[Anthropgrad] Reminder - RMAP RESEARCH SEMINAR - Maylee Thavat - 4-5pm Thursday 29 May

[RMAP Seminars]

GIFT AND COMMODITY RELATIONS IN PRO-POOR PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT: A 
CASE STUDY OF RICE SEED COMPANIES IN CAMBODIA

Maylee Thavat
RMAP PhD Student

Thursday 29 May 2008, 4-5pm
Seminar Room C (Nadel Room) Coombs Building, ANU

Abstract
It is often asserted that aid exists to incorporate peasants into 
commodity relations. But perhaps the reverse is also true, namely that 
peasants exist to incorporate aid into gift relations. The first 
sentence bestows on development activities a type of hegemony and 
coherence that belies the general befuddlement surrounding development 
aid implementation, especially in the area of private sector development.

In this seminar, I will show that far from rationalising subsistence 
communities, their production and trade, towards the single end of 
commodity relations, private sector oriented development projects often 
reinforce and/or transform a range of different gift and commodity 
relations within the recipient country, strengthen some above others and 
often with perverse outcomes.

Using the case study of private rice seed companies set up by AusAID in 
Cambodia, this seminar will discuss how the dual aims of commercially 
successful rice companies and poverty alleviation resulted in both 
direct sales and indirect gifts of seed to farmers, both of which 
undermined the commercial viability of the seed companies yet ultimately 
bypassed the subsistence farmers the project set out to help. This 
outcome then precipitated the need for more donor aid to the private 
companies in the name of poverty alleviation of subsistence farmers. 
Although this seminar demonstrates that very little of this aid ended up 
assisting the target 'subsistence farmers' this seemed of little 
consequence to the larger bilateral 'gift' relations that their very 
existence was enrolled to justify.

Bio
Maylee is a PhD student at RMAP who is currently writing her thesis 
entitled 'Aiding Trade: Case Studies in Agricultural Value Chain 
Development in Cambodia'. For this research she spent three years living 
and working in Cambodia. Prior to beginning her PhD at RMAP, Maylee 
completed a Masters in Development Studies at The University of 
Melbourne where she also wrote a masters thesis on the subject of 
mainstreaming fair trade coffee in Australian supermarkets. Her research 
interests lie in the areas of agricultural trade and development, 
commodity chain analysis, development theory and practice.
-- 

Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program

Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

The Australian National University

 

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