| In the village of Imorona, in Northeastern Madagascar, smallholder farmers grow subsistence crops including rice, tuber crops and fruit trees alongside market crops of vanilla, cloves and coffee in complex and robust agroforestry systems. Drawing from eighteen months of ethnographic, economic botany, and archival research, my dissertation illustrates how these agricultural terrains emerge as ideological terrains, where individuals cultivate both materials and meanings. In their everyday interactions with local landscapes, people turn towards their agroforestry fields to remember shared histories, articulate current conditions, and imagine future aspirations. In the process, local landscapes emerge as interwoven ecologies of memory, moralities, and meaning.;The ideological dimensions of agroforestry landscapes become particularly important during times of pronounced cultural upheaval and change. For example, families in the region are currently facing increased conversion to Christianity, the rapid spread of large-scale agricultural and development programs, and the growing volatility of global commodity markets. In face of these changes, people ground their shifting worldviews within their familiar agrarian identities. How can one be both a good farmer and a good Christian? How does a developed person plant and harvest rice? What does it mean to be both a local vanilla farmer and part of a global environmental and economic community? In contemplating these intersecting changes, individuals turn towards their local landscapes, which in turn reflect ways people integrate new materials and meanings into existing moral and ecological landscapes in a way that maintains the relevancy of local environmental practices and imaginations.;Overall, I argue that cultivating land and cultivating self are not separate considerations, but are joined to form resilient ideologies and practices that facilitate both cultural change and continuity. Examining such "happy landscapes" in turn, illustrates that in order for landscapes to be truly sustainable they must not only be ecologically healthy and economically viable, but also culturally meaningful. |
