Without pot you cannot cook rice

Abstract

Bem adaptada ao meio e detentora de um conjunto de saberes e técnicas que, durante séculos, lhe permitiu garantir a sua segurança alimentar, a sociedade Felupe encontra-se actualmente confrontada com mudanças bruscas de parâmetros que condicionam a sua estabilidade e resiliência: o crescente e rápido aumento da inconstância do mercado mundial dificulta a criação atempada de estratégias de adaptação; os fluxos instáveis de influências, ideias, comércios ilícitos, etc., promovem golpes de Estado que, por indutores de instabilidade política e/ou de segurança, alteram a organização social, agravam constrangimentos existentes, geram novas turbulências, fragilizam a coesão social e, consequentemente, a estabilidade social. Este paper explora estas bruscas e agressivas mudanças de parâmetros que poderão condicionar fortemente a estabilidade e resiliência da sociedade Felupe.

The Felupe society, before constraints and turbulences generated by external dynamics, has been able to adapt their internal dynamics to ensure its stability. Diversifying the agricultural production and serving up of the specificity of their social organization, the location of their ground and the ties with other Joola subgroups, the Felupe society strengthened and restructured traditional networks that allowed the improvement of their own conditions of life. However, today, new factors are constraining its social cohesion and resilience: rainfall changes decrease the surface of mangrove rice; migration, even though seasonal, reduces the required hand labor; dependence, risk and uncertainty inherent to annual fluctuations of food prices in foreign markets, weakens the economy; the growing strength of the external and invasive dynamics strengthens the capacity of resilience. In fact, the growing and rapid increase of world market inconstancy makes more difficult the timely establishment of strategies of adaptation to turbulences caused in the balance of food security and, consequently, in social stability. This paper explores these aggressive and abrupt changes of parameters which may strongly restrict the stability and resilience of the Felupe society.