From the Margins to the Center: Peasant Struggles and State Power in Chile, Peru, and Bolivia

Assessment of wind energy potential in Chile: A project-based regional wind supply function approach

<p>Este trabajo forma parte de una investigación más amplia sobre las luchas y los movimientos campesinos en la República Dominicana. El propósito del artículo es trazar las principales líneas de desarrollo de las luchas de las masas campesinas, destacando la diversidad de formas que han asumido a lo largo del presente siglo. No obstante, su énfasis es en los años 1960-1990. Debido al papel central del estado en la historia contemporánea dominicana, se recalca la importancia de las relaciones del campesinado con el poder central y cómo la misma ha incidido sobre las luchas sociales en el ámbito rural.</p>

A.R. Desai (ed.), Peasant Struggles in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp.xxv + 772; Rs. 140. Sunil Sen, Peasant Movements in India: Mid‐Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1982. Pp.275; Rs.75. D.N. Dhanagare, Peasant Movements in India: 1920–1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp.xii + 254; £12. This review of some important recent works on peasant movements in India examines four major questions concerning (a) the social locus of rebellions, (b) the role of capitalism and imperialism, (c) the part played by existing state power, and (d) the role of parties or organisations. It is argued that while there is no unchanging social base the disproportionately high degree of tribal participation in armed rebellion may provide some clue to the relative lack of similar participation among the mainstream peasantry, that capitalist imperialism is a multi faceted phenomenon impinging on the peasantry in many ways, that existing state power plays a major part in rebellio...

This chapter seeks to provide an analytical guide to the analysis of peasant alternatives to neoliberalism. It situates the discussion about peasant alternatives under neoliberalism within a longer debate on the peasantry within capitalist development and provides a definition of the peasantry based on four general characteristics. It argues that a key feature of peasant struggles is the collective struggle for land and territory and that access to land provides peasants with greater control over their labour. In certain cases, this is reinforced by the reproduction of non-capitalist practices, such as solidarity, reciprocity, and redistribution, which can be oriented to progressive or conservative ends. The chapter identifies three major peasant strategies in relation to the market: market avoidance, market integration, and market creation, which are often combined. It also highlights four different political strategies that contemporary peasant movements have adopted with respect to state power: building of alliances outside the state, the deployment of actions to pressure the state, decisions to take on state positions, and building a transnational network to coordinate campaigns. The chapter concludes by underlining the fragmented and contradictory nature of the peasantry but argues that its process of class formation is often about transcending this fragmentation politically.