中的中国乡村神圣空间的政治建构,为中国乡村和城镇化研究提供有益的研究视角。     

农村土地交易的权利配置及利益分享

农村土地交易的现状是令人担忧的,现行物权法为农村土地交易厘清了所有权及其相关权利的关系。但是。农村土地交易仅仅依靠物权法是无法解决的。农村土地交易权利配置与利益分享机制是解决农村土地问题的关键。构建以农地发展权为基础的农地制度,再进行具体的制度安排,是构建我国土地交易利益分享机制的有效途径。     

乡村旅游地空间生产与村民角色转型的过程与机制——以丹霞山瑶塘村为例

乡村旅游空间与村民社会角色是一个相互形塑和建构的过程,揭示两者的互动机制对乡村旅游地可持续发展具有重要意义。研究发现,乡村旅游地空间经历了农业生产空间、农旅并存空间、旅游消费空间的演变过程;村民角色从"农业生产者",经不同转型轨迹,归于"旅游从业者"角色。权力、资本和市场等主体对乡村旅游空间的建构,对村民角色扮演提出新的期望和规范;村民主体的微观权力、资本积累、个人技能、个人观念影响其角色扮演与空间适应;不同角色村民主体通过微观空间生产行为,促使乡村旅游空间景观化、商业化和制度化,也会产生民宿空间分异和乡村公共空间侵占等问题。     

CROSSING THE RIVER: HOW LOCAL STRUGGLES BUILD A BROADER MOVEMENT

A case study of environmental justice organizing in South Carolina explores how local activists can build an oppositional ideology that connects to a broader agenda for social justice. A multi-issue, state-wide workers' rights organization provided ideological context and strategic experience that enabled residents fighting to clean up a polluted pond to connect their concern to a wider effort for economic justice and undoing racism. The organization's worker-centered, multi-racial identity and an organizing strategy that exposes contradictions of the dominant ideology are seen as enabling these wider connections.     

近代山东村落社区结构的整合与分化

在近代山东农村,村落社区成员对土地、资金、村公产等物质资源和宗教、教育、村庄自卫等人资源的分配,必须通过各种社会组织才能得以进行,其中宗族组织起了统合血缘地缘关系及情感流向的关键作用。在村落社区以宗族组织为中心的社会结构整合过程中,会出现基于地权分配不均衡而产生的社会分化,这必然导致经济社会地位相近的村落成员组成某些特殊的社会组织,从而使村落社区结构在统合性中又产生一定的分异性。     

社区居民参与城市会展业发展的社会交换关系研究——以广州琶洲村村民为例

广州的琶洲地区是广州会展业的代表符号,琶洲村是会展业促进城市化发展的典型城中村。本文以琶洲村村民为例,从社区居民的经济影响感知视角解析会展业发展过程中居民的社会交换关系。研究显示:①城市会展业成为社区重要的社会交换关系变量,社区经济对会展业的依赖性增强。②在会展业发展过程中,外来者的进入打破了原来社区交换关系的均衡与稳定,社区参与交换关系的网络呈多元化特征;社区居民之间的内部交换关系发生了变化,正经历竞争与分化的阶段。③社区居民不满足现有的外部交换关系,表现出对更高层次交换关系的热切期盼。     

Unsettled Rights: Afro-descendant recognition and ex-situ titling in Colombia

Ethnic recognition and collective titling have since the second half of the 20th century been promoted as ways of compensating for historical injustices and countering the destructive effects of capitalist development. While holding promise of autonomy, territorial rights, and resource control, they have also been seen as political technologies governing, spatially tying identities to place, and incorporating new areas into capital market relations. This paper draws on and contributes to these debates by exploring how the Colombian legislation for Afro-descendants ethnic recognition and collective titling is understood, employed and ‘reworked’ from below as well as from above. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, the paper follows the case of an Afro-descendant sand-extracting community in the Cauca Valley Region, Colombia. Threatened by a competing mining claim, the villagers seek to gain ethnic recognition among other things to secure rights and control mining resources. In the process, the villagers are offered a land plot away from where they live and work to title as their collective territory; a mechanism that I term ‘ex-situ titling’. As the villagers have no prior relation to the land, nor intend to resettle there, I argue that the ex-situ land titling only serves as a procedural step in the process of ethnic recognition, which, nevertheless, contributes to the uncertainty and incertitude around the villagers' ethnic rights and resource control.     

晚清民国乌鲁木齐地区村落类型与社会治理——以个案分析为中心

晚清民国乌鲁木齐地区的村落,根据人口结构不同,可以分为宗族、地理相近与地理相错三种类型。由于三种类型村落的自治程度不同,造成了政府对其治理方式上存在区别,也突出了国家对其控制力上存在差别。文章主要以村落个案分析为中心,针对每种类型的村落,以个案的形式说明村落类型与治理之间的关系及反映出的乡村社会治理的空间差异性。     

Conflict on the urban fringe: Urbanization,environmental stress,and urban unrest in Africa

Most research on the security implications of environmental and demographic change does not explicitly distinguish between urban and rural areas. While statistical conflict analyses are increasingly sophisticated with respect to spatial and substantive disaggregation they largely ignore the possibility that urban and rural areas may be affected differently. In Africa, a continent assumed to be particularly vulnerable to the social and economic externalities of environmental and demographic change, less than one percent of the land mass is defined as ‘urban’. Yet, the population that lives in African cities is expected to increase by more than 150% between 2020 and 2050 according to UN population forecasts, massively outpacing rural population growth estimated at 35%. Given the vast social transformation associated with this process of rapid urbanization, understanding the dynamics and consequences of urban population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its possible relationship with environmental factors is key to reducing vulnerabilities and facilitating sustainable urban growth on the continent. In this article we argue that high urban population growth may strain the provision of public services in urban areas, heighten competition over scarce urban land, and increase the chances of urban social unrest. We expect population pressure to have the most profound effects on social unrest in peri-urban areas, meaning the urban outskirts. We further investigate whether environmental push factors, operationalized as droughts happening in rural areas proximate to the urban centers, could be driving any effect of urban population growth on social disorder, possibly supporting concerns over climate change-induced social unrest. We test our expectations on a sample of similarly sized urban and peri-urban ‘grid cells’ covering the whole of the African continent for the 1997–2010 period, using geo-coded social unrest data. Our analysis shows that urban population growth is associated with increased unrest in the peri-urban areas only. We find no evidence, however, that this relationship is driven by environmental push factors in the form of nearby droughts. The study contributes insights relevant to the broader debates about possible security implications of hyper-urbanization and climate change.