The rock, the beach, and the tidal pool: People and poverty in natural resource‐dependent areas

Abstract

Explaining why poverty exists in natural resource-dependent areas (NRDAs) presents a formidable challenge, given variability in the nature, spatial manifestations, and social character of human well-being. Nonetheless, there are structures and processes unique to NRDAs, including resource degradation, increasingly restrictive public land use policies, concentrated land ownership, and high rates of occupational injury that create the potential for impoverization in NRDAs. Given this complex context, we examine two theories of poverty. We find processes such as the shift from labor to capital-intensive resource extraction, profit squeezes, and increased capital mobility identified in advanced capitalism theory help to explain NRDA poverty. In addition, processes identified in the theory of internal colonialism such as unequal exchange, the clash between traditional and secular cultures, and the

Beyond formal groups: neighboring acts and watershed protection in Appalachia

“…Despite being rich in coal and natural gas resources, the region is characterized by persistent poverty (Thorne et al 2004). Similar to other resourcedependent places (Peluso et al 1994), the boom-and-bust cycles of coal mining and associated employment have had a significant impact on the region's demographics. In West Virginia (the only state located entirely within Appalachia), coal employment reached a high in 1940, with over 130,000 coal miners.…”

Uncovering Discursive Framings of the Bangladesh Shipbreaking Industry

“…Our interviews with workers suggest that workers value their employment in shipbreaking (Cairns 2014). This contradiction is reminiscent that peasants have their own culture, needs preferences and demands that are most often determined by the access to available opportunities (Peluso et al 1994;Buerk 2006). Buerk (2006) ethnography of the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh captured how workers recalled their helplessness-potentially exhibiting risk takers behaviors-over the abysmal economic plights their families experienced.…”

“…Arguably, the emphasis on workers' rights is driven by the empathy of first world institutions (and in this case, third world NGOs sharing a first world view), identifying "the other whose sorrows and frustrations are being made part of the spectacle" and thus are viewed as a false cultural affirmation (Escobar 2011, p. 170). This does not mean that the workers are immune from sorrow and frustrations, but rather that the priority of the workers is misrepresented and "intentionally uninformed" (Leach and Mearns 1996;Peluso et al 1994). The difficulty of understanding such a paradoxical stance of workers and their representation of sufferings needs to be studied "against the exploitation of and domination over the conditions of local, regional, national and global political discourses" (Escobar 2011).…”

Defining fishers in the South African context: subsistence, artisanal and small-scale commercial sectors

“…To qualify for consideration, fishers should be poor and have no other full-time employment that yields income sufficient for the resource to be no longer necessary to meet their basic food requirements. (Branch et al 2002) Peluso et al (1994) also noted that the movement of resources out of the area of capture for processing and sale is one of the factors removing control from local communities.…”

“…In many cases this will be by way of entrants who need to start small, even if they grow later. Small-scale commercial enterprises should be seen as an opportunity to break the cycle of persistent poverty associated with subsistence fisheries (Peluso et al 1994), while at the same time developing adequate methods of control that will safeguard the resource. (7) Small-scale fisheries are a means of uplifting poor people who already have the skills and experience required for fishing, and should not simply be another way of allowing well-to-do investors entrance into the fishing industry.…”