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1. The current pattern of anthropization of the biosphere, which has led scientist to coin the term Anthropocene, cannot be properly understood without accounting for the specific dynamics of capitalism. 2. Here we combine theoretical ecology with a framework from the social sciences, historical materialism, to study these dynamics by looking at the case of capital-intense agriculture in the Gran Chaco. In so doing we espouse a process perspective, and we obtain some important general insights for the transition towards sustainability. 3. We appreciate the interplay between contingencies and autocatalytic configuration of processes in the emergence, persistence and eventually transformation of a socio-economic system. 4. We point to the analogy between the capitalist urge for economic expansion, driven by the competitive search for maximum profits, and the intrinsic growth-enhancing tendency of autocatalytic configurations. 5. More broadly, we expose the dialectical relationship between the set of material/economic processes and cultural/institutional ones, which originates the historical development of capitalist dynamics and the associated pattern of dangerous anthropization. 6. Transition towards sustainability will require acting simultaneously on both spheres, while taking advantage of a suitable window of opportunity.

We study the role of social learning in the diffusion of cash crops in a resettled village economy in northeastern Brazil. We combine detailed geo-coded data on farming plots with dyadic data on social ties among settlers, and we leverage natural exogenous variation in network formation induced by the land occupation movement and the agrarian reform. By using longitudinal data on farming decisions over 15 years we find consistent evidence of significant peer effects in the decision to farm new cash fruits (pineapple and passion fruit). Our results suggest that social diffusion is heterogeneous along observed plot and crop characteristics, i.e. farmers growing water-sensitive crop are more likely to respond to the actions of peers with similar water access conditions.

Cattle production is a central livelihood for smallholders in the Argentinian Chaco. Smallscale “criollo” farmers oftentimes live in settlements in the middle of the forest. However, the Chaco forests and related ecosystems are under high pressure. The Argentinian Chaco currently experiences very high deforestation rates. This process has been driven mostly by the expansion of the agricultural frontiers, in particular for soy, as well by large-scale cattle ranchers [1]. Among the two main user groups of native forest, we find indigenous people, as well as small-scale “criollo” farmers. These smallholders raise cattle, mostly with management practices known as “campo abierto”, a system under which cattle roam freely in the forest and feed from natural vegetation (trees, shrubs and rare natural pastures). In order to secure higher income for farmers, as well as to reduce pressure on forests, recent and private initiatives have developed silvopastoral production systems for smallholders. Most of these systems involve felling shrubs (either with tractor rollers or manually) and introducing new grass species (gaton panic, buffalo grass, etc.). These pastures provide forage during the dry season and thus contribute to reduced pressure on forests during this sensitive period, although this comes with important costs associated with preparation of land and fences. This article examines the current introduction of silvopastoral production systems in the Chaco salteño and their adoption by smallholders. We will present results from a survey conducted in August 2018 of 552 small-scale cattle rangers from the departments of Rivadavia and San Martin, Salta, Argentina. We will focus especially on the stated motivations of smallholders adopting these practices. This information will be combined with socio-economic profiles of the households (i.e. subsistence versus entrepreneurial farmers). We also examine diffusion channels of silvopastoral practices (networks and institutions involved). The article concludes with some policy implications for silvopastoral development in the Argentinian Chaco in the context of acute deforestation.

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has received increasing attention as a means of supporting children and young people in developing their knowledge and understanding of multiple global issues (Bourn, 2015; Fricke & Gathercole, 2015). Despite this increasing prominence, it is apparent that GCE remains a highly contested notion (Marshall, 2005; Hartung, 2017; Jooste & Heleta, 2017). The report draws on an analysis of nine Global Citizenship Education teacher education programmes across four EU countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Italy. The methodology adopted is a multiple-site case study design (Yin, 2014), using ethnography as main method. The research employed a qualitative framework, seeking a description of practices and meaning making to behavioural patterns. Within each country, the research focused on an analysis of two typologies of settings: a) a training course for in-service primary school teachers organized by the project partner in the framework of the project, b) a training course organized by a different organization on themes related to Global Citizenship Education. The selection of the second setting was based on extreme case sampling. This setting was selected for being as different as possible from the initial one, in terms of approach, goals, teachers’ trainers and organization (but on the same or related theme). The theoretical assumption behind this choice is that being organized by a different institution the ideas behind course implementation are more likely to be different. Based on this the report argues that the teacher education programmes examined present an argument as to how teacher education programmes at the focus of this research present a transformational approach to GCE, where the concepts of critical thinking and self-reflection are perceived as the foundations towards action for a more just and sustainable world. This conception echoes aspects of Freirean pedagogy, itself an important GCE theoretical framework (Scheunpflug & Asbrand, 2006). However, less evident was the ‘critical’ approach to GCE, illustrated in the work of Andreotti (2006).

There is an on-going debate on the effects of participatory development interventions; some scholars claim that participation is the key driver of change while others show that these interventions are vulnerable to unintended consequences and often only empower the already leading elites. The Brazilian agrarian reform created a large migration flow into villages inside sugar cane plantations (engenhos) that became agrarian reform settlements (assentamentos). The main novelties in assentamentos are the presence of households with heterogeneous background and free use of land. The main question is whether the agrarian reform and producers’ cooperatives supported the emergence in assentamentos of new forms of social organization. This research argues that that impact of development intervention is not only related to participants but to the entire target social structure. Applying theory of adaptiveness, the main hypothesis is that the capacity of assentamentos to respond to the changes promoted by these external interventions depends on the level of overlap between multiple social networks that define the social structure of assentamentos. This research explores qualitatively and quantitatively the network formation of three assentamentos in Northeast Brazil. Furthermore it analyzes how one cooperative supporting family farming influences and it is influenced by the social network structure. The agrarian reform and the creation of a producers’ cooperative can be considered as participatory interventions, as they were community driven. The unit of analysis is the household. Households are the nodes in the network. Villages are considered as social relational systems. The analysis focuses on the study of multiple networks that connect households in each village. By analyzing three agrarian reform settlements that were created by three different social movements, the research shows that different households’ recruitment strategies and different villages’ histories led to different village composition and social processes behind network formation. Family farming plays a crucial role in allowing for the possibility to create new rural villages that differ from previous sugar cane plantation production units. The possibility of family farming to become a relevant livelihood strategy is associated with the features of villages’ social networks. The producers’ cooperative, supporting the introduction of new labor-intensive crops and guaranteeing a market for some crops, sustains family farming employment network. However the brokering role of the cooperative is hampered by the cooperative political positioning and by the path of specialization towards high value and labor-intensive crops.

This paper focuses on the role of rural producers’ organizations as factors of innovation in those contexts characterized by subsistence level agricultural production, by means of a case study on the cooperative associations that compose UDCM (União Distrital dos Camponeses de Morrumbala), in the district of Morrumbala (Zambezia province, Mozambique). Our methodology adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, joining together the economic and the anthropological analysis and using both qualitative and quantitative data. Data collected underline that cooperative is a medium useful to mediate between innovations introduction and the transformations of social context in which the members live. Moreover we are going to show that cooperatives are brokers able to introduce peasants to an accumulation pattern without eliminating redistribution dynamics. The social change imposed by a market system that might introduce, by means of the surplus production, to a capitalistic development, is therefore mediated with the local social and cultural context.

The Argentinian Dry Chaco has suffered from very high deforestation rates in the last decades, and forest degradation remains an important issue. This study examines the adoption of sustainable silvopastoral practices by smallholder households in the Chaco. Data for the study were collected from 392 families in two munici-palities of the Province of Salta. We used multivariate probit (MVP) models to assess land users’ decision to adopt three management practices. We show that socio-economic factors (household assets, number of animals), human and social capital (literacy, affiliation with a producer organization), as well as access to financial re-sources (credit) determine adoption. Secured land tenure also increases the likelihood of adoption, but not as much as we initially hypothesized. We discuss how certain specificities of the area, including difficulties accessing land titles and pressure from the agro-industry, as well as the characteristics of the resource itself – forest grazing areas, some shared by multiple families – might explain this unexpectedly low influence of land tenure on the adoption of sustainable silvopastoral practices.

According to recommendations of the UN Secretary General's Global Education First Initiative, countries and regions require a number of structural changes if they are to implement educational policies and practice based on global citizenship education, and to promote respect and responsibility across cultures. In this paper, we present the first results of a three-year project to compare existing educational policies, strategies and school curricula in ten European Union (EU) countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Spain, Portugal, UK) to ascertain the current level of such structural changes. Through a comparative policy analysis, we investigated whether, to what extent, and how global citizenship education is integrated within primary school curricula. The article focuses on national governmental agencies – specifically two main bodies in each country, the ministries of foreign affairs and education – and their political discourses. We argue that the gap between the two traditions, with separate approaches, purposes, concepts and bureaucracies, represents a strategic political challenge for the introduction of global citizenship education in primary schools.

This paper analyses the role of rural producers' organisations as elements of innovation processes in contexts characterised by subsistence-level agricultural production. The primary focus is on a group of producers' associations – cooperatives – in the district of Morrumbala (Zambezia Province, Mozambique) where the authors conducted a case study. The interdisciplinary methodology used combines economic and anthropological methods of analysis. The study results indicate that the cooperative organisation is a useful tool to mediate between the introduction of innovation and the transformation of the social context in which its members live. Moreover, the results show that producers' organisations are brokers that are able to introduce peasants to an accumulation pattern that does not eliminate redistribution dynamics. In effect, therefore, the social change imposed by the market system is mediated by the local social and cultural context.