Peasant collective action against disembedding land

Abstract

Since independence in 1975, peasant collective actions have been rare in Mozambique. Yet in recent years there has been an emergence of collective action by peasants in Niassa Province in northern Mozambique. The collective action has been stimulated by the introduction of forest plantations and the associated loss of land access, rights, and employment by local communities. Although commodification of land is prevented by the Mozambican land law (Governo de Moçambique, 1997), government concessions to large plantation firms resulted not only in loss of land access for peasants but also limited access to employment. After just a couple of years of forest plantation development the communities became painfully aware that their work force was not needed by the investors once clearing and planting was completed. The peasant reaction is explained using Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness. Peasants’ collective action can be understood as a countermovement to the disembedding of land represented by plantation development. The loss of access to the land, unlike the many other injustices suffered by peasants resulted in collective action and not ‘just’ everyday individual struggle because the peasants’ struggle against the forest plantations is a struggle to preserve the peasant economy and community. The land concessions not only represent something foreign to the peasant logic, they actually threaten the possibility to continue life according to that logic. The chapter is based on ethnographically inspired fieldwork carried out between 2014 and 2016.