Logo image
Back
Epilogue: The COVID-19 Pandemic, Changing Agrarian Scenarios and Social Assistance
Book chapter

Epilogue: The COVID-19 Pandemic, Changing Agrarian Scenarios and Social Assistance

John F McCarthy, A. McWilliam, Carol Warren, V. Budianto, S. Hadi, P. M. Kutanegara, N. Maliati, S. Makambombu, G. Nooteboom, H. Sitorus, …
The Paradox of Agrarian Change: Food Security and the Politics of Social Protection in Indonesia, pp.423-435
NUS Press
2023
url
https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/View
Publisher

Abstract

As we finalised this volume, the COVID-19 pandemic bore down on Indonesia and disrupted the picture of declining rural poverty discussed in earlier chapters. To reflect on the implications for rural livelihoods and the scenarios we identified, we conducted interviews and reviews of available reports. Here we offer some preliminary thoughts on the impacts of the pandemic and consider how COVID-19 has triggered changes within the scenarios outlined in Chapter 2. We also reflect on the role of social assistance during this crisis. The scenario approach applied in this volume understands rural transformation as a diachronic process, where contextual and relational mechanisms interact dynamically with political, institutional, economic, social and environmental structures and social relations to produce discernible patterns of agrarian change over time. A path dependency is at work in each scenario: as proximate and relational processes have converged with structures to shape a scenario over historical time, these patterns work causally, setting the conditions for possible outcomes into the future. However, change is not predetermined. When a contingent event occurs, such as a pandemic, it may reinforce pre-existing patterns, reproducing or deepening the effects. Yet, the contingent event may also trigger reactions and changes that can shift livelihood trajectories in new directions. As we will argue below, the pattern of change will depend upon how the contingent trigger (for example, a pandemic) plays into processes and structures characteristic of the specific scenario. In this epilogue, then, we set out to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic works as a contingent trigger exerting pressure on existing patterns of rural change, and intensifying the insecurity of the most vulnerable, producing both winners and losers.

Details

Metrics

129 Record Views
Logo image