Rural society with traditional peansants households agriculture creates positive externolities to the eco-everionment for many thousands years until capitalists modernization (industrialization with the urbanization) produced heavy polluted products to replace eco-production since 20 centrary, to end the peasantry.
Maintain the peasantry livelihoods for rural cultural deversify which can sustain the whole world ecological economy with little pollution
General comments
We need to change governments' priorities in developing countries, where export oriented development is given prominence over local consumption. Development policies should focus on creating better consumers in rural areas - in other words to increase their disposable incomes by getting rid of middle men and corrupt government officials and politicians.
Written by kalinga at 01 / 07 / 2010
iN TERMS OF economy which works we should reexamine the past globalizations where trade was thriving and cultures mixed. I come from Zanzibar where cosmopolitan cultures exist and it is because of very rich trading relationships with places where the dhows came from and went to. The season used was the monsoon winds and the economy was thriving because trade was based on exchange of goods on mutual need. For example being a Muslim country when ramadhan(month of fasting) approaches a thriving trade would be from Oman where dates came from and in return Oman took spices from Zanzibar. This trade is still going on but under this new globalization monopoly has killed equal exchange and one power dominates.
Under dhow culture also peoples met, relationships developed and it is these cultures which set the value systems that society developed around. These cultures still prevail but are finding it hard to survive now because of global dominance at political and economic level.
In my region to contend injustice systems of economy people then engage in whatever forms of livelihood that will bring survival come to the fore and make it function. In the case of Somalia it is piracy and informal banking systems that is thriving in the vicinity of Somalia.
With global economy collapse there is little faith in the banking sector as such the emerging economy is investments in buildings so one finds a thriving culture of buildings which then owners rent out or sell and the profit margin is then reinvested in yet other buildings. This is also because the second generation of educated Africans who have western education but with strong links to home, are coming to invest at home and they refuse to live as second class citizens(race issues) in the west so there is now a sizeable diasporic economy beginning to emerge.
One sees this even in film and arts industries. e.g.Bollywood hardly used to have English subtitles for their films before but now it is almost automatic and films are premiered in the West targetting the diasporic Indian population but then also expanding its markets to international audiences.
With women more and more traditional form of banking is done. e.g in Tanzania we have a form of traditional baking system called Upatu whereby women put in certain amount at the end of the month in a collective pull and the one who needs most of the capital will collect the money that month and it rotates so each one gets a turn. In this way women get seed money to start economic ventures which enhances livelihood. Formal banking is totally avoidable under this system.
So peoples create different forms of economy to survive and live. Multiple structures of economy is already taking place in our part of the world anyway and we need to capture this in our discussions and theories as we see failed development policies and economies.
Written by F.Alloo at 19 / 07 / 2010
Under a capital-driven globalization framework, traditional peasantry is not only deprived of the positive externalities it offers with no return, but also to be considered inferior to every other sector in the economy; young people want to leave the countryside as they grow up, only those who failed school stay home to carry on farming. Then we can hardly expect a thriving agriculture and prosperous countryside, which is taking and will still take more than half of the global population. If we are looking at a different and better consensus than the so-called "Washington" one, we have to address the most fundamental issue: to revive non-market social structure, to build collective network and institution that can protect the small farmers from harsh capital, and give political validity to traditional agriculture against the highly efficient but exploitive global market. To make it very clear, we must declare the Washington Consensus is fundamentally false and misleading.
Written by G.Xiulin at 27 / 09 / 2010
This forum has been assessed 0 times [Participate] [View the results for this forum]