We are as Flexible as Rubber!: Livelihood Strategies, Diversity and the Local Institutional Setting of Rubber Small Holders in Kerala, South India

We are as Flexible as Rubber!: Livelihood Strategies, Diversity and the Local Institutional Setting of Rubber Small Holders in Kerala, South India

By- Balz Strasser


Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Indian natural rubber sector has been affected by trends toward trade liberalization, a reduced role of the State, and organizational reforms. Rubber cultivators in Kerala - around 1 million holders cultivating an average 0.5 ha of rubber plantation - have been affected by these processes in different ways. It is hypothesized that growers - especially the ones located in agro-ecologically marginal rubber areas- are coping with these changes with diversified income-generating strategies. This book suggests a new perspective on these coping processes with the development of a typology of rubber growers based on their income-generating strategies. The book shows that the different types of holdings have specific management strategies and ways of dealing with risks. Furthermore, there is evidence that specific local institutions and organizations can hinder and/or support the income generation of these different types of holdings.




Balz Strasser is an agro-economist combining scientific knowledge with hands-on experience on farming systems, market development and policy frameworks for improving rural livelihoods in developing countries. This book is based on his PhD thesis written at the Human Geography Department of the University of Zurich. Since 2008 he is working as Managing Director of Pakka Trade in Switzerland.




ISBN  978-81-7304-803-6    2009   276p.   Rs.695/ pounds 50

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Water and State in Europe and Asia

Water and State in Europe and Asia

By- Peter Borschberg and Martin Krieger (eds)

Water is indispensable for all life on earth. Since ancient times, the control of fresh-water resources and also the sea facilitated the rise of communal structures and administrative institutions across Europe and Asia. Many states tightened their authority by creaming off agriculutral surpluses from irrigated lands. The more effective the irrigational systems, the higher state revenues tended to be. For much of the twentieth century, research on such community-based irrigation was dominated by Karl August Wittfogel’s discourse on ‘Hydraulic Despotism’.

Seaborne empires could flourish as a result of their commercial success and naval strength. For such maritime polities indispensable facets of statehood included military power at sea, successful control of marketplaces and domination of maritime trading routes. The control of waterways and channels was of great strategic importance, such as notably the Danish Sound or the Malacca Straits.

Water and State in Europe and Asia brings together established as well as younger experts from Asia and Europe to explore the interdependence of water and state formation on both continents. Hermann Kulke, Peter Borschberg, Ranabir Chakravarti, S. Jeyaseela Stephen, Martin Krieger and Maitrii Aung-Thwin contribute case-studies on Asia to the volume such as on the Bay of Bengal, North and South India and South-East Asia. Investigating the European perspective. Horst Wernicks, Jens E. Olesen, Karel Davids, Allan I. Macinnes, Salvatore Ciriacono and Andreas Klinger exhaustively study the Hanseatic League the North and Baltic Sea regions the Mediterranean as well as waterways within continental Europe. The individual papers contribute to shaping a virtual global image of water being a major stimulus of the emergence of state-power.

  

Peter Borschberg is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National Univesity of Singapore. He has published on trade, diplomacy and colonial politics in early modern South-East Asia.

Martin Krieger is Lecturer of early modern history at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald (Germany). His major areas of interest are economic cultural and environmental history. He has published on North German and North European as well as on Indian
colonial history.

ISBN  81-7304-776-6    2008   290p.   Rs.875/ pounds 45

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