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Building on conceptual frameworks to assess community resilience developed by Emery and Flora (2006) and Kelly et al. (2015), this study analyses the resilience of Hu village (Sichuan, China). The resilience of the village is assessed in the face of multiple and complex slow-and fast onset anthropogenic disturbances, especially the impacts of globalisation and modernisation, which have substantially transformed Chinese society. Hu village is typical for a rural community in transition affected by industrialisation, deagrarianisation, counterurbanisation and changing stakeholder expectations and opportunities. This has been accompanied by agricultural depopulation, outmigration, increasing non-farm employment, declining agricultural incomes, and associated social and psychological changes-processes that have decreased community resilience. Overall, Hu village emerges as only moderately resilient with tendencies for a further weakening of resilience. While economic, social and cultural domains are (still) moderately resilient, the natural and political domains show weak resilience. Building on critical studies of Chinese rural areas (e.g. Ye and He, 2008; He, 2010; Huang et al., 2010) the study concludes by arguing that Chinese government policies need to be substantially realigned if the resilience of rural communities such as Hu village is to be improved.

Dependence on chemical pesticides has become one of the most pressing challenges to global environmental sustainability and public health. Considerable regulatory efforts have been taken to mitigate pesticide dependence, which however has resulted in a prevalent ‘managerial failure’. Massive pesticide application has generated severe genetic resistance from pests, which has in turn further aggravated pesticide dependence and thus induced agrochemical industries to develop new pesticide varieties. This review proposes to look beyond the resistance-dependence nexus and presents a comprehensive discussion about global pesticide dependence in a social science perspective, i.e., revealing the socio-economic and political factors that reinforce pesticide dependence. These factors are classified into five intertwined themes: (1) agricultural regime, (2) social process of pesticide application, (3) economic analysis, (4) politics and governance, and (5) promotional failure of alternatives. It is found that pesticide dependence is not just a technological issue in the sphere of natural sciences, but more a human-made issue, with deep-seated socio-economic and political reasons. Addressing contemporary trap of global pesticide dependence entails a full acknowledgement and comprehension of the complex and intertwined factors. Furthermore, this review identifies two major explanatory approaches underlying the extant social science literature: a structuralist approach that stresses macro-level structures such as institutions, policies and paradigms, and an individualist approach that focuses on the decision-making of farmers at the micro level. This review recognizes the limitations of the two approaches and calls for transcending the duality. This study advocates a policy framework that emphasizes alignment and coordination from multi-dimensions, multi-actors and multi-scales. For future research, collaborations between natural and social scientists, and more integrated and interdisciplinary approaches should be strengthened.

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Based on an in-depth case study of a rural community, this paper documents the contemporary state of Chinese smallholder agriculture and the changes that it has been experiencing in the context of dramatic socio-economic transition through the lens of three main economic drivers: livelihood diversification, market conditions and government interventions. Results reveal that the change in Chinese smallholder agriculture has been complex and multidimensional. All three factors exert profound influence and shape the current state of Chinese agriculture. Massive rural-urban migration has resulted in labour shortages, which in turn have led to a reduction in agricultural diversity and land use intensity and a shift from traditional labour-intensive technologies to modern capital-intensive technologies. However, because of well-developed agricultural markets, input use levels are similar across farmer categories (such as income diversification), helping to maintain productivity. Furthermore, reduced profits from farming due to increasing input prices and decreasing output prices have exerted pressure on smallholders to increasingly turn to nonfarm activities and have also triggered a thriving informal land transfer market, which was previously non-existent. Policy implications include the need to strengthen local economies, improve market conditions, invest in rural infrastructures and facilitate smallholders' mobility.