Volume 53, No. 2, Summer 1994
Transitions to Free Trade: Local Impacts of Changes in Mexican Agrarian Policy
Lois Stanford
Key words: export agriculture, free trade, market structure, peasants, Mexico, Michoacan
Since 1988, Mexico has shifted agrarian policy to support foreign and national private capital investment in its agricultural sector. The government's withdrawal of political support for peasant organizations has already had an impact on local gricultural industries. In the case of Michoacan's export cantaloupe industry, US companies now no longer offer financial credit to peasant organizations and work only with wealthy commercial producers. From 1987-90, the local agricultural industry declined overall, and the market structure became more concentrated. A statistical measure of market structure for three seasons (1987-88, 1988-89, and 1989-90) shows an increasing concentration of the local industry in the hands of private commercial firms. The local economy's restructuring enables a few commercial investors to earn profits. They gain, however, at the expense of the regions' economic growth, as they expand their oligopoly in a retracting local industry. These firms are unlikely to defend Michoacan's traditional position in Mexico's export sector under the projected North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This case study demonstrates the need for local-level studies that examine the linkages between macro-level policy changes and local economies. The impact of Mexico's capitalization of the agricultural sector and the projected NAFTA will vary across different regions and different commodity systems.
Gender Issues Associated with Labor Migration and Dependence on Off-Farm Income in Rural Bolivia
Maria Elena Gisbert, Michael Painter, and Mery Quiton
Key words: agriculture, environment, migration, women; Central Bolivia
Central Bolivia resembles many areas of Latin America, where farm families are heavily dependent on off-farm income. Satisfying this frequently involves migration by males seeking employment, and creates conditions of chronic labor scarcity on the farm. As a result, land management often suffers, and a self-perpetuating cycle of impoverishment and environmental degradation is established. Because women assume almost all farm management duties in areas experiencing high rates of male wage labor migration, they are often the major agents and major victims of this cycle. A key to breaking the cycle is the empowerment of rural women to overcome the effects of labor scarcity by replacing individual family survival strategies with collective action.
Using Indigenous Knowledge to Improve Agriculture and Natural Resource Management
Billie R. DeWalt
Key words: agriculture, indigenous knowledge systems, natural resource management, philosophy
Scientific knowledge systems have received increasing criticism within the social science literature while indigenous knowledge systems are often over-optimistically presented as viable alternative ways of knowing. This paper argues that we need to search for more effective and creative interactions between indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge systems. I discuss the strengths and the weaknesses of both scientific and indigenous knowledge systems. I then draw on these examples to indicate in what situations we should look for guidance and ideas from indigenous knowledge systems. The paper closes with a discussion of how scientists, social scientists and people with local knowledge can better work together to improve agricultural and natural resource management system.
Changes in House Construction Materials in Border Mexico: Four Research Propositions about Commoditization
Josiah McC. Heyman
Key words: consumption, economic development, houses, material culture, US-Mexico border
In the US-Mexican industrial border city of Agua Prieta, Sonora, houses are being built with purchased, manufactured materials, many of them from outside the region, rather than with local or self-made materials. This situation provides an opportunity to explore the logic of delocalization and commoditization of material culture. Definitive explanations are not available, but four lines of inquiry are suggested. The tradeoff between time and money changes as people enter the wage economy. Houses become vehicles for investment across time. Access to local resources become constrained while new commercial channels of purchased manufactures are opened. Techniques of construction change as the regional stratification picture shifts in response to external connections.
Business Contracts in Javanese Vegetable Marketing
Okke Braadbaart
Key words: agricultural economies, marketing; Java
The paper looks at long-term personalized business contracts in Javanese vegetable marketing as mechanisms for coping with pervasive uncertainty. It thereby builds on a perspective evolving in both anthropology and in industrial sociology. Comparing exchange relationships along two vegetable assembly channels, it finds a rich variety of contract and non-contract forms of exchange. Comparative analysis indicates close links between exchange patterns and market micro-environment, a finding that confirms the "uncertainty-handling" hypothesis. The study also provides some support for the proposition, advanced in industrial sociology, that firms engage in long-term contracts in order to bridge market failure problems arising from the interdependency of their actions. Longitudinal studies of contracting are suggested as a promising tool for future research on contracting practice.
Weighing the Risks and Rewards of Involvement in Cultural Conservatism and Heritage Tourism
Benita J. Howell
Key words: cultural conservation, heritage tourism, politics of cultural representation, tourism and development, US
Many towns in the United States are embracing heritage tourism in order to stimulate economic growth and enhance quality of life, hoping to attract new business and industry. Communities seek anthropologists' services as consultants on heritage tourism development projects; however, critics within our discipline have voiced doubts about the intellectual and ethical integrity of such work. This paper reviews literature on sociocultural impacts of tourism, focusing on work that raises concerns about spurious cultural representations that result when the tourism industry or entrepreneurs within host societies appropriate heritage and commoditize it for tourist consumption. Critics accuse anthropologists and other specialists in cultural heritage conservation of staging inauthentic events and inventing spurious cultural traditions that undermine rather than sustain the vitality of genuine cultural expression. This critique is presented and challenged. Cultural heritage conservation projects in the United States, typically funded through state humanities council grants, require both citizen participation and scholarly involvement. The goals, organization, and role demands of such projects can be problematic for anthropologists and other cultural specialists. This discussion highlights the special difficulties encountered when projects are part of planning for cultural tourism and and suggests modest changes in humanities council policy that would place cultural specialists in a more tenable position vis-a-vis citizen participants. Anthropologists who accept the challenges of this work experience issues of social interaction and cultural representation in a praxis that can both focus needed attention on the content and meaning of cultural representations in tourism planning and, at the same time, enrich our discipline.
Conservation and Forced Innovation: Responses to Turtle Excluder Devices among Gulf of Mexico Shrimpers
Mark Moberg and Christopher L. Dyer
Key words: conservation, Gulf of Mexico, innovation, shrimp fishing; US, Alabama
By 1989, Federal regulations required the use of Turtle Excluder Devices on offshore shrimp trawlers in the US waters. Fishermen in Bayou La Batre, Alabama initially responded to this forced innovation by experimenting with and modifying the device. Resistance followed when modifications were unable to reduce catch loss associated with their use. The unintended consequences of TEDs for fishermen's livelihoods and resource management are examined.
Commentary: Planning and the Law of Social Impact Assessment
James P. Boggs
Commentary: The Fifth Subdiscipline: Anthropological Practice and the Future of Anthropology
Marietta L. Baba
Commentary: Training Programs for the Practice of Applied Anthropology
Gilbert Kushner
Peter K. New Award Paper: Multiple Sexual Partners, Migrant Labor, and the Makings for an Epidemic: Knowledge and Beliefs about AIDS among Women in Highland Lesotho
Nancy Romero-Daza
