ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors begin with the regional level and work their way down to the local community and farmstead levels. Many of the Tanzanian regions were dominated by variants of swidden agriculture of the long or short fallow variety. In New Guinea, the pig population often competes with the human population for cultivated tubers, a feature that tends to increase with the intensification or ‘involution’ of cultivation systems there. The fact that the conspicuous activity of clearing trees is less prominent in short-fallow cultivation is amply counterbalanced by other time-consuming activities. Processes of intensification are operative at different structural levels, scales or levels of aggregation, such as the region, the local community or the household-cum-farmstead. To redefine intensification in this way is almost tantamount to pointing out that the scope for additional food production in response to population growth is larger than usually assumed.
