Towards a Relational Approach to Agency for Mapping Pathways Into and Out of Poverty

全球贫困在世纪看起来完全不同，因为气候相关事件，政治-宗教冲突和经济增长-不平等关系增加了基于性别，种族和阶级的持续形式的社会排斥。在这种不确定和不可预测的情况下，我们需要采取新的方法来理解进入和摆脱贫困的复杂途径，将注意力集中在穷人实现变革的集体能力上，即，他们的机构，由社交网络和与自然的关系构成，并以科学和技术为媒介。我们的目标是发展创新的“关系机构路径方法”的概念和方法，借鉴科学，技术和社会研究的理论和减贫和社会正义的“路径方法”，强调社会，技术和环境变化之间的相互作用。我们将发展这种新的方法来理解小农和农业无地者摆脱贫困的多种途径，在两个竞技场。首先，我们将研究小农和农场工人如何适应农场的新技术，因为他们的耕作方式因技术和环境变化而发生变化。其次，我们将研究农民如何将收获的作物转化为市场商品，与信贷提供商和贸易商谈判他们的关系。从20世纪60年代起，这两个领域在"绿色革命"中发挥了巨大作用，当时技术、市场和政府支持被用来加强农业生产。我们工作的第一个地理重点将是印度泰米尔纳德邦的北阿尔科特地区，这是亚洲绿色革命的一个典型范例，那里有自20世纪70年代初以来的大量历史数据。与我们在马德拉斯发展研究所的合作研究人员合作，并在该领域收集新的生活史数据，我们将绘制长期的机构路径，通过不断变化的技术，自然资源和社会世界构成的贫困，因为不同性别，阶级和种姓的人生活。我们将在肯尼亚的Machakos县测试这种方法（与我们在非洲技术研究中心的合作研究员合作），那里已经进行了几次尝试，以启动绿色革命，但都没有可持续性。除了依靠档案数据和收集生活史使用人种学参与研究的参与者，我们将使用研讨会的形式来收集数据，人们如何评估不同的途径，根据一系列标准，从传统的福利和福祉指标以及参与者自己设计的指标中得出贫困。为了在其他低收入环境中宣传我们的方法，我们会为初级研究人员制订培训计划。在整个项目中，研究人员、政策制定者和农民将广泛参与，我们将在肯尼亚组织一个最后的研讨会，将这些参与者聚集在一个安全的空间进行集体学习，在那里我们的研究结果和方法可以与他们不同的知识和经验进行交流。我们将在学术和政策论坛上展示我们的工作，制作政策简报、网络博客和一部纪录短片（与学术界和政策界以外的受众接触）。我们认为我们的研究至少对五个群体感兴趣：a）试图通过更好地利用自然资源和新技术来加强小农农业的政府机构; B）农村发展组织（包括非政府组织），积极组织减贫举措;（c）从事全球南方农业可持续性和贫困问题研究的学术研究人员;（d）国际和基层环境非政府组织;（e）东非农民联合会等农民协会。

Global poverty looks radically different in the 21st century as climate-related events, political-religious conflicts and economic growth-inequality nexuses add to persistent forms of social exclusion based on gender, race, and class. In this uncertain and unpredictable context, we require new approaches to understand complex pathways into and out of poverty, directing attention to poor people's collective capacity to bring about transformative change i.e., their agency, as constituted by social networks and relations with nature, and mediated by science and technology. Our aim is to develop the concepts and methods of an innovative 'relational agency pathways approach', drawing on theories from Science, Technology and Society studies and the 'pathways approach' to poverty reduction and social justice, which emphasise interactions between social, technological and environmental change.We will develop this new approach to understand diverse pathways out of poverty for smallholders and the landless in agriculture, in two arenas. First, we will study how small farmers and farmworkers adapt new technologies on the farm, as their cultivation practices are transformed due to technological and environmental change. Second, we will study how farmers turn a harvested crop into a commodity for the market, negotiating their relationships with credit providers and traders. Both these arenas played out dramatically under the 'Green Revolution', from the 1960s onwards, when technology, markets and government support were used to intensify agricultural production. The first geographical focus of our work will be on the North Arcot region of Tamil Nadu, India, a classic exemplar of the Green Revolution in Asia, where extensive historical data since the early 1970s are available. Collaborating with our co-investigators at Madras Institute of Development Studies, and collecting new life history data in the field, we will map long-term agency pathways into and out of poverty constituted by changing technologies, natural resources and social worlds, as lived by people of different genders, classes and castes. We will test the approach in Machakos County in Kenya (in collaboration with our co-investigator at African Centre for Technology Studies), where several attempts have been made to get a Green Revolution off the ground, but none have been sustainable. In addition to relying on archival data and collecting life histories using ethnographic engagement with the study's participants, we will use a workshop format to collect data on how people evaluate diverse pathways out of (and into) poverty along a range of criteria derived from conventional indicators of welfare and well-being as well as those designed by the participants themselves.To communicate our approach in other low-income contexts, we will develop a training programme for junior researchers. There will be broad-based participation from researchers, policymakers and farmers throughout the project, and we will organise a final workshop in Kenya, which will bring these participants together in a safe space for collective learning, where our findings and approach can be confronted with their different knowledges and experiences.We will present our work in academic and policy forums, produce policy briefs and web blogs and a short documentary film (to engage with audiences beyond academia and policy). We see our research to be of interest to at least five groups: a) government institutions attempting to intensify smallholder agriculture through better use of natural resources and new technologies; b) rural development organisations (including non-governmental ones), active in organising initiatives for poverty alleviation; c) academic researchers working on agricultural sustainability and poverty issues in the global south; d) environmental NGOs at international and grassroots levels; e) farmers' associations such as the East African Farmers' Federation.