Political-economic Structures Research Articles

Thailand's Contract Farming Act at a Crossroads: Impacts, Shortfalls, and the Need to Better Protect Smallholders

ABSTRACT Thailand is a global pioneer in contract farming (CF). Many smallholder farmers have gained better access to markets and capital while achieving higher and more stable incomes. Nevertheless, farmers have also faced exploitative conditions in their contractual relationships with agribusiness companies. In response, the Thai Parliament in 2017 passed the Contract Farming Promotion and Development Act. Based on fieldwork with key actors and contract farmers, this article examines how debates around CF have unfolded over time, the key issues discussed in the reform process before and after the CF Act was enacted, and its implications for smallholders. The law has had some success with increasing transparency, improving the conciliation process between farmers and companies, and deterring companies from unfair practices. However, in reality, it has done little to protect the livelihoods of Thai farmers due to a number of limitations, including weaknesses of the law itself, its limited implementation, and the country’s wider agrarian political economy. Specifically, the country’s oligarchic and oligopolistic political-economic structures have resulted in farmers having little bargaining or political power and limited access to markets.

Presidential Discourses on Regionalism in Azerbaijan: Turkic Solidarity and the Silk Road

Abstract Drawing on theories of comparative regionalism, this article examines the construction of regionalist frames in Azerbaijan covering the period from 1993 to mid-2023. By examining more than 60 text passages from presidential speeches and statements, the study identifies two framings of regionalism that have dominated presidential discourses in Azerbaijan: the discourse of Turkic solidarity or unity (in the political-security domain) and the narrative of an East-West corridor or the revival of the Silk Road for transport of cargo and hydrocarbon resources (in the economic domain). By constructing these discursive frames, Azerbaijani state leaders crafted an alternative regional order reconstituting the geographic category of “South Caucasus” into a new, spatially broader area. In this formulation, “South Caucasus” is viewed as a central pillar of the Silk Road, and Azerbaijan as one of its focal points or nodes. While the study underscores a key role that actors and ideas play in the formation of regions and regional institutions, it also highlights how social construction of regional identities is embedded in and shaped by historical experiences and country-specific political-economic conditions such as historical memories, experiences of war, collective identities and cultural affinities, geographic location, domestic political economic structures, and international linkages.

Prefiguring Alternative Organizing: Confronting marginalization through projective cultural adjustment and tempered autonomy

In this paper, we examine community collectives – place-based, community-led initiatives for sustainable livelihood, as an alternative to the top-down, efficiency-driven economic model. Drawing on the theoretical framework of prefigurative organizing, we examined the strategies employed by community members in confronting entrenched inequalities and overcoming marginalization as they envision and engage in inclusive futures. We conducted a comparative case study of two exemplary community collectives in India that exhibited differences in the degrees of internal and external marginalization. We identified two key cross-cutting themes of prefigurative organizing: projective cultural adjustment – whether a community leverages their traditional culture or breaks away from it, and tempered autonomy – negotiating autonomy without overtly challenging dominant groups, and exercising self-imposed restraints to make independent decisions. We show how these two themes manifested across three key processes of prefigurative organizing: prefiguring self-governance; commoning; and cultivating discursive spaces. These findings help us theorize that in communities where the degree of internal marginalization is high due to persisting social hierarchies, breaking away from past discriminatory practices, incorporating suspension of consent in the decision-making process, and introducing multiple constructive works are essential components of prefigurative organizing. In communities where the degree of external marginalization is high, building on the past, incorporating refusal in decision-making, and introducing unified constructive work are important components of prefigurative organizing. We suggest that prefigurative organizing against the dominant power structure, whether within community social hierarchies or external exploitative political-economic structures, is based on selective and strategic engagement without seeking an exit, as exit might not be an option for place-based communities. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research for alternative organizing and grand challenges.

The production-protection nexus: How political-economic processes influence prospects for transformative change in human-wildlife interactions

This article advances a novel analytical framework for investigating the influence of political-economic processes in human-wildlife interactions (HWI) to support efforts to transform wildlife conservation governance. To date, the majority of research and advocacy addressing HWI focuses on micro-level processes, while even the small body of existing literature exploring social dimensions of such interactions has largely neglected attention to political-economic forces. This is consonant with efforts to transform conservation policy and practice more broadly, which tend to emphasize “circular” change within current political-economic structures rather than “axial” transformation aiming to transcend these structures themselves. Our analysis thus advances understanding of potential for axial transformation in HWI via confrontation with, and “unmaking” of, constraining political-economic structures. It does so through cross-site analysis of conservation policy and practice in relation to three apex predator species (lions, jaguars and wolves) in varied geographic and socio-political contexts, grounded in qualitative ethnographic study within the different sites by members of an international research team. We explore how the relative power of different political-economic interests within each case influences how the animals are perceived and valued, and how this in turn influences conservation interventions and their impact on HWI within these spaces. We term this analysis of the “production-protection nexus” (the interrelation between process of resource extraction and conservation, respectively) in rural landscapes. We emphasize importance of attention to this formative nexus both within and across specific locales in growing global efforts to transform situations of human-wildlife conflict into less contentious coexistence.

The Modality of Mulyadi Jayabaya’s Political Clan in the Lebak Local Election in 2018

This research discusses a number of strengths or capital possessed by the Mulyadi Jayabaya political clan in the electoral process at the 2018 Lebak regional head election, as well as having brought up his daughter in the 2018 regional head elections as a representation of one of the local political clans that has dominated the political-economic structure. The incumbent’s success in this electoral process has cemented the status quo among political clans. In addition, this victory cannot be denied because of the symbolic power that has been obtained by the incumbent. As stated in the study of Pierre Bourdieu (1986), who has seen that in the social arena there are always those who dominate and are dominated. Thus, to analyze the amount of capital owned by the Mulyadi Jayabaya political clan, the author uses a concept that has been conveyed by Pierre Bourdieu regarding capital, which consists of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital. This research addresses a number of capitals that are used ath the same time in an effort to maintain their power in fighting the empty column and civil society members who are members of the fight group for empty column because capital has a significant role, especially the political legacy that has been abandoned by the previous regent. As a result, incumbents and political clans build networks formally, such as with the bureaucracy, and with informal leaders, such as religious leaders, youth, and organizations, in the aftermath of clan member’s victories in the 2018 Lebak regional head election.

Betel Nut Consumption and the Reasons for Its Rise among Chinese Migrant Workers

Background: In China, betel nut users were initially concentrated in specific regions and ethnic groups. However, in recent years, public health concerns have been raised because betel nuts, addictive substances, have become largely used by Chinese migrant workers. Methods: This study adopts an anthropological fieldwork research methodology to investigate the rise in betel nut consumption among Chinese migrant workers. We observe the everyday lives of migrant workers in the rural-urban area of Wuhan. We use in-depth interviews to understand their psychology and behaviors toward betel nut consumption. Discussion: The study’s results indicate that the observed increase in betel nut consumption among migrant workers is not only the result of the spread of betel nuts across regions and groups, but more importantly, it is related to the working and living conditions, social interaction, consumption culture, and masculinity image of migrant workers. The consumption of betel nuts reflects the political-economic structure and socio-cultural background to which Chinese migrant workers belong. Conclusion: The increasing consumption of betel nuts is a social issue that requires thorough research and government engagement. We contend that anthropology research may help identify the social mechanisms incentivizing betel nut consumption and solve the related public health issues among Chinese migrant workers from public policy and social governance perspectives.

The politics of animal extinction and conservation: Interests, framing, and policy

Why do conservation policies fail to prevent species extinctions and die-offs in contravention of stated intentions and goals? Bringing together a range of literature, including political ecology, political theory, conservation science, communication theory, environmental communication, with original data, this article explores this question, then addresses these failures within Aotearoa New Zealand's context. Using the New Zealand case, it offers a systems-level view of these failures, focusing on the influences and limitations that arise from the political-economic structures, fractured governance, interest group influence, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in representative democracies. Secondly, in these settings, we argue that communication and framing by the interested parties—politicians, government officials, interest groups and NGOs—buttress this system, partly by normalizing it, obscuring scientific realities, shifting focus away from deeper issues, and thus limiting the possibility of substantive solutions in what might be called a colonization of consciousness. Together, this economic-political-communication complex has failed to prevent—and in some ways aided—mass die-offs of native animal species. The article then suggests exploring alternative models, such as deliberative democracy, to this seemingly intractable problem, to strengthen the influence of scientific expertise, better inform decision-makers, advance public understandings of science, and improve democracy by engaging members of the public in decision-making processes. While this study focuses on New Zealand, the issues related to political ecology, the political-economic systems, and the framing of issues, apply to many democratic countries.

Degrowth and agri-food systems: a research agenda for the critical social sciences

Degrowth has become a recognised paradigm for identifying and critiquing systemic unsustainability rooted in the capitalist, growth-compelled economy. Increasingly, degrowth is discussed in relation to specific economic sectors such as the agri-food system. This paper builds on the foundational work of Gerber (2020) and Nelson and Edwards (2021). While both publications take a rather specific analytical or disciplinary focus—the former specifically connects critical agrarian studies and degrowth, the latter explores the contributions of the recent volume ‘Food for degrowth’—this paper takes stock of the emerging body of literature on degrowth and agri-food systems more broadly. It proposes research avenues that deepen, expand and diversify degrowth research on agri-food systems in four areas: (i) degrowth conceptualisations; (ii) theorisation of transformations towards sustainability; (iii) the political economy of degrowth agri-food systems; and (iv) rurality and degrowth. Together, these avenues devote due attention to a variety of agents (ranging from translocal networks to non-humans), spaces (e.g. the rural), theories (e.g. sustainability transitions and transformations towards sustainability) and policies (of the agricultural sector and beyond) that thus far have received limited attention within the degrowth literature. The critical social science perspective on degrowth agri-food systems, which is advanced in this paper, illuminates that the present unsustainability and injustice of hegemonic agri-food systems are not merely a problem of that sector alone, but rather are ingrained in the social imaginaries of how economies and societies should work as well as in the political–economic structures that uphold and reproduce these imaginaries.

Rising from the ashes of the film museum: the role of individual habitus and political-economic structures in the shaping of the British Film Institute’s curatorial strategies and the establishment of the BFI Gallery

ABSTRACT This article concentrates on the establishment and curation of the BFI Gallery at BFI Southbank (2007–2011), where the core, audience-facing cultural offer was extended to include contemporary artists' moving image installations. It considers the conditions that led the British Film Institute to favour commissioning over displaying, and the curatorial model of the temporary gallery commission over that of the collection-based film museum that had previously characterised the institution. The article discusses the critical and practical issues that affect the conceptualisation of the the BFI Gallery, such as the economic and political decisions of the day and the habitus of institutional management. To analyse the underlying mechanisms that triggered the changes of curatorial policies observed, consideration is given to the role of individual curators with a visual art background, who, from the early 2000s, reached the senior and executive levels of the BFI, an organisation previously led by cinema experts. The analysis uses the author's empirical experience as BFI curator to provide insight into the hidden cultural dynamics that generate the meaning of the work of art, with specific attention to curatorial moving image practices.

Animal Farm

In Republic II, after Socrates has constructed the smallest city answering the demands of Necessity, Glaucon dismisses it as unfit for human habitation. The lack of relishes makes life there unpalatable. Without further ado, this “healthy” and “true” city is abandoned, and Socrates spends the rest of the Republic on the etiology, diagnosis, and possible treatment of the chronic “fever” afflicting the city of luxury. Prominent commentators see nothing strange in his brisk turn away from the “true” city, taking the Kallipolis as a hardheaded alternative to Socratic pie in the sky. By contrast, I take seriously Socrates’ claim that the CP is the true city. I analyze its political-economic structure; show how this reappears in the Kallipolis; and explain the CP’s hidden role as a quasi-medical model of equilibrium, an ideal the Kallipolis never achieves, yet to which its rulers must look in exercising their craft.

Political economy of renewable energy transition in rentier states: The case of Oman

AbstractDespite the abundance of renewable resources, renewable energy accounts for less than 1% of the total installed power capacity in oil‐producing Gulf Arab states. While the political–economic structures of oil‐producing Gulf Arab states are thought to have played a role in determining these states' remarkably low uptake of renewable energy, these structures remain understudied. With a focus on Oman, we assess how political–economic structures have influenced its adoption of renewable energy. We implement an analytical framework that integrates insights from energy transition studies and the political–economic theory of rentier states. Drawing on secondary data and primary information from semi‐structured interviews with renewable energy developers and energy experts, this study reveals that renewable energy roll‐out in Oman has been delayed through three different strategies, namely the use media and public debate, a reduction of the power of renewable energy stakeholders, and the use of institutional mechanisms to strengthen hydrocarbon‐based technologies. Oman's renewable energy transition efforts aim to protect rents from oil exports rather than advance low‐carbon energy transition.

Professionalisation and the spectacle of nature: Understanding changes in the visual imaginaries of private protected area organisations in Australia

Imaginaries of protected areas as state-based fortresses have been challenged by expansion of the global nature conservation estate on non-government lands, notably in contexts such as Australia where neoliberal reform has been strong. Little is known about the implications of this change for the meanings, purposes and practices of nature conservation. Images are central to public understandings of nature conservation. We thus investigate the visual communication of environmental non-government organisations (ENGOs) involved in private protected areas in Australia, with particular focus on Bush Heritage Australia (BHA). We employ a three-part design encompassing quantitative and qualitative methods to study the visual imaginaries underlying nature conservation in BHA's magazines and the web homepages of it and four other ENGOs over 2004–2020. We find that visual imaginaries changed across time, as ENGOs went through an organisational process of professionalisation comprising three dynamics: legitimising, marketising, and differentiating. An imaginary of dedicated Western volunteer groups protecting scenic wilderness was replaced by the spectacle of uplifting and intimate individual encounters with native nature. Amenable to working within rather than transforming dominant political-economic structures, the new imaginary empowers professional ENGOs and their partners as primary carers of nature. It advertises a mediated access to spectacular nature that promises positive emotions and redemption for environmental wrongs to financial supporters of ENGOs. These findings reveal the role of non-government actors under neoliberal conditions in the use of visual representations to shift the meanings, purposes and practices of nature conservation.

Beyond "toxic bodies": Multiplied rationalities of women's reproductive health in a high-risk environmental area (Taranto, Italy).

This study investigates women's reproductive health concerns in Taranto, a steel town and a "high-risk environmental area" in Italy. It draws on participatory ethnographic research (body mapping, interviews and fieldnotes) and analyses political and social aspects of women's reproductive health in relation to pollution. I argue that in highly polluted environments, both political rationalities and women's health concerns over their bodies are multiplied, extending beyond a focus on their bodies as shaped by toxic exposure. Women make sense of knowledge about their reproductive health and questions of responsibility in relation not only to societal norms, but also through reference to the wider polluted environment and the political-economic structures they inhabit. By focusing on women's own experiences, the study contributes to our understanding of women's agency over their environment-health relations and seeks to complicate women's role as environmental subjects beyond "toxic bodies".

Deconstructing citizenship and the growth of Detroit's green renaissance

Detroit is in the midst of a contemporary urban renewal project that is being carried out through green gentrification. The displacement of residents is happening through the discursive and political management of the water system, which produces conditions that leave residents with few options for remaining in the city. In this article, I explore how resource management, particularly water and wastewater infrastructure, has been used to degrade the political efficacy of Black Detroit residents. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analysis of news articles and government reports, I argue that in recent years the city of Detroit has developed a wasting economy. This political-economic structure relies on the coupling of deconstructive and constructive processes that promote the withering of citizenship in order to make way for radical racial transformation in access to and control over the city. Keywords: Green gentrification, environmental racism, infrastructural violence, embodied metabolism

Beyond Scarcity: An Assessment of Water Management in Egypt from A Political Ecology Perspective

Water management constitutes a challenge for contemporary Egypt, as the country faces a water shortage that, in certain areas, might endanger the basic needs of people in the dry season. This article seeks to understand the origin of water problems, and argues that beyond existing scarcity due to environmental challenges, current sociopolitical conditions play a significant role. Egypt is socially, economically, and environmentally in a difficult position to be sustainable. The paper utilizes the political ecology approach to shed light on the nexus between the fields mentioned above and tries to create an integrated and comprehensive strategy to analyze the water problems and possible solutions for contemporary Egypt. SWOT analysis helps evaluate the existing conditions (strengths and weaknesses) and potentialities (opportunities and threats) for the Egyptian agriculture and water management sector. Three different angles are utilized during the analysis: the infrastructural background (the economic aspect), the institutional basis (the political aspect), and the international impacts (the environmental aspect) that affect water policy. Regarding the mounting challenges, a slow change of the system is expected, but negative changes in the natural environment could accelerate pressure on Egyptian society and government to adjust. However, the support of international partners to maintain a politically and socially stable Egypt contributes to maintaining archaic political-economic structures that are unsustainable.

Constructing Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as a radically transformative policy in South Africa: government v corporate discourse

This paper investigates how the South African government and mining corporations have appropriated anti-apartheid and anti-colonial discourses to legitimise Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) as a radically transformative policy without being transformative in conception, discourse, or action. There is a presumption in academic circles that BEE is a panacea for radically transforming historical, structural, and unequal power relations in South Africa. This article rejects this presumption by demonstrating how the conception and discourse of BEE have ignored these power relations and their underlying political economic structures of apartheid capitalism even before the policy was implemented or enforced by the government. Using [Young, Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press] critique of the distributive paradigm of justice, and employing [Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press] three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this article argues that the government and mining corporations present BEE as a new measure of radical transformation while simultaneously reducing this transformation to the micro concept of economic participation, focusing on numbers, representation, and targets rather than on historical, structural, and unequal power relations. As a result, the government and these corporations have reinforced and maintained these power relations while employing the discourse of BEE to masquerade as advancing their transformation. The crux is that BEE encourages Black people to operate within economically and institutionally oppressive structures which amplify the conditions they purport to be challenging.

Implementation of agrarian reform in North Sumatra, Indonesia: The productiveness of institutional fragmentation

Over the past few years, the Government of Indonesia has set out to implement an ambitious goal of formally changing land tenure arrangements on over 20 million hectares of land across the country. In this paper, I analyze the politics surrounding the policy framework’s implementation at the provincial level in North Sumatra. Given variegated meanings of agrarian reform held by different civil society actors as well as the abstract national-level policy framework allowing for multiple types of tenure to be claimed, I show how “ineffective” policy implementation cannot be merely explained by characterizing state institutions as dysfunctional, in part due to how “accurate” claims cannot be ascertained in a self-evident manner. Rather, the invocation and resignification of longstanding commonly accepted communitarian vocabularies provide opportunities for different civil society actors to assert and gain recognition for specific visions of (re)territorializing land and (re)subjectivizing rural populations to challenge longstanding political-economic structures that continue to privilege plantation, mining, and logging interests. As such, contemporary fragmentation of the Indonesian land bureaucracy should not be seen in a negative light. Instead, bureaucratic interactions at the provincial level are decisive modes of articulating and formalizing legitimate visions of land use and rural development as well as defining appropriate economic, environmental, and cultural subjectivities in a non-deterministic manner.

Contested transition? Exploring the politics and process of regional energy planning in Indonesia

Transitioning to low carbon energy involves policies, institutions, and actors across different scales of governance. Indonesia's aspiration for a transition to low carbon energy is occurring in the dynamics of the re-scaling of environmental governance through decentralization processes. This article examines the interplays of actors at the national and provincial levels in negotiating energy futures as the energy planning processes unfold on the ground and identifies context specific factors that shape the outcomes. Further, it investigates how the regulatory framework and institutional arrangements for energy transition planning could not only generate obstacles for renewable energy transition but also open opportunities for actions. It is based on interviews with stakeholders at national and subnational levels, combined with the analysis of policy documents, studies, and relevant reports. The findings reveal emerging spaces for local actions amid constraining regulatory and institutional fields through the process of regional energy plan development. However, the ability of sub-national actors to seize these spaces is influenced by several factors, most notably political leadership, civil society engagement, political economic structure and power relations. These in-depth insights from Indonesia have wider implications for understanding the multi-scalar dynamics of energy transitions and provide useful policy recommendations for engaging subnational actors in the transition process.

On viability: Climate change and the science of possible futures

Growing attention to the impacts of climate change around the world has been accompanied by the profusion of discourses about the lives, livelihoods, and geographies that are “viable” and those that are not in the time of climate change. These discourses of viability often invoke concrete physical limits and tipping points suggesting a transcendent natural order. Conversely, I demonstrate how viability is co-produced through political economic structures that exercise power at multiple scales in shaping the environment and understandings of how it is changing. I describe three dialectics of this co-production: epistemic/material (between ideas about viability and their biophysical and political economic conditions), epistemic/normative (between how the world is understood to be and ideas about how we should live in it), and inter-scalar (between geographic scales, where action at one scale shapes both ecologies and understandings of possible action at another). Each of these dialectics shapes the knowledge regimes that govern the ambiguous social and biophysical process of disappearance and foreclosure of livelihood possibilities in the time of climate change. I examine these discourses of viability through narratives of unviable agrarian livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh, as a lens through which to examine the dialectics of viability more broadly. I situate these discourses concretely in relation to an analysis of interdisciplinary social and natural scientific research on ecological and agrarian viability in coastal Bangladesh now and in the future. Across a broad interdisciplinary spectrum, I find that scientific attention to political economy shapes the politics of possibility. Finally, I demonstrate how discourses of viability limit alternative possible economic and ecological futures. I do this through a concrete examination of the co-production of viable agrarian futures within communities in coastal Bangladesh. These alternative visions indicate that the viability of agriculture is shaped by historical and ongoing decisions in the present about cultivation, water management, and development intervention.

Transition coalitions: toward a theory of transformative just transitions

ABSTRACT From its origins in the labor and environmental justice movements in the United States, the concept of a just transition has travelled globally as a frame to infuse concerns of justice in public responses to escalating environmental crises. However, important gaps remain in terms of understanding the potential of transition efforts to be transformative in shifting the political economic structures that cause, sustain, and deepen injustices. This article asks: what does critical sociological theory of power and social change offer for understanding the features of transformative transition coalitions as compared to those that reinforce environmental, social, and economic inequality? To this purpose, I apply insights from Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, contemporary scholars who use their theory, and environmental justice scholars to identify the means and form of transformative just transition coalitions. I identify two respective conditions of transformative coalitions: strategic power and embedded relations. Through this lens, I describe four transition coalition types: status quo, impeded, disembedded, and transformative, and discuss related examples.