Gender and development in the agrarian south

Abstract

A central question posed by the still largely peasant populations of the global south is the feasibility of reproducing a model of development which in advanced capitalist economies, settled the classical agrarian question through the transfer and application of organizational models derived from large-scale industry to agriculture, and in favor of a minority of their populations. In the global south, the transplanting of this development model has been characterized by the dominance of large-scale corporate capital and financial monopolies in agriculture, a structure that jeopardizes the future of family farming, food sovereignty, and agroecological sustainability. The result has been massive loss of arable land, deepening precarity and exploitation of labor, disintegration of indigenous food systems, and the commodification of nature. Such (under)developmental logics directly affect processes of social reproduction here, in part because agrarian livelihoods remain central to the survival of the majority in the global south. Contrary to prevailing neoliberal logic, these outcomes actually reassert the continued relevance of land and the peasantry, and raise new or contemporary agrarian questions, among which gender (gendered labor) is central. The chapter links these concerns through an examination of the structures, trajectories and gendered outcomes of capitalist development in the agrarian south, with the aim also of outlining a feminist decolonial critique of economic development.