EUROSEAS International Conference: 12-15 September 2007, Italy

From Indopedia

-- University of Naples, Italy

-- Co-organizers: NOVELLINO Dario and PLATTEN J. Simon *Department of Anthropology, University of Kent, UK.

-- In Southeast Asia, population pressure and environmental transformations continue to represent an important factor of change for small-scale societies. By and large, semi-nomadic groups are diversifying their livelihood options with an emphasis towards more stable forms of agriculture and various strategies for livestock rearing. On other occasions, due to progressive desertification and the recurrence of environmental disasters, communities of farmers have increased their use of non-domestic resources, often engaging in food procurement activities (e.g. honey gathering) that are not customary to their groups. As niches of specializations become more permeable to diversification, social relations, traditional institutions, mobility patterns and ethnobiological relations are also subject to re-organization. On the one hand, modernization followed by globalization, has altered traditional endogenous movements, exchanges and transmission of plant and animal resources. On the other, the introduction and exchanges of imported genetic resources has also created new conditions for local populations to open to the global flow and negotiate freely with outside forces. Often, the knowledge of introduced breeds and landraces has ingeniously been transformed by local communities, or added as an overlay to pre-existing ways of managing and interacting with the environment. In some cases, this has been orchestrated by cultivators themselves and has resulted in a strengthened expression of local identity and community cohesion within the market economy.

-- However, where socio-political circumstances were unfavorable, the introduction of commercial breeds of animals (e.g. imported pigs and cows) and plants (e.g. rubber, oil palm) have created a distinctive cultural space controlled by lobbies and elites. As a result, imported breeds, bearing no relationship to the local ecology, have contributed to plundering peoples¹ territories, undermining the corporate basis of community life. Overall, experimentation of plant and animal related knowledge has co-evolved within the context of complementary modes of food procurement. More importantly, through the movement of people, plants and animals, cosmological views, socio-economic and political organizations, ecological knowledge, representations of land and identity, forms of ownership and land management systems have been extended well beyond the medium of their local environment and engage with ever widening circles of knowledge that are, eventually, global. Generally speaking, the introduction of new species and breeds respond to both global and locally situated dynamics, and its localization via peoples¹ exchanges makes it the subject of constant re-working. Today, many indigenous plants and animal breeds are at risk due to national agricultural policies. So called improved breeds bring with them ideas and strategies for the accumulation of wealth and prestige, hence fostering patterns of inequality. On a parallel level, international treaties such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity push for the conservation of genetic resources in ³the surroundings where they have developed their distinct properties (article 8). Overlapping agenda, and new political and economic developments occurring across the region provides a rich context in which to examine emerging patterns of peoples/plants and animal interactions. We seek to explore the many facets of this process, by bringing together a collection of case studies focusing on the exchange, experimentation and transmission of plant/animal resources and knowledge by indigenous societies and rural communities in contemporary Southeast Asia.

-- Timeline: Interested authors should send a title and abstract for consideration to the panel¹s co-organizers no later than December 1, 2006. Deadline for completed paper: April 1, 2007.

-- Contacts: If interested, please contact Dr. Dario Novellino (darionovellino@alice.it) and Dr. Simon Platten (S.J.Platten@kent.ac.uk)