Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1959858
S. Newman
Richard Lewontin would have laughed out loud if someone had referred to him as a postmodernist. But his role in late twentieth-early twenty-first century evolutionary biology was precisely that: di...
{"title":"Richard Lewontin (1929–2021): Evolutionary Biology’s Great Disrupter","authors":"S. Newman","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1959858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1959858","url":null,"abstract":"Richard Lewontin would have laughed out loud if someone had referred to him as a postmodernist. But his role in late twentieth-early twenty-first century evolutionary biology was precisely that: di...","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1959858","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46413453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1971146
L. Quiquivix
Following Europe’s implosion in the wake of two internal wars and our decolonization struggles of the 20th century, Empire set on a strategic shift toward a politics of “universal human equality” that, rather than dismantle the world built by 1492, brought us deeper into it by having us mimic and depend on it. Today it is a generally accepted, even if a ceaselessly controversial idea in this now-dominant world, that all human beings have the right to live, even the non-European ones (Schmitt 2006). And we are told – and many of us believe it in spite of all evidence – that our new world of nation-states and those who head them up and even look like us now, will see to the enforcement of this right – no need to pay too close attention to how things go and, much less, threaten consequences if things end up going the way they’ve been going. Instead, what we’re supposed to be concerning ourselves with is our money situation; for if the human right to live in the dominant world is today universally granted, the economic system chosen to enforce it carries with it an unspoken caveat: we must have the ability to pay for it. For those of us with little or no money to buy our life-sustaining goods and services like clean water, air, food, housing, education, healthcare, and safety, we are told we can acquire that money by selling our labor as long as somebody is willing to buy it. That latter part is another unspoken stipulation, but for many of us, it is often the loudest, for even when we try, even when we never pause to wonder if it’s even ethical or desirable to sell ourselves so that we may live (Weeks 2011), for many of us out there selling, nobody is buying. The list of possible reasons is long and can include obstacles such as having a disability that makes us unable to do the type of work considered valuable enough for payment; or lacking the required years of formal education specified in the job ad, or attending a school considered unimpressive; or having the wrong citizenship, or being considered by the buyer to be of an inferior race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, or social class (whether directly or indirectly said out loud, depending on the history
{"title":"The Dominant World’s Life-Commodity-Competition Model","authors":"L. Quiquivix","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1971146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1971146","url":null,"abstract":"Following Europe’s implosion in the wake of two internal wars and our decolonization struggles of the 20th century, Empire set on a strategic shift toward a politics of “universal human equality” that, rather than dismantle the world built by 1492, brought us deeper into it by having us mimic and depend on it. Today it is a generally accepted, even if a ceaselessly controversial idea in this now-dominant world, that all human beings have the right to live, even the non-European ones (Schmitt 2006). And we are told – and many of us believe it in spite of all evidence – that our new world of nation-states and those who head them up and even look like us now, will see to the enforcement of this right – no need to pay too close attention to how things go and, much less, threaten consequences if things end up going the way they’ve been going. Instead, what we’re supposed to be concerning ourselves with is our money situation; for if the human right to live in the dominant world is today universally granted, the economic system chosen to enforce it carries with it an unspoken caveat: we must have the ability to pay for it. For those of us with little or no money to buy our life-sustaining goods and services like clean water, air, food, housing, education, healthcare, and safety, we are told we can acquire that money by selling our labor as long as somebody is willing to buy it. That latter part is another unspoken stipulation, but for many of us, it is often the loudest, for even when we try, even when we never pause to wonder if it’s even ethical or desirable to sell ourselves so that we may live (Weeks 2011), for many of us out there selling, nobody is buying. The list of possible reasons is long and can include obstacles such as having a disability that makes us unable to do the type of work considered valuable enough for payment; or lacking the required years of formal education specified in the job ad, or attending a school considered unimpressive; or having the wrong citizenship, or being considered by the buyer to be of an inferior race, gender, sexuality, religion, age, or social class (whether directly or indirectly said out loud, depending on the history","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49446072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1959859
S. Faizi
ABSTRACT The community of nations should criminalise ecocide and create a mechanism to prosecute the culprits. This should be done by establishing an Environmental Security Council as a democratic, independent multilateral body, without overburdening the International Criminal Court with this new agenda when ICC itself is in dire need of strengthening to effectively enforce its original mandate.The paper sets the basis for addressing ecocide as an international crime and outlines the framework for establishing an Environmental Security Council to address this.
{"title":"Ecocides: On the Need for an Environmental Security Council (ESC)","authors":"S. Faizi","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1959859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1959859","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The community of nations should criminalise ecocide and create a mechanism to prosecute the culprits. This should be done by establishing an Environmental Security Council as a democratic, independent multilateral body, without overburdening the International Criminal Court with this new agenda when ICC itself is in dire need of strengthening to effectively enforce its original mandate.The paper sets the basis for addressing ecocide as an international crime and outlines the framework for establishing an Environmental Security Council to address this.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1959859","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43495526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1959860
Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro, Qingzhi Huan
ABSTRACT In this introduction to the section dedicated to Eco-Civilisation in the People's Republic of China, we discuss the topic of Eco-Civilisation in its multiple dimensions and highlight the salient points made by the authors of the collected papers.
{"title":"Introduction: China's Eco-Civilisation in Theory and Practice","authors":"Salvatore Engel‐Di Mauro, Qingzhi Huan","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1959860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1959860","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this introduction to the section dedicated to Eco-Civilisation in the People's Republic of China, we discuss the topic of Eco-Civilisation in its multiple dimensions and highlight the salient points made by the authors of the collected papers.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44856451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-13DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1927126
Audrey Joslin
ABSTRACT The role of labor in value production for neoliberal conservation arrangements is a topic that has only recently begun to receive attention from scholars. Engaging with Marx’s labor theory of value, this article analyzes the interaction of a water fund Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program with labor institutions in the Ecuadorian Andes. Data from participant observation, key actor interviews, and textual materials support an empirical case study of the model water fund, Fondo para la protección del agua – FONAG. Despite neoliberal discourse promoting financial and material incentives as the main driver of conservation action, this article demonstrates how PES agreements interact with pre-existing labor and land use regimes to generate and circulate value beyond the contractual arrangement between the target community and PES promoters. This article furthermore highlights how value produced from pre-existing labor institutions may constitute an overlooked component of “green grabbing” as it may be unacknowledged and susceptible to appropriation by international organizations.
劳工在新自由主义保护安排的价值生产中的作用是一个最近才开始受到学者关注的话题。本文运用马克思的劳动价值理论，分析了厄瓜多尔安第斯山脉水利基金生态系统服务支付计划与劳动机构的互动关系。来自参与者观察、关键参与者访谈和文本材料的数据支持了对模型水基金Fondo para la protección del agua–FONAG的实证案例研究。尽管新自由主义话语将财政和物质激励作为保护行动的主要驱动力，但本文展示了PES协议如何与预先存在的劳动力和土地使用制度相互作用，以在目标社区和PES推动者之间的合同安排之外产生和流通价值。这篇文章进一步强调了从现有的劳工制度中产生的价值如何可能构成“绿色攫取”的一个被忽视的组成部分，因为它可能未被承认，并且容易被国际组织挪用。
{"title":"Labor as a Linchpin in Ecosystem Services Conservation: Appropriating Value from Collective Institutions?","authors":"Audrey Joslin","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1927126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1927126","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The role of labor in value production for neoliberal conservation arrangements is a topic that has only recently begun to receive attention from scholars. Engaging with Marx’s labor theory of value, this article analyzes the interaction of a water fund Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program with labor institutions in the Ecuadorian Andes. Data from participant observation, key actor interviews, and textual materials support an empirical case study of the model water fund, Fondo para la protección del agua – FONAG. Despite neoliberal discourse promoting financial and material incentives as the main driver of conservation action, this article demonstrates how PES agreements interact with pre-existing labor and land use regimes to generate and circulate value beyond the contractual arrangement between the target community and PES promoters. This article furthermore highlights how value produced from pre-existing labor institutions may constitute an overlooked component of “green grabbing” as it may be unacknowledged and susceptible to appropriation by international organizations.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1927126","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41684561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1917638
J. Watson
ABSTRACT Since the 1930s some economic historians have supposed that there was “timber famine” in early modern England, due to over-use of wood fuel for industry, especially making iron with charcoal, and the narrative is still current, often combined with a claim that England was deforested in that way. For the environmental historian Jason W. Moore in particular, the idea of a commodity frontier in “forest products” is central to an account of the spread of capitalism. After a brief summary of woodland management in Britain, I discuss how calculations have been made, with many estimates and approximations, in relation to deforestation in the Weald, where the manufacture of iron in blast furnaces first came to Britain. Although the case for timber famine and deforestation due to charcoal iron cannot be demonstrated through the calculation approach, the industry certainly had socioeconomic and environmental impacts, and I suggest ways forward researching these within a unified approach to economic and environmental history. The idea of a single commodity frontier in “forest products” cannot be sustained but the commodity frontier concept remains useful in investigating the commodification process.
{"title":"Not Out of the Woods Yet: On the Trail of the Commodity Frontier in Fuelwood for Iron","authors":"J. Watson","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1917638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1917638","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the 1930s some economic historians have supposed that there was “timber famine” in early modern England, due to over-use of wood fuel for industry, especially making iron with charcoal, and the narrative is still current, often combined with a claim that England was deforested in that way. For the environmental historian Jason W. Moore in particular, the idea of a commodity frontier in “forest products” is central to an account of the spread of capitalism. After a brief summary of woodland management in Britain, I discuss how calculations have been made, with many estimates and approximations, in relation to deforestation in the Weald, where the manufacture of iron in blast furnaces first came to Britain. Although the case for timber famine and deforestation due to charcoal iron cannot be demonstrated through the calculation approach, the industry certainly had socioeconomic and environmental impacts, and I suggest ways forward researching these within a unified approach to economic and environmental history. The idea of a single commodity frontier in “forest products” cannot be sustained but the commodity frontier concept remains useful in investigating the commodification process.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1917638","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49269195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-26DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1911385
L. Corradi, Salvatore Engel-Dimauro
ABSTRACT This essay, the first of a triptych published in Jacobin-Italia, focuses on the contribution of scholar-activist and Black Native American sociologist John Brown Childs, who played an important role in producing and developing “trans-communality” theory and practice. His work came out of his experiences in Soledad Prison, where inmates developed their own trans-racial education system, which included promoting gender consciousness and social empowerment. Childs' work sheds light on the possibility of overcoming intra-communal conflicts and creating intersectional alliances among different and oppressed social groups or “nations”.
{"title":"Intersectional Alliances in Soledad Prison: The Exemplary Life of John Brown Childs","authors":"L. Corradi, Salvatore Engel-Dimauro","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1911385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1911385","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay, the first of a triptych published in Jacobin-Italia, focuses on the contribution of scholar-activist and Black Native American sociologist John Brown Childs, who played an important role in producing and developing “trans-communality” theory and practice. His work came out of his experiences in Soledad Prison, where inmates developed their own trans-racial education system, which included promoting gender consciousness and social empowerment. Childs' work sheds light on the possibility of overcoming intra-communal conflicts and creating intersectional alliances among different and oppressed social groups or “nations”.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1911385","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47886903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-23DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1918198
Clayton Fordahl
ABSTRACT Though the concept of community has been of central concern to the social sciences and social theory since the 19th century, it has also been a frequent target of criticism. Community is often accused of being a vague and sentimental concept. These criticisms are often accompanied by the claim that sociologists and social theorists have used the concept of community to cloak their political agendas. This article compares a range of radical, classical social theorists on three topics that intersect with discussions of community in the classical and contemporary periods: place, pace, and power. This comparison suggests that while the community concept in classical theory was sentimental in nature, it was also used to critique specific technological developments, from the rise of railways to the spread of industrial manufacturing. This revisionist reading of the concept of community achieves three things for contemporary radical theory: (1) it suggests that technological change should be at the center of social critique; (2) it demonstrates the interdependence of technology with other macro-historical social changes; and (3) it offers a model of how a sentimental concept can be used to develop critical and theoretical accounts of technological change.
{"title":"Community and the Critique of Technology: A Revisionist Account of an Essential Concept","authors":"Clayton Fordahl","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1918198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1918198","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Though the concept of community has been of central concern to the social sciences and social theory since the 19th century, it has also been a frequent target of criticism. Community is often accused of being a vague and sentimental concept. These criticisms are often accompanied by the claim that sociologists and social theorists have used the concept of community to cloak their political agendas. This article compares a range of radical, classical social theorists on three topics that intersect with discussions of community in the classical and contemporary periods: place, pace, and power. This comparison suggests that while the community concept in classical theory was sentimental in nature, it was also used to critique specific technological developments, from the rise of railways to the spread of industrial manufacturing. This revisionist reading of the concept of community achieves three things for contemporary radical theory: (1) it suggests that technological change should be at the center of social critique; (2) it demonstrates the interdependence of technology with other macro-historical social changes; and (3) it offers a model of how a sentimental concept can be used to develop critical and theoretical accounts of technological change.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1918198","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46280503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-21DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1916829
Ryan M. Katz-Rosene, Julia Szwarc
ABSTRACT This article raises concern about the growing embrace of “eco-survivalism”—an environmental discourse motivated by the idea of “riding out” what is seen as the inevitable collapse of the global economy and human population caused by severe environmental degradation. First, we identify this environmental discourse and differentiate it from other leading contemporary environmental discourses which are primarily motivated by the challenge of averting collapse. Second, we show how the rise and spread of eco-survivalism today is catalyzed by the growing perceived urgency of the global environmental crisis as conditioned by neoliberal capitalism. Finally, we consider some of the concerning implications of its rise, including the emergence of environmental defeatism, the depoliticization of environmental action, and the reification of socio-economic injustices (in terms of who is deemed worthy of “surviving”).
{"title":"Preparing for Collapse: The Concerning Rise of “Eco-Survivalism”","authors":"Ryan M. Katz-Rosene, Julia Szwarc","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1916829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1916829","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 This article raises concern about the growing embrace of “eco-survivalism”—an environmental discourse motivated by the idea of “riding out” what is seen as the inevitable collapse of the global economy and human population caused by severe environmental degradation. First, we identify this environmental discourse and differentiate it from other leading contemporary environmental discourses which are primarily motivated by the challenge of averting collapse. Second, we show how the rise and spread of eco-survivalism today is catalyzed by the growing perceived urgency of the global environmental crisis as conditioned by neoliberal capitalism. Finally, we consider some of the concerning implications of its rise, including the emergence of environmental defeatism, the depoliticization of environmental action, and the reification of socio-economic injustices (in terms of who is deemed worthy of “surviving”).","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1916829","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41316986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2021.1936917
Tanya Singh, Pritam Singh, Meena Dhanda
ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food security, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.
{"title":"Resisting a “Digital Green Revolution”: Agri-logistics, India’s New Farm Laws and the Regional Politics of Protest","authors":"Tanya Singh, Pritam Singh, Meena Dhanda","doi":"10.1080/10455752.2021.1936917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2021.1936917","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food security, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.","PeriodicalId":39549,"journal":{"name":"Capitalism, Nature, Socialism","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10455752.2021.1936917","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43491724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：