Playing development roles: the political ecology of performance in agricultural development

Abstract

Performance is a useful lens through which to analyze agrarian life, as performance illuminates the ways that farmers manage the complex socioecological demands of farm work while participating in social life and in the larger political economy. The dialectic of planning and improvisation in the farm field has produced scholarship at multiple scales of political ecology, including the global ramifications of new technologies or policies, as well as the hyper-local engagements between farmers and fields in the context of modernity and development. Political ecologists are also beginning to understand how affects, such as aspirations and frustrations, influence agriculture by structuring how farmers and other stakeholders make decisions about farms, households, capital, and environments. To understand farm work as a performance is to situate it within particular stages, roles, scripts, and audiences at different scales. The articles in this Special Section ask how farmers have improvised, planned, and performed in response to agroecological challenges, bridging scholarship in political ecology, development studies, and the study of agrarian landscapes through new empirical case studies and theoretical contributions. Agriculture both signals social values and fosters improvisations within farming communities' collective vulnerability to weather and the political economy. We argue that the lens of performance situates the political ecology of agriculture within the constraints of the political economy, the aspirations and frustrations of daily life, and the dialectic between improvised responses to change and planning in the field.Keywords: Performance, agriculture, planning, improvisation, agrarian studies

Peasant maize cultivation as an assemblage: an analysis of socio-cultural dynamics of maize cultivation in western Kenya

“…These are some of the practices of the farmers who are seemingly change agents who want to portray a different image to outsiders; that they always use maize technologies for production. They also represent a performance in farming (Flachs & Richards, 2018;Glover, 2018;Richards, 1993) as "the farmers manage the complex socio-ecological demands of farm work while participating in social life and in the larger political economy" (Flachs & Richards, 2018: 638). Farmers have to respond to their community but at the same time they need to represent the organisations in which they benefit from such as the MVP.…”

New Farmer Identity: The Emergence of a Post‐Productivist Agricultural Regime in China

“…The reflexive character of identity forms the basis of connections between performance and identity (Burke and Reitzes 1981). Performance is a powerful lens to describe behaviour that signifies identity (Flachs and Richards 2018). An identity contains a set of meanings that shape the self‐in‐role, and provides a reference for the individual to explain the social situation and his/ her (potential) actions (Wells 1978; Burke and Reitzes 1981).…”

The direction of ecological insurrections: political ecology comes to daggers with Fukuoka

“…"No matter how the harvest will turn out, whether or not there will be enough food to eat", explains Fukuoka (2010: 114), "in simply sowing seed and caring tenderly for plants under nature's guidance there is joy." This certainly deserves caution given the hardships of cultivation (see Flachs and Richards 2018), yet Fukuoka (2012) emphasizes the need to revitalize connection and joy by participating within ecosystems. Development industries, harsh environmental conditions and failed farming practices have led to exit them or destroy them.…”