The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana and their attitudes to their goats
Through offering a variety of funding programmes, in recent years the government of Botswana has made an attempt to promote goat production, partly with the aim of alleviating poverty among the resource-poor rural population. Goat production is also emerging as an alternative for the non-poor, as th...
| Autor principal: | |
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| Formato: | H2 |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
SLU/Dept. of Urban and Rural Development
2017
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| Materias: |
| _version_ | 1855572181021360128 |
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| author | Arvidsson, Anna |
| author_browse | Arvidsson, Anna |
| author_facet | Arvidsson, Anna |
| author_sort | Arvidsson, Anna |
| collection | Epsilon Archive for Student Projects |
| description | Through offering a variety of funding programmes, in recent years the government of Botswana has made an attempt to promote goat production, partly with the aim of alleviating poverty among the resource-poor rural population. Goat production is also emerging as an alternative for the non-poor, as the goat market is expected to grow and as goats are perceived as a good complement or alternative for cattle, as they are better adapted to the more frequent climate change-induced droughts expected in southern Africa. In this thesis, I explore how animal owners and farm workers perceive goats in different ways. Using an analytical framework drawing on political ecology, I place goats in the centre of the narrative in this thesis, with emphasis on how the participants of this study manage their goats. I also
investigate how unequal power relations between animal owners and farm workers are described and reproduced. The concept of passive resistance proved useful when exploring how farm workers find ways to resist unjust labour control from their employers and the concept of power in examining the asymmetrical relationship between animal owners and farm workers. Empirical data for the analyses were collected, using a variety of qualitative research methods, during field work in rural Botswana in early 2017. Using the method of sensitising concepts within the grounded theory approach, I began analysing the empirical data already in the field. The results showed that farm workers are often underpaid, exploited and mistreated by their employers and that this unjust treatment of farm workers has negative spillover effects on goats. Overall, this study shows that it is crucial to critically evaluate the social processes involved in goat production in order to improve social justice among humans and improve animal welfare among goats. |
| format | H2 |
| id | RepoSLU13064 |
| institution | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences |
| language | Inglés |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publishDateSort | 2017 |
| publisher | SLU/Dept. of Urban and Rural Development |
| publisherStr | SLU/Dept. of Urban and Rural Development |
| record_format | eprints |
| spelling | RepoSLU130642017-12-19T08:06:14Z The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana and their attitudes to their goats Arvidsson, Anna political ecology intersectionality goats power livestock passive resistance agriculture Botswana Through offering a variety of funding programmes, in recent years the government of Botswana has made an attempt to promote goat production, partly with the aim of alleviating poverty among the resource-poor rural population. Goat production is also emerging as an alternative for the non-poor, as the goat market is expected to grow and as goats are perceived as a good complement or alternative for cattle, as they are better adapted to the more frequent climate change-induced droughts expected in southern Africa. In this thesis, I explore how animal owners and farm workers perceive goats in different ways. Using an analytical framework drawing on political ecology, I place goats in the centre of the narrative in this thesis, with emphasis on how the participants of this study manage their goats. I also investigate how unequal power relations between animal owners and farm workers are described and reproduced. The concept of passive resistance proved useful when exploring how farm workers find ways to resist unjust labour control from their employers and the concept of power in examining the asymmetrical relationship between animal owners and farm workers. Empirical data for the analyses were collected, using a variety of qualitative research methods, during field work in rural Botswana in early 2017. Using the method of sensitising concepts within the grounded theory approach, I began analysing the empirical data already in the field. The results showed that farm workers are often underpaid, exploited and mistreated by their employers and that this unjust treatment of farm workers has negative spillover effects on goats. Overall, this study shows that it is crucial to critically evaluate the social processes involved in goat production in order to improve social justice among humans and improve animal welfare among goats. SLU/Dept. of Urban and Rural Development 2017 H2 eng https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/13064/ |
| spellingShingle | political ecology intersectionality goats power livestock passive resistance agriculture Botswana Arvidsson, Anna The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana and their attitudes to their goats |
| title | The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| title_full | The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| title_fullStr | The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| title_full_unstemmed | The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| title_short | The goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in Botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| title_sort | goats are my friends, my children, my everything! : a study of remote farmers and farm workers in botswana
and their attitudes to their goats |
| topic | political ecology intersectionality goats power livestock passive resistance agriculture Botswana |