Social movements & politics
Autonomy in agrarian studies, politics & movements: An inter-paradigm debate
KEES JANSEN & LEANDRO VERGARA-CAMUS Autonomy has been a word that has been rolling off the tongues of leftist activists and academics for decades and has been the subject of countless articles and books. It has been theorised from Marxist, Anarchist, Post-Marxist, Foucauldian and Feminist perspectives. Historically, the term autonomy has often been used…
Read More
Book Review: Mythri Jegathesan’s Tea & Solidarity
JAYASEELAN RAJ Tea and Solidarity is a fascinating monograph by Mythri Jegathesan that examines the lives of tea-plucking women and their families as they seek work outside the Sri Lankan plantations. It provides a powerful description of their struggle for a dignified life within and outside the plantations, what Jegathesan calls their ‘desires for…
Read More
AQs Shorts: Vikas Rawal
In our fifth AQs Shorts video, Vikas Rawal speaks about the historic farmers’ protests in India – the role of a prolonged agrarian and employment crisis and of neoliberalism in giving rise to the protests as well as their social, class and regional basis. Vikas Rawal is Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,…
Read More
Book Review: Penelope Anthias’ Limits to Decolonization
ENRIQUE CASTAÑÓN BALLIVIÁN Limits to Decolonization is a rich ethnographic account of an indigenous struggle for territorial recognition in a context of intensifying extractivism. It traces the historical demand of Guaraní communities to regain control of their ancestral territory in the Bolivian Chaco where most of the country’s gas extraction takes place. While the…
Read More
Peasant politics, criminal persecution and authoritarianism in Colombia
SERGIO CORONADO The irregular arrest of three renowned leaders of the agrarian social movements in Colombia needs to be analysed as a counter-reaction against the recent wave of contentious politics in the countryside. It also points to increasing authoritarianism in Colombian politics. On December 15th and 16th 2020, three well-known defenders of Colombian land…
Read More
Book review of Pablo Lapegna’s Soybeans and Power
CARLA GRAS In Soybeans and Power, Pablo Lapegna offers a thorough and challenging analysis of the contested terrain of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in Argentina. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the province of Formosa, in the North East of that country, he addresses key issues regarding the new landscapes produced by the expansion…
Read More
Rule by Bosses? Criminal Political Economies in South Asia
MICHAEL LEVIEN In the past few decades, the term “mafia” has gained widespread usage across South Asia, and particularly India and Pakistan where there are said to be a variety of sector-specific ones: “land mafia,” “sand mafia,” “coal mafia,” “timber mafia,” “water mafia,” “contractor mafia,” and so on. The sum total of these mafia…
Read More
Colombia’s new peasantries and social-territorial movements
KYLA SANKEY In Colombia, agrarian social movements have been at the forefront of struggles against neoliberalism and war. The rural poor have borne the brunt of half a century of civil war, which caused 260,000 deaths, 60,000 disappearances and 7 million displacements. They also suffered the worst effects of free market policies, which have resulted…
Read More
Land reform in South Africa in 2018
BEN COUSINS Land reform has recently become an explosive political issue in South Africa. Progress in transforming racially unequal patterns of land ownership in rural and urban areas has been painfully slow since the transition to democracy in 1994.
Read More
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2017
We are pleased to announce that R. Ramakumar, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, has been awarded the 2017 Bernstein & Byres Prize for his article ‘Jats, Khaps and Riots: Communal Politics and the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Northern India’.
Read More