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Research themes
Research themes
The research programme explores a number of key issues deriving from the central CERES research questions on the principles and processes underlying rural resource management at various levels of analysis. These are elaborated under the following thematic headings:
1. Development Strategies, Agrarian Debates and Agrarian Reforms
2. Population, Environment, Food Systems and Rural Change.
3. Rural-Urban Interaction and Rural Transformation.
4. Market Formation and its Impact on Rural Communities and Households.
5. Rural African Land and Labour Issues.
6. Global-Local Transformations: Agriculture, Livelihoods, Food and Consumption.
7. The Experience of Crisis: Rural Responses to Economic and Political Crisis. Each of these themes constitutes a sub-programme of its own and consists of several project clusters focusing on a specific topic and/or region. The various research themes however are linked by a number of core crosscutting issues on which the participant researchers exchange relevant research findings and collaborate in various ways. The foremost general issue undoubtedly (still) is the varied and often contradictory social, economic and cultural impacts of the incorporation of rural communities into wider national and international political and economic systems. This may coincide with increased government presence through the implementation of top-down policies, or equally with drastic reductions of the role of the state and liberalisation of the rural economy through e.g. structural adjustment programmes and post-socialist transitions. Both processes may deeply affect the existing production relations and social relations (including gender), as well as the sustainability of local resource use (including food security), local employment opportunities and the role of local institutions and knowledge systems in allocating and exploiting the available resources.
Each of the above mentioned research focuses contributes to the unravelling of these complex structural changes and local responses due to processes of (unequal) incorporation. This might even be achieved through a common analytical approach, i.e. by relating these changes and responses to the position, participation and exclusion of the respective agents and actors in formal and informal networks providing access to resources, power and information. As Castells (1997) has demonstrated in a recent study, the expansion, consolidation and erosion of these networks may offer a major clue to a better understanding of the differential economic, social and political impacts of processes of integration and marginalisation at both the local (community) and the national (state) level of analysis. Actor-oriented and network approaches of course do not necessarily exclude structural influences on actor behaviour and roles; it is precisely the interactions of structure and agency, global and local, individual and society which form the key problematic of this research programme, as of the social sciences generally.

Theme 1. Development Strategies, Agrarian Debates and Agrarian Reforms
Research within this theme aims to explores fundamental analytical and policy issues concerning the role of the agricultural and rural sectors in the development process, and is concerned specifically with agrarian aspects of the second question of the CERES research programme. One cluster of related studies concerns comparative study of the ways in which agrarian issues have been defined and debated by academics and policy makers in African, Asian and Latin American countries. Another concerns itself with the comparative study of major structural changes on the agrarian sector in former socialist countries and other countries undergoing structural adjustment based on neo-liberal models.

Cluster 1: Agrarian debates in comparative perspective.
This cluster involves comparative and historical analysis of the main debates on the agrarian problem and transition since the Second World War in selected African, Asian and Latin American countries. The aim is to understand how the 'agrarian question' has been defined and debated in different countries and regions, the relations between agrarian debates, state strategies and agrarian crises and the lessons to be learned for contemporary state policies.
At present, in addition to literature research at regional level, research is conducted on Mozambique, S. Africa and Ethiopia; Chile, Mexico and Peru; India and Indonesia.

Cluster 2: Agrarian transitions in the 1990s: comparative experiences of post-socialist reforms, structural adjustment and privatisation in the agrarian sector
Various research projects were executed or are still ongoing within the context of this cluster:
° Structural Adjustment and the Agricultural (and Rural) Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean
This project is a follow-up of a project that was already completed (focusing on Adjustment and Food Markets in Central America and in particular Nicaragua, 1992-96), and was partly done in co-operation with the Agricultural Unit of the ECLAC/UN in Santiago (Spoor). Further work was done during 1999 on the establishment of a data base with time series of economic data on production and trade, which is still be completed for further analysis (Spoor, Izurieta). First results were presented in a joint Latin American Seminar in November 1998. A book on Rural Development in Latin America and the Caribbean) was completed that was published by ECLAC and AlfaOmega in Bogota and Mexico (2001). Subsequently publications will follow on the problem of policy responses to crises and their differential impact.
° Agrarian Reform in Latin America and the Carribbean
This research is based on a longstanding research interest in Land Reform (Kay), which focuses at the transformation of agrarian structures in the LAC region. Countries such as Chile and Peru have been the primary areas of attention, but in the period 1999-2001 a comparative approach was taken (Kay), which included a thorough analysis of the individual land reform experience in the region, including also the dimension of resource conflicts and property rights. Co-operation exists with various institutions in Latin American countries, as well as with European institutes, which specialise in Latin American Studies (such as CEDLA, ILAS, etc.). In the field of Gender and Agrarian Transition co-operation was extended (Spoor) to the UNRISD sponsored comparative research project on Gender, Agrarian Reform and Property Rights, which was undertaken in countries such as Brazil, South-Africa and Uzbekistan (to be presented in an international seminar in Addis Abeba, September 2001).
° Agrarian Transition in Post-Socialist Economies (Central Asian States and Mongolia)
This research is following a project that was focusing on the interplay between the macro-economic transition and the transforming agrarian sector in the Central Asian States and Mongolia (1993-1998), from which a substantial amount of research output was derived. The follow-up research actually focuses on two aspects of the agrarian transition: (1) the changes that take place in land ownership, institutions and markets; (2) the effects the whole transition has on the rural environment, relating this to the degradation of land and water resources (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). The research project as a whole forms part and parcel of the research program of the Centre for the Study of Transition and Development (CESTRAD), that was established at the ISS in 1999 (Spoor). In the period 2000-2001 the research was expanded to including an analysis of the 'State of Agrarian Reform in the Former
Soviet Union". First results are published in Europe-Asia Studies (September 2001; Spoor & Visser). In December 2001 a major international seminar is planned on "Transition, Institutions and the Rural Sector", where research results will be presented and a new agenda for research ion agrarian transition will be discussed (Spoor, Saith).
PhD Students (list is not complete):
Ngo Thi Men (Vietnam), Hayyalu Shiferaw (Ethiopia), Oane Visser (Netherlands), Saturnino Borras (Philippenes), Ngo Thi Song An (Vietnam).

Theme 2. Population, Environment, Food Systems and Rural Change
This theme focuses on the complex relationships linking changes in population, agrarian resource use and technology, to issues of access to food and environmental sustainability. One cluster examines relations between resource use, environmental change, technology and rural livelihoods in both long-term and short-term perspective, while the second focuses on changes in livelihood strategies and reproductive behaviour in response to a variety of exogenous forces.

Cluster 1: Resource use, technology, environmental change and rural livelihoods.
This cluster of studies explores the causes and consequences of changing resource use patterns (including technology) on rural societies and livelihoods, in a variety of settings. Some of these studies take a relatively long-term perspective on rural environmental change, resource use and livelihood patterns at local level, while others combine a national, regional and local focus to analyse the institutional dimensions and local impacts of environmental management (large-scale water control projects) and induced agrarian (bio)technology innovations.
Research is carried out in the Ethiopian highlands; Kenya (various regions); Northwest Honduras, Mexico (Chiapas) and Nepal.
Co-operating institutions: Kenya Agricultural Biotechnology Platform.

Cluster 2: Impact of exogenous changes on household livelihood and reproductive strategies
These studies concern on the one hand the processes and mechanisms through which macro factors (structural reforms and development strategies) influence local-level economic activities and reproductive behaviour and household coping strategies.
Research is carried out in Côte d'Ivoire.
Co-operating institutions: IFORD, Yaounde

Theme 3: Rural-Urban Interaction and Rural Transformation
A key issue deriving from the research focus mentioned above is the process of rural transformation under conditions of advancing (regional) incorporation and rural-urban interaction. As has become clear from the literature and recent case studies, these conditions may lead to very different responses among the rural communities and producers affected. These may react for example, by diversifying their rural resource base (i.e. developing non-farm activities and indulging in rural-urban labour mobility), or by intensifying food crop agriculture and switching to cash-crop farming or even by withdrawing into subsistence agriculture after completely switching their main income source to non-farm activities. At the end of these adaptive processes, increasing rural-urban interaction may even engender a process of rural "in situ" urbanisation, i.e. urbanisation without a massive dislocation of the population. Together with the related changes in socio-economic and spatial structures, institutional arrangements and production relations, these processes are at the centre of rural transformation study as outlined above. As these near-universal processes have specific regional histories and manifestations, they are studied in three clusters focusing respectively in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South- and Southeast Asia.

Theme 4. Market Formation and its Impact on Rural Communities and Households
Incorporation of rural societies into regional, national and global markets -- a historical process that has long been at work in different paces and degrees -- has now become a general phenomenon. Some areas have been -- actively or passively -- involved in world market oriented production for centuries, others only more recently. The major mechanism of present-day market formation in the agrarian sector are through agrarian commercialisation (production of cash crops, both for export and for the growing urban domestic market). Patterns of rural market formation are strongly determined by government policies, ranging from more or less laissez-faire attitudes in neo-liberal regimes (although even here, states generally try to maintain some degree of control over markets for the major 'political' crops, including food) to attempts at strict centralised control in socialist countries. While the macro-economic
and macro-sociological dimensions of these processes are the objects of research of other themes in this, this theme focuses specifically on the impact of market formation on the social organisation of rural communities and households. Each of the three research clusters addresses specific dimensions of the overall process of market incorporation of rural communities.

Cluster 1: Market formation and the role of rural entrepreneurs and institutions
This cluster focuses on the development of markets for agricultural commodities, emphasising the role of entrepreneurs, brokers and state agencies in shaping commercial networks and the ways in which market formation influences production and production relations. Individual studies address these general processes in a variety of (liberal, populist and socialist) political settings and also in different time-perspectives. Special attention is paid to the development of cash crop production, the role of local or regional entrepreneurs (sometimes from ethnic minorities) in establishing trade networks and marketing chains linking local producers with national markets, and the role of private and public financial institutions.
Research is presently carried out in Mexico; Ethiopia; Vietnam; Indonesia and the Philippines
Co-operating Institutions: University of Hanoi; University of the Philippines; University of Addis Ababa.

Cluster 2: Incorporation, communities and households
Market incorporation brings incisive changes in the internal organisation of agrarian communities and rural households. Changes in production organisation and technology bring rapid changes in the structure and volume of employment and in agrarian labour relations; within households, older systems of (gender and generational) division of labour are transformed as new patterns of livelihood emerge. Studies in this cluster directly address the impacts of market formation and incorporation on livelihood patterns and incomes, intra-household relations (gender in particular), and rural social differentiation.
Research is presently carried out in Ethiopia, India and Indonesia.

Theme 5. Rural African Land and Labour Issues
The fifth theme takes as its research entry point the interaction of land and labour as the two principal means of production for smallholder households in sub-Saharan Africa. Study of the interaction of land and labour allocation within rural African households yields interesting patterns when analysed within wider regional, national and international socio-economic and political contexts. The extremely wide range of rapid changes that now are being experienced in sub-Saharan Africa, the inadequacies of current conceptual frameworks and policy formulation, and the depth of the political and economic crisis now prevailing, justifies in this case a comparative approach between countries within the same sub-continent.

Cluster 1: Rural Labour Transformations
Rural labour patterns are undergoing rapid and profound transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa related to declining reliance on export crop production in peasant farming, growing disinterest in farming, particularly amongst youth, loss of access to land, consequent changes to land inheritance practices, increasing population densities which preclude old forms of land management, and the restructuring of plantation agriculture. Occupational adjustment and innovative forms of rural employment, farm management and agricultural production patterns have surfaced with implications for social divisions of labour, collective labour relations, and agrarian cultures. New forms of labour usage pose theoretical and practical challenges for this cluster. What relationship does the movement into trade and services have to prevailing agricultural systems? Does this non-agricultural activity effectively offset farmers' agricultural livelihood risks and the threat of food insecurity? How is labour mobilised and managed? How viable and durable are rural enterprises? Do they represent alternative forms of life and cultural mores to existing agrarian values? What sorts of training requirements do they posit? These are some of the questions highlighted in this cluster. Geographical coverage spans: Benin, North Cameroon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and S. Africa.
Co-operating institutions: Afrika-Studiecentrum; Centre for Social Research,
Malawi; Rhodes University, South Africa; University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Universities of Ahmadu Bello, Zaria and Nsukka, Nigeria.

Cluster 2: Negotiating Land and Resource Utilisation
Once considered the continent of land abundance, the African rural population now faces critical land and natural resource constraints related to increasing population densities and expanding non-agricultural forms of land usage. This cluster directs its attention to the causes and consequences of change catalysed by resource contraction. Declining soil fertility, food insecurity, and incursions on
pastoralists' grazing areas, amongst other tendencies, are examined and related to changes in agricultural land use management and irrigation, spatial mobility patterns, and urban-rural links. Emphasis is placed on the social process of negotiating access to scarcer resources like land, water and credit. Levels and units of analysis span decision-making within households, other rural agencies and local and national state policy formulation. New ethnic and gender identities and divisions of labour, as well as technical change directed at more productive agriculture are considered. Research concentrates on: Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Burkina Faso, and Benin.
Co-operating Institutions: Moi University, Kenya; Sokoine University, Tanzania.

Cluster 3: Agricultural Marketing Linkages and Adaptations
Produce marketing has been a central pivot of rural economic life in colonial and post-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. This cluster, in keeping with the theme of dynamic change that permeates Working Programme 2, focuses on comparative marketing systems through time. Contrasts between different forms of marketing structures, i.e. national parastatals and marketing boards as well as regional and local co-operative societies are highlighted. Various topics are analysed including commodity pricing, efficiency of distribution networks, and marketing organisational forms in relation to patterns of agriculture production. A number of commodities are studied, both traditional African export crops like coffee and cotton, as well as the new 'non-traditional exports' like horticultural products. The countries covered are: Uganda, North Cameroon and Kenya.

Theme 6. Global-Local Transformations: Agriculture, Livelihoods, Food and Consumption
The aim of this sixth theme is to contribute to theoretical understandings, empirical analyses and policy debates concerning globalisation and localisation within the field of rural development. The research group is constituted of two main clusters of projects focusing on: 1) Issues of 'Global' and 'Local' Knowledge and Institutions: Agriculture, Food and Environment; and 2) Neoliberal Policies, 'Global' Commodities, and Migration Flows: Social Restructuring and Local Responses.
These two broad areas of enquiry are crosscut by an interest in two processes: a) interventions by state, non-state and international organisations in differing rural situations; and b) the critical role played in this process by local cultural repertoires and organising practices. Both offer entry-points for the study of changing patterns of 'rurality' in a 'globalizing' world. These processes also raise important policy questions concerning the role of local actors in the management and representation of planned change.

Cluster 1: Issues of 'Global' and 'Local' Knowledge and Institutions: Agriculture, Food and Environment
Our concern global/local processes stems, in part, from the growing awareness of significant changes taking place in agricultural production and food networks, embracing both industrialised and less industrialised societies. These transformations are fundamental to the 'repositioning' of farmers and other relevant (rural) actors, vis-à-vis the state, private enterprise and international regulatory bodies. These counter tendencies are further compounded by the fact that global consumers and other citizens' pressure groups are actively promoting alternative agendas that challenge orthodox growth, market and modernisation models.
The projects falling under this heading are mainly concentrated geographically in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, although several of them explore new global connections with Europe and the United States.
Co-operating institutions: University of Wales, Cardiff/Swansea; London School of Economics and Political Science; Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brasil; CIAD, Agricultural University of Beijing; National University of Honduras; National University of Central Peru; CIESAS, Mexico; University of Guadalajara, Mexico; University of Cochabamba, Bolivia; University of Toulouse, France; ANAPQUI, Bolivia; Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo; ALFA; EU.

Cluster 2: Neo-liberal Policies, 'Global' Commodities, and Migration Flows: Social Restructuring and Local Responses.
Our second focus starts with the recognition of the increasing vulnerabilities of many rural populations in the face of global economic change and political violence. This leads us to stress the analysis of different scenarios and outcomes of global commodity networks, transnational migration and the movement of displaced persons. These processes raise critical issues concerning the viability of certain types of livelihoods and modes of organisation, and address fundamental questions about changes in cultural identity and social relations in what looks like being an increasingly transnational and deterritorialised 'rural' world.
The projects falling under this heading are mainly concentrated geographically in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, although again several studies examine the implications of these social processes within a broad global context wherein Europe and the United States constitute key points of reference.
Co-operating Institutions: IDS, University of Nairobi, Kenya; CIAD, Agricultural University of Beijing; Catholic University, Peru; Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo; University of Tel-Aviv, Israel; Colegio de Michoacán; CIESAS, Mexico; COLEF, Mexico; University of Roskilde, Denmark; University of Copenhagen; NIRP; University of Zimbabwe.

Theme 7: The experience of crisis: rural responses to economic and political crisis
Indonesia’s current economic, political and social crisis has had different, often contradictory and sometimes unexpected impacts in different regions and different social groups. Crisis in its various forms is nothing new in Indonesia; some authors for example have viewed the period of the 1930s – 1960s as a time of successive, almost continuous crises. The mechanisms through which global and national economic or political convulsions are translated into local impacts and responses remain unclear. Crisis also exposes the failure or predicament of particular models of social, economic and/or political development, and by definition after crisis things will never be the same again. Comparative dimensions, historical depth, and local-level research in its broader context, are thus important elements in the understanding of how Indonesians, in various places and social groups, experience and respond to the current ‘total’ crisis. Coping with crisis aims, through a number of local and regional studies, to explore the experience of crisis in Indonesia as a window on more fundamental features of social, economic and political change. The project involves collaboration between various disciplines and between senior, mid-career and junior researchers from Indonesia and the Netherlands. The project focuses on five linked themes:

a. Impact pact of the crisis on different social groups. How has the crisis been experienced by different urban and rural social groups? What have been their main modes of ‘coping’? What forms of resilience and vulnerability are manifested, and what do these reveal about the underlying structural changes and tensions in earlier periods of growth, stability and development? How far does the study of crisis and response offer a window on Indonesian economy and society?

b. Resources, rights and reforms. What are the consequences of crisis for the patterns of access, control and management of natural and other resources? Does crisis result in shifts in patterns and processes of (dis)accumulation of land and (economic and social) capital between social groups? Have conflicts increased, and how have modes of conflict management changed, in the context of economic and political crisis and reform?

c. Crises past and present: comparative study of crisis and response in modern Indonesian history. How does the present crisis compare with previous crises experienced during the lifetime of the older generation of Indonesians; what were their impacts on different social groups and on the distribution of wealth and power? The project will undertake comparative work covering not only the 1930s depression but also the period of Japanese occupation and independence struggles (1940s) and the serious economic crisis in the years immediately before and after the political convulsion of 1965-66. This theme invites challenging collaboration between the documentary and archival studies of historians and the local/oral history work which contemporary researchers can incorporate in their field studies.

d. Small-scale enterprises and the ‘informal sector’ in times of crisis. The small-scale economic sector has been viewed both in the past and at present as an important economic and socio-political ‘safety net’: generating employment for vulnerable groups and also alleviating potential tensions by offering niches to indigenous middle classes in urban and rural areas.
What has been the role of small-scale enterprise in generating employment for vulnerable groups in periods of crisis? What coping strategies are available to small-scale entrepreneurs, and why do some branches of SSE fare better than others? Does the phenomenon of ‘clustering’ promote resilience through fostering co-operation, networking and alliances among entrepreneurs?

e. Public services in times of crisis and reform: dynamics of civil society and government bureaucracy at local and intermediate levels. This theme focuses on the dynamics of the civil society – government bureaucracy relationship at local and intermediate levels. How far have processes of reform and democratisation affected the capacity of civil society institutions to promote improvements in public services and their responsiveness to local needs and interests?

The project will rely mainly on local studies and particularly local re-studies, building on previous (pre-crisis) work by the project researchers at local and intermediate levels. Research will focus on selected urban and rural districts, mainly in Java, South Sulawesi and West Sumatra.

Participating institutions:
Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague (Co-ordinating the project on behalf of CERES, ASSR and KITLV); Department of Anthropology (KUN), Nijmegen; Department of Human Geography (UU), Utrecht; Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (CASA), Amsterdam; Department of Economics (VU), Amsterdam; Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV), Leiden; Population Studies Centre (UGM), Yogyakarta; Faculty of Geography, Department of Rural and Regional Development Planning (FG-UGM), Yogyakarta; Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (Andalas University), Padang; Faculty of Agriculture (Hasanuddin University), Ujung Pandang; Faculty of Economics (Satya Wacana University), Salatiga; Centre of Economic-Development Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (PEP-LIPI), Jakarta.
 
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