Hacia estrategias de vida sostenibles. Culturas, recursos y cambios en India y Bolivia

Los múltiples autores de este estudio resumen su propuesta en estos términos: “los habitantes de las comunidades rurales han desarrollado percepciones del manejo sostenible de recursos que son específicas a su cultura y ubicación geográfica, por ejemplo, la que se refiere al uso de tierra. Sin embargo, el ‘uso de tierra’ –o manejar los recursos naturales en general– representa tan sólo una dimensión, por muy importante que sea, de una preocupación mucho más amplia relacionada a las estrategias de vida sostenibles. ¿Cómo tratar con la integridad de las dimensiones si queremos apoyar desde los proyectos y programas de “desarrollo” esas estrategias de vida? Este es el centro de este trabajo que busca, partiendo de una experiencia desarrollada en la India, abarcar estos aspectos para Bolivia”.

"It was hard to come to mutual understanding..." - Multidimensionality of social learning processes in natural resource use in India, Africa and Latin America

Sustainable natural resource use requires that multiple actors reassess their situation in a systemic perspective. This can be conceptualised as a social learning process between actors from rural communities and the experts from outside organisations. A specifically designed workshop oriented towards a systemic view of natural resource use and the enhancement of mutual learning between local and external actors, provided the background for evaluating the potentials and constraints of intensified social learning processes. Case studies in rural communities in India, Bolivia, Peru and Mali showed that changes in the narratives of the participants of the workshop followed a similar temporal sequence relatively independently from their specific contexts. Social learning processes were found to be more likely to be successful if they 1) opened new space for communicative action, allowing for an intersubjective re-definition of the present situation, 2) contributed to rebalance the relationships between social capital and social, emotional and cognitive competencies within and between local and external actors.

Perceived malleability of self versus the world and its impact on youths’ control orientation and well-being in the US, Germany, and India

Primary control is defined as changing the world to fit the self, while secondary control is defined as changing the self to fit the world. To understand why different individuals prefer different kinds of control processes, we proposed a research project looking at US, German and Indian young adults. We hypothesize that theories of self and the world (fixed vs. malleable; Dweck, 1999) affect the prevailing mode of control used. Furthermore, adolescents’ cultural background is assumed to affect their self-world theories as well as the adaptiveness of specific modes of control. For example, in the US, where the self is tended to be seen as fixed and the world as malleable, primary control prevails and is more adaptive than secondary control while the reverse is expected for India. We present the theoretical outline and methodology of the study as well as first results.