Reconciling Agency and Structure in Empirical Analysis: Smallholder Land Use in the Southern Yucatán, Mexico

• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00479.x
• Publication Date: 2006-05-30T23:22:07Z
• Authors: Rinku Roy Chowdhury; B. L. Turner
• Keywords: Yucatan peninsula

The agent-structure binary in human-environment relations has historically ascribed primacy to either decision-making agents or political-economic structures as the anthropogenic force driving landscape change. This has, part, separated cultural and political ecology, despite important research weaving structure agency each of these related subfields. implications approaching explanations land use using this are illustrated systematically, drawing from empirical on smallholder southern Yucatán Mexico, a development frontier environmental conservation region. land-use strategies mixed subsistence-market cultivators explored through agent, structure, integrated models addressing parcel allocations suite regionally evolving and/or extant uses. compared illustrate what understanding is missed by focus approach alone gained joining them. Results suggest that focusing may lead inadequate even erroneous characterizations variables interest chosen approach. A sectorally disaggregated can identify suites factors drive particular