In rural West Africa, the gendered division of labour extends to labelling certain crops as ‘male’ or ‘female’. With the introduction of new varieties of crops and technologies, these constructions of gendered plants undergo a process of renegotiation at social intrafaces. This process of attaching meaning to new features in cultivation results in the remaking of gendered crops. These negotiations, in turn, have an effect on the construction of gender in specific ethnic and environmental settings, unlinking labour from its gendered connotations and, thus, unmaking the social meaning and creating room for manoeuvre. Based on fieldwork among the Dagomba and Kusasi people in northern Ghana, this study examines how gendered responsibilities and access to the cultivation of crops are linked and expressed in obligations related to the cultural ideal of a proper meal, in this case consisting of the food categories (male) staple and (female) soup, which serve as the blueprint for assigning crops to a specific gender.
ABSTRACT. Transdisciplinary sustainability science (TSS) is a prominent way of scientifically contributing to the solution of sustainability problems. Little is known, however, about the practice of scientists in TSS, especially those early in their career. Our objectives were to identify these practices and to outline the needs and challenges for early career scientists in TSS. To that end, we compiled 10 key characteristics of TSS based on a literature survey. We then analyzed research groups with 81 early career scientists against these characteristics. All of these research groups are funded by an ongoing federally funded German program for socialecological research whose main feature is to promote sustainability-oriented inter-and transdisciplinary research. We found that the practices of the 12 groups generally correspond with the characteristics for TSS, although there is ample variation in how they were addressed. Three major challenges were identified: (1) TSS demands openness to a plurality of research designs, theories, and methods, while also requiring shared, explicit, and recursive use of TSS characteristics; (2) researchers in TSS teams must make decisions about trade-offs between achievements of societal and scientific impact, acknowledging that focusing on the time-consuming former aspect is difficult to integrate into a scientific career path; and (3) although generalist researchers are increasingly becoming involved in such TSS research projects, supporting the integration of social, natural, and engineering sciences, specialized knowledge is also required.
This paper contributes to the discourse on food policy, particularly in relation to organic farming in Indonesia. Organic farming was first adopted by nonstate actors in Indonesia, by faith-based organisations and then by small farmer associations, while the state support for organic agriculture followed at a later date. The three groups, represented in this study by three case studies, adopt different positions with regard to the definition of organic agriculture and its relevance to food self-sufficiency, food security and food sovereignty. For Bina Sarana Bhakti Foundation (BSB), organic farming is both a spiritual worldview and a practical philosophy. For the Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI), organic agriculture foremost is a political tool to resist global capitalist agriculture. Despite their very different outlooks, both these two civil society organisations see organic agriculture as a post-materialist enterprise directed towards explicitly social-political goals. By contrast, the government's engagement in organic agriculture, although laced with evocative phrases such as "back to nature", is driven primarily by visions of developing a new niche market for Indonesian exports. The Indonesian State adopts a one-dimensional productivist definition that excludes different meanings and traditions of organic farming. The reduction of the meaning of 'organic' to 'organically certified products' excludes farmers who consider that they are practicing organic agriculture. We conclude that there is a strong case to be made that the State should relax its regulatory grip on the organic sector, to create room for sorely needed innovation and cooperation among the different actors involved.
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