Agrarian Change Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx’s 200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and... more

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox
reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx’s
200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian
capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and industrial
capitalism have been a vital part of debates over and within
Marxism for more than a century and have been central to the
social scientific and historical understandings of the modern world
system. At the same time, since the seminal debates associated
with the ‘classical agrarian question,’ agrarian studies is marked by
durable tensions and polarities in theoretical approach. While
Marxists have long criticized ‘populists’ for ignoring capitalism and
class, populists have charged Marxists with historical determinism.
It is the premise of this special issue that much of this debate has
reached something of an impasse. This is in part because new
empirical work addressing the complex contemporary patterns
and conjunctures of global agrarian capitalism, and because new
and generative theoretical reconstructions of Marxism itself, offer
exciting new horizons. Contributions to this special issue help
point the way beyond this impasse, and illustrate that agrarian
Marxism remains a dynamic theoretical program that offers
powerful insights into agrarian change and politics in the twentyfirst
century.

This paper analyzes the response by NGOs to the 2008 World Development Report (WDR08). It does so at two levels of analysis, which in turn reflect two possible ways of reading the WDR08. The first is to read the WDR08 as a document for... more

This paper analyzes the response by NGOs to the 2008 World Development Report (WDR08). It does so at two levels of analysis, which in turn reflect two possible ways of reading the WDR08. The first is to read the WDR08 as a document for policy guidance on ‘agriculture for development’. In this respect the paper shows how NGOs expose and challenge the WDR08's optimism for the benign impact of unregulated agribusiness investment on poverty reduction, and put forward a convincing alternative. The second, and politically more fertile, way of reading the WDR08 is to make sense of its numerous internal contradictions. These contradictions are functional to the World Bank's hegemonic effort of establishing a common, and broader, agenda for rural development. Having highlighted the WDR08's incoherent messages on (i) rural labour markets and their role in poverty reduction and (ii) what constitutes the most promising driver of poverty reduction in agriculture (returns from wage labour vs from own account farming), the paper documents NGOs’ failure to detect and politically exploit these contradictions.

Agricultural biotechnology is typically analyzed critically by means of a political ecological focus on the science and its ecological implications – agbio science as a radical, and ‘non-natural’, break with ‘normal’ trajectories for ‘new... more

Agricultural biotechnology is typically analyzed critically by means of a political ecological focus on the science and its ecological implications – agbio science as a radical, and ‘non-natural’, break with ‘normal’ trajectories for ‘new plant science’. Surprisingly, less attention has been paid to a range of key political economic issues, many of which were important in the last big food production technology ‘revolution’, the Green Revolution. This paper will focus on three areas of political economy. First, we discuss the corporate drivers of agricultural biotechnology, and examine whether these drivers have already set the technology so that it cannot be changed. Second, we investigate the present economics and technology of genetic modification in plants, and its possible future. Third, we examine empirical evidence for alternative visions of the technology.

This article analyzes the development of the Green revolution in Costa Rica’s rice production. It shows the leading role played by changes in the biological capital (seeds) in the transformation of rice agriculture since the 1940s. The... more

This article analyzes the development of the Green revolution in Costa Rica’s rice production. It shows the leading role played by changes in the biological capital (seeds) in the transformation of rice agriculture since the 1940s. The hypothesis is that the selection process of new genetic material (high-yielding varieties) was decisive for the consolidation of the technical package associated with the Green revolution as well as in strengthening capitalist forms of production. The research is based on agronomic document review, interviews, statistical series and agricultural periodicals.

In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and development finance scholarship in order to analyze the... more

In the context of neoliberal financialization, what is the role of debt in agrarian change? To address this question, I combine insights about debt from rural political ecology and development finance scholarship in order to analyze the relationship between changing agroecological practices and household indebtedness in a Cambodian rice-farming village. In the past two decades, Cambodians have borrowed from commercial microfinance institutions at the highest rate per capita of any country in the world. With fewer Cambodians farming, and agricultural production increasingly commodified, researchers have begun to study how the fast growth of Cambodia's microfinance industry contributes to these changes. By building upon the concept of financial landscapes, which highlights the diversity of social and material relations of debt in rural economies, I argue that agrarian change in Cambodia is entangled with rising household debts used to fund both agricultural production and social reproduction. I describe how non-monetary debt obligations underpinned labor-intensive rice agricultural practices in the 1980s and early 1990s, but have since been replaced by monetary debt used to fund household basic needs and commodified agricultural production. To make my argument, I draw upon 20 months of ethnographic research within a farming village in Kampot Province. This article contributes to rural political ecology and development finance scholarship by exploring debt in its diverse material and social forms at a time of deepening financialization, and how these debt relations in turn shape the economic and agroecological contours of contemporary agrarian change.

Since the liberalization of the Sino-Soviet border, Chinese peasants, migrants, and investors have been actively engaged in agriculture in the Russian Far East (RFE). These range from agricultural laborers contracted by labor-exporting... more

Since the liberalization of the Sino-Soviet border, Chinese peasants, migrants, and investors have been actively engaged in agriculture in the Russian Far East (RFE). These range from agricultural laborers contracted by labor-exporting firms, to farmers who have set up their own small and medium-sized farms. In the last decade and a half, Chinese presence on Russian rural land has expanded to include agribusinesses and capital-rich investors that have seized on profit-making opportunities, and who cultivate Russia’s comparatively cheap and abundant arable land on a much larger scale. With the use of wage labor and other capitalized factor inputs, the occurrence of economic differentiation among producers, and strongly commercial drivers, Chinese agriculture in the RFE stands in stark contrast to agriculture in China itself, where institutional and structural constraints still limit the development of full-blown capitalist agriculture. This paper presents a journalistic view of Chinese agrarian capitalism as it exists in the RFE, with a focus on Chinese actors and social relations of production. It lays groundwork for more extensive research of Chinese agriculture in Russia, which in academic and policy circles has not yet been studied as its own separate topic.

Reports of declining staple food availability and the possibility of a world food crisis first appeared in the international press in late 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa, with its deepening need for disaster food relief in arid and war-torn... more

Reports of declining staple food availability and the possibility of a world food crisis first appeared in the international press in late 2007. Sub-Saharan Africa, with its deepening need for disaster food relief in arid and war-torn areas was most vulnerable. The economic viability of western donors’ food aid to the continent was increasingly being stretched. Largely missing from the press reports and general debate, however, was any acknowledgement of three decades of agrarian change in the South, which had profoundly altered the nature of global agricultural food production. Much of what was headlined as breaking news was, in fact, the logical outcome of already well-established vulnerabilities that analysts and media observers had failed to note.
This article asks how the changing character of African staple food demand fits into the wider global picture and why signs of escalating global food supply constraints were ignored despite international donor agencies’ professed concern with alleviating African rural poverty?

Capitalismo: tierra y poder en América Latina (1982-2012) reúne un balance sobre la situación del agro en 17 países latinoamericanos, con ello se busca continuar el magno esfuerzo realizado hace tres décadas por Pablo González Casanova... more

Capitalismo: tierra y poder en América Latina (1982-2012) reúne un balance sobre la situación del agro en 17 países latinoamericanos, con ello se busca continuar el magno esfuerzo realizado hace tres décadas por Pablo González Casanova con su historia de los movimientos campesinos y, al mismo tiempo, se intenta reflejar los efectos del proceso de mundialización exacerbado y dirigido por el capital financiero internacional que arrolla al agro mundial desde hace más de 30 años. América Latina abarca regiones diferentes que poseen orografía, recursos hídricos y sistemas climáticos y son fruto de una construcción histórica del territorio que varía mucho. Por lo tanto, para facilitar el cotejo entre los diversos casos, consideramos esas diferencias al organizar los tres volúmenes que integran esta colección. A eso responde la agrupación en regiones vastas (el Cono Sur, el Arco Andino, Mesoamérica) de países que, grosso modo, tienen algunas características similares, a pesar de sus difere...

Since the mid-2000s, India has been beset by widespread farmer protests against land dispossession. Dispossession Without Development demonstrates that beneath these conflicts lay a profound shift in regimes of dispossession. While the... more

Since the mid-2000s, India has been beset by widespread farmer protests against land dispossession. Dispossession Without Development demonstrates that beneath these conflicts lay a profound shift in regimes of dispossession. While the postcolonial Indian state dispossessed land mostly for public-sector industry and infrastructure, since the 1990s state governments have become land brokers for private real estate capital. Using the case of a village in Rajasthan that was dispossessed for a private Special Economic Zone, the book ethnographically illustrates the exclusionary trajectory of capitalism driving dispossession in contemporary India. Taking us into the lives of diverse villagers in "Rajpura," the book meticulously documents the destruction of agricultural livelihoods, the marginalization of rural labor, the spatial uneveness of infrastructure provision, and the dramatic consequences of real estate speculation for social inequality and village politics. Illuminating the structural underpinnings of land struggles in contemporary India, this book will resonate in any place where "land grabs" have fueled conflict in recent years.

The East African Groundnut Scheme in Tanganyika is probably the most dramatic and most cited failure of the ambitions of British late colonial developmentalism. Issues of labour supply in the scheme's short history, and the relationship... more

The East African Groundnut Scheme in Tanganyika is probably the most dramatic and most cited failure of the ambitions of British late colonial developmentalism. Issues of labour supply in the scheme's short history, and the relationship of labour supply with the peasant economy of Southern Province, have received almost no attention, a gap which this article aims to begin to fill. It suggests that the implementation of the scheme gave rise to a political battle over labour market control between the colonial state in Tanganyika and scheme managers. The paper documents how, without any support from the colonial administration, the scheme attempted to recruit the large numbers of workers it required, and its frustrations in doing so. It investigates the factors that prevented labour supply satisfying demand, how peasants in the area engaged with the labour market (and were able to adjust their participation in it), and the impact of labour market growth on the household farm economy.

The establishment of the Bwanje Valley Irrigation Scheme (BVIS) in Malawi is a striking example of informed amnesia in development assistance. Despite the lessons learned earlier concerning a process approach to participatory irrigation... more

The establishment of the Bwanje Valley Irrigation Scheme (BVIS) in Malawi is a striking example of informed amnesia in development assistance. Despite the lessons learned earlier concerning a process approach to participatory irrigation development in Africa, in the case of BVIS outside interveners designed an irrigation system and parachuted it into Bwanje Valley as a black-boxed technology. Using a sociotechnical

Este libro analiza los conflictos agrarios y las dinámicas territoriales que afectan al Departamento del Huila y el sur del Tolima, en relación al conflicto armado y en medio de la implementación del Acuerdo de Paz. El libro agrupa varios... more

Este libro analiza los conflictos agrarios y las dinámicas territoriales que afectan al Departamento del Huila y el sur del Tolima, en relación al conflicto armado y en medio de la implementación del Acuerdo de Paz. El libro agrupa varios trabajos que analizan procesos que incluyen la histórica configuración territorial del Huila y sur del Tolima, las dinámicas de la guerra, los procesos de exclusión social y política, el poblamiento y colonización de territorios, el papel de los actores armados, los procesos desiguales de desarrollo y los nuevos conflictos por el extractivismo. Se enfatiza en las problemáticas de la economía cafetera, sus crisis ocasionadas por las reformas liberalizadoras desde los años 1990s, y la movilización social de campesinos cuyas identidades y subjetividades se han ido configurando de manera dinámica en medio de procesos de colonización, violencia y exclusión. Desde múltiples miradas disciplinares y enfoques cualitativos, se aborda el estudio de nuevos conflictos territoriales y socio-económicos surgidos a partir de recientes proyectos minero-energéticos y nuevas tendencias dentro de los encadenamientos productivos tales como la asociatividad. El estudio de los conflictos agrarios y territoriales y de las respuestas sociales, es crucial para entender el alcance del Acuerdo de Paz, en especial en el punto uno sobre la Reforma Rural Integral.

This article examines the shifting ways in which the dispossessive and toxic effects of agricultural chemicals have been encoded as agrarian best practices. I develop the concept of agrarian racial regimes, based on the work of Cedric... more

This article examines the shifting ways in which the dispossessive and toxic effects of agricultural chemicals have been encoded as agrarian best practices. I develop the concept of agrarian racial regimes, based on the work of Cedric Robinson, to examine how constructed hierarchies of human worth are made central to the sale and usage of chemicals. A focus on the politics of pesticides in the Mississippi Delta, a plantation region of the U.S. South, elucidates the ways in which agrarian racial capitalism has been reproduced through shifting antiblack conceptions of racial difference and technological progress. Two key conjunctures serve to draw these dynamics into relief: the development of the application of pesticides by aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s and the shift toward nearly complete mechanization and chemicalization of cotton production in the 1950s and 1960s. Analyzing film and advertisements in this period in the context of the material relations of agriculture and race, I argue that dispossession and toxicity are encoded as best practices through antiblack representations of agrarian whiteness. In the first period, chemicals were positioned as the height of progress through racist depictions of Black workers in the fields. In the second period, in response to Black challenges to white supremacy, the notion of “clean cotton” was deployed to represent Black absence as the height of technological progress and possessive agrarian masculinity. In both instances, racial representation has served to justify unstable and toxic relations of unequal power and profit.

World Bank, inside its Country Partnership Framework for Indonesia, explicitly stated that it is needed in "focusing the reform agenda around making more space and a more reliable and enabling environment for the private sector, in all... more

World Bank, inside its Country Partnership Framework for Indonesia, explicitly stated that it is needed in "focusing the reform agenda around making more space and a more reliable and enabling environment for the private sector, in all our engagements." The framework contains a 200 million USD loan for 'accelerating agrarian reform' in Indonesia. The purposes for the loan are creating parcel plots in the designated region villages, administer all land claims, and facilitate the land arrangement and registration into the e-land. It includes legal rights and communal land, land registration (common or individual land) for women. The loan needs a new mechanism to consult several NGOs, CSOs and advocacy groups on agrarian reform, adat rights, good governance and woman rights. The consultation must be included in the Environmental and Social Management Framework (document). Several movement organizations agreed that they would make the organized rural area part of the designated loan project area. It was a surprising one since several of the organization mentioned before were the leading impetus for 'genuine agrarian reform' (based on BAL 1960) implementation. The questions on “what form and to what extend the transmutation of agrarian movement In Indonesia is happening” and “how scholar-activists, which have been using the social movement to accommodate their interest, position themselves” then arisen, even though the agrarian reform loan package from World Bank clearly done for the capital accumulation’s sake.

This paper draws on lectures given in recent years at the China Agricultural University, on author's book Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change [1] and on a recent article [3]. The author supplied as few references as possible to very large... more

This paper draws on lectures given in recent years at the China Agricultural University, on author's book Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change [1] and on a recent article [3]. The author supplied as few references as possible to very large literature in English on agrarian change both historical and contemporary; there is an ample bibliography in [1], which is expanded in [2—5]. The paper outlines in schematic fashion some key concepts in the political economy of agrarian change with special reference to capitalism historically and today; some key questions posed by the political economy of agrarian change, and how it seeks to investigate and answer them; two sets of more specific questions about agrarian transition to capitalism and agrarian change within capitalism (internal to the countryside, bringing in rural-urban interconnections, pointing towards the place of agriculture within larger 'national' economies, and concerning the character and effects of the capitalist world economy). With the aid of the last group of questions, the author discusses three themes, which they are deployed to investigate: the agrarian origins of capitalism, the distinction between farming and agriculture generated by capitalism, and the fate(s) of peasant farmers in the modern world of capitalism. The author believes that one cannot conceive the emergence and functioning of agriculture in modern capitalism without the centrality and configurations of new sets of dynamics linking agriculture and industry, and the rural and urban, and the local, national and global. The three themes all feed into the fourth and final theme, that of investigating the fate(s) of the peasantry in capitalism today, which resonates longstanding debates of the 'disappearance' or 'persis-tence' of the peasantry, albeit now in the conditions of contemporary 'globalization'. The author does not deny some of the critique of the contemporary globalization, or at least its effects; his problem is the advo-cacy of 'solutions' premised on an unconvincing, pre-given and idealized 'peasant way' that lacks the analytical means (and desire) to confront processes of class formation in the countryside. This paper outlines, in schematic fashion, some key concepts in the political economy of agrarian change with special reference to capitalism historically and today. It also indicates some of the key questions posed by the political economy of agrarian change, and how it seeks to investigate and answer them. By political economy I mean the field of social relations and processes/dynamics of production and reproduction. Applied to some types of society, and notably capitalist societies, the foundational, although not

Abstract: The developmentalist gaze of the Fair Trade movement is on Global South producers. In this article we turn our analytic gaze toward North American fair traders to explore the racialized, neocolonial power relations in which... more

Abstract: The developmentalist gaze of the Fair Trade movement is on Global South producers. In this article we turn our analytic gaze toward North American fair traders to explore the racialized, neocolonial power relations in which these movement actors are implicated. Section One is a brief historical sketch of Fair Trade certification. We argue that the certification system is a multi-sited, global institution that is shaped by and shapes neocolonial power relations in Fair Trade by exploring the consolidation and more recent splintering of the international certification system. Section Two provides a postcolonial critique of developmentalism, with a focus on the timing of development, in order to lay a foundation for the remaining sections. In Section Three we analyze the spatiality of Fair Trade, with an emphasis on what and who are missing from or erased by the structural and conceptual frameworks of Fair Trade. In Section Four we explore the relationship between Fair Trade, commodity fetishism, and the developmentalist conception of space/time propagated by Fair Trade advocates. Section Five is a critical analysis of the neocolonialist and racist discourse of Fair Trade, with a focus on the “helping” discourse. We contend that as Global North fair traders strive to “help” Global South producers, they re-entrench neocolonial narratives of white supremacy and the desire to develop.

Transmigration has been related to efforts to boost food productivity. During the New Order era, transmigration was promoted in order to create cheap labor on large government-owned plantations. After the New Order period, transmigration... more

Transmigration has been related to efforts to boost food productivity. During the New Order era, transmigration was promoted in order to create cheap labor on large government-owned plantations. After the New Order period, transmigration was once again made to support food program initiated through food estate project. This study wants to explore the paradox of the process of modernization of large-scale agriculture through a food estate project which turned out causing negative impacts for transmigrant farmers and local residents. This research is a literature study carried out by searching research reports, government documents, journal articles, and news from various media concerning the implementation of food estate. Data analysis was carried out through several stages, namely data reduction, data presentation, verif ication and conclusion drawing. This study has discovered how the large-scale agricultural modernization projects in Merauke and Bulungan is not an effort to support food security, but merely a broad-scale agribusiness expansion. The implementation of transmigration, basically, only serves as a support to ease the agribusiness expansion that takes place in Merauke and Bulungan. This study has proven the condition of food insecurity that must be faced by transmigrant farmers & local residents affected by the project. Intisari: Transmigrasi selama ini terkait dengan upaya menggenjot produktivitas pangan. Pada masa Orde Baru, transmigrasi digalakkan dengan untuk menjadikan transmigran sebagai tenaga kerja murah di perkebunan besar milik pemerintah. Setelah masa Orde Baru berakhir, transmigrasi dijadikan lagi sebagai penopang program pangan dengan dicetuskannya proyek food estate. Kajian ini ingin mendalami paradoks dari proses modernisasi pertanian skala luas melalui proyek food estate yang justru menyebabkan dampak negatif bagi petani transmigran dan penduduk lokal. Penelitian ini merupakan studi literatur yang dilakukan dengan melakukan penelusuran terhadap laporan penelitian, dokumen pemerintahan, artikel jurnal, dan berita dari berbagai media yang terkait dengan pelaksanaan food estate. Analisis data dilakukan melalui beberapa tahapan, yakni reduksi data, penyajian data, verif ikasi dan penarikan kesimpulan. Kajian ini telah menemukan bagaimana proyek modernisasi pertanian dalam skala luas di Merauke dan Bulungan bukanlah usaha menjaga ketahanan pangan, melainkan semata ekspansi agribisnis dalam skala luas. Penyelenggaraan transmigrasi pada dasarnya hanya menjadi penopang untuk memfasilitasi ekspansi agribisnis yang terjadi di Merauke dan Bulungan. Kajian ini telah membuktikan kondisi kerawanan pangan yang harus dihadapi petani transmigran & penduduk lokal terdampak proyek. Kata Kunci: Transmigrasi, Food Estate, Modernisasi Pertanian. BHUMI: Jurnal Agraria dan Pertanahan

In this paper propose some seemingly mundane questions to engage us in the field. These would comprise: (i) is peasant a class or a social category?; (ii) what position they would have in a new identity politics?; (iii) how was... more

In this paper propose some seemingly mundane questions to engage us in the field. These would comprise: (i) is peasant a class or a social category?;
(ii) what position they would have in a new identity politics?; (iii) how was state-peasant relation defined in the given process of the rise of modern nation-state?, and (v) do ‘differentiation’ and ‘typification of peasants’ still hold anthropological signification?. Only by answering these questions, we can establish that the study of peasants is still a relevant field of study in our context. I end this paper here with a hope that we need to see more anthropological engagement in the study of ‘peasants’ and ‘peasants’ politics’ in the years to come.

L'objectif de la contribution est de rendre compte des tensions liées à la compétition sur les droits fonciers en incluant le jeu des clivages ethniques et ethno-nationalitaires sans tomber pour autant dans une interprétation monocausale.... more

L'objectif de la contribution est de rendre compte des tensions liées à la compétition sur les droits fonciers en incluant le jeu des clivages ethniques et ethno-nationalitaires sans tomber pour autant dans une interprétation monocausale. Il s'agit d'identifier les processus sociaux par lesquels, selon des modalités proprement ivoiriennes, la composante ethnique s'entremêle à d'autres facteurs tout aussi importants afin de mieux apprécier la place effective de la diversité ethnique dans l'exacerbation de la question foncière et tenter de la prévenir. La contribution se focalise sur les régions forestières du Sud du pays, et plus particulièrement sur la région de l'ouest du Bandama, représentative des zones de colonisation agricole massive depuis l'indépendance, et où la crise récente a suscité avec le plus de violence des tensions intercommunautaires. L'argument général est que l'enchâssement mutuel du champ ethnique et du champ foncier concerne, au delà de la question de l'accès à la terre et de son contrôle, les fondements proprement ivoiriens de la société et de l'État. Avant d'être un « problème » relativement à la répartition pacifique des droits fonciers, la pluralité ethnique (et ethnico-nationale) est un élément intrinsèque du dispositif de gouvernance rurale et d'ancrage local de l'État colonial et postcolonial. Aussi l'ethnicisation de la question foncière est-elle moins une cause qu'un indicateur de la crise de la ruralité et de sa gouvernance. Le rappel des éléments clés de l'histoire agraire de la zone forestière montre que le véritable opérateur de la problématique ethnique est l'idéologie politique de l'autochtonie (entendue comme un fait politique institutionnalisé) mise en place par les autorités coloniales pour gouverner et mettre en valeur le territoire, puis recomposée sous le régime d'Houphouët-Boigny pour soutenir la nouvelle frontière agricole de l'ouest forestier. En dépit des changements intervenus depuis, notamment la forte tendance vers l'individualisation et la transférabilité des droits fonciers coutumiers, la distinction « autochtones » / « étrangers » (au sens de non natifs) demeure un élément structurant à la fois de l'exercice effectif des droits acquis par transaction au niveau local, mais aussi du mode de gouvernement de l'État vis-à-vis des communautés locales. De sorte que la double dimension économique et socio-politique des transferts fonciers est un facteur permanent de politisation des tensions foncières, mais aussi un élément hérité et très puissant de cohérence de l'ordre social paysan que l'État utilise pour sa propre reproduction au niveau villageois et qu'il ne peut abolir par décret. Face à ce dilemme, l'État ivoirien a privilégié dès les années 1990 une approche juridique de la question foncière. La loi de décembre 1998 sur le Domaine foncier rural table ainsi sur la formalisation systématique des droits coutumiers ou acquis selon les pratiques coutumières pour clarifier définitivement les droits et pacifier les rapports fonciers entre les différentes communautés ethniques. Mais le législateur lui-même n'a pu faire abstraction, dans la rédaction de la loi, des prérogatives du principe d'autochtonie dans la constatation de l'origine des droits avant enregistrement. La mise en oeuvre de la loi dans le cadre du Programme national de sécurisation foncière est cependant restée anecdotique, avant et pendant la crise. Pourtant, contrastant avec les faibles résultats de l'action légale d'enregistrement des transactions, on a constaté durant ces périodes d'insécurité la permanence de nombreuses transactions foncières coutumières entre autochtones et migrants. Ce constat, ainsi que celui de la permanence de conditionnalités sociales attachées aux opérations de « ventes » coutumières entre autochtones et « étrangers », interpellent le choix affirmé par le Gouvernement actuel de mettre en oeuvre à grande échelle le Programme national de sécurisation foncière par la délivrance systématique de titres de propriété et de promouvoir vigoureusement une politique d'ouverture du marché de la terre. En effet, après comme avant le conflit armé, les ingrédients de l'histoire agraire ivoirienne restent toujours actifs. La contribution propose des pistes de réflexion et de solution concernant la pacification des rapports fonciers et les orientations des actions gouvernementales. Elle souligne en particulier : 1) les risques d'un programme de sécurisation des droits coutumiers trop systématiquement orienté sur la délivrance de titres

A B S T R A C T In the recent explosion of attention given to the land grabbing phenomenon, contract farming has been identified as a potentially inclusive alternative for smallholders to outright acquisition of farm land by agri-business... more

A B S T R A C T In the recent explosion of attention given to the land grabbing phenomenon, contract farming has been identified as a potentially inclusive alternative for smallholders to outright acquisition of farm land by agri-business capital. This paper responds to these claims by resituating contract farming as an equally important form of land control. The focus of the paper is a case study of potato contract farming in Maharashtra, India. While there is 'nothing new' about contract farming as a mode of agriculture production in India, its influence on patterns of agrarian change is poorly understood. Adopting an agrarian political economy-informed livelihoods approach, the paper argues that rather than an inclusive alternative to land grabbing, contract farming in the study site represents another way that capital is coming to control land in rural India, with just as important implications for agrarian livelihoods. While some individual households have improved their livelihoods through participation , the contract scheme acts to reinforce already existing patterns of inequality. In particular, the unequal power relations between firm and farmer skew the capture of benefits towards the firm, and render participating households vulnerable to indebtedness and loss of autonomy over land and livelihood decisions.

Abstract This thesis explores the social, political and economic relations constituted in relation to agrarian cooperatives that work land confiscated by the state from mafiosi owners in the Alto Belice valley, Sicily. It examines access... more

Abstract
This thesis explores the social, political and economic relations constituted in relation to agrarian cooperatives that work land confiscated by the state from mafiosi owners in the Alto Belice valley, Sicily. It examines access to resources (work and land), and the cooperatives’ division of labour, paying attention to the material changes that the cooperatives (considered in the context of the anti-mafia movement) have brought to people’s lives, as well as the tensions regarding social, labour and property relations that emerged from these changes.
The thesis argues that the state’s intervention entailed the promotion of values (‘legality’) and relationships antithetical to those that obtained locally, such as kinship obligations and local reciprocities, as continuities between local workers’ moralities, and practices with mafia codes are seen as contradicting the state ideology of radical change.
These tensions are explored in the specificities of the cooperatives’ division of labour, which, informed by class, relatedness and locality, pose obstacles to the development of horizontal, equal work relationships. In this context, the thesis explores the contradictions and unintended consequences of the state policy of ‘antimafia transformation’, creating fissures between the cooperatives’ administrators, the local workforce and the wider community.
The thesis provides an ethnographic account of a political project of change that challenged the complex phenomenon of the mafia by radically shifting the conditions of access to material resources. The cooperative project provides alternative values and means of livelihood to those associated with mafia dominance in the area, but largely fails to address the local social arrangements within which the project unfolds. The thesis also addresses debates about horizontal relations in cooperatives, looking at how access to resources (land, labour, reputation) is organised across different moral claims and evaluations, articulated within and outside the cooperatives’ framework.

Laporan Utama: Menakar Reforma Agraria dalam Visi Misi