social science applications in asian agroforestry - USAID

192 Pages·2010·3.85 MB·English

SOCIAL SCIENCE APPLICATIONS IN

ASIAN AGROFORESTRY

Editors
WILLIAM R. BURCH, JR.
Director, Institute of Forestry-Yale Project
Nepal
J. KATHY PARKER
President, Oriskany Institute
U.S.A.
WINROCK INTERNATIONAL, USA

and

SOUTH ASIA BOOKS, USA
This volume was sponsored by the Forestry/Fuelwood Research and
Development (F/FRED) Project for which Winrock International is the
principal contractor. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, the F/FRED Project is designed to help scientists in Asia
address the needs of small-scale farmers for fuelwood and other tree
products. F/FRED provides a network through which biological and social
scientists exchange research plans, methods, and results. The books in this
series are designed to further stimulate international efforts to improve the
productivity and effectiveness of agroforestry research in meeting
increasing human and environmental needs.
© 1992 Winrock International, USA
ISBN 0.933595.33.6
In collaboration with South Asia Books, USA, originally published in
India by Mohan Primlani, Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.,
66 Janpath, New Delhi 110 001 for the Winrock - Oxford & IBH Series,
phototypeset by Indira Printers and printed at Rekha Printers Pvt. Ltd.,
A-102/1 Okhla Industrial Area, Phase II, New Delhi 110 020.
We dedicate this volume to Dean Wacharakitti Sathit of
Kasetsart University, a leader in internationai forestry and a
great contributor tc the emergerce of social forestry in Asia-­
a leader taken all too quickly from us.
Foreword

Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development and the
Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd. began publishing a book series on
agroforestry research and practice in 1990. The first volume. A Handbook
for Managing Agroforestry Research, was written by Dr. John Gordon, Dean
of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and myself.
This is the third volume in the series. The editors. Dr. William R.
Burch and Dr. J. Kathy Parker, have organized a social science pejpective
of agroforestry around disciplinary themcs, but only after setting the stage
for understanding the problems from a client perspective. We think that
the causes of the problems agroforestry technologies will help solve are
primarily social. Consequently, it will not be possible to solve these
problems unless the primary causal factors are understood and addressed
in designing effective agroforestry interventions.
The second volume in the series was edited by Dr. Martha Avery, Dr.
Melvin Cannell, and Dr. Chin Ong. They organized our current
understanding of agroforestry systems in terms of biological concepts. The
fourth volume, which is a collection of readings edited by me, Dr. P.K.
Khosla and Ms. Karen Seckler, will apply the concepts and practices
discussed in the first three volumes to agroforestry systems in South Asia.
Other volumes in this series will expand our conceptual and empirical
understanding of agroforestry, and develop more locational-specific
understanding of particular systems. At present, Winrock and Oxford &
IBH plan on publishing ten or more volumes on agroforestry over the next
three years.
We have three goals in this series. We want each volume to be
relevant to the problems faced by researchers and practitioners, but we
are especially concerned that the volumes lead toward results of benefit
to rural poor people throughout Asia. Our authors and editors are working
hard on the quality of their written expression as well as the quality of
their ideas, so each volume can be easily understood and translated into
practice.
Finally, we want the price of each volume to be within reach of
students, researchers, and practitioners. We are most grateful to the U.S.
Agency for International Development for supporting the first three
volumes of this series through its F/FRED Multipurpose Tree Species
Network Project being managed by Winrock International. The Ford
Foundation and other donors are supporting future vcldmes, and we are
searching for additional support.
General Series Editor WILLIAM R. BENILEY
May 1991
Preface

Human beings have always had a well-stocked cafeteria of social forestry
strategies. Agroforestry is one of them. Like most, it has a iong history of
practice by farmers, though scientists and resource managers have only
recently discovered its possibilities. Agroforestry represents some
combination of people, domestic animals, crops, and trees des;gned to
rehabilitate land and/or to r-ustain and increase the production of certain
desired social benefits. In some practices, the preferred activities seem to
be more in the domain of horticulture than of forestry. Yet the practices
share much with the full array of social forentry strategies for improving
the erosystems and the lives of rural people.
The common elements of such strategies are: (1) small-scale
applications; (2) technologies with low capital and energy investment
requirements; (3) outputs primarily directed to immediate human needs
rather than commercial advantage; (4) orientation to clients rather than to
professionals and their large-scale public and private agencies: (5)
diversity of products and benefits rather than a rmonocultural approach. Of
course, we could identify other similarities in the wide array of strategies.
However, the point is that we are as concermd with the structure and
functioning of the human ecosystem as we are with the biophysical system.
It is important to see agroforestry within the broader context of
people-tree related development strategies lest we become convinced that
agroforestry is primarily a matter of discovering some new technologies­
tissue culture, super trees, fertilizers, or pesticide systems. The "green
revolution" is an appealing model because it is familiar, it seems modem,
and it involves the same set of biophysical scientists doing the same kind
of research. However, the need for approaches that balance biophysical
and social knowledge are suggested by several factors: (1) the social scale
in which we are operating is large; (2) deforestation is more often a
symptom of underlying institutional and cultural problems than of
failures of technology; and (3) afforestation, reforestation, and other land
rehabilitation activities gain more through improved social organizational
technologies than through biophysical technologies.
Indeed, g'oforestry is a "very social science" as Tom Pawlick' has
demonstrated. However, the acceptance of agroforestry as a social science
often seems honored more in rhetoric than in practice. This book hopes to
share with Asian agroforesters some conceptual tools to convert rhetoric
into practice. Diligent readers may make systematic use of the theories,
Pawlick, T. 1989. Agroforestry ...a very social science. Agroforeswy Today 1: 2-7.
x Preface
methods, and substantive findings of the social sciences in their daily
research, policy, planning, and management activities in agroforestry.
The book is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the
underlying theme that we must connect the older, traditional Asian
practices to some of the newer approaches. It also sketches some of the
long-term contributions socia! science can make to guide natural resource
policy and management.
The second sectior identifies some of the problem areas in Asian
agroforestry where social science may be of most use. Rao gives an
overview of the varietyj in Asian institutions and programs that rely on and
influence participatory forestry practices. Shah examines how one
particular problem, restoring wastelands, is less a biotechnical issue and
more a matter of addressing sociocultural issues and changing political,
institutional, and administrative imperatives. Bentley suggests an array of
social science applications, the foremost being that social science research
is needed to sustain the utility of biophysical research.
The third section considers the conceptual and methodological
approaches of four social sciences-social ecology, political science,
economics, and anthropology. Though these four disciplines have
overlapping approaches and interests, they are as different at their cores
as cell biology is from whole system ecology. The reader will need to
keep these similarities in mind but should not let th ,-obscure the utility
of their distinctly different approaches.
The successful agroforester will need an awareness of cultural values
and the forces that compel the emergence of new values. Here
anthropology may bt. the best guide. On another site, the central interest
may be how social norms, which structure behavior, can affect the equity of
distribution. Here social ecology may be a useful guide. On another
project, the central interest may be how material wealth is created and
motivates behavior and how efficiently resources are allocated. Here
economics may be the best guide. Yet again, the question may concern the
structure of social power and how its effectiveness is made manifest. Here
political science may be the best g ide. Of course, most agroforestry
projects require some combined attention to values, norms, wealth, and
power and their emergence, equity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
The chapters in this third section concentrate on the particulars of their
individual disciplines. TLey also show how these specialized sets of
knowledge provide insight into particular facets of project development
and overall project success. Parker and Burch emphasize how policy,
planning, and management of agroforestry systems Lt- both part of the
normative social order and the very forces for altering and reconstituting
that order. Blair discusses how political science is a diagnostic tool for
identifying power relationships between national elites, local elites, and
the masses. These organized systems of power can both inhibit and
facilitate the agroforester's goals, while a lack of knowledge about such
systems ensures failure. Mercer demonstrates how the economics
paradigm can improve efficiency in resource decisions and the distribution
effects of those decisions. Messerschmidt provides an overview of methods
and perspectives, anthropologists use to incorporate cultural aspects in
social and agroforestry projects to ensure that they serve the needs and fit
Preface xi
the capacities of the populace. He also furnishes a set of case studies that
include and tie together all of the four social science approaches
considered in this book. In short, the reader who is open to new perspec­
tives, methods, and concepts for solving old issues will find much that
links biophysical hopes to social utility.
Though all books are a shadow dance between individual aspirations
and a large underlying stratum of collective help, this book is even more
than usually so a product of many others whose names do not appear in
print. The original planting of the idea for the book has now faded into
the mists of myth where we believe that some important dialogue between
Asian scientists, USAID planners, and Winrock contractors produced the
vision for such a collection. We do know that many of our colleagues in
the FAO-South and Southeast Asia Forestry Educators Network have been
in the forefront of interest, as have our colleagues in the Science and
Technology Bureau of USAID.
We can name many of our Winrock colleagues--Guner Gery, Carol
Stoney, Chun Lai, Bill Bentley, Tom Niblock, Ken MacDicken, Charly
Mehl and Celso Lantican-who at one time or another gave necessary
guidance. We owe particular gratitude to Karen Seckler, who, more than
anyone, has helped to turn the work into an ordered form. Additional
thanks go to Melinda Murtha and Barbara Scott who brought this book to
a physical reality and whose liaison and logistical efforts helped move
the manuscript around numerous obstacles during its long and sometimes
arduous path to publication. Our past and present Yale colleagues-
Asmeen Khan, Sonia Varley, Jeff Bopp, Betsy McGean, Linda Lind, Bob
Clausi, Marco Lowenstein, Christin Gallup, and Christine LaPorte-found
threads nf thought we did not know we had lost.
Of special importance have been our Faculty of Forestry colleagues at
Kasetsait University, Thailand, and our colleagues at the Institute of
Forestry, Pokhara, Nepal. It is their wisdom and openness, their generosity
and kindness, their firmness in countering our errors that have helped us to
persevere. They have taken us to the frontlines of social forestry and
helped us to find the points of entry for a useful social science.
Though we are most grateful to all of those who have helped guide us
in this effort, we fully accept all responsibility for the errors of omission
and commission.
W. R. BURCH, JR.
J. K. PARKER
Contents

Foreword vii

Preface ix

Contributing Authors xvii

Acronyms xix

PART ONE: SETTING THE STAGE
1. OUR THEME: THINKING SOCIAL SCIENTIFICALLY 3

ABOUT AGROFORESTRY

W.R. Burch, Jr.
Introduction 4

On the Functions and Varieties of Forestry Practices 5

Theoretical Perspectives 9

Findings 10

Conclusion 15

PART TWO: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS
2. PROGRAMS OF PARTICIPATORY FORESTRY 21

DEVELOPMENT IN ASIA
Y.S. Ra
Traditi nal Management of Forests 22

Governiment Programs 22

Nongovemment Action 29

Measures for Ensuring Sustained Participation 31

Conclusion 33

3. WASTELAND DEVELOPMI2NT IN INDIA: 35

POLITICAL, INSTITUTIONAL, AND

SOCIOCULTURAL IMPERATIVES

S.A. Shah
Commitment to Develop Wastelands 36

Major Problems Facing Wasteland Development 36

Sociocultural Considerations 39

Proposed Strategy and Alternatives 41

Conclusion 45
xiv Contents
4. SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH IN AGROFORESTRY 47
AND OTHER LAND-USE TECHNOLOGIES
W.R. Bentley
Social Science and Technology Development 48
Technology Development and Transfer 48
Policy and Planning
49
Diagnostics
50
Undestanding Social Phenomena
53
Social Values
54
Integrated Research
55
Summary
55
PART THREE: APPROACHES AND APPLICATIONS
5. TOWARD A SOCIAL ECOLOGY FOR 59
AGROFORESTRY IN ASIA
J.K. Parker, W.R. Burch, J'.
Working with Paradox: Agroforestry, Sociology, and the Art of
Development
60
Conceptual Framework for a Social Ecology of Agroforestry 61
Using Social Ecology Concepts and Measures in Agroforestry
Applications
66
From Understanding to Innovation
79
Conclusion and Summary
81
6. THE USES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE IN 85
AGROFORESTRY INTERVENTIONS
H. W. Blair
Political Science as a Discipline
86
Analytical Political Science
87
Prescriptive Political Science
95
Analytical and Prescriptive Political Science Combined: Public
Choice, Decentralization, and Development 99
Conclusion
103
Endnotes
105
7. THE ECONOMICS OF AGROFORESTRY 11
D.E. Mercer
Introduction
112
Efficiency in Agroforestry System and Project Design 113
Distributive Considerations in Agroforestry Project Design 123
Distortions of Agroforestry Incentives 127
Conclusion
135
Appendix
137
Endnotes
139
Glossary
140
Contents xv

8. THE USES OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN AGRO/ 145

SOCIAL FORESTRY R AND D: APPROACHES

TO ANTHROPOLOGICAL FORESTRY

D.A. Messerschmidc
lntrodv-tion 146

Development Anthropology and Anthropological Forestry 146

Theories, Models, and Methods 147

Transfer Techniques: Case Studies in Anthropological

Forc:stry 160

Appenlix - Diagnosis 3nd Design in Agroforestry 168

Endnotes 171

EPILOGUE
181
J.K. Parker, W.R. Burch, Jr.
SUBJECT INDEX 185