 Troubling Tradition, Community, and Self-Reliance: Reframing Expectations for Village Seed BanksEmily Reisman World Development, 2017, vol. 98, issue C, 160-168 Abstract: Heralded by both food sovereignty activists and mainstream development practitioners, village seed banks are a rural development phenomenon rapidly gaining attention for their potential to support resilient agricultural systems. This paper presents a case study for examining the power of prevailing narratives of decentralized development to shape and ultimately constrain the operations of village seed banks in Telangana, India. This case demonstrates how visions of tradition, community, and self-reliance can serve to discount the materiality of seeds, the social complexity of village institutions, and even the voices of farmers. The goal of this research is not to criticize village seed banks, as they hold great potential, nor to vilify the narratives in question, but rather to encourage critical reflection on how the assumptions embedded in these narratives shape mechanisms for agricultural development. I argue for a shift away from framing tradition, community, and self-reliance as development solutions and propose an interrogative approach that turns these narratives into questions for engaging more effectively with rural livelihoods. Keywords: seed banks; rainfed agriculture; narrative; decentralization; South Asia; India (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:98:y:2017:i:c:p:160-168 DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.04.024 Access Statistics for this article World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes More articles in World Development from Elsevier |
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