Volume 61, No. 2, Summer 2002
Managing Farmer and Consumer Expectations: A Study of a North Carolina Farmers Market
Susan Andreatta and William Wickliffe, II
The overall goal of this research was to better understand the cultural relationships between the food-selling habits of farmers and the food-buying habits of consumers at a farmers market located near three urban centers in North Carolina. The project focused on farmers’ and consumers’ expectations and was designed to identify how the success of the market can be improved. Such improvement should increase consumers’ satisfaction with the market and also increase farmers’ quality of life. This study shows that the farmers market itself plays an important role in structuring the relationships between farmers and consumers and in determining whether the experiences of selling and buying at the market are satisfying to them. The market is more than just a physical space for commercial transactions; rather, the market, and the policies and regulations that govern its operation, is an active contributor to the cultural dynamic within which those transactions take place. Our findings emphasize the importance of understanding the market as a context within which farmers and consumers make their marketing and buying decisions.
Key words: farmers markets, agriculture, North Carolina
Ecological Degradation, Global Tourism, and Inequality: Maya Interpretations of the Changing Environment in Quintana Roo, Mexico
Ana M. Juárez
This essay, focusing on the perspective of indigenous Mayas, documents and describes the process of ecological degradation and the rise of the tourist industry in Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Using a combination of ethnographic, secondary, and archival sources, the author challenges widespread assumptions regarding global tourism and explains how local and global forces shaped Tulum’s culture and political economy. Although Mayas ambiguously interpret recent social and environmental changes, she shows that they do not critique the process of globalization in and of itself, but rather critique inequality, their loss of cultural autonomy, and their subordinate position within contemporary global cultures and economies. Scholars and planners must begin to consider Maya interpretations of their changing environment to alleviate the area’s severe social and ethnic stratification.
Key words: tourism, globalization, social relations, environment, Mayas, Mexico
Cognitive Aspects of Intergenerational Change: Mental Models, Cultural Change, and Environmental Behavior among the Lacandon Maya of Southern Mexico
Norbert Ross1
The life of the Lacandon Maya of Mensäbäk (Chiapas, Mexico) has undergone tremendous changes in the last 30 years. These changes are manifested in a generational split in social relations, household location, and economic behavior. The changes affecting social life as well as decision-making processes are paralleled by changes in environmental cognition among the adult members of the community. Older individuals reveal a systematic awareness of the ecological complexity involving animals and plants of the rainforest. The data suggest that the emerging patterns of change are not due to different stages of development—from novice to expert—nor do they seem to be reversible. Rather, they indicate an intricate system that closely links culture, cognition, and behavior.
Key words: culture, cognition, intergenerational change, agricultural decision making, Maya, Mexico
Perceptions of Risk, Vulnerability, and Disease Prevention in Rural Burkina Faso: Implications for Community-Based Health Care and Insurance
Johannes Sommerfeld, Mamadou Sanon, Bocar A. Kouyaté, and Rainer Sauerborn
This paper examines local discourse on perceived risk and vulnerability among rural and semiurban populations in Kossi Province in the northwest of Burkina Faso. Focus group data are presented to elucidate this discourse in a number of risk domains. Local notions of disease prevention are exemplified with respect to malaria, diarrhea, and vaccine-preventable diseases. Quantitative measures on perceived severity and perceived personal vulnerability, assessed using culturally adapted scaling methods and relating to a list of selected risks, are presented. Implications of the complex local discourse on uncertainty and vulnerability with respect to community-centered development efforts such as community-based health care and insurance are explored.
Key words: risk, vulnerability, perceptions, West Africa, Burkina Faso
Nenets Reindeer Herding and Industrial Exploitation in Northwest Russia
Tuula Tuisku
Exploration and extraction of mineral resources threaten reindeer herding, a traditional livelihood of the Nenets, the indigenous population of the Nenets Autonomous District in northwest Russia. Reindeer herders are worried about the degradation of the environment and encountering oil workers on the tundra. Based on previous experience they feel they cannot influence development despite new legislation, which is supposed to take into account traditional livelihoods.
Key words: reindeer herding, industrial development, decision making, Nenets, Russia
“Rational” and Ecocultural Circumstances of Program Take-Up Among Low-Income Working Parents
Christina M. Gibson and Thomas S. Weisner
New Hope (NH) is a random-assignment, antipoverty program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that offers child care subsidies, wage subsidies, health insurance, and, if needed, a temporary community service job to participants working 30 or more hours per week. Despite the relative generosity of the program and supportive caseworkers, take-up was far from universal, and participants rarely used all services. Ethnographic analysis of a random sample of experimental participants found that NH’s economically based offer was theoretically too narrow to motivate all participants. Four categories of personal and family circumstances were associated with take-up: 1) the constrained-by-information group (participants’ understandings about the program differed from what NH in fact offered); 2) the disruptive-life group (significant personal troubles and instability); 3) the pro-con group (used often explicit cost-benefit calculations); and 4) the daily-routine group (used particular benefits but only if they helped sustain their family daily routine). Analysis of take-up of other services by the control group showed similar patterns, suggesting that these take-up patterns are not specific to NH. We conclude that use of welfare-to-work interventions reflects ecocultural conditions and personal goals and values, as well as a more conventional cost-benefit approach. Economic rational choice as well as local, situated rationality models are needed to fully account for benefit use.
Key words: rational choice, ecocultural theory, welfare reform, program take-up, working poor, Wisconsin
Managing Farmer and Consumer Expectations: A Study of a North Carolina Farmers Market
Susan Andreatta and William Wickliffe, II
The overall goal of this research was to better understand the cultural relationships between the food-selling habits of farmers and the food-buying habits of consumers at a farmers market located near three urban centers in North Carolina. The project focused on farmers’ and consumers’ expectations and was designed to identify how the success of the market can be improved. Such improvement should increase consumers’ satisfaction with the market and also increase farmers’ quality of life. This study shows that the farmers market itself plays an important role in structuring the relationships between farmers and consumers and in determining whether the experiences of selling and buying at the market are satisfying to them. The market is more than just a physical space for commercial transactions; rather, the market, and the policies and regulations that govern its operation, is an active contributor to the cultural dynamic within which those transactions take place. Our findings emphasize the importance of understanding the market as a context within which farmers and consumers make their marketing and buying decisions.
Key words: farmers markets, agriculture, North Carolina
Perturbing the System: “Hard Science,” “Soft Science,” and Social Science, The Anxiety and Madness of Method
Joan Cassell
“Objective” research is ill-equipped to deal with emotion-laden topics such as terminal illness, dying, and death. I am confronted daily with these issues during my current fieldwork in a hospital intensive care unit (ICU). Physicians are biased toward methods claiming to be “scientific,” and many medical sociologists conspire to satisfy this predilection. When unable to conduct hypothesis-driven research, they strive to be value-neutral and “objective” in the field, thus avoiding the Hawthorne effect. But why bother, when the Heisenberg Effect still holds? A phallic metaphor valorizes “hard” science as masculine, while denigrating “soft” science as feminine. This paper examines and critiques the notion of value-neutral social research, where “objectivity” is equated with scientific legitimacy. A fieldworker can learn more from perturbing the system than from pretending to be an invisible fly on the wall.
Key words: intensive care units, death and dying, participant observation, “objective” research, United States
