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Swidden, Sawah, and In-Between: Agricultural Transformation in Borneo

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Abstract

The change from swidden to sawah cultivation in Tara'n Dayak villages in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, is presented as a long-term, complex incremental process in which distinct, unstable, and often confusing production technologies figure as transitional forms. The transitional phases are discussed in terms of their efficiency and sustainability. It is argued that the failure to perceive and understand long-term processes of agricultural change may result in both misinterpretation of technological patterns and environmental variables, as well as of rules of labor and resource sharing.

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Padoch, C., Harwell, E. & Susanto, A. Swidden, Sawah, and In-Between: Agricultural Transformation in Borneo. Human Ecology 26, 3–20 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018740615905

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