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This publication explores the meaning of agriculture
and guides the reader into new territory, where food, ecology, and culture
converge. In the food systems of South Asia, the margin between cultivated
and uncultivated biodiversity dissolves through women’s day-to-day
practice of collecting and cooking food, constituting a feminine
landscape. The authors bring this practice to light, and demonstrate the
value of food production and consumption systems that are localized rather
than globalized. Based on extensive field research in India and
Bangladesh, with and by farming communities, the book offers both
people-based and evidence-based perspectives on the value of ecological
farming, the survival strategies of the very poor, and the ongoing
contribution of biodiversity to livelihoods. It also introduces new
concepts such as “the social landscape” and “the ethical relations
underlying production systems” relevant to key debates concerning the
cultural politics of food sovereignty, land tenure, and the economics of
food systems. The authors are leading activists and accomplished
researchers with a long history of engagement with farming communities and
the peasant world in South Asia and elsewhere. |
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Farhad
Mazhar is a founding member of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development
Alternative) and is currently its Managing Director.
Daniel
Buckles is Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and former
Senior Program Specialist at IDRC.
P.V. Satheesh (India) is the co-founder and current Director of the
Deccan Development Society.
Farida Akhter is the Executive Director of UBINIG. |
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