RATIONALITY, REPRESENTATION, AND THE RISK MEDIATING CHARACTERISTICS OF A KARAKORAM MOUNTAIN FARMING SYSTEM

Despite emerging appreciations of contextual knowledge systems, elemen ts of diversity in mountain farming systems are often characterized as irrational and as obstacles to achieving the production goals of 'mod ernized' agriculture. In this paper I suggest that these negative repr esentations are produced at least in part as a function of the normali zation of a large-scale agriculture as rational. A case-study of a mou ntain farming system in the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan i s presented to expose a contextual rationality in relation to risk min imization and to challenge characterizations of this system as 'backwa rd,' unsophisticated and irrational. Specifically I examine the risk m ediating characteristics of practices such as field dispersal, delayed planting, intercropping, and polyvarietal planting and conclude that the characteristic feature of this local fawning system is a contextua lly rational diversity. This conflicts with the modernist paradigm of rationality and economic growth subscribed to by a local development a gency. Intervention based on in-informed interpretations of ''traditio nal'' practice have the potential to increase vulnerability of village rs by failing to appreciate the contextual rationality of diversity.