Economic Specialization in Sugar Cane Wage Labor: Ethnographic Case Study of a Rural Nicaraguan Community

 
 
 
 

Economic Specialization in Sugar Cane Wage Labor: Ethnographic Case Study of a Rural Nicaraguan Community

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Title: Economic Specialization in Sugar Cane Wage Labor: Ethnographic Case Study of a Rural Nicaraguan Community
Author: Elliott, Michael H.
Description: Valencia, a rural community in northwestern Nicaragua, was formed into a cooperative when the Sandinistas came to power. With the rise of the Unión Nacional Opositora (UNO) government, the cooperative disbanded and its members have turned to wage labor in the sugar industry as their main livelihood. This thesis uses insights from development geography and the experiences of decollectivization elsewhere to understand how livelihoods were shaped by the collectivization process and the decollectivization that has accompanied neoliberal economic reform. These overarching economic models affect localities in distinct ways, making place-based studies focused on local characteristics a vital research tool. In the case of Valencia, it is important to examine the community's ties to Nicaragua's agrarian reform of the 1980's, the undoing of the reform, and individual responses to those changes. Based on a household census and semi-ethnographic research, this study shows that the implementation of reform policies must match the goals they are meant to achieve (i.e. by promoting technical proficiency), and that having sufficient time is an important component when agrarian reforms are used to create lasting changes in rural areas.
Permanent Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1212519949
http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/108267
Date: 2008

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