ABSTRACT

Rita Merkle, PhD student at the Free University of Berlin, Geosciences, Centre for Development Studies. Email: ritamerkle@wanadoo.fr. A word of thanks is due to Professor Wang Yiming and Ren Xuerong for their assistance in China and to Peter Ho, Jakob Eyferth, Thomas Kampen, Karl Eric Longstreth and Francisco Léon for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. Financial support of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) for the field research is gratefully acknowledged.