Peasant Movement Research Articles

Social Movements and Patronage Politics: Processes of Demobilization and Dual Pressure

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a “dual pressure” stemming “from below” and “from above.” In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure “from below” on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure “from above,” because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.

The Polish Underground Resistance During the Second World War: A Study in Political Disunity During Occupation

The armed resistance movement which emerged in Poland during the Second World War is usually portrayed as united and representing all sections of society. In reality, this was very far from the case and the underground resistance was divided on several lines, of which that separating the Home Army (AK) from the peasant armed units was most pronounced. Conflicts between the two related to the army’s role in the destruction of democracy before the war. As the end of the war appeared in sight, so these divisions multiplied as the peasant movement became anxious about the AK reconstructing the pre-war state of affairs.

An Archive of Counterinsurgency: State Anxieties and Peasant Guerrillas in Cold War Mexico

Recently declassified Mexican spy reports that tracked and analysed revolutionary guerrilla organisations during the 1960s and 1970s collectively form an archive of counterinsurgency. The archive produced knowledge on individuals and groups deemed subversive threats to the authoritarian rule of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). This article examines one declassified spy report produced in late August 1972 after a peasant guerrilla movement in the south–western Mexican state of Guerrero surprisingly ambushed two military convoys. In proposing a series of counterinsurgent solutions to defeat the guerrilla El Partido de los Pobres (The Party of the Poor, PDLP), this article argues that the document reveals an anxious state's need to restore balance to a political situation unexpectedly off balance. The document's main suggestion, targeting the insurrection's base of popular support, would form the core of the counterinsurgency waged by the PRI regime in Guerrero from 1972 to 1974.

Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968–2000

Rural Protest and the Making of Democracy in Mexico, 1968–2000

996 and all that: the Norman peasants' revolt reconsidered

Early in the reign of Richard II of Normandy (996–1026), a peasant movement, usually described as a revolt, was suppressed. This paper re‐examines the evidence of William of Jumièges, Wace and an anonymous history of Fécamp. It argues that the movement cannot be securely dated to 996, was not a military enterprise, and was not revolutionary. Peasants attempted to mobilize quasi‐Carolingian assembly practices in order to gain concessions concerning specific economic issues, but did not seek to re‐order their society. The movement probably affected the Seine valley, rather than encompassing all of Normandy.

Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and the New Green Revolution

In the face of recurrent global food crises, institutions of the corporate food regime propose a new Green Revolution coupled with a continuation of neoliberal economic policies. Because these are causes of the crises to begin with, this approach can worsen rather than end hunger. Building a countermovement depends in part on forging strong strategic alliances between agroecology and food sovereignty. Agroecologists face important choices between reformist and radical versions of agroecology. The former version attempts to co-opt agroecology into the Green Revolution; the latter centers agroecology within a politically transformative peasant movement for food sovereignty.

Vertreibung als Strategie: Landkonflikte in Kolumbien

Schlagwörter: Raum, scale, gewaltsame Vertreibung, Lateinamerika, paramilitärische Gruppen, strategisch-relationaler Ansatz, Bewegung der Kleinbäuerinnen/-bauern-----Displacement as Policy: Land Conflicts in Colombia.AbstractRural land conflicts in Colombia are typical of such conflicts in Latin American, but Colombia is, at the same time, an exception: nowhere else has the violent displacement of people from regions with promising agro-industrial or mining projects, and the outsourcing of violence to paramilitary groups, been so systematic. Out of a total population of approximately 44 million, the United Nations now estimates between 3.6 and 5.2 million internally displaced Colombians. This article analyses the violent reconfiguration of rural Colombia. It does not just look at the actual conflicts butalso at the relations of domination which, in turn, influence these conflicts and the production of space. Neil Brenner’s (2004) approach allows for a critical analysis of the developments in Colombia – most notably how state strategies have radically restructured rural spaces from the 1980s onwards and how they more or less constituted a coherent state-spatial project during Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s two presidential terms from 2002-2010. More than other space-theoretical approaches, Brenner combines the process of spatial structuring with the question of the driving forces at different institutional scales for the remaking of state space. Doing this, Brenner adds a spatial perspective to Bob Jessop’s (2008) strategic-relational approach to state theory and enables a differentiated analysis of processes in sub-national spaces and institutional scales, the modalities employed and the relation to subaltern spatial strategies. This makes this approach extremely interesting and helpful to better understand the complex landscape of rural confl icts in Colombia.Keywords: space, scale, violent displacement, Latin America, paramilitary groups, strategic-relational approach, peasant movements

Educação do campo: embate entre Movimento Camponês e Estado

O artigo trata do embate entre os diferentes movimentos sociais populares do campo, identificados na unidade provisória Movimento Camponês, que demandam a educação do campo voltada aos seus modos de vida e de trabalho, e o Estado brasileiro, no que concerne aos programas governamentais oferecidos em resposta a essa demanda¹ . Visa a apontar potencialidades da educação do campo, enquanto conquista do Movimento Camponês, e os limites que esta enfrenta, no Brasil, em que o capital agrário e financeiro, relacionado ao agronegócio, disputa a propriedade da terra e exerce pressão sobre o Estado. A importância deste trabalho está em promover uma reflexão sobre os desafios colocados ao Movimento Camponês, enquanto este orienta suas ações por um projeto societário em visível confronto com o modelo neoliberal de sociedade no qual se sustentam as ações do Estado brasileiro.

Udział chłopów a tzw. sprawa włościańska jako płaszczyzna dyskursu o powstaniu styczniowym w polskiej historiografi i i publicystyce historycznej 1863–1918

Presented paper is a kind of analysis in historiography. It reflects to the problem of the peasants participation in the January Uprising of 1863. Chronologically consideration are not reaching beyond 1918. All the text taken into consideration are historical synthesis of January Uprising against Russia or brochures. Especially second type presented what might have been thought by the Polish common people. Analysis was prepared according to different ideological interpretations. All those created in the circles of the Peasant Movement in the end of 19th century were mostly didactical narrations. Their aims were connected with intensification of national identification of Polish farmers and peasantry. However, the interpretations crated by the independence orientated Polish left (Bolesław Limanowski, Stanisław Krzemiński) were concentrated on the idea of „people’s war”. These kind of war should have liberated the peasants and started the social revolution. Nevertheless, there was also conservative point of view presented by Stanisław Koźmian, the politician from Galicia. He saw the problem of peasants in Uprising as a myth. Peasantry could not have participated in the uprising made by the nobility, that is what Koźmian assumes to be historical truth. Another author, Walery Przyborowski from the Russian partition mentioned similar to the Koźmian ideas, except of he was more ironic.

Symbols in Motion: Katari as Traveling Image in Landless Movement Politics in Bolivia

This case study of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST-Bolivia) looks at the contemporary use and value of the image of Tupac Katari, an anti-colonial hero who led a regional insurgency in 1780. The symbol of Katari as resurrected spirit in political tale-telling and on flags and posters mixes with more contemporary icons of landless peasant politics to serve political and economic purposes: redistributing land and resources to displaced peoples. This essay argues that as this symbol travels through time – from a popular sign of Andean politics to a critical emblem of multiculturalism in the 1990s – it takes on new meanings as indigenous peoples make critical links between ethnic/racial identity, uneven resource distribution, and structural inequality. As people move across geographic space – from MST communities to urban centers, from Santa Cruz to La Paz – their symbols stand against new forms of violence and discrimination and infuse regional spaces with hybrid political identities. However, when an image or symbol, once tethered to concrete demands and embodied performances at a local level, moves across scales and turns into a mere symbol of the state, abstracted from material shifts, it loses its capacity to mobilize.

Food sovereignty in US food movements: radical visions and neoliberal constraints

Although the concept of food sovereignty is rooted in International Peasant Movements across the global south, activists have recently called for the adoption of this framework among low-income communities of color in the urban United States. This paper investigates on-the-ground processes through which food sovereignty articulates with the work of food justice and community food security activists in Oakland, California, and Seattle, Washington. In Oakland, we analyze a farmers market that seeks to connect black farmers to low-income consumers. In Seattle, we attend to the experiences of displaced immigrant farmers from Latin America and their efforts to address their food needs following migration. In both cases, we find that US based projects were constrained by broader forces of neoliberalism that remained unrecognized by local activists. In Oakland, despite a desire to create a local food system led by marginalized African Americans, emphasis on providing green jobs in agriculture led activists to take a market-based approach that kept local food out of the economic grasp of food-insecure neighborhood residents. In Seattle, the marginalization of the immense agroecological knowledge of Latino/an immigrant farmers rendered local food projects less inclusive and capable of transformative change. Taken together, these very different cases suggest that a shift towards food sovereignty necessitates a broad acknowledgement of and resistance to neoliberalism.

O direito à terra como um direito humano: a luta pela reforma agrária e o movimento de direitos humanos no Brasil

O objetivo deste texto é analisar, por meio da história recente dos movimentos sociais que lutam pela reforma agrária no Brasil, a construção do direito à terra como um direito humano. A partir dos anos de 1970, a interação de movimentos camponeses da Igreja Católica progressista e da rede transnacional de direitos humanos confluiu na produção dessa ideia da posse da terra como um direito humano, que marcou não apenas a luta pela terra no Brasil, como também influenciou a forma como o próprio movimento de direitos humanos foi construído no país e na maneira como ele se inseriu nessa rede transnacional de ativistas.

Estratégia de articulação e estratégia de aliança: possibilidades para a luta política

Este artigo tem por objetivo discutir estratégias de luta política desenvolvidas por movimentos sociais que atuam na sociedade brasileira, tendo como problema: quais as possibilidades de democratização social frente ao descentramento do espaço político e a pluralidade de sujeitos políticos que caracterizam as últimas décadas das sociedades ocidentais contemporâneas? Foram entrevistados representantes de grupos do movimento feminista (Marcha Mundial das Mulheres - MMM), do movimento negro (Negras Ativas - NA), do movimento camponês (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra - MST), do movimento sindical (Central Única dos Trabalhadores - CUT), do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Desempregados (MTD) e da Brigadas Populares (BP). Além disso, foram entrevistadas a secretária da Assembleia Popular Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte (AP-MBH) e a vice-presidente "Trans" da Associação Brasileira de Gays, Lésbicas, Bissexuais, Travestis e Transexuais (ABGLT), entidades que, na pesquisa, denominamos de espaços de vínculos entre sujeitos políticos. Também coletamos, junto aos grupos, materiais referentes a ações desenvolvidas por eles, à história dos grupos, às suas bandeiras políticas. Para a análise dos dados, nos concentramos teoricamente em uma teoria democrática específica, denominada Teoria Democrática Radical e Plural, desenvolvida por Ernesto Laclau e Chantal Mouffe, desde meados da década de 1980. A partir da leitura das entrevistas, dos documentos coletados junto aos grupos e das considerações da Teoria Democrática Radical e Plural, construímos categorias analíticas referentes ao problema proposto na pesquisa. Discutimos, neste artigo, duas estratégias de luta política, denominadas estratégia de articulação e estratégia de aliança. A estratégia de articulação é concebida como a construção de uma relação de equivalência ("nós") entre diferentes sujeitos políticos, de modo a se construir um projeto contra-hegemônico. Já estratégia de aliança é definida como a construção de vínculo, em torno de demandas especificas, entre sujeitos políticos na construção de ações conjuntas, sem que isso implique, necessariamente, na promoção de uma relação de equivalência entre os grupos. Entendemos essas duas formas de estratégia política não como opostas, a priori, mas como modos complementares de se construir a mudança social. As estratégias debatidas podem ser úteis para pesquisas no campo dos movimentos sociais, sobretudo, na análise dos modos de construção da luta política.

‘MORAL ECONOMY’ AND PEASANT REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA: 1861–1918

The ‘moral economy’ thesis was first propounded by E. P. Thompson and then developed by James C. Scott, and centres on the idea that in pre-capitalist societies social relations are grounded in a p...

Framing transformation: the counter-hegemonic potential of food sovereignty in the US context

Originally created by the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, the concept of “food sovereignty” is being used with increasing frequency by agrifood activists and others in the Global North. Using the analytical lens of framing, I explore the effects of this diffusion on the transformative potential of food sovereignty. US agrifood initiatives have recently been the subject of criticism for their lack of transformative potential, whether because they offer market-based solutions rather than demanding political ones or because they fail to adequately address existing social injustice. In this paper, I consider how food sovereignty measures up to this critique both as it was originally framed by Via Campesina and as it is being reframed for the US context. First I briefly compare food sovereignty to community food security (CFS), which was developed more explicitly for the North American context and has been criticized for its lack of transformative potential. I then explore how the potential of food sovereignty has been affected as it is reframed to resonate with US audiences through an examination of its use on the web sites of US-based organizations. I find that, while some reframing of the concept to highlight consumer choice does seem to be occurring, it remains a primarily political concept. It may not, however, be fulfilling its potential for addressing social injustice in the US agrifood system because it tends to be used either in reference to international issues or, when applied to the US context, treated as a rough synonym for local control. I conclude that, if advocates can successfully guide the reframing process, food sovereignty could serve as a valuable counter-hegemonic vision to complement the more pragmatic and locally-grounded work of CFS advocates.

Defending Democracy? Human Rights Discourse in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsNicole FabricantNicole Fabricant is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Towson University. She is the co-editor, with Washington University professor Bret Gustafson, of Remapping Bolivia: Resources, Territory and Indigeneity in a Plurinational State (SAR Press, 2011), and is currently finishing a book on Bolivia’s Landless Peasant Movement (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming).

TEKANAN STRUKTURAL, PELUANG POLITIK, DAN SUKSES GERAKAN PETANI DI LAMPUNG

This study was aimed at explaining one of the conflicts in Lampung Province who developed into a peasant movement. Interestingly, this peasant movement overran the land and agrarian policy influence to form a new village. Data were obtained from depth interviews and documentary studies. The results found that the structural pressures led to the accumulation of land conflicts crystallize into "sub-culture of peasant opposition." Its social and cultural capital were a base to accelerate the strengthening of peasants' resource mobilization. The momentum of the political opportunities at the beginning of reform responded quickly to the socio-political movements in the form of protests, negotiations and land occupation. Through this movement, the farmers has managed to occupy agricultural land, the agrarian policy changes that benefit farmers and obtained the legality of the formation of a new village Karang Rejo. However, behind this success, the substantive isues of peasants to land ownership was still neglected, so that the struggle of peasants were still not finished.Key words: land conflict, peasant movement, movement outcome

A tribute to Willem Assies (1954–2010): reflections on his contribution to peasant and indigenous studies

This article discusses the manifold contributions of Willem Assies to the social sciences and Latin American studies. It focuses on his writings on agrarian and peasant studies, social movements, and indigenous peoples. In particular, he made important contributions to our understanding of multicultural citizenship, the multiethnic state, and plurinational democracy. His writings had a major impact on those working on rural and indigenous peoples' issues, although the Dutch academic establishment largely failed to appreciate his exceptional talents. It is argued in this article that he never wavered from his early recognition of the importance of class in social analysis, while acknowledging its limitations. In his view, one of the central challenges facing the indigenous peoples' social movements was how to link indigenous issues to general national problems. To what extent had they met this challenge? His premature death prevented him from exploring this key issue further, but hopefully other scholars will take up the baton and continue to debate his ideas.

La Via Campesina: Peasant-led agrarian reform and food sovereignty

Faustino Torrez summarizes the findings of the Agrarian Reform Commission of La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement that initiated the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform. The process included a global encounter with the landless peoples in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the La Via Campesina conferences, and the global fora in Valencia and Porto Alegre. La Via Campesina has been developing a new concept of agrarian reform that recognizes the socio-environmental aspects of land, the sea and natural resources, in the context of food sovereignty. Integral agrarian reform encompasses policies of redistribution, just, equitable access and control of natural, social and productive resources (credit, appropriate technologies, health, education, social security etc.) by peasants and their families, indigenous people, landless workers, artisanal fisherfolk, pastoralists, the unemployed, Dalit communities, Afrodescendents and other rural peoples. He argues that development policies should be based on agro-ecological strategies centred on family and peasant agriculture and artisanal fishing; trade policies that oppose dumping of products in the market and favour peasant and family farm production oriented towards local, national and international markets; and public policies in the areas of education, health and infrastructure for the countryside that complement trade and other policies.

The EROI of agriculture and its use by the Via Campesina

Via Campesina supports peasant and small farmer agriculture both in the South and in the North. Its basic doctrine is that of ‘food sovereignty’. It is a movement that defends an ‘ecological neo-Narodnism’. Among the analytical tools used by this international peasant movement is the comparison between the energy efficiency of traditional small farm agriculture and modern industrial agriculture. This article briefly recalls the history of agricultural energetics, and then looks at the use of the concept of EROI (energy return on energy input) by Via Campesina when it claims that ‘industrial agriculture is no longer a producer of energy but a consumer of energy’, and that ‘peasant agriculture cools down the Earth’. The absence in Marxism of a tradition of analysis of energy flows is also reviewed here, since it is of interest in order to bring together the classic economic concept of decreasing returns with the more recent notion of a declining EROI. The article also draws on work analysing how environmental activists use concepts from ecological economics, while at the same time ‘activist knowledge’ contributes to ecological economics in a two-way communication between activism and science.