Our understandings of the effects of war on land and resource access following armed conflicts are often shaped (and limited) by a reliance upon remotely sensed data. Here, we analyze household-level survey and community-level focus group data collected in Sri Lanka following the end of the nation’s ethno-religiously rooted civil war (1983–2009) to determine if and how the war differently affected the nation’s rice farmers. Our synthetic analyses revealed geographic variation in agricultural livelihood viability in post-war Sri Lanka, demonstrating how the protracted effects of war are exacerbating the vulnerability of rural Sri Lanka’s ethno-religious minority (Tamil and Moor) populations by (re-)shaping access to critical natural resources, including both land and irrigation water.

Coastal zones, which connect terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, are among the most resource-rich regions globally and home to nearly 40% of the global human population. Because human land-based activities can alter natural processes in ways that affect adjacent aquatic ecosystems, land-sea interactions are increasingly recognized as critical to coastal conservation planning and governance. However, the complex socioeconomic dynamics inherent in coastal and marine socioecological systems (SESs) have received little consideration. Drawing on knowledge generalized from long-term studies in Caribbean Nicaragua, we devised a conceptual framework that clarifies the multiple ways socioeconomically driven behavior can link the land and sea. In addition to other ecosystem effects, the framework illustrates how feedbacks resulting from changes to aquatic resources can influence terrestrial resource management decisions and land uses. We assessed the framework by applying it to empirical studies from a variety of coastal SESs. The results suggest its broad applicability and highlighted the paucity of research that explicitly investigates the effects of human behavior on coastal SES dynamics. We encourage researchers and policy makers to consider direct, indirect, and bidirectional cross-ecosystem links that move beyond traditionally recognized land-to-sea processes.

This edited volume assembles contributions from a suite of Native scholar-activists to explore how the concept of food sovereignty applies to various Indigenous communities throughout the United States, and perhaps in distinct ways to US Indigeneity as a whole. Chapters range from descriptions of historical Native foodways and their undermining through processes associated with settler colonialism to examples of contemporary initiatives and activities that are working to reform food systems among Native communities in the United States. The content speaks to the diversity of US Native groups and the environmental contexts in which they were historically (or are currently) situated. Thus, the volume also highlights the diverse traditional subsistence systems that characterize(d) US Native peoples, including both historically agricultural and nonagricultural societies, and the unique challenges faced by various communities to maintain or regenerate traditional foodways. Ultimately, the chapters work together to assert that efforts to promote food sovereignty in US Indigenous communities are critical to individual and community health, cultural revitalization and continuity, intimate and sustainable human-environmental (or nonhuman) relationships, and political and economic autonomy.Notably, all the contributors have deeply personal connections with their focal topics. The authors largely identify with an Indigenous community, and most chapters begin with personal narratives that position the author within the community or food initiative being discussed. Additionally, an introductory chapter presents a collection of short biographical sketches about various activists, some of whom also contributed chapters, highlighting their experience and direct involvement in the Indigenous food movement and providing the reader with an overview of food-system issues and initiatives occurring throughout the United States.Although some chapters lean toward an academic audience, most are less concerned with the theoretical aspects of food sovereignty than providing an account of a group's history or current food autonomy-related project in ways that are accessible to a variety of readers, including those generally interested in the cultural dimensions of sustainable agriculture. The focus on US Indigenous groups limits engagement with (and forgoes explicitly making some potentially key contributions to) broader understandings of food sovereignty, which is noted by contributors as an evolving, complicated, and even problematic concept. For example, the book fails to directly address questions about how the phenomena described differ from issues in non-Indigenous communities in the US or from the experiences of communities in other parts of the world, particularly where the concept of food sovereignty originates (i.e., peasant communities in the Global South). Although elements of this may be clear to some readers, the cultural and sociopolitical aspects of US Indigeneity are in certain ways distinct from other groups working toward more sovereign food systems, including the displacement of some communities from their Native lands, the degradation of key traditional resources, and the focus on the documentation and restoration of traditional foodways as both a means of building food sovereignty and for revitalization of identity. Thus, while the conclusion highlights that the book is in part an attempt to grapple with what is unique about US Indigenous food sovereignty, to do so in relative isolation proves challenging.Ultimately, Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States achieves its central goal: to recount activities and ideas that support the rebuilding of more autonomous and culturally significant Native food systems in the United States. The book provides a suite of specific examples and case studies that can help readers begin to understand the heterogeneity of traditional and contemporary food systems that characterize Indigenous communities throughout the US, as well as qualities, attributes, and challenges shared by these groups. In conversation with other texts and media, Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States can help to expose readers to the unique position of US Indigenous groups' efforts. Thus, this book, which includes a study question list for each chapter in an addendum, is well positioned to serve as a key text for courses covering environmental justice and sustainable food systems.

This study examines language ideologies and communicative practices in the multilingual Vaupes region of northwestern Amazonia. Following a comparative overview of the Vaupes as a 'small-scale' language ecology, it discusses claims from existing ethnographic work on the region in light of data from a corpus of video-recordings of sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous everyday conversations. It shows how a practice-based and interdisciplinary approach combining language documentation methodology and ethnographic, structural linguistic, and interactional perspectives can contribute to understanding of macro and micro aspects of multilingualism, thus contributing to future work on the Vaupes, typologies of small-scale multilingual ecologies, and language contact research. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article analyzes the use of several response particles in face-to-face interaction in Wa’ikhana, an East Tukano language of northwestern Amazonia. Adopting a Conversation Analysis approach, we explore details of each particle, considering their prosodic shapes, the action contexts in which they occur, and their sequential positioning, all crucial to understanding their meanings in interaction. Our analysis shows that Wa’ikhana response particles exhibit both universal and language-particular properties, thus demonstrating the contributions of data from lesser-studied languages to research on language in social interaction, and the value of an interactional approach in the study of under-described, and often endangered, indigenous languages.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------ANALISANDO PARTÍCULAS EM WA’IKHANAEste artigo analisa o uso de um conjunto de partículas responsivas em interação cotidiana em Wa’ikhana, língua da família Tukano Oriental, falada no noroeste amazônico. Adotando a abordagem da Análise de Conversação, exploramos detalhes de cada partícula, considerando sua forma prosódica, o contexto de ação em que ocorre e sua posição sequencial, todos cruciais para o entendimento do seu significado em interação. Nossa análise mostra que partículas responsivas em Wa’ikhana exibem propriedades universais e próprias, demonstrando a contribuição de dados provindos de línguas pouco conhecidas à pesquisa sobre linguagem e interação social, bem como o valor da abordagem interacional no estudo de línguas indígenas pouco estudadas e muitas vezes ameaçadas.---Original em inglês.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043765.].

This paper offers an analysis of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, with particular attention to the role of the Committee chairperson within this procedural infrastructure—an infrastructure that, we argue, systematically provides for and thereby implicitly legitimizes the insertion of bias in its proceedings, while nonetheless orienting to an ideology of fairness based on time limits for speaking. Focusing on the linguistic and interactional mechanisms through which chairpersons may use the ‘interstitial spaces’ that emerge within such hearings, we conclude that the structural privileges afforded to partisan chairpersons can compromise the Committee's ability to reach impartial and unbiased conclusions in its investigations, and we offer recommendations with regard to how this might be resolved.

Globalization processes, such as market pressures, tend to encourage farmers to reduce agricultural (or agro-) biodiversity. Yet, what is known about the drivers of agrobiodiversity erosion largely comes from research from communities in which farming is the principle natural resource-based livelihood. Focusing on Caribbean Nicaragua's Pearl Lagoon Basin following the construction of the first regional road, we used a mixed methods approach to understand how the complex livelihood dynamics inherent in coastal socio-ecological systemswhere households rely upon both terrestrial and aquatic resourcesaffect farmers' decisions to maintain agrobiodiversity. Our analyses reveal atypical spatial patterns of agrobiodiversity maintenance relative to road access: the farming systems of households most proximal to the road are significantly more agrobiodiverse than those maintained by household in distant communities. This pattern is in part explained by local livelihood dynamics. Market access associated with road development encouraged the depletion of the lagoon fishery. To buffer their food security, households' near to the road are focusing efforts on their historically biodiverse subsistence agricultural systems. These findings suggest that conservation efforts targeting coastal socio-ecological systems must account for the ways in which the complexity of natural resource-based livelihoods in these systems affect households' responses to a changing world.

Pressure of freshwater resources has intensified in recent decades, stressing agricultural communities worldwide. Research is needed to advance our understanding of the factors that support resilience. Past research suggests that social capital positively predicts health and well-being; yet, we know surprisingly little about the relationship between social capital and resilience to environmental stress. Some scholars have cautioned that tight-knit social relationships can also constrain behavior and undermine flexibility, which could undermine adaptive responses to environmental stress. In this analysis, we use survey data from 225 smallholding rice farmers in Sri Lanka to examine the relationship between individual-level measures of cognitive and structural social capital measured before a drought-affected season, and livelihood outcomes (rice yields and income loss) measured after the season. We also examined if membership in less powerful groups (landless, female, and poor farmers) moderated the relationship between social capital and livelihood outcomes. Higher levels of perceived social cohesion (a measure of cognitive social capital) were associated with poorer yields for both female and landless farmers; yet, the yields of male and landowning farmers were unrelated to perceived social cohesion. Likewise, landless farmers with higher levels of community participation (a form of structural social capital) experienced a marginally higher rate of lost income due to the drought. These data suggest that the relationship between social capital and resilience operates differently for different members of the community. Importantly, some community members may face a difficult tradeoff between agricultural productivity and maintaining social relationships.

Farmers’ maintenance of agrobiodiversity is fundamental to global food security, particularly in a world increasingly affected by climate change. Biodiversity helps to buffer agroecosystems from stresses like climatic variability, and the crop genetic diversity conserved with biodiverse agroecosystems is critical for plant breeding both locally and globally. Yet, despite these benefits, few studies have directly assessed the implications of household–level agrobiodiversity maintenance on household food security. Drawing on survey data collected in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota District, we evaluated the plant diversity maintained by small–scale farming households in both homegardens and crop fields and determined the relationships between this diversity and their households’ food security. We also considered how a suite of additional demographic, household, community, and farm characteristics relate to both the plant diversity maintained by a household and their food security. Similar to previous studies, the age of the agricultural decision-maker and the age and size of households’ homegardens positively correlated with the overall species richness of farming systems. Older homegardens were also identified to be more evenly distributed in their species abundance, and market–oriented households had significantly higher species richness but lower Shannon Indices. Most notably, household socioeconomic status and material wealth were important to both agrobiodiversity maintenance and household food security, while no significant relationships between species richness and food security measures were detected. These findings suggest that effort aiming to increase the food security of small–scale farming households in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere, should target those farming households with a paucity of socioeconomic assets, as these households lack both agroecological and economic resources to overcome shocks, such as those associated with climate change.

Smallholder farmers with limited governmental and institutional support often devise innovative strategies to mitigate the impacts of water stress on agricultural production. These drought mitigation strategies can be more culturally and ecologically suitable than top-down, technocratic, strategies. Top-down drought mitigation approaches, however, often link farmers with significant infrastructures, financial resources, and specialized knowledge. Successful rescaling of localized mitigation practices can integrate the benefits of localized mitigation with resources available at larger scales. This paper describes the rescaling of a Sri Lankan drought mitigation practice known as bethma. We focus on the process of rescaling, specifically what is lost and gained when this local practice is implemented at a much larger scale. We identify factors driving participation in bethma and the impacts of this participation on farmer livelihoods. Results suggest that participation in bethma during water-scarce seasons has significant positive impacts on agricultural yields, but that this participation is strongly influenced by the nature of a farmer's land ownership. Much of the success of bethma's implementation is due to the decentralized, flexible implementation at a regional scale. The loss of localized information, however, influences farmer participation in the practices and the distribution of the benefits associated with bethma.

Anthropogenic threats to natural systems can be exacerbated due to connectivity between marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, complicating the already daunting task of governance across the land-sea interface. Globalization, including new access to markets, can change social-ecological, land-sea linkages via livelihood responses and adaptations by local people. As a first step in understanding these trans-ecosystem effects, we examined exit and entry decisions of artisanal fishers and smallholder farmers on the rapidly globalizing Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. We found that exit and entry decisions demonstrated clear temporal and spatial patterns and that these decisions differed by livelihood. In addition to household characteristics, livelihood exit and entry decisions were strongly affected by new access to regional and global markets. The natural resource implications of these livelihood decisions are potentially profound as they provide novel linkages and spatially-explicit feedbacks between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Our findings support the need for more scientific inquiry in understanding trans-ecosystem tradeoffs due to linked-livelihood transitions as well as the need for a trans-ecosystem approach to natural resource management and development policy in rapidly changing coastal regions.

Place reference is pervasive in talk-in-interaction but remains less well understood than reference to persons. This paper explores place reference in Kula, an endangered non-Austronesian language of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family in southeastern Indonesia. Using a Conversation Analytic approach, it provides a description of both verbal and nonverbal resources for achieving successful reference to place in Kula. The paper also contributes to the cross-linguistic study of reference in conversation. The organization of practices for place reference in interaction in Kula is suggested to conform to more generic organizational principles, e.g. preferences for minimization and recognition, and fitting the formulation to the task-at-hand, while also reflecting properties specific to Kula, e.g. the use of elevationals in formulations of place reference.

Correlations between farmer ethnic identity and the agrobiodiversity they maintain have been identified globally. This has been maintained even as small-scale farmers are increasingly connected to extra-local political economic systems, which are cited as the driver of global agrobiodiversity erosion. Yet, how ethnicity influences the maintenance of biodiverse farming systems is poorly understood. Employing a political ecology framework that integrated qualitative, demographic, and agroecological methods in Caribbean Nicaragua's Pearl Lagoon Basin, this research revealed patterns indicating that farmers who identify with the area's indigenous (Miskito) and afro-descendant (Creole and Garifuna) 'minority' groups tend to maintain more diverse farms than nearby farmers who identify as mestizo, particularly those who are recent migrants to the region. In contrast to previous studies, however, the most connected farmers in the Basin tend to have the highest levels of agrobiodiversity within their farming systems. Qualitative and regression analyses reveal that ethnic patterns in the maintenance of agrobiodiversity are explained in part by the historical farming practices that characterize land use in the Basin and the agroecological knowledge that farmers develop over a lifetime farming in this socio-ecological context. Further, by acknowledging the plastic nature of ethnic identity, this research highlights the importance of ethnic-based land rights in the Nicaragua's South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region as a critical factor that directly and indirectly influences the ethnic identities of farmers in the Pearl Lagoon Basin and their abilities to participate in agricultural development projects whose extension activities promote agrobiodiversity conservation.

Tropical forest conversion to pasture, which drives greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss, remains a pressing socio-ecological challenge. This problem has spurred increased interest in the potential of small-scale agroforestry systems to couple sustainable agriculture with biodiversity conservation, particularly in rapidly developing areas of the tropics. In addition to providing natural resources (i.e. food, medicine, lumber), agroforestry systems have the potential to maintain higher levels of biodiversity and greater biomass than lower diversity crop or pasture systems. Greater plant diversity may also enhance soil quality, further supporting agricultural productivity in nutrient-limited tropical systems. Yet, the nature of these relationships remains equivocal. To better understand how different land use strategies impact ecosystem services, we characterized the relationships between plant diversity (including species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and natural resource diversity), and soil quality within pasture, agroforests, and secondary forests, three common land use types maintained by small-scale farmers in the Pearl Lagoon Basin, Nicaragua. The area is undergoing accelerated globalization following the 2007 completion of the region's first major road; a change which is expected to increase forest conversion for agriculture. However, farmer agrobiodiversity maintenance in the Basin was previously found to be positively correlated with affiliation to local agricultural NGOs through the maintenance of agroforestry systems, despite these farmers residing in the communities closest to the new road, highlighting the potential for maintaining diverse agroforestry agricultural strategies despite heightened globalization pressures. We found that agroforestry sites tended to have higher surface soil %C, %N, and pH relative to neighboring to secondary forest, while maintaining comparable plant diversity. In contrast, pasture reduced species richness, phylogenetic diversity, and natural resource diversity. No significant relationships were found between plant diversity and the soil properties assessed; however higher species richness and phylodiversity was positively correlated with natural resource diversity. These finding suggest that small, diversified agroforestry systems may be a viable strategy for promoting both social and ecological functions in eastern Nicaragua and other rapidly developing areas of the tropics.