The Using Of Agro-Biodiversity And Shaping Of Playroom For Peasants’ Choices

Agro-biodiversity is an important resource for agricultural development as it is related to agricultural production, livelihood, indigenous knowledge and routine lives. The dissertation is a qualitative study based on fieldwork in Huabian village of Guizhou province, aiming to disclose the mechanism underlying how peasants make choices to use agro-biodiversity resources through four dimensions:agricultural production, peasants’ knowledge system,households’livelihoods and peasants’ routine lives, trying to further unveil the shaping of space for peasants’choices.The research has found that:First, peasants’ agricultural production activities are deeply influenced by government’s grain policies and subsidies on major crops and economic crops which emphasize neccessarity of increasing grain output and realizing food security. Peasants’ choices are reduced by interventions in cropping patterns and productive structure. Market-oriented systems, policy-stimulated institutions and limited accessible resources constrain the playroom for peasants to make free choices. Second, rural households are facing rising social vulnerability and dropping livelihood safety. Rural development policies accelerate the decrease of traditional diversified coping strategies by overmagnifying function of leading agricultural industries and agricultutal expension. Comercialization of means of production further extrudes peasants’ accessible options for making choices. These haven’t successfully decreased social vulnerability of rural households but exposed them to increasing risks and degrading coping capacity. Third, peasants’ knowledge system is discontinued with indigenous knowledge system in the context of agricultural modernization, because indigenous knowledge is gradually given up by peasants at different levels under the assault of agricultural modernization. Peasants’reliance on modern agricultural technology and knowledge system has risen and they become affiliated to modern knowledge system. They are excluded from the core of agricultural knowledge system both spatially and sequentially. Forth, peasants’ routine lives have been changed by market-oriented reform, commercialization and urban-rural dualism. Floating labors from rural area to urban area and peasants’ changing concepts of consumption and service change the traditional of culture of ethnic minorities, custom and cooperation. Economic relation has disembeded from social relation in current rural area, which brings new challenges to persistence of cultural community.In conclusion, institutional logic of the state along with economic logic of market jointly shape the playroom for peasants to make choices in using agro-biodiversity resource through agricultural policies, agricultural modernization, commercialization and urban-rural dualism. Liberty and degree of free choice of peasant determines the level of their development. The nature of development is to expand playroom and to improve capacity for peasants to make choices. Development invokes the regression of subjectivity of peasants.