Fall Semester 2005
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Government, Department of Political Science, Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Co-Director, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University,
"How Will Globalization Affect the Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptability of Socio-Ecological Systems at Various Scales? An Agenda for Scientific Research"
Abstract
This paper focuses on the effects of globalization on the resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability of socio-ecological systems (SESs) and coupled human-environment systems at scales ranging from the local to the global. Globalization itself is not treated a single, measurable variable, owing to the term's lack of precision and the absence of standard measures or indicators of globalization. Rather, globalization refers to a multidimensional phenomenon whose elements can be disaggregated and analyzed one at a time.
We start with an effort to sharpen the conceptual foundation of our argument before moving on to some general comments about the nature of globalization and an account of a number of major analytic features of globalization. In the process, we develop questions and hypotheses about the impact of various aspects of globalization on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability in SESs. Because human behavior is reflexive, in the sense that people observe both natural and social occurrences and change their behavior on the basis of such observations and their expectations about future occurrences, we also consider human responses to globalization in evaluating the impacts of this phenomenon on resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability. In our final section, we highlight some of the principal questions outlined in the preceding sections of the paper and endeavor to frame them as priorities for a research program that will interest members of the community interested in the human dimensions of global change.
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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Eduardo S. Brondizio, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University,
"Small farmers in the global market: Commodity chains, land use, and development in the Amazon estuary"
Abstract
This presentation focuses on the interactions between rural communities and expanding global markets for forest products. It does so by telling the story of the boom in the açaí fruit (Euterpe oleracea) economy—from a rural staple food to a fashion food in national and international markets—and examines the development and formation of its production system as well as the organization of its corresponding commodity chain. The case described here illustrates changing economic opportunities during the expansion of a production system from local to global spheres and the implications of these changes for small farmers. This work is based on a commodity chain ethnographic approach to address linkages between consumers, markets, and local production systems. The presentation reflects on the process of scaling up the community level ethnographic process to capture the expansion of local products nationally and internationally. A commodity chain ethnographic perspective to local agricultural economies contributes to nesting local communities, small farmers and their landscapes within larger social, economic, and political forces shaping and shaped by national and global markets. The paper discusses how market expansion has taken advantage of symbols and images to depict forest products and local producers, the consequence of these representations for the position of small farmers within emerging global markets, and their implications for rural development in the region.
Note: This Session will be held in the Seminar room at the Workshop, 513 N. Park.
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Last Updated: October 17, 2005
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