Documents found
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8351.More information
In southern countries, urban agriculture is often criticized because of its polluting practices due, to a large part, to the non-standard use of pesticides on market garden sites. The relationships between the actors involved in the design and implementation of public policies constitute one of the causality registers of these practices. This article aims to list and describe the actors structuring the uses of pesticides in urban agriculture in Benin, as well as their interactions. The methodological device is an ethnographic type based on the review of texts relating to pesticides, in-depth interviews, and direct observations on market garden sites in Benin's three main urban areas: Cotonou, Porto-Novo and Parakou. In total, 55 actors from different profiles were surveyed. Several categories of people are involved in market gardening sites. Faced with logics involved (both divergent and contradictory), the "social life" of the pesticide escapes the control of public institutions. The knowledge of producers and sellers prevails over official recommendations. Likewise, the institutional vacuum created by public sector agents is filled by some specific actors, the "distributor-framers". In addition, intergenerational conflicts between producers, aroused by political intrigue, are recurrent in access to available material and financial resources. Such situations weaken the sector of the market garden and interfere negatively in the implementation of public policies relating to pesticides.
Keywords: maraichage, pesticide, acteur, logiques, conflits, ville, Bénin, market gardening, pesticide, actor, logics, conflicts, city, Benin
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8352.
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8355.
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8356.
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8357.More information
The rural world today is changing from a disintegrating traditional civilisation to one still imperfectly adapted to the needs of modern life. This monograph attempts to show in as comprehensive a manner as possible, how a little village community called Goulien, situated in the westernmost part of Brittany undergoes this change. The situation of this village is almost insular, and this, together with the stability of its population and the strength of local traditions, had established a continuity over the course of centuries such that many characteristics which were still apparent very recently were undoubtedly derived from a most remote antiquity. But the shattering of its traditional past, the first signs of which were probably revealed after 1918, has within a few years led to important changes (1st part). As far as the technical and economic levels are concerned, this change is manifest firstly in a modification of the professional structure, with a considerable diminution of the non- agricultural population ; crucial to this process has been a significant reduction in occupations of local interest, among which some have altogether disappeared, and the recent development of professions whose center can only be found outside the commune. The farmers, who make up the majority of the population, are confronted by new conditions (such as the disappearance of part-time hired labour and the growth of market economy) and they must, willy nilly, try to make the appropriate changes by adopting modern techniques, which, very often, still coexist with others altogether traditional (2nd part). It is especially in the satisfaction of daily needs of every kind that this evolution is most apparent. In housing, furniture, household implements, food, dress, and styles of leisure, one can observe a propensity of the villagers to adopt urban norms, at least such as they imagine these to be, as much as possible ; it does not, however, exclude the persistence of unconscious and indélébile customs. The non-agricultural population is more favorable to such changes than the agricultural population (3rd part). The material changes of life, together with increased contacts with the outside world, have undoubtedly contributed greatly to an accelerated disintegration of a system of beliefs and practices inherited, for the most part, from a very remote past, and while still very much alive at the end of the last century, only barely survive today (4th part). Finally, it is still within the social structure that one can observe, despite the new institutions and the growing pressures of the global society, the most striking continuities with the past ; this apparent in the persisting division of the commune into two geographical moieties, the existence of two networks of mutual help and interdépendance whose antagonisms are expressed in political life, etc... (5th part).
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