DOI: 10.32735/s0718-6568/2002-n3-181
De la transferencia a la creatividad. Los papeles culturales de la ciencia en los países subdesarrollados
El autor afirma que la ciencia y la tecnologia son hoy dos poderosas instituciones sociales y culturales internacionales que apuntan a producir conocimiento universalmente valido y productos para el consumo mundial. A partir de esto, se interroga sobre el supuesto de que lo cultural es una esfera separada y secundaria, meramente superestructural. Y postula que la cultura es el ambito en que se producen las ideas por las que regimos nuestras vidas y que ellas penetran la ciencia. Dado el caracter cultural de la ciencia, permite plantear que llegar a ser cientificamente desarrollados podria no necesariamente significar volverse como Europa y/o los Estados Unidos. Tras ello se pregunta por las caracteristicas que debiera tener la tecnologia en America Latina.
DOI: 10.3167/082279404780446096
Pastoral Practices and their Transformation in the North-Western Karakoram
Textbooks and research papers dealing with pastoral practices in high mountain contexts generally favour the European ' Alpwirtschaft ' or ' Almwirtschaft ' strategy as the only important way of utilising mountain resources. The first diagram published by Arbos (1923: 572) described the movement of mountain farmers and their livestock in Tarentaise in the French Alps. More than half a century later it was reproduced as the sole and/or role model in the textbook on 'mountains and man' by Price (1981: 413). In addition, a diagram based on the situation in the Swiss Val d'Annivers, initially published in 1936 in the influential text of Robert Peattie later figured in the textbooks as the 'ideal' model of resource utilisation at different elevations. Needless to say, this practice has not existed in the Valais for nearly two generations. Nevertheless, this diagram was republished during the 1980s and even as late as 1997 (see Grötzbach 1982: 10; 1987: 65; 1988: 27; Grötzbach and Stadel 1997: 26). This seems to be an example of an Eurocentric view of pastoral practices in mountain regions. Western textbook authors seem to support a romantic view of long-extinct practices, while neglecting the existence of forms of mobile animal husbandry in other parts of the world. In an attempt to overcome this restricted and fragmented world view, in the present article emphasis is placed on current pastoral practices in High Asia.
DOI: 10.3167/082279402782311149
Pastoral Nomads, The State and a National Park: The Case of Dachigam, Kashmir
Introduction Most of the world's nomadic communities live in South Asia, and this region has the greatest variety of domestic animals systematically herded--bovines, equines, cameis, sheep, goats, pigs, ducks, guinea-fowl. Yet, scholarly interest in South Asian nomadism is meagre (Rao and Casimir 2003), and largely limited to expounding the 'problems' these 'backward' communities create for the state in its developmental aims. Reflecting colonial and orientalist attitudes flavoured by an urbanised and sedentist bias, the perspective has been largely that of a state, whose ultimate objective is to settle migratory pastoralists and other nomads. With environmental problems growing and alarming reports of deforestation throughout the region, state forest departments in many South Asian countries are locked in battles over what they deem 'overexploitation' by migratory herders. Increasingly, however, this perspective is being questioned and issues of social justice are coming to the fore. The notion of the environment being a concern of and for the state, rather than one of and for the people, is being contested. Slowly, but steadily, resource use--and with this, nomadism--in South Asia is also becoming a contested domain. In this paper I draw on ethnographic data (1) and archival materials to discuss some of the contradictions inherent in the conflict between the state in South Asia and its organs and institutions on the one hand and pastoral communities on the other. Using the example of the Dachigam National Park, I try to illustrate how wildlife management problems are often embedded in the much larger context of state-nomad relations and, more generally, in relations of dominance handed down from colonial times, and closely related to colonial concepts of nature. Finally, I show how such relations of dominance can be contested in times of more generalised political conflict. I take as an example the Valley of Kashmir, which has been witnessing severe armed violence since 1990. The Setting The Valley of Kashmir (henceforth, 'Kashmir') in the western Himalayas is part of the Indian-administered unit known as Jammu and Kashmir (henceforth, JK Casimir and Rao 1998; Casimir 2003). The herders belong to different communities, some of whom are sedentary, others transhumant and still others nomadic. Thus in summer, Kashmiri farmers, living year round in hamlets at 2,000 to 2,500 m with easy access to village commons, are often entrusted by farmers living further below with their livestock, in return for payment in cash and kind. Other farmers still lower down in the Valley pay the Pohol--professional Kashmiri herdsmen--to take their stock up to alpine pastures and bring them back in autumn, to be stail-fed in winter. Additionally, nomadic pastoral communities of the Bakkarwal and the Banihara enter Kashmir with their herds in early summer and exit in autumn, while the Gujar spend the entire year with their livestock transhuming within the Valley. …
DOI: 10.3167/np.2009.130201
Mountain Pastoralism 1500–2000: An Introduction
This special issue of Nomadic Peoples presents a collection of articles that give an idea of the continuities and changes of pastoralism in upland areas during the past five centuries. They are the result of a lengthy project on 'Mountain Pastoralism and Modernity' organized by historians from different continents. The following introduction aims to trace the framework of that enterprise. It takes up a few key concepts: mountain pastoralism, history, verticality, intensification and mobility. It then describes the project, outlines the current state of research in the continents concerned, and points to some results and prospects.
DOI: 10.1659/mrd-journal-d-13-00013.1
¤ Open Access
The Atta Abad Landslide and Everyday Mobility in Gojal, Northern Pakistan
Abstract In early 2010, the massive Atta Abad landslide blocked the Hunza River in the Gojal region of northern Pakistan. It also buried or flooded 25 km of the Karakoram Highway, the only vehicular transportation route connecting this region to the rest of Pakistan. Since the Karakoram Highway opened in 1978, road mobility has become deeply integrated into the everyday economies and time–space fabric of Gojali households. In this paper, we focus on what happens when a natural disaster unexpectedly slams the brakes on movement as a way to understand more fully the sociodevelopmental implications of roads in the rural global South. We review the history of mobility in the region to explain the importance of the Karakoram Highway as a mobility platform that restructured sociospatial relations in Gojal. We then turn to interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and local news sources to outline how residents of 4 Gojali communities were experiencing the economic, social, and emotional impacts of landslide-induced m...
DOI: 10.2307/3673356
Population Pressure, Mobility, and Socio-Economic Change in Mountainous Environments: Regions of Refuge in Comparative Perspective
This paper examines demographic and socioeconomic forces in high isolated parts of the world. These regions were not always isolated; they were once the centers of their own particular worlds which, in some cases, were complex civilizations. It is their relegation to the very periphery of the modern world that is the principal theme of this paper. Population migration, both into and out of these areas, has played a vital role in linking mountainous regions to the wider world. Particular attention is paid to the part played by the traditional mobility patterns and by the resource base of the mountains in the transformation of integral, self-sufficient cultures into dependent, subservient part-cultures, the regions of refuge. The effect of population pressure and the development of outmigration from the Andes of Peru is examined first and the analysis extended to the highlands of Papua-New Guinea and to several regions in the Himalayan arc to provide the background for a comparative study of regions of refuge.
DOI: 10.1659/0276-4741(2003)023[0369:fccitw]2.0.co;2
¤ Open Access
Forest Cover Change in the Western Carpathians in the Past 180 Years
Since the 19th century a slow expansion of forests into previous agricultural areas has been recorded in the Carpathians. The present article analyzes forest cover change in the Orawa region of Poland, using historical maps and contemporary satellite data. Forest cover change was analyzed with reference to elevation, under the assumption that it reflects a transformation of the vertical land use system developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. For the past 180 years, the proportion of forest in the study area has increased from 25% to 40%. Forest expansion largely affected pastures cleared within the forest belt and areas located immediately above and below this belt. Changes in forest area were largely related to a decline in agriculture and have occurred along with population growth. As a result, grazing has been replaced by forestry, nature conservation, and tourism.
DOI: 10.1127/1868-5749/2011/019-0024
Untangling human development and natural gradients: Implications of underlying correlation structure for linking landscapes and riverine ecosystems
Increasingly, ecologists seek to identify and quantify relationships between landscape gradients and aquatic ecosystems. Considerable statistical challenges emerge in this effort, some of which are attributable to multicollinearity between human development and landscape gradients. In this paper, we measure the covariation between human development—such as agriculture and urbanization – and natural landscape gradients – such as valley form, climate and geology. With a dataset of wade-able streams from coastal Oregon (USA), we use linear regression to quantify covariation between human activities and landscape gradients. We show that the correlation between human development and natural landscape gradients varies dramatically with the scale of observation. Similarly, we show how the correlation varies by region, even within a scale of interest. We then use a simulation experiment to demonstrate how this inherent covariation can hinder statistical efforts to identify mechanistic links between landscape gradients and features of aquatic ecosystems. We illustrate the negative consequences of the underlying correlation structure for statistical efforts: infl ated goodness-of-fi t metrics and infl ated error terms on key coeffi cients that may undermine model building. We conclude by discussing the current best statistical practices for dealing with multicollinearity as well as the limitations of existing statistical tools.
DOI: 10.2307/3673848
Pastoralism in Paramo Environments: Practices, Forage, and Impact on Vegetation in the Cordillera of Merida, Venezuela
An analysis of cattle farming and its impact on vegetation between 3,000 and 4,500 m was conducted in paramo farming communities dedicated to cultivating tuber crops in the Cordillera of Merida, Venezuela. Spatial variation of natural forage, vegetation selection by cattle, the grazing range, and farming practices were studied. The short-term impact of grazing on natural vegetation was investigated using experimental plots in short grassland and rosette-shrub communities. In the highlands of the paramo, the grazing patterns were characterized by intensive use of short grassland on the valley floor and extensive use of rosette-shrub communities on the hillsides which, in turn, were related to the spatial distribution of forage and acceptable ecological conditions for the cattle. The greatest impact on the vegetation was the concentration of grazing in short grasslands and the current grassland composition and distribution may be due to these grazing patterns. However, long-term studies are necessary to evaluate the magnitude of this impact. There is little forage available for recently introduced cattle in the high paramo, especially in the dry period, and fodder is acquired from diverse alternative sources in the agricultural belt. This factor and the need for animal labor in agriculture result in grazing patterns characterized by a great variety of animal movements between ecological zones depending on the resource availability of each family which confers greater spatial-temporal dynamics on grazing patterns. Finally, it is recommended that emphasis is placed on cattle management rather than on the elimination of pastoralism, in order to conserve these fragile ecosystems and to maintain the economy of the agropastoral communities.