Project 2.2

This project studies cooperation as a climate adaptation tool through a comparative, long-run study of rural Asia. Using archival data, it investigates interactions between climate, institutions, and cooperative behaviour. The project explores how new agricultural technologies and practices created new forms of climate risk that in turn led to distinctive forms of local institutional adaptation across regions and socio-economic groups. By clarifying why cooperation succeeds or fails in historically climate-vulnerable agricultural contexts, this research offers lessons for global climate adaptation, informing conditions that could facilitate cooperation in other affected parts of the world, including the Netherlands.

Around the world, climate risks facing agriculture have intensified in recent years. The capability of rural societies to adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change hinges on their capacity for cooperation. This project studies the historical roots of cooperation in rural societies faced with climate uncertainty. In the post WWII period, rural societies in Asian countries underwent a dramatic transformation. The introduction of new agricultural technologies increased crop productivity and rural incomes. At the same time, these changes reshaped economic, political, and social power in rural communities. They also exposed farmers to new forms of climate risk, contributing to variation in cooperation and conflict. Focusing on local processes during this period allows us to trace when and why cooperation breaks down or endures, and to assess the consequences for sustainable development.

Through a comparative and long run study of rural Asia, the project will investigate interactions between climate, institutions and cooperative behaviour. This will involve the collection of archival data at the household or village level to understand how local conditions and cooperative behaviour changes over time and across regions or countries. The project will analyse the drivers of cooperation through historical analysis, with additional insight from the field of social psychology that helps to understand cooperation at an individual and group level. By clarifying when cooperation succeeds or fails in historically climate-vulnerable agricultural contexts, the project offers lessons for climate adaptation in other countries around the world.

Conceptually, the project aims to study cooperation through the lens of economic history and social psychology. Exploring this topic from a historical perspective brings us new understandings of how adaptation strategies have changed over time and across regions and what has facilitated these changes. Bringing psychology into this discussion furthers our understanding of cooperative behaviour as an adaptation tool at individual and group levels by theorizing (and depending on the candidate’s interest and background potentially also fieldwork)

The project will contain five key components:

1. An integrative literature review which defines and integrates relevant concepts, theories and perspectives from economics, history and social psychology to determine how disciplines have viewed the determinants and functioning of cooperation and climate adaptation among farmers.
2. The construction and analysis of a new household or village level dataset on agriculture and climate risk, economic outcomes, and various institutional forms of cooperation. This includes a careful study of different levels of cooperation (or lack thereof) as well as the different institutional forms it can take. The project aims to construct this dataset using administrative reports and archival sources.
3. The construction and analysis of a new dataset on participation in organizations across regions in Asia and over time. The project aims to show the importance of cooperation as a tool of climate change adaptation. It also goes further and asks: Who cooperated and why? In doing so, it enables the more empirical testing of findings in point 1.
4. A qualitative or quantitative analysis of farmer networks outside organizations. Tracing these networks may not be possible through historical archival sources alone. Here, the project can supplement archival approaches with oral histories or fieldwork.
5. A comparative element, which is present throughout the project. The project can exploit regional variation in cooperation to explain what might have facilitated or held back cooperation. This includes an analysis of cooperation across socio-economic groups as well as across regions with distinct social and institutional conditions. It also studies cooperation over time, with a particular emphasis on the role of cooperation in changing the sensitivity of farming groups to long-run climate change.

We would be interested to hear from candidates from any of the fields mentioned above to explain how their skills could contribute to the design of the project as outlined here.