Part of Cluster 2: Dynamics of Social Cohesion in the Face of Climate Change
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Project 2.2

Climate, Cooperation and Community in Asia

Description

This project studies cooperation through a comparative, long-run study of rural Asia. Using household and village-level archival data, it investigates a two-way relationship: how climate stress reshapes cooperative structures within and between groups and how historical cooperative arrangements in turn shape communities’ responses to climate stress. The project studies new agricultural technologies and practices in Asia and associated implications for climate risk adaptation in the post WWII period. 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.

Team

Supervisors

Aim of the project

Climate change poses a serious challenge to social cohesion in the coming decades. Extreme weather events, disruptions to food or water supplies, and the pressure to adopt new agricultural practices are already becoming increasingly visible, straining relations between people and decreasing trust in the institutions that guide collective responses. Communities are divided along existing fault lines such as those of neighbourhood, class, gender, and caste, or along new dimensions. The capability of rural societies to adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change hinges on their capacity for cooperation, both within and across rural groups. 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 construction of a dataset 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

Research design

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 four key components:
  1. An integrative literature review that brings together concepts, theories, and evidence from economic history, social and cultural psychology, and development economics on how cooperation and social cohesion form and break down among farmers. This stage sets up the conceptual framework for the project, defining relevant variables and laying out their possible operationalisation.
  2. Construction of a new quantitative dataset on agriculture, types of risk, and economic & social outcomes at the village level. This includes a careful study of cooperation (or lack thereof) at different levels as well as the different institutional forms it can take. The project aims to construct this dataset using archival, administrative and geo-spatial sources.
  3. Dependent on the candidate’s interest, field work in farmers’ communities would be possible. The aim of the field work would be to better understand under which conditions do people recognize the problem of climate change and when do they start to act. Qualitative and quantitative methods will help to identify factors and underlying mechanisms of why and how farmers may or may not cooperate with each other. In a next step, a more psychological longitudinal field study could systematically investigate how farmers may change their cooperative behavior in the face of climate changing conditions over times. How this may affect specific behaviors such as offering and seeking help or sharing resources within or beyond ingroup boundaries (relevant for cooperation).
  4. A comparative analysis that brings together findings across regions, countries, and time periods. The project exploits regional differences in the timing and character of the Green Revolution across and within countries. This includes an analysis of cooperation within and across socio-economic groups as well as across regions with distinct social and institutional conditions. It also studies the role of cooperation in changing the sensitivity of farming groups to long-run climate change.