Environment, Knowledge and Gender: Local Development in India's Jharkhand

Extrait de la couverture : "Tracing global shifts in development thinking through to national level policy-making in India and its local scale implications, Sarah Jewitt investigates the practical value of radical populist and eco-feminist alternatives to more mainstream forms of development. Using detailes empirical data on forests and agriculture from two adivasi (tribal) villages in India, she takes a micro-political ecology approach to examine inter- and intra-community (especially gender) variations in environmental knowledge, resource management strategies and development aspirations. Critiquing the adoption of romanticized eco-feminist discourse in policy-making, Jewitt studies the Jharkhand region of Bihar, India, to determine women's contribution to environmental degradation and how the implementation of environmentally-oriented development initiatives affects their daily lives. She also examines the populist concern about the displacement of traditional agro-ecological practices by modern techniques and illustrates the need to understand local people's socio-cultural beliefs and aspirations as well as their technical knowlerdge when seeking to promotw more appropriate development."