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Call
for papers for Special Issue titled 'Global Crisis
and Agrarian Transformation: What Future for Re-peasantization?',
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy. |
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Agrarian
South: Journal of Political Economy invites
articles for its Special Issue to be published in
December 2013, on ''Global Crisis and Agrarian Transformation:
What Future for Re-peasantization?''. The deadline
for receipt of manuscripts is 10
June 2013. Manuscript submissions should
adhere to journal styles (see http://ags.sagepub.com/)
and not exceed 8,000 words. All manuscripts will
be subject to peer review. Abstracts of 150 words
should be sent in advance for early feedback. For
inquiries and submissions, please contact the Editors
at agrariansouth@gmail.com.
Global Crisis and Agrarian
Transformation: What Future for Re-peasantization?
The multiple crises that are unfolding in the twenty-first
century, from the economic, to those of climate,
energy, and food, will persist and deepen, and challenge
generations to come. The crises are unique in their
complexity, while the challenge they pose is nothing
less than rebuilding a world system that respects
the sovereignty of nations, promotes the equitable
and sustainable use of natural resources, and re-orients
development away from Eurocentric modernization.
The dominant Western model of development projected
after the Second World War conceived of economic
growth and prosperity as a process of stages. Aided
by Western technology, credit, and strategic protection,
and supported by a benevolent state, this was to
lead to a modernity defined by technological advance,
industrialization, urbanization, and mass consumption.
Contending models of modernity also existed, most
notably the Soviet and the Chinese. The former differed
mainly in its emphasis on autonomy from Western
monopolies, not its basic vision of modernity. The
Chinese model differed more substantively, by defending
a peasant path to industrialization, balance between
town and country, and an external autonomy reinforced
by internal balance. This was the quintessential
case of a modernity seen through the eyes of the
peasantry.
None of these three models survived the Cold War
intact. As neoliberalism spread throughout the system,
the Soviet model came undone, the Chinese was coopted,
though not defeated, and the Western model was undermined
by its underlying capitalist logic. In the 1980s,
aspects of the original Western model were demoted,
especially the state as a planning institution and
industrialization as a goal for all nations. But
development under Western firms, finance, and strategic
protection was retained as an ideal and reinforced
in the 1990s, as were urbanization and mass consumption
of an ever more individualized character. The latter
element has now also suffered a severe setback,
by the dramatic spending cuts and burgeoning unemployment
that have struck the centers of the system, following
the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, Western monopolies
have been entering a phase of contestation by ''emerging''
countries in the South; this remains contradictory
in its dynamics, including the role played by China,
which has embarked on a new path of industrialization
and rural-urban migration. Yet, it is clear that
the original Western model is a mere shadow of its
past. The question remains whether there will emerge
a new relation of forces to contest Western monopolies
effectively and, moreover, to overcome the idea
that modernity requires a rural exodus.
This Special Issue intends to initiate a systematic
debate on 'the return to the countryside'. To be
sure, the rural exodus continues unabated, swelling
the ranks of populations in flux, as formal employment
continues to dwindle and peasant production is further
squeezed. This has led many to argue that 'de-peasantization'
is a social fact, and that it should be supported
by public policies which promote the diversification
of petty economic activities among those expelled
from peasant and formal employment. A contrary position
has argued that nowhere in the South has the rural
exodus yielded permanent urbanization, but an indeterminate
process of semi-proletarianization among societies
straddling peasant production and varieties of self-
and salaried employment. Thus, what is required
is an agrarian transformation which rebuilds agriculture
and promotes food sovereignty and new inter-sectoral
relations on a more autonomous and sustainable basis.
New rural movements have also been staking such
a claim since the 1990s, by occupying land and recuperating
peasant production, and these have been joined by
urban movements similarly staking claims to land
on the margins of towns. It appears that there are
today, more than ever before, objective conditions,
among diverse societies across Africa, Asia and
Latin America, for the elaboration of policies with
popular appeal for a return to the countryside on
new terms.
The global crisis presently unfolding has been experienced
in more profound ways among the countries of the
South that were forced to adjust to the adversities
of their external economic environment, well before
the crisis struck the centre. And among these countries,
economic crisis amplified their energy and food
crises, and also synergized adversely with the local
effects of global climate change. These serial national
crises may be taken as reasonable indicators of
things to come, as the global crisis deepens and
its effects are felt more immediately throughout
the system.
In a number of cases across the South, beyond China,
a new thinking on the countryside has been evolving
and new policies put in place from a peasant-friendly
perspective. A consensus is emerging, slowly but
surely, that development requires the re-building
of agriculture, so as to make the countryside viable
for a dignified life for larger populations and
to transform it into a basic element of national
sovereignty, via food production for domestic consumption
and new synergies with domestic industries. The
factors which have been driving such policies are
diverse. In countries which have embarked on a path
of radical nationalism, such as Cuba, Venezuela,
Bolivia, Zimbabwe, and Nepal, the driving force
has been the recognition that food and energy dependence,
and monopolistic control over land and natural resources
by foreign capital and racial/caste minorities,
are contrary to national sovereignty. And in these
cases, the agrarian question has once again become
a national question, a land question, and a peasant
question.
The fuller meaning of 're-peasantization' has not
yet revealed itself. Indeed, it is still early days.
It remains in dispute even in the countries above,
on a series of issues such as land tenure, appropriate
technology, sustainability, cooperative production,
markets, state support, relations with industry,
and not least gender relations, given that the return
to the countryside can imply neither a return to
an idyllic past nor a regression to patriarchy.
It is important to consider other forms in which
a return to the countryside, or to agriculture more
generally, has been underway. Among the newcomers
to this scenario are urbanites in the North, such
as in Detroit, once the 'Motown' of the world, whose
de-industrialized citizenry has rediscovered farming,
or in Southern Europe whose new unemployed are beginning
to make their way back to the villages of their
grandparents. Moreover, there is a growing number
of other countries in the South which are experimenting
with policies intended to support peasant production
for the domestic market, among which Brazil has
claimed a leading role. At the same time, the question
of 're-peasantization' is being contested by a wider
array of forces led by finance capital and multinational
firms, and including governmental, intergovernmental,
and non-governmental organizations, which strive
to lock in peasant production to new 'green' technologies
– all the while they participate directly or indirectly
in the scramble for peasant land.
Be it as it may at the level of official policy,
the social agency for urban and rural land, and
re-peasantization as a political project, will continue
to gain strength and remain among the key forms
and processes of resistance in the world system.
This is a social force which has the unique potential
to shift the relation of forces over the long term
and create space for a wider range of reflections
on development in the twenty-first century.
The Editorial Board of Agrarian South hopes that
interested researchers, from both North and South,
will engage with this turn of events in development
theory and policy and offer conceptually rigorous
and empirically-based research, towards a more coherent
debate on an issue which will likely define the
whole of the century. Articles may explore such
issues as:
-
theoretical
approaches to re-peasantization, agrarian transformation,
and world-systemic transition;
-
local, national,
and regional experiences of re-peasantization;
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land reform,
land tenure, and cooperativism;
-
agrarian
change, inter-sectoral linkages, and structural
transformation;
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the state
and regional institutions in agrarian transformation;
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production
systems and relations of production and reproduction:
rural-urban, gender, and class;
-
productive
resources: land, energy, and technology;
-
the new politics
of social movements and international organizations.
March
8, 2013.
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