We analyse the marketing of ‘heirloom rices’ produced in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines, as the commodification of a historical ‘anti-commodity’. We contend that, historically, rice was…
Heirloom rice in Ifugao: an ‘anti-commodity’ in the process of commodification
Double coupling: modeling subjectivity and asymmetric organization in social-ecological systems
Ecology and Society 20(3): 26 Social-ecological organization is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines material and symbolic processes. However, the coupling between social and ecological subsystem is often conceptualized as purely material,…
Advancing Metrics: Models for understanding adaptive capacity and water security
Volume 21, August 2016, Pages 52–57 We explore the relationship between water security (WS) and adaptive capacity (AC); the two concepts are connected because achieving the first may be dependent…
Adapting to risk and perpetuating poverty: Household’s strategies for managing flood risk and water scarcity in Mexico City
Volume 66, December 2016, Pages 324–333 Adaptation is typically conceived uniquely in positive terms, however for some populations, investments in risk management can entail significant tradeoffs. Here we discuss the…
Opinion: Urban resilience efforts must consider social and political forces
Environmental disasters, ranging from catastrophic floods to extreme temperatures, have caused more than 30,000 deaths per year and more than US$ 250–300 billion a year in economic losses, globally, between…
Learning about ‘Engaged Excellence’ across a Transformative Knowledge Network
The ‘Pathways’ transformative knowledge network is an international group of research organisations, collaborating to explore processes of social transformation and to share insights across disciplines, cultures and contexts. Working across…
Why Invisible Power and Structural Violence Persist in the Water Domain
IDS Bulletin Vol 47, No 5 (2016): Power, Poverty and Inequality (open access) This article argues that inequality in access to water and sanitation is largely caused and legitimised by…
The Politics of Sustainability and Development
This review examines the relationships between politics, sustainability, and development. Following an overview of sustainability thinking across different traditions, the politics of resources and the influence of scarcity narratives on…
Indigenous African soil enrichment as a climate-smart sustainable agriculture alternative
by Dawit Solomon, Johannes Lehmann, James A Fraser, Melissa Leach, Kojo Amanor, Victoria Frausin, Søren M Kristiansen, Dominique Millimouno and James Fairhead We describe for the first time a current…
Solar PV and solar water heaters in China: Different pathways to low carbon energy
This review paper examines pathways towards solar energy in China by examining two different solar energy technologies, namely solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar water heaters (SWH). The paper investigates these two case studies to understand how different pathways for low carbon innovation are promoted and challenged by China’s changing financing and policy-making, and how they relate to changing practices among producers and consumers.