irrigated rice production (Other Keyword)
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: "My only equal [as sovereign of this land] is rice": The "technology" of rice production politically deployed and ideologically appropriated in early Merina "states" of central Madagascar. (2015)
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Over past centuries the landscape of the central highlands of Madagascar has been dramatically transformed. Draining, diking and terracing have created vast expanses of irrigated rice fields where forests once stood. The employ of this transformative technology depended on collective social labor; unsurprisingly the dikes that rendered the land productive also served in the political organization and unification of territory and populations. Yet, the destruction of these dikes was also a ploy...