Description:
"...This chapter has several related objectives. In the first section, I provide
some indication of Batak rice yields and subsistence strategies before the
arrival of large numbers of migrants about forty-five years ago. These
data are based on verbal accounts that I have recorded from Batak elders.
The 1960s were the prelude to a new era of cultural transformations,
which continued through the 1970s and led to major farming crises and
the loss of both land and landraces. I begin by analysing chronologically
a number of events that occurred between 1980 and 2005, and which have
led to the collapse of a relatively stable society of foragers and farmers.
The changing relations between forest availability, swidden size and fal
low periods and the reasons why yields declined per unit of land and
labour cannot be understood without seeing the larger picture and assess
ing the different factors, both external and internal, that have contributed
to the transformation of the Batak swidden system into a costly, often
unproductive and increasingly ?risky? enterprise. In the final section I
examine how national and local politics have had (and continue to have)
a crucial bearing on everything happening in and around Batak swid-
dens. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, the ?cycle of nature? (the seasonal
changes taking place in the environment and people?s cultural means of
coping with them) impinges on and is often inseparable from the ?cycle of
politics? (the recurrent ways in which the state manifests itself through its
laws and programmes)..."
Source/publisher:
Chapter from R. Ellen (ed.) ?Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Modern Crises: Coping Strategies in Island Southeast Asia?.
Date of Publication:
2007-00-00
Date of entry:
2015-02-05
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
385.79 KB