Showing papers in "The Journal of Peasant Studies in 2002"

PEASANTS SPEAK - The Vía Campesina: Consolidating an International Peasant and Farm Movement

Abstract: Concerted attempts to exclude farming people from policy development and decision-making have been accompanied by the formation of an international peasant and farm movement, the Via Campesina, which emerged in 1993. This article examines the response of peasant and farm organizations to the increased globalization of an industrialized and liberalized model of agriculture by analyzing the formation, consolidation and functioning of the Via Campesina. The Via Campesina is using three traditional weapons of the weak - organization, cooperation and community - to redefine rural development and to build an alternative model, one that is based on social justice, gender and ethnic equality, economic equity and environmental sustainability.

The Reconstruction of a Modern Mexican Peasantry

Abstract: This analysis of maize in Mexico reveals how technocratic prejudices and modernizing ideologies have had a devastating impact. The tenacity with which the peasantry continues to support traditional social and productive organizations with their own resources is evidence of the currency of their unique vision of society. This vision is leading them to inject new vigour into rural society by diversifying their productive strategies, an approach that has always been a central part of rural survival, but whose significance has been underestimated by social scientists who have largely focused on their productivity in the fields.

The peasantry and the state in Latin America: A troubled past, an uncertain future

Abstract: (2002). The peasantry and the state in Latin America: A troubled past, an uncertain future. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 29, No. 3-4, pp. 41-82.

From Rice to Prawns: Economic Transformation and Agrarian Structure in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract: This article investigates the changes in agrarian structure brought about by the development of export-oriented freshwater prawn cultivation in south-western Bangladesh. Prawn farming in this particular context has spread among agricultural producers so rapidly within the last decade that many of the agrarian institutions have been carried over or been adapted to the new production regime. Thus the institutions governing landholdings and contractual labour arrangements involved in prawn farming have many things in common with those involved in rice production. While landholders generally have benefited from the new prawn economy, it is difficult to say whether the position of landless men and women from poor households has improved on a sustainable basis. Thus the employment gains of local male workers are currently under threat from cheaper migrants, while new jobs for women from poor households are highly intensive, potentially hazardous, and poorly paid.

Latin American peasants - new paradigms for old?

Abstract: (2002). Latin American peasants - new paradigms for old? The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 29, No. 3-4, pp. 1-40.

The impact of neo-liberal economics on peruvian peasant agriculture in the 1990s

Abstract: During the 1990s, Peru was among the Latin American countries that underwent the most rapid and radical transformation towards a liberal economy. This had the effect of changing the rules affecting economic agents of all sorts, including peasant producers. Although the collectivist aims of the 1969 agrarian reform legislation had long since been abandoned in favour of policies that sought to privilege market relations in the rural sphere, the liberalization of the agricultural economy became much more explicit in the 1990s. The virtues of free market economics were extolled as a panacea – even for sectors like peasants at the very margins of the economic system. State intervention for agriculture of all sorts was reduced, while producers were forced to compete on more open terms with imports. Such a major transformation naturally brought with it winners and losers in agriculture, just as it did in other sectors of economic life. The 1969 agrarian reform and its effects on Peruvian agriculture gave rise to a substantial literature in the 1970s, but the changes that have taken place since 1990 have received less attention, especially with regard to peasant economy. Although rural poverty has recently become a major topic of debate, much of the writing has focused more on the provision of different types of social support than on resolving the underlying problems of agriculture. The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which peasant agriculture has responded to the changes in the economic environment in which it operates and the ways it has impacted on those dependent on it for their livelihood. Overall, the conclusion reached here is that, 12 years after it was originally launched, liberalization has probably

From dependency to reform and back again: The Chilean peasantry during the twentieth century

Abstract: Although the Latin American peasantry remains comparatively important in terms of livelihood generation and identity formation, the rise of neo-liberal economic theory and policy and its application across the continent arguably spells the demise of peasant economy and society. There can be little doubt, therefore, that the economic liberalization associated with the most recent penetration of global capital represents an important – if not epochal – watershed in the transformation of Latin American peasantries. The latter notwithstanding, debates about this process, its causes and outcome, rage unabated. Views range from the descampesinistas, who insist upon the inevitable decline of the smallholding sector, to the campesinistas, who emphasize the vitality and adaptability of the peasantry [see Kay, 1997b; 2000]; however, the literature is on the whole fairly negative with respect to the implications of the current restructuring phase. This article takes the political economy – arguably structuralist – position that a predetermined transformation is not possible and that agrarian policy frameworks play a crucial role. It is clear that, in the wake of globalization, the peasantry is being abandoned politically by Latin American governments whose primary concern it once used to be. At a conceptual level, it appears that there is a simultaneous process of de-peasantization and de-agrarianization occurring throughout Latin America. Despite the recent structural reforms launching economies back towards specialization in agricultural exports, in general the relative economic importance of agriculture is declining both in terms of income

Globalization and the reinvention of Andean tradition: The politics of community and ethnicity in highland Bolivia

Abstract: (2002). Globalization and the reinvention of Andean tradition: The politics of community and ethnicity in highland Bolivia. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 29, No. 3-4, pp. 228-269.

Representing the peasantry? Struggles for/about land in Brazil

Abstract: (2002). Representing the peasantry? Struggles for/about land in Brazil. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 29, No. 3-4, pp. 300-335.

Whither O Campesinato? Historical peasantries of Brazilian Amazonia

Abstract: Brazilian Amazonian peasantries have attracted relatively little scholarly attention, and even with the opening up of Amazonia via the TransAmazon Highway (c.1970) and a significant expansion of social science research in the region, recent frontier colonists and environmental crises have been the major foci. This article examines some of the factors contributing to the relative invisibility of historical peasantries in the region and tries to show the relevance of such peasantries to debates concerning agrarian structure, economic transformation and state-led modernization efforts. A key feature in the portrayal of Amazonian peasantries (and Amerindians) has been the unique role attributed to the neo-humid tropical landscape in restricting the possibilities for an elaborated social landscape. Drawing on anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, the article advances the notion that these simplifying assumptions are unwarranted and are impediments not only to a more accurate understanding of the legacy of colonial society in Amazonia, but also to efforts to mitigate social conflict and environmental depredation. The visibility of Amazonian peasantries in scholarly or general literature has been highly variable over time. Currently and in the recent past, the activities of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Rubber Tappers Union (CNS)(see glossary) have provided concrete examples of what an Amazonian peasantry might represent, but these are hardly representative of the diversity of Amazonian peasantries, and in the main, Amazonian peasantries have tended to be subsumed under a rigid structure of naturalism within which social life – whether Indian or mestiço – is treated as contingent and burdened by what Blaut [1994: 70] has referred to as the ‘Doctrine of Tropical Nastiness’. The main purpose of this article is to try to account for the relative absence of studies of Brazilian Amazonian peasantries from the anthropological and

From rubber estate to simple commodity production: Agrarian struggles in the Northern Bolivian Amazon

Abstract: In October 2001 the Bolivian government convoked an ‘Earth Summit’ (Cumbre de la Tierra), to be held a month later. The previous years had seen an escalation of peasant unrest. In the Andean highlands the peasantry had turned increasingly to militant action with strong ethnic overtones. In the eastern tropical lowlands a colonists’ movement had gathered strength, and in the year 2000 a movement of landless peasants had erupted, eliciting a violent response from large landowners who, in turn, pressured the government with their own claims. By the end of June that same year indigenous people of the tropical lowlands had initiated their ‘Third March’ under the banner of ‘Land, Territories and Natural Resources’ and were joined by peasants from the region. The ‘Earth Summit’ ended in failure. Conditions were hardly propitious as in early November a clash between landless peasants and alleged paramilitaries had claimed seven lives, and peasant organizations were suspicious about the intentions of a government

On which side of what barricade? Subaltern resistance in Latin America and elsewhere

Abstract: Where the study of peasants is concerned, there can be little doubt as to the identity of the most fashionable and influential paradigm exercising intellectual hegemony in academic circles over the past two decades: the Subaltern Studies project, a six-volume series edited by Ranajit Guha that appeared throughout the 1980s. Conceived initially as an alternative historiography of South Asia, it sought to reinterpret both the rural ‘voice from below’ and grassroots agrarian mobilization that occurred during the colonial era. Its goal was simple: to expunge the outdated view of South Asian peasants as ideologically passive/disempowered – a tainted legacy of colonialism, it was argued – and replace it with an appropriately (post-) modern (or post-colonial) perception of them as active/empowered rural subjects. For this reason, the epistemological focus of the Subaltern Studies project was from the outset on the idioms of agrarian protest, the object being to rescue and give expression to hitherto subordinated and/or ignored

Winners and Losers in Russian Agrarian Reform

Abstract: More than ten years after Russian agrarian reform was begun, it is appropriate to reflect upon winners and losers. Using survey data from 800 households in five Russian regions, this article is interested in the effect of reform within the rural sphere. The analysis focuses on four groups of rural actors within the food production sphere: private farmers, farm managers, specialists employed on state and collective farms and their juridical successors, and farm workers employed on state and collective farms and their juridical successors The first part of the article examines winners and losers using the following variables: self-perceptions about winners and losers, monthly household income, job security, and ownership of certain durable goods. We conclude that private farmers have fared best relative to other occupational groups. On large farms, managers have fared best. The second part of the article analyses why winners win by considering structural and behavioural factors. We conclude that winners win...

The Impact of the Black Death on Peasant Economy in England, 1350-1500

Abstract: This article provides an abstract model that compares the financial position of peasant economy in England during the post-plague period with the conditions faced by its counterparts prior to the great epidemic. The model presents a detailed discussion of the likely sources of income and a breakdown of the various types of expenditure, and concludes that, despite the stagnation of prices in product markets and the inflationary pressures in factor markets, peasant economy in the post-plague era was characterized by substantial improvements in its standard of living. The reductions in the size of peasant families and of seigneurial burdens are identified as the primary causes of this improvement.

Social Movements and Marginalized Rural Youth in Brazil, Egypt and Nepal

Abstract: This article seeks to highlight the evolving trends in the roles of youth in rural social movements, noting that such movements are critical if authorities and more dominant classes in society are to listen to powerless and propertyless rural population groups. It has been argued that the phenomenon of youth participation in rural social movements has passed largely unnoticed by development theory in general and social movements theory in particular. This lacuna is deleterious, not least because the main victims of globalization are the young of impoverished rural families, for whom the choice to remain in agriculture, either as petty commodity producers or as landless labourers, is in terms of economic livelihood becoming increasingly fraught. Indeed, uprooted in large numbers, rural youth may provoke a significant disintegration of the peasantry while adding to the multiplication of social problems in urban areas. Fortunately, the increasing socio-economic marginality of young people in rural areas mani...

Review article - A Rose by Any Other Name? The Fragrance of Imperialism

Abstract: This review considers yet another over-optimistic postmodern analysis of the capitalist world economy, from which imperialism, economic crisis, the state, class and class struggle have all been purged. According to the authors of this book, as a result of new science and technology global capitalism now functions as an autonomous 'empire', ruled only by the market and the multinational corporation. Against this celebratory interpretation, this review maintains both that the role of the imperial state in capitalist reproduction has been underestimated, and, conversely, that the economic impact of innovation, science and technology on capitalist productivity have been overestimated. Not only is the imperial state still important to an understanding of imperialism, therefore, but the latter is also central to the study of agrarian transformation and the role of peasants and workers in this process. Authors: HARDT, MICHAEL and NEGRI, ANTONIO; Empire

Land Reform in El Salvador and the Chapultepec Peace Accord

Abstract: The focus of this article is on the land transfer programme (PTT) carried out in El Salvador over the past decade as a result of the 1992 Chapultepec Peace Accord. Building on the agrarian reforms of the 1980s, the PTT beneficiaries were smallholders created by the state and drawn from ex-combatants on both sides (the FMLN, the military) in the war. Among the issues considered are the forms of tenure that resulted, and the agrarian debt incurred. Also examined is the socio-economic profile of the PTT beneficiaries, together with their assessment of the positive/negative impact on their lives of the reform programme. Finally, the achievements and failures of the PTT are evaluated in terms of the wider national/international context, and the resulting contradiction between the objectives of the agrarian reform and the determinants of global markets.

Caste, Class and Peasant Agency in Subaltern Studies Discourse: Revisionist Historiography, Elite Ideology

Abstract: On the basis of empirical evidence from the princely states of Rajasthan, it is argued here that Subaltern Studies discourse about peasants and peasant movements in colonial India is seriously flawed, mainly due to its symptomatic underestimation of the significance of land relations. A close scrutiny of its epistemological assumptions reveals that Subaltern Studies is elite (Brahmanical-bourgeois) ideology and revisionist historiography (anticipated by contemporary conservative historians of the French Revolution). Its claim to reconcile epistemologically irreconciliable positions is intellectually unsustainable.

Devil pact narratives in rural Central America: Class, gender and 'resistance'

Abstract: The Faustian bargain, or 'pact with the devil', made by a person who exchanges human souls in order to obtain unattainable riches and power, is a widespread peasant narrative in Central and South America. The narrative expresses various overlapping meanings, of which a sudden increase in wealth and a concomitant shift in social relationships is a central theme. In the case examined, peasants invoke the devil pact narrative and the realm of the supernatural to explain wealth and poverty in order to avoid tensions that socio-economic accounts would provoke. By not referring to the history of deceit, force, robbery, consent and complicity that has led to an unequal distribution of local resources, peasants make new forms of accumulation ideologically manageable. The Faustian narrative offers an ideologically acceptable explanation, and thus provides them with a way of handling the inequality between villagers created as a result of accumulation. It is therefore best seen as an adaptive mechanism in the face of contradictions generated by a modernizing agrarian capitalism, rather than - as in Taussig's interpretation - as a form of resistance by the gift economy against unfolding capitalism, or - as in Edelman's interpretation - as an everyday form of resistance against sexual domination.

The American Path of Bourgeois Development

Abstract: The peculiarities of American political, social and intellectual development have been determined by the fact that, economically speaking, the United States was a colonial country during the first three centuries of its existence, and that, towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, it effected an almost direct transition from a colonial to an imperialist economy. The aim of this article is to analyse, from the point of view of the labour theory of value, the way in which the American regime of landed property (the so-called 'frontier') influenced the development of capitalism during what should properly be called, adopting as our taxonomic criterion the prevailing social relations of production, the colonial period of American history.

Debate - Theory and History in Thinking the Transition to Capitalism: A Reply to Zmolek

Abstract: Zmolek's condensed summary of the development of 'agrarian capitalism' is good as far as it goes, but it needs to be supplemented with how this development interacted with manufacturing, with the development of money, with the kinds and degrees of commodification of labour-power and land, with various kinds of commodity markets both internal and external, with the kinds and degrees of productivity increase in various sector, and finally with the unprecedented expansion of putting-out manufacturing in the eighteenth century. Methodologically his account suffers from anachronism, structuralism, teleology and undialectical or either-or thinking. Ironically, these are all things he says he wants to avoid. A key difference between us is the importance of putting-out manufacturing as the first historical manifestation of dynamic capital accumulation. Zmolek seems oblivious to the difficulties in referring to a period of transition to capitalism as already capitalist as in 'agrarian capitalism'.

The Miser's Store: Property and Traditional Law in the Governance of the 'Native' Economy

Abstract: Recent studies of 'liberal governmentality' have examined how state actions regulate the ideally self-regulating economic sphere [Burchell, 1991]; this article highlights the particular dilemmas of liberal governmentality in a colonial arena where not one, but two types of economy were posited. By analysing the system of traditional property law implemented by the Dutch in two locations in central Sulawesi, Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), I show that property is only an indifferent marker of class, and that the limits of surplus extraction are set by control of other means of production. By arguing that both 'traditional' and 'capitalist' economies are embedded in the same local legal culture, I hope to demonstrate that a shift from the one to the other cannot of itself offer the promised benefits of modernity.