Rights Of Peasants Research Articles

New Rights Advocacy and the Human Rights of Peasants: La Via Campesina and the Evolution of New Human Rights Norms

New Rights Advocacy and the Human Rights of Peasants: La Via Campesina and the Evolution of New Human Rights Norms

Nature of Conflicts, Tensions and Exploitation in Sharecropping in Rural Sindh

This paper explains the causes of conflicts and tensions in sharecropping relationships, the nature and level of exploitation. It explains the immediate as well as root causes of conflicts that emerge between sharecroppers and landlords. Life-world of peasants of Sindh has been explored at village, sub-regional and regional level. It was found that the historical systemic structures of exploitation still exist in its refined form in peasant life-world. Peasant life within village and among village peasants is relatively peaceful. Conflicts emerge or take serious turn when outside systemic agents get involved in issues related to sharecropper and landlord. Historically property rights given to big landlords and feudal lords by imperialistic forces while snatching the indigenous right of peasants to self-cultivation, is the root cause that has spawned several sub-systemic pathologies in the life-world of peasants. Absentee landlordism, Kamdaari system, debt bondage, social bondage, system of Kann, landlessness, adulterated hybrid seeds, and issues of Sanad are some of the sub-systemic evils that have emerged over the years. All such sub-systemic structures put bigger and influential landlords into strategic advantage over the sharecroppers, particularly landless peasants; the imbalance that perpetuates “permanent liminality” suppresses reciprocal dialogues and discourages mutual negotiations. Outside systemic factors like SHO-Landlord nexus or Feudal-Police-Tapedar troika play central role in conflict creation and exacerbation in landlord-sharecropper relationship leading to bloody conflicts, caste wars, tribal feuds and honor-killings, thus, further differentiating and alienating life-world and the system rural Sindh.

Kitap incelemesi : Alan Mikhail (2011), Nature and Empire in Otoman Egypt: An Environmental History, (NY: Cambridge University Press).

History is an account of the use, control, and management of the irrigation system in pre-modern Egypt, and how it coincided with Egypt’s transformation from a remote Ottoman province loosely connected to the capital into a sovereign state ruled by an autarch. Mikhail’s argument is clear: Egypt’s move away from being a remote province of the Ottoman empire into a strong, centralized, and authoritarian polity controlled by Egyptian bureaucracy transformed the management of environmental resources. This transformation necessitated the abandonment of old ways and habits, caused tension between the local populations and Egyptian bureaucracy; and eliminated the rights of peasants over land and water use. Mikhail’s book is valuable in two significant ways. First, it acknowledges the interrelation between environmental changes and political and socio-economic transformations in the Ottoman Empire. Second, it moves nature from afield to the center of historical narrative providing new environmental perspectives and approaches to historical events in Ottoman history that were once regarded as unimportant. Mikhail’s work is noteworthy for its methodology, approach, and its straightforward and readable prose. There is no doubt that environmental historians will take notice of the fact that the Ottoman Empire, due to its sheer size and proximity to Europe, Asia, and Africa, its large diversity of ecological zones, climatic conditions, and environmental features has a lot to offer

Linking the Rights of Peasants to the Right to Food in the United Nations

This article analyzes two convergent processes: (1) the increasing specification of the right to food in international law; and (2) the efforts of transnational agrarian social movements, notably Vía Campesina, to have the United Nations adopt an instrument on the rights of peasants. Because one-seventh of humanity suffers from hunger and because the right to food has wide support among UN member states and is essential for the enjoyment of all other rights, it has become a magnet for diverse kinds of rights claims. Vía Campesina has elaborated a draft instrument that has received growing attention in the UN Human Rights Council. Several of the claimed rights, however, are contentious and have generated opposition from powerful UN member states.

Médicos, hospitales y servicios de inteligencia: el movimiento médico mexicano de 1964-1965 a través de reportes de inteligencia

In the autumn of 1964, residents and interns of Mexico's hospitals began a strike to demand salary increases, better working conditions, and more educational opportunities. As time passed, however, these workplace demands shifted to encompass more global issues of social justice, the right of all Mexicans to healthcare, and even peasant rights and agrarian reform. The Mexican government, concerned by the growing influence of these young doctors, made it a top priority of the intelligence service to monitor on a daily basis all Mexico City hospitals and to clandestinely follow certain physicians. Using only a sampling of these intelligence reports, the article reveals how the government of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz used the medical movement to better understand the student protests of 1968.

Médicos, hospitales y servicios de inteligencia: el movimiento médico mexicano de 1964-1965 a través de reportes de inteligencia

In the autumn of 1964, residents and interns of Mexico's hospitals began a strike to demand salary increases, better working conditions, and more educational opportunities. As time passed, however, these workplace demands shifted to encompass more global issues of social justice, the right of all Mexicans to healthcare, and even peasant rights and agrarian reform. The Mexican government, concerned by the growing influence of these young doctors, made it a top priority of the intelligence service to monitor on a daily basis all Mexico City hospitals and to clandestinely follow certain physicians. Using only a sampling of these intelligence reports, the article reveals how the government of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz used the medical movement to better understand the student protests of 1968

Naming the Subject: Recovering "Euro-Asian" History

Naming the Subject:Recovering "Euro-Asian" History Emma J. Teng (bio) The historic election of Barack Obama as America's first biracial president has drawn attention once again to a phenomenon that has been gathering momentum since the 1990s: that is, the movement among so-called "multiracial" or "mixed-race" people for recognition, both political and cultural. Although the American media has mostly focused on the multiracial movement in the US, this push for recognition actually has global dimensions. Kumari Jayawardena's Erasure of the Euro-Asian: Recovering Early Radicalism and Feminism in South Asia is among the latest in a spate of books published in Asia that seeks to restore those of Asian/European ancestry to the historical record, including Michael Roberts, et al., People Inbetween: The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformation within Sri Lanka (1989), Myrna Braga-Blake's Singapore Eurasians -- Memories and Hopes (1992), and Vicki Lee's Being Eurasian: Memories across Racial Divides (2004).1 In fact, if Paul Spickard identified a "biracial biography boom" in the US during the 1990s, we seem to be currently in the midst of a "Eurasian publishing boom" that spans the globe from Asia, to Australia, Europe, and the US.2 This publishing trend includes not only academic books like Jayawardena's, but also memoirs, family biographies/genealogies, dictionaries, musical CDs, and even cookbooks.3 It further includes projects such as the Anglo Indian Heritage Books series, which reprints classic works such as H.A. Stark's Hostages to India (1926) and Cedric Dover's Cimmerii?: or Eurasians and Their Future (1929).4 What does Jayawardena's book add to the mix? Although South Asian studies is beyond my own field, I can say that I found much in this richly documented monograph to inspire my current work on Chinese and Chinese American representations of Eurasian interracialism. The book certainly speaks to a wider audience, to those who are interested in multiracial identity, and in women's history more generally. The main aim of the book is to counter the erasure of so-called "Euro-Asians" (the author's own term) from the historical record, and to demonstrate their contributions to social movements in South Asia during the colonial era. The book is divided into three main sections: the first provides background on the historical formation of "mixed-race" communities in South Asia under Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial rule; the second discusses Euro-Asian radicals and modernism; the third, the role of women and gender. Jayawardena argues that Euro-Asians were not "marginalmen" [End Page 257] in colonial society, but actually played central roles in the struggles for worker and peasant rights, women's rights, democracy, secularism, and protonationalism. Focusing on public intellectuals, she crafts a portrait of what she calls "the utopian vision of Euro-Asians," a vision that extended beyond their own communal group to the nation. The book highlights the important contributions of figures like John Ricketts, Henry Derozio, Charles Lorenz, Frederick Nell, A.E. Buultjens, Eleanor Lorenz, Winifred Nell, and Agnes de Silva. Much of this ground has been covered elsewhere, but Jayawardena makes a significant contribution in her discussion of pioneering women, as well as in her intersectional analysis of gender and ethnicity. She demonstrates that in contrast to their stereotypical image as "exotic creoles," Euro-Asian women were often highly educated, and were among the earliest women professionals in South Asia, especially in the fields of education and medicine. The Euro-Asian "new woman" broke new ground on numerous fronts, and served in the vanguard of feminist and other radical movements. The fascinating stories of many women are collected here, some rescued from the dustbin of history. As such, Jayawardena goes far beyond the writers of earlier generations, who often rendered the Euro-Asian woman doubly invisible. A second important contribution of the book is seemingly simpler, but potentially more far-reaching: that lies in the name that Jayawardena invents to describe the subjects of her study. "What's in a Name?" As early as the 1920s, Eurasian "race man" Cedric Dover urged "mixedrace" populations throughout Asia to give serious consideration to this issue. The question of nomenclature had plagued...

중국 신 농촌 건설에 있어서 농촌 잉여 노동력에 대한 해결방안 연구

How to make use of the surplus labor force is the key problem referring to success or failure of new rural building in China. The purpose of the paper is to know exactly that what the problems to the development in the rural area, especially the problem of the rural labor force. The way to solve rural labor force question is to protect the rights of peasants, eliminate the extant city and rural`s partitioning pattern and give them the same treatment. Firstly, it should dominate the city and rural economic society`s development; Secondly, it should dominate the markets in city and rural, and speed up the fair competition in employment; Thirdly, it should dominate the infrastructural facilities in city and rural; Fourthly, it should dominate the education and social enterprises in city and rural; Fifthly, it should dominate the social security system in city and rural. It should also enlarge the investment of funding, science technology, talented person and management. This is the only way to solve the problem of rural labor force outlet.

Peasants Should Enjoy Equal Social Security Right with Urban Dwellers

According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the effective conventions therein, every citizen should enjoy equal right of social security. But in reality, a peasant has much less such right than an urban dweller, only because of their different hukou. Peasants, as part of the investors of state-owned property, should have the rights of owners and enjoy the benefits from their assets; the existing binary social frame which limits the rights of peasants baffles China’s progress into a market economy and founding of a harmonious social society. Therefore, establishing a uniform system of security right that authorizes all citizens to enjoy it equally is one of China’s urgent tasks.

Beyond State and Peasant: The Egalitarian Import of Juristic Revisions of Agrarian and Administrative Contracts in the Early Mamlūk Period

AbstractIn this article I argue that Shāfi'ī and Hanbalī jurists forged an agricultural policy beginning in the early Mamlūk period that aimed at securing the rights of peasants. They did so by introducing radical and systematic changes in the doctrines of their schools, applying the highest categories of legal reasoning (ijtihād). An analysis of Shāfi'ī and Hanbalī legal texts reveals that jurists advanced new interpretations of contracts of sharecropping and iqtā' that systematically promoted the interests of landless peasants over the elite. The legal revisions were predicated on developments in the land assignment/taxation system of the early 8th/14th century. Ultimately, the jurists' strategy exploited state innovations in the interest of advancing social and economic objectives that were independent of any centralized political authority or state institution.

Conflict in the Countryside: The Emerging Political Awareness of the Peasants

Yu Jianrong Conflict in the Countryside: The Emerging Political Awareness of the Peasants 1. THE MEANING OF SOCIAL ACTION ORIENTATION THERE ARE TWO BASIC WAYS TO UNDERSTAND THE METHODS OF THE contemporary Chinese resistance movement to protect the rights of peasants: the logic of action and the structure of action. The logic of social action deals with the emergence and the development of social action; it is very much part of the study of motivations (in examining the logic of social action, it is important to pay attention to the process of its inception and development, the meanings of which are given by social action theory). The structure of social action is essentially concerned with its internal forms. These represent the basis by which to determine the nature of social action and also provide an impor­ tant basis by which the nature of social action is determined. The inter­ nal structure of any kind of social action can be divided into various aspects, such as action patterns, action techniques, action orientation, and other special properties of action. Social action orientations are not only related to regulatory systems of social action—meaning the standards of what actors can and cannot do—they are also even more related to why actors perform one way rather than another; these are the fundamental issues relating to action. As Max Weber pointed out in Economy and Society, the important factors for determining social oriensocial research Vol 73 : No 1: Spring 2006 141 tations, including not to do something or to tolerate something, are (1) the rationality of goals, and by anticipating the circumstances of the facts of the external world and the conduct of other people to utilize this anticipation as a ‘condition’ or a ‘method’ in order to await the realization of the intended results that one strives for and considers by way of one’s conformance with rationality; (2) the rationality of values, and by the pure belief (no matter if it is interpreted in terms of logic, aesthetics, or religion) in unconditional, intrinsic value, to deal with any specific conduct consciously, regardless of whether or not one attains results; (3) morale, particularly in relation to emotions, and the condi­ tions arising from present morale and emotions; (4) tradition, arising from popularly agreed upon custom. Simply stated, the “foundations of the orientations of social action can be: (a) convention, (b) interest, or (c) legal order” (Parsons, 2003: 728). If we apply this to the examina­ tion and analysis of the contemporary Chinese resistance movement to protect the rights of peasants, we will discover that “interest” is the basis of their action orientation, “legality” is the special feature of their action, and “custom” is the method of their action. Clearly, this movement possesses the ingredients of social modernity, the customs of rural Chinese traditional society, and moreover, is characterized by the fact that peasants are the subjects of social action. Only by under­ standing these ingredients, customs, and legal appeals shall we be in a position to draw an exhaustive map of the contemporary Chinese resis­ tance movement to protect the rights of peasants. Iwill attempt to use the resistance movement to protect the rights of peasants in Hengyang County in Hunan Province as the concrete evidence of my analysis in order to examine the action orientations of this resistance movement. Hengyang County in Hunan Province is situ­ ated in Central China, and is a typical Chinese agricultural economic region. The peasants and the peasant leaders of this county who have organized this resistance movement have already attracted a high degree of attention among Chinese scholars, and they have influenced Chinese government agricultural policies (Yu Jianrong, 2003). The sources of this paper come from my own protracted follow-up inter­ 142 social research views with the leaders of the resistance movement to protect the rights of peasants. 2. THE OBJECTIVES OF ACTION AND THE EXPRESSION OF INTEREST Interest is usually considered a key factor in social action. “By way of the category o f‘interest,’ we can on the basis of the shared expectations of actors work out the orientations of ‘rationality of goals’ in order to understand the unity of their action” (Parsons...

Matija Gubec Goes to Spain: Symbols and Ideology in Croatia, 1936–1939

In 1930s Croatia, radical political ideologies on the left and right gained increasing support as the unresolved “national question” and international events challenged the Croatian Peasant Party’s position as the dominant political force. Both communists and the extreme right began using the symbol of Matija Gubec, the leader of a sixteenth century peasant revolt and icon of the Peasant Party, to mobilize their own followers in the years preceding World War Two. This article traces how each of the political forces in Croatia reinterpreted the Gubec legand to fit their own radically different ideologies, paying especially close attention to the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), when communist-led volunteers from Croatia in the Republican Army established a unit named after Gubec and set a precedent for similar units in the partisan resistance in the 1940s. All sides realized the potential of Gubec as a Croatian national symbol, including the communists, who sought to counter their opponents’ claims that they were internationalists in the service of foreign powers. The essence of Gubec remained; however, his role as a fighter for peasant rights, and in the interwar period, the majority of Croats remained peasants who easily could relate to such an explicit political symlbol.

Without One Ritual Note: Folklore Performance and the Haitian State,1935–1946

During a roundtable discussion focused on the early history of Haitian staged folklore performance that took place in Port-au-Prince in April 1997, one panelist noted that the so-called mouvement folklorique had “really begun” under the post–U.S. occupation presidency of Elie Lescot (1941–46). Another then observed that “paradoxically, you also had under Lescot the kanpay rejete,” the Roman Catholic Church’s violent crusade against “superstition,” which the state backed in 1941–42 with military force.1 This article focuses on the logic of that historical conjunction, examining official cultural nationalist policy in Haiti during the late 1930s and early 1940s in relation to the postoccupation legal regime against les pratiques superstitieuses (superstitious practices). The latter was a new penal category, instituted by Lescot’s predecessor, Stenio Vincent, a year after the end of the nineteen-year U.S. military occupation of Haiti in the summer of 1934. Repealing the longstanding legal prohibition against les sortileges (spells), Vincent’s government tightened the official interdiction of particular forms of popular ritual, but also, for the first time, affirmed the right of peasants to organize “popular dances.” The article will consider the implications of this legal formulation in light of the Haitian state’s support for the church’s “antisuperstition” campaign and its simultaneous construction and promotion of ritual dance as an

Land Rights in Rural China: Facts, Fictions and Issues

China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and

Base Communities and Rural Mobilization in Northern Brazil

and activism for agrarian reform. This article presents the results of field research that demonstrates this relationship. The theoretical analysis combines structural and interpretative frameworks, using the synthesis of the theories of NIarx and Weber found in Otto Maduro's work, supplemented by that of Gramsci, in order to p lace the study of religiously influenced change within the broader poktical-economic context. Qualitative data are drawn from forty-nine interviews corducted in eight rural parishes in the states of MaranAdo and Pard. The subjects included thirty-eight lay members of base communities} most of whom are also members of 7ural unions, and eleven pastoral agents four religious sisters, four priests, and three lay church workers. These interviews reveal the knks between the church and agranan activism. The article concludes with a discussiorl of the prospect for the continuaton of such lin1cs. Land is a key issue in Brazil. Conflict over land resulted in the murder of Chico Mendes and in massacres of indigenous peoples. The driving of thousands of peasant farmers from the countryside in the name of modernization has produced an artificial urbanization characterized by soaring rates of unemployment, hungert homelessness, and crime. There is a growing movement to defend the rights of peasants against the land claims of large ranchers and national and foreign companies. A strong force within this movement has come from base communities (comurlidades eclesiais de base, or CEBs) grassroots Catholic groups that study the Bible and discuss its application to people's lives. Although there is an abundance of research on Brazilian CEBs (see Drogus 1992; Hewitt 1991; Mainwaring 1989; Mariz 1992), little has been written about their activism for agrarian reform. This article offers a theoretical framework for examining the links between base communities and rural mobilization, and presents qualitative data gathered in the eastern Amazon region.l

Broken promises: popular protest, Indian nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar, 1935-1946

Concentrating on a nine-year period, this study examines the changing relationship between the Congress and its mass base in the penultimate phase of the Raj. This phase of the national movement was particularly important as, in the course of it, the Congress changed from being a movement of opposition to being a party in power. Twice within the period, in 1937-39 and again in 1946, the Congress accepted office. This had far-reaching implications for the nature of the organization and its relationship with its mass constituency. Soon after the Congress assumed office in 1937 a large-scale peasant agitation emerged which aimed to persuade the Congress to abide by its promises to the people and restore peasant rights eroded by landlord attacks and a growing resource crisis. The book highlights the critical ecological context of these agitations. Following the withdrawal from office in 1939, the pressures on the Congress shifted dramatically. This process was to culminate in the Quit India movement in 1942. Immediately after this mass upsurge, the Congress retreated underground and became a more amorphous organization allied to dacoit gangs in the countryside. The activities of these underground organizations, known as the Azad Dastas, have not been described previously, and provide an instructive picture of the nature of popular nationalism.

Agricultural biodiversity and peasant rights to subsistence in the central Andes during Inca rule

Pronounced agricultural biodiversity present in the central Andes was shaped through economic and social features of peasant agriculture during Inca rule in the 1400s and the early 1500s. The organization of economic activities into dual production and the claims of peasant households to subsistence rights were particularly formative. Dual production under the Inca entailed various biological and political economic distinctions between surplus-oriented farming and subsistence agriculture. Much surplus-oriented farming relied on a few crops and crop types, and it was organized by the Inca state and the official religion. In contrast, subsistence agriculture contained to majority of diverse crops and crop types, and it was directed by peasant households. Subsistence rights involved the claims to resources that enabled household production of several customary consumption goods. Agricultural biodiversity along with the capacity to marshall sufficient land (including the environmental range of farm land) and labor (including the scheduling of labor) for production formed integral parts of peasant subsistence rights under the Inca. Following Inca downfall, the struggle for subsistence rights by peasants in the central Andes served as a crucial fulcrum for the subsequent history of agricultural biodiversity.

Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest in the Early Porfiriato: Maps

U NDER CONDITIONS of rigid social and political hierarchy, and especially where rural cultivators form a distinct and subordinate ethnic group, marked improvement in the profitability of agricultural enterprise tends to be associated with regressive movements in the distribution of property (land, livestock, implements, and the like) as well as direct assaults on the political liberties and other rights of peasants. While there has been some recognition that such a process accompanied the large scale penetration of foreign capital and technology into much of IndoLatin America in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the process has not received the attention it deserves.' Perhaps the most visible and costly byproduct of nineteenth-century foreign intrusion were the railroads. Hundreds, even thousands, of miles of railroads often were built even before substantial direct investments were made in other kinds of enterprise. In fact railroads accounted for more than half of all British and United States investments in Latin America until well after the turn of the century.2 The close relationship between transport innovation and export sector development has been very evident to historians.3 However, much less is known of the impact of railroads on agrarian conditions except where the new transport system formed part of the agricultural export system. Yet railroads often induced profound transformations

The legislative activity of the Duke of Mazovia Janusz I of Warsaw 1381-1429

The article presents the legislative activity of Janusz I of Warsaw who from 1381 was an independent ruler of the Eastern Mazovia. It also offers an analysis of 15 legal instruments including 14 statutes and one landed privilege, which is the oldest known act of this type from the region of Mazovia delivered 21st June 1414 in Nowe Miasto for both the Czersk and Warsaw nobility. The article further deals with the division of specific regulations into criminal and private law, which includes marriage and family law, the law of succession, property law, obligations, the right of peasants to leave a village belonging to a feudal master as well as court proceedings. The article finishes with the presentation of the research results.