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The focus of this intervention follows the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and its consequences. With both health and the economy as central to this crisis, besides each amplifying the other, in some regards, the two also might stand in conflict. However, both are definitely delivering a number of consequences for humans in different regions and life circumstances across the globe. With the help of several examples, this paper sets out to visualize the unequal distribution of duties, strains, exposure and aftermath of the current health crisis.

While a remarkable continuity in smallholder agricultural production has been identified, the shift from subsistence orientation towards more wage dependence appears in a different light when analysed under a gender perspective. "Feminisation" has been a catchphrase to characterise some of these processes; however, the debate has been subject to overgeneralisation, and can only inadequately grasp the gender dynamics in what has been referred to as "new ruralities". Illustrated for high-value crop production as an expression of agricultural transition in the Global South, this contribution offers a critical account of the feminisation thesis. Instead of discarding the notion of feminisation, it advocates a reassessment of its potential as a comprehensive framework against which empirical findings can be reflected. While conventional uses of the feminisation thesis have, in their great majority, come up with the conclusion that for women it can always only get worse, I propose a perspective which reveals gains and risks and how they are shared between men and women as they engage in new agricultural labour markets. This perspective rests on a methodology for case-based, comparative studies developed in this paper as a contribution for assessing the nature of agricultural transition and to investigate the qualitative change associated with new ruralities. A distinctive appreciation of the substance of agricultural change for different members of the rural society – namely men and women, but also different men, and different women – is the premise for overcoming barriers to shared development, and for framing effective governance in the context of global development.

The paper focuses on indigenous peoples, their present Situation and prospects for the future. While emphasizing the cultural heterogeneity of indigenous peoples worldwide, the paper at the same time Stresses certain basic similarities especially as concerns their relation with land. It argues that in order for indigenous cultures to regain control of their own future, necessary recognition of their special rights to land as well as acceptance of some form of self-determination is mandatory. The ongoing work on securing these rights by indigenous and non-indigenous NGO's and within the UN and ILO is discussed. It is argued that this work on indigenous human rights must continue and that increased international concern is necessary in order to secure to indigenous peoples their basic and necessary human rights.

Labour market issues give insight into the myriad ways in which people and politics respond to social and spatial tensions marking current transformations alongside globalisation. This paper explores the relations between the globalising Philippine labour market, spatially disparate development and the course of national economic policies. Philippine State policies almost exclusively promote global-oriented Service and industry sectors and their predominantly urban locations.The agricultural sector, and thus most of the rural regions and inhabitants, is neglected by these policies. Many rural regions find themselves being pushed into the economic periphery. Their inhabitants appear caught in a spiral of increasing poverty, leading to heightened exodus as persons seek employment and better perspectives in urban centres. Persistent inequality of power relations, landownership, socio-political conflicts and slow decentral isation further exacerbate the Situation in the peripheries. At the same time, the urban centres struggle to absorb the migrants in the face of economic volatility through globalisation. Unemployment is high and the informal sector large. A strategy of the State government has been to export workforce surplus to global labour markets. In the long run, however, the Philippines, and particularly its peripheries, could loose their most productive human capital, and consequently, their basis for any endogenously driven development. Thus, it appears necessary for the government to provide their Citizens with a sustainable, socially and spatially more balanced inner labour market if it wishes to herald in a developmental turnabout.