increase evoked a 2.3% increase in
cultivated area.
Subsistence households in Zomba
District, in contrast, generally base their
farming decisions more on social
considerations than on economic factors.
On the other hand, small-scale farmers in
transition from household subsistence to
an incipient commercial orientation, or
those with a holding large enough to
produce a saleable surplus, base their
decisionmaking more on economic than
social factors (G.A. Banda, pers. comm.).
Impacts of
Aquaculture DevelopmentWithout long-term evaluation
exercises or other longitudinal studies, it
isimpossible to assess thehuman ecological
i.mpactper se of aquaculture development.
This is a task for the future. At this stage
in the development of a paradigm for that
purpose, potential impacts of aquaculture
development on households, its intra-
community consequences and, from these
levels, feedback to and impacts on external
influences, as manifested in modifications
to policy, programs and projects, or in the
provision of supplementary inputs to
aquaculture or complementary physical
and institutional infrastructures, are
examined. These can all be regarded as
indicators, although not amenable to
precise measurement, of the human
ecolo~cal consequences of aquaculture
development.The Impacts of Aquaculture
Developnzent on Households
LAND TENURE AND USE RIGHTS
Innovations such as aquaculture may
be most easily introduced and have the
least social environmental impact, other
things being equal, into communities
where land and improvements to it, as
well as access to water resources and thelike, are vested in the individual. The
degree to which an individual will be
permitted use of land owned by the
extended kin group or the community
varies according to tradition and
particularly to conditions within ethnic
groups brought about by recent or ongoing
socioeconomic change. Members of most
developing-country rural societies are still
bound by traditional kinship obligations,
which they can ignore only at their peril.
The fundamental sociological element in
many developing-country societies is the
extended family, that forms a village or
hamlet, commonly based on a founding
lineage or its descendants.
A special and widespread case in
developing countries is presented by
matrilineal kinship societies, since descent
and inheritance, with associated primary
rights to resources, is through the female.
In many matrilineal societies an area
occupied by a matrilineage is recognized
as being owned by that lineage as a
corporate group. The lineage has the
general usufruct right to that area,
whereas the individual families which
compose that lineage have the recognized
usufruct. Under matrilineal kinship
systems land and resource rights are
inherited through the female line, and
decisions are made by a woman's brothers;
i.e., a man seeking permission to build a
fishpond would usually have to petition
his wife's brother(s). Traditionally,
residence rules have been uxorilocal (i.e.,
on marriage a man takes up residence in
his wife's household).
In such societies a male is ir~ an
anomalous position with respect to resource
rights, since although the head of his
household, as a consequence of
matrilineality and uxorilocality,
respectively, he obtains access to land
through the female line and resides in his
wife'svillage. Ahusband works the land of
his wife or wives. Further, although
heading his own household, a man rrlust