Understanding Different Types of Subsistence Economies

Abstract

The Batwa of Buhoma, Uganda, a remote hunter-gatherer community were evicted from their forest in 1992 in order to provide a sanctuary for the mountain gorillas. Based on individual and group interviews, this commentary provides a case study that describes how the Batwa now address their basic needs, and how they participate in the formation of subsistence markets and microenterprises. In positioning this study, four types of subsistence economies are identified: nature-based, nonprofit-based, market-based, and hybrid. In addition, different types of subsistence markets are identified, namely, within community and cross community markets. This then raises several questions for future research and for subsistence communities like the Batwa's regarding how to achieve sustainability.This article provides an exploratory case study that describes how a remote indigenous community, the Batwa of Buhoma, in South Western Uganda transitioned from a subsistence yet sustainable hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the forest to one where its basic needs are met through interventions by charitable nonprofit organizations, and to a lesser extent by a combination of naturebased and market-based activities. This community was evicted from the forest when a national park was created in 1992 to make a sanctuary for the endangered mountain gorillas. Since then, the Batwa have been living as refugees on the fringes of neighboring societies in extreme poverty and largely dependent on NGOs and churches for their basic needs. Although there are many similarities with regard to how different subsistence communities struggle to survive, the Batwa's unique context, in which markets play a lesser role in addressing community needs, can provide a starting point for a dialog on the varying ways of enabling sustainable subsistence communities.The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it provides a unique look inside a newly evicted, remote, skill and resource poor (from a market perspective) community with minimal exposure to, and understanding of markets (let alone their formation) as they work to survive outside of their natural habitat. Second, it compares and contrasts the Batwa's context with that generally studied in the subsistence marketplace literature. And third, it raises some questions for future research regarding how survival needs may be met by a combination of market and nonmarket activities, as well through different types of markets (e.g., within-community versus different types of cross-community markets).This article is organized into six sections. The next and second section describes the impetus for the study and methodology used. The third section, using the Viswanathan (2007) article as a template, explores the context within which the Batwa live post eviction from the forest by focusing on how they currently meet their basic needs and the type of market activities in which they participate. The fourth section, drawing upon the Batwa's situation pre and post eviction from the forest and different subsistence contexts s...

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