Journal of Agrarian Change最新文献

{"title":"Land Grab Double Binds: Peasant Farmers and/in the Ecuadorian Mining Boom","authors":"Angus Lyall,&nbsp;Gabriela Ruales","doi":"10.1111/joac.12612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12612","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The expansion of mining in Ecuador has stirred resistance among some Indigenous peasant communities in the name of territorial rights; others have offered their land and labour to mining companies. In this and similar land grab contexts, Indigenous peasant communities are often broadly represented as natural resisters or as corrupted collaborators, which, we argue, does not account for how peasants with territorial and/or land rights weigh their options. In Napo province, we examine how peasants have adjudicated contradictory socioeconomic pressures and, in turn, opted to work with miners. We highlight the methodological and political implications of centering how local ‘participants’ in land grabs experience untenable choices or ‘double binds’ to understand the efficacy of land grabs and the obstacles to resistance.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12612","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unpacking youth engagement in agriculture: Land, labour mobility and youth livelihoods in rural Nepal","authors":"Ramesh Sunam,&nbsp;Fraser Sugden,&nbsp;Arjun Kharel,&nbsp;Tula Raj Sunuwar,&nbsp;Takeshi Ito","doi":"10.1111/joac.12611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12611","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Young people are increasingly turning away from agriculture in many parts of the global South, even where agriculture remains the backbone of livelihoods and the rural economy. This tendency among rural youth has become a critical research and public concern given that mass youth un (der)employment has emerged as a defining feature in many countries. In this paper, we interrogate and depart from the dominant narrative of the youth-agriculture disconnect by focussing on socio-economic conditions that shape diverse patterns of youth livelihood in rural areas. Our empirical evidence draws on ethnographic studies conducted in rural parts of Nepal with in-depth interviews with young people complemented by key informant interviews with local leaders and community workers who shared their experiences and local narratives of the links among youth, agriculture and migration. Findings show that youth aspiration to leave agriculture is hard to deny, although this is heavily mediated by economic status, caste and gender in rural contexts. Given the chronic livelihood insecurity and the structural barriers rooted in class, caste and gender, we find that youth from underprivileged backgrounds do not have the luxury of considering an ‘exit’ from agriculture despite their mobility aspirations. When a longer-term livelihood trajectory is considered, youth aspirations to transition out of agriculture show some degree of temporality regardless of their background, suggesting their re-engagement in agriculture later in their life.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12611","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Making green cocoa: Deforestation, the legacy of war, and agrarian capitalism in Côte d'Ivoire","authors":"Jacobo Grajales,&nbsp;Oscar Toukpo","doi":"10.1111/joac.12609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12609","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the legacy of war on environmental policy, contributing to recent literature on the linkages between armed violence, conservation, rural livelihoods and global value chains. It argues that environmental norms reshape agricultural practices, but also the means by which people claim control over land and labour. Using the case of cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire, this paper examines the impact of ‘zero-deforestation’ policies on the country's last agricultural frontier: its western forestlands, where migration and deforestation have driven the development of the cocoa economy for years. The region is now feeling the effects of global trade policies such as the European Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), competition for the last remaining forests and social fault lines inherited from the war. This article traces the origins of the zero-deforestation policy, its national and local impact and its implications for social struggles over the control of land and labour.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12609","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Now we are in power: The politics of passive revolution in twenty-first-century Bolivia by Angus McNelly. University of Pittsburgh Press. 2023. Pp. 268. $60 (hb). ISBN 13: 978-08229-4778-3. ISBN 10: 0-8229-4778-1, DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.2667634","authors":"Afonso Henrique Fernandes","doi":"10.1111/joac.12606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12606","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;What happens to popular organizations and leaderships when they take on the leading role in politics, winning over governments and running the state? To what extent does their potential for change materialize into structural transformations concerning the living conditions of historically subordinated social sectors? What are the limitations of these processes, and in what ways can paths be sought to overcome these limitations? Throughout the history of Latin America, many intellectuals, politicians and academics have pondered these questions. In different contexts, these issues have proven to be key problems for popular political forces that eventually managed to attain some degree of hegemony in society, being elected as governors of the state and placing themselves as the governing force in their countries and territories. Now we are in power seeks to answer these challenging questions, reflecting specifically on the ‘el proceso de cambio’ in 21st century Bolivia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia&lt;/i&gt; (2023) by Angus McNelly is a compelling case study regarding one of the most important experiences of governments led by organizations and leaderships originating from the popular movement and elected within the institutional hallmark of the liberal state. The book is product of an extensive ethnographic research conducted between 2016 and 2019, with fieldwork in collaboration with social movements in La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz and other locations in Bolivia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When arriving in Bolivia shortly after Evo Morales' defeat in the 2016 referendum that would have allowed him to run for a third presidential term, McNelly became interested in a significant sentiment of frustration towards the government. Ten years after coming to power, a feeling of distrust among important strata of the population and social movements with ‘el proceso de cambio’ (the process of change) was widely perceived. Therefore, McNelly's proposal is to reflect on the experience of the ‘first indigenous government in the country's history’ through some categories of Antonio Gramsci's thinking, such as catharsis, transformism, Caesarism, hegemony, integral state and, notably, the notion of passive revolution. The author considers that the transformations experienced by Bolivian society in the 21st century were imbued with a dialectic between restoration/revolution characteristic of processes that tend to incorporate (at least partially) the transformative force of some revolutionary impulses into strategies that preserve the historical structures of domination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;McNelly undertakes an analytical journey to understand the Bolivian case through a rich dialogue with the Latin American critical tradition that has dedicated itself to understanding the behaviour and relationships of popular organizations and leaderships with the state in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. The author is caut","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12606","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142862027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Can food sovereignty be institutionalised? Insights from the Cuban experience","authors":"Elisa Botella-Rodríguez,&nbsp;Ángel Luis González-Esteban","doi":"10.1111/joac.12608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12608","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Cuba stands out among Latin American nations for its efforts to institutionalize food sovereignty (FS) through the promotion of alternative small-scale farming, making it a prime case study for this model. This paper examines the extent to which Cuba has institutionalized FS and the factors driving this process from an agrarian political economy perspective. Public policies, sustainable practices and key actors—including a ‘partner state’—have advanced agroecology as a core strategy to reduce food imports since the early 1990s. However, other entities, such as the military enterprise <i>Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A</i>. (GAESA), may be seen as obstacles to this strategy. Whilst these struggles and tensions are not unique to Cuba, the island stands out for its decisive steps in institutionalizing FS. Cuba has achieved significant ‘pockets’ or ‘spaces’ of FS, despite lacking a fully consolidated domestic food system.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12608","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Accidental gamblers: Risk and vulnerability in Vidarbha cotton by Sarthak Gaurav and Thiagu Ranganathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. pp. 497. £150 (hb) / $150 (e-book). ISBN: 9781108832298; ISBN: 9781009276597","authors":"Silva Lieberherr","doi":"10.1111/joac.12605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12605","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;This book considers cotton cultivation as a farmer's ‘gamble with the rains and a gamble with the markets’ (p. 317). The authors analyse these gambles, the decisions that come with them and the structures that shape them through great empirical depth making it a highly relevant contribution. Vidarbha, a region in Central India and the focus of this book, is of particular interest regarding these gambles because of the region's extreme vulnerability to climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is perhaps the most fascinating characteristic of the book that the authors take the farmers seriously as cotton specialists (p. 4) who are well aware of the risky business they engage in. This is possible because both authors spent long periods in the field during several phases of fieldwork from 2008 to 2020, using the methodology of longitudinal study of villages. The so-called agrarian crisis, unfolding in India since the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, serves as a backdrop of the book. Vidarbha is one of the epicentres of this crisis and became infamous for the farmer suicides that have swept the landscape—particularly, as the authors claim, in the cotton growing areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The authors do not disagree about the devastating impacts of the neoliberal reforms but show that agrarian distress in the region has been going on for longer. They start with a detailed and determined historical account of Vidarbha in particular, adding up to scarce (at least English) literature (see, e.g., Satya, &lt;span&gt;1997&lt;/span&gt;). The historical review gives a detailed account of how Vidarbha became a ‘cotton frontier’ (p. 376) whereby ‘accidents’, events completely external from the perspective of a Vidarbha farmer, influenced the cotton economy and the structure in which the farmers' gambles have been taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book closely analyses the colonial takeover and the subsequent phenomenal rise in the area under cotton, when farmers started to grow for world markets, though still under a predominantly rain-fed environment. This, the authors argue, caused deforestation and increased water use and ‘rendered the population vulnerable to ecological and environmental degradation’ (p. 82). They also describe how the American Civil War as a major boost for cotton production generated unprecedented wealth for merchants and large landholders while peasants and agricultural labourers became even more vulnerable to food inflation and adverse income shocks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Guarav and Ranganathan clearly show how these developments and the change in local institutions still shape today's agriculture in Vidarbha. For example, they highlight how forced commercialization resulted in the expansion of area on which cash crops are cultivated, in increased indebtedness and—together with the development of a land market—in land concentration. They describe how&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, the authors do not engage deeply with how this historical legacy influences the caste-class structure of the present.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The book then ","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12605","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The rise and fall of community development in rural Turkey, 1960–1980","authors":"Burak Gürel,&nbsp;Kadir Selamet","doi":"10.1111/joac.12604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12604","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Turkey's Community Development Program (CDP), implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, has remained a largely underexplored subject in the global history of rural community development schemes. Based on detailed archival research, this article shows that the programme's central goal was to mobilize the labour and financial resources of the villagers to carry out rapid infrastructure construction. Turkish policymakers hoped that such mobilization could help achieve a high level of rural development far beyond what could be achieved by relying solely on government spending and might also allow the allocation of more resources to urban industrialization. Despite its initial promise, the CDP was unable to effectively mobilize the countryside due to a combination of structural, political, and bureaucratic challenges, including unequal land distribution, intense electoral competition, and inadequate administrative coordination. However, the CDP was not entirely inconsequential. It played a modest role in the commercialization and capitalist transformation of Turkish agriculture.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12604","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who rents out the land? Agrarian capital accumulation and lessor landowners in South America: The case of Uruguay","authors":"Gabriel Oyhantçabal Benelli,&nbsp;Soledad Figueredo,&nbsp;Lucía Sabia,&nbsp;Verónica Nuñez","doi":"10.1111/joac.12603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12603","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article studies the connections between lessor landowners, land grabbing and land financialization in contemporary capital accumulation. Drawing upon extensive empirical research conducted in Uruguay, which combined database analysis and in-depth interviews, the paper provides key insights to understand why land leasing has become a central strategy of ground rent appropriation among different types of landowners at the beginning of the 21st century. Our main results show that the leasing strategy is a combination of tenant-capitalists' expansion, social differentiation and demographic processes of the small landowning capitals displaced from production that rent out their lands, the process of land financialization through large institutional investors, which deploy a land banking strategy, and the optimization of land exploitation among landowner-capitalists. Moreover, our results highlight the importance of prioritising the study of landowners as a class in itself and the different forms of ground rent appropriation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12603","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142152323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond simplistic narratives: Dynamic farmers, precarity and the politics of agribusiness expansion","authors":"Enrique Castañón Ballivián","doi":"10.1111/joac.12602","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12602","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Agribusiness expansion is usually framed around two competing narratives. On the one hand, advocates present it as a promising vehicle to modernise agriculture and integrate small farmers into global value chains. On the other hand, critics denounce it as a top-down corporate assault to monopolise agriculture and dispossess peasants of land. Despite their differences, these contrasting narratives tend to share a reductionistic capital-centric bias as they are mainly focused on the alleged benefits/dangers of the ‘arrival’ of agribusiness corporate capital. Although simplistic, these narratives have been politically effective in shaping the public debate and thus should be exposed to critical challenge. Drawing on my ethnographic research in eastern lowland Bolivia, I show how both narratives fail to capture the complexity of an actually existing agribusiness structure. My grounded analysis of the process of agrarian change focuses on the changing labour dynamics among <i>campesinos</i> who have striven to become prosperous soy producers. Faced with bleak prospects and structural insecurity, they have been articulating a political practice around the notion of precarity. I argue that this emerging politics from below deserves more attention as an important terrain of political struggles of classes of labour.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12602","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141943778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vulnerabilities of the neoliberal global food system: The Russia–Ukraine War and COVID-19","authors":"Cuma Yıldırım,&nbsp;Hakkı Göker Önen","doi":"10.1111/joac.12601","DOIUrl":"10.1111/joac.12601","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war have demonstrated that the neoliberal system is unstable during global crises. In times of crisis, exporter countries adopt protectionist policies in the form of export restrictions to safeguard their local food supply and curb inflation. Consequently, low-income countries might find themselves unable to access essential food products. In this regard, the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war has gradually increased export restrictions, causing severe food supply disruptions. In particular, import-dependent countries cannot access essential food products and face famine. To this point, this study explores the vulnerabilities of neoliberalism when exporter countries turn to protectionism. Moreover, it asks whether food sovereignty and self-sufficiency could act as a safeguard for import-dependent states against such vulnerabilities. In doing so, the study aims to contribute to the literature by linking protectionism with export restrictions, diverging from the more common association of protectionism with solely import restrictions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47678,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Agrarian Change","volume":"24 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joac.12601","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141943780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}