Journal of Agrarian Change最新文献

Indonesia is the world's largest producer of carrageenan seaweed, the cultivation of which is dominated by household operators and is transforming livelihoods in many coastal communities. Growing demand from the global food processing sector has rapidly transformed Indonesian coastal sea space into a commoditized livelihood resource, where access is governed by emergent, and highly fluid, institutions. Through an extensive ethnographic study in two coastal villages in South Sulawesi, we show how a new property rights regime is being created through evolving institutions of access (both formal and informal) in continual feedback with the livelihood strategies pursued by individual households. The ability to benefit from access to sea space, during a price boom, emerges from within multiple strands of intersecting power relations, producing a range of livelihood outcomes. This study contributes to debates on how rural livelihood opportunities are infused by the politics of access to natural resources, thus reshaping processes of agrarian change in coastal regions.

A capitalist agrarian transformation is unfolding in northern Ghana, marked by shifts in crop types, rapid increases in farm sizes and deepening rural social differentiation. This paper investigates these dynamics through a mixed-methods approach across six farming communities in two districts, focusing on how social differentiation, accumulation, dispossession and exploitation reshape the region. Urban male capitalists, in collusion with local chiefs, drive mutual enrichment, while women and landless youth are disproportionately disadvantaged. Their land rights are increasingly eroded as powerful elites and traditional ruling families appropriate and accumulate capital at their expense. This transformation, rooted in patriarchal structures, is fuelling tensions and pockets of resistance among affected groups. The paper highlights how powerful individuals and groups can thwart often well-intentioned state-led agriculture modernization initiatives for their parochial interests. It shows how predominantly urban-based elites and power brokers frequently hijack the state's effort to reform the rural sector in the context of neoliberal capitalist economies in the Global South. It offers broader insights into social differentiation and the tensions that arise between and among the various competing group interests. Finally, it raises questions of justice across generations and gender which have broader implications for the political economy of agrarian change and structural transformation in rural northern Ghana. The implications extend beyond social cohesion, with potential impacts on biodiversity loss and climate change.

The expansion of mining in Ecuador has stirred resistance among some Indigenous peasant communities in the name of territorial rights; others have offered their land and labour to mining companies. In this and similar land grab contexts, Indigenous peasant communities are often broadly represented as natural resisters or as corrupted collaborators, which, we argue, does not account for how peasants with territorial and/or land rights weigh their options. In Napo province, we examine how peasants have adjudicated contradictory socioeconomic pressures and, in turn, opted to work with miners. We highlight the methodological and political implications of centering how local ‘participants’ in land grabs experience untenable choices or ‘double binds’ to understand the efficacy of land grabs and the obstacles to resistance.

Young people are increasingly turning away from agriculture in many parts of the global South, even where agriculture remains the backbone of livelihoods and the rural economy. This tendency among rural youth has become a critical research and public concern given that mass youth un (der)employment has emerged as a defining feature in many countries. In this paper, we interrogate and depart from the dominant narrative of the youth-agriculture disconnect by focussing on socio-economic conditions that shape diverse patterns of youth livelihood in rural areas. Our empirical evidence draws on ethnographic studies conducted in rural parts of Nepal with in-depth interviews with young people complemented by key informant interviews with local leaders and community workers who shared their experiences and local narratives of the links among youth, agriculture and migration. Findings show that youth aspiration to leave agriculture is hard to deny, although this is heavily mediated by economic status, caste and gender in rural contexts. Given the chronic livelihood insecurity and the structural barriers rooted in class, caste and gender, we find that youth from underprivileged backgrounds do not have the luxury of considering an ‘exit’ from agriculture despite their mobility aspirations. When a longer-term livelihood trajectory is considered, youth aspirations to transition out of agriculture show some degree of temporality regardless of their background, suggesting their re-engagement in agriculture later in their life.

In the Javanese village of Kaliloro, share tenancy in rice cultivation, which was widely predicted to disappear with the Green Revolution, has not declined but expanded since the early 1970s. In this article, building on previous debates on share tenancy, we show how sharecropping has survived and expanded in Kaliloro's generally commoditized agrarian economy. Many share tenancy relationships in Kaliloro link wealthier landowners and landless or near-landless tenants. But many also occur between households of relatively equal status and between parents and their own children. For both landowners and share tenants, their reasons for reliance on sharecropping over hired labour are complex, going beyond simple comparisons of relative labour costs (to landowners) or labour earnings (to share tenants). The landless and near-landless are well aware of the exploitative nature of share tenancy, but it remains an important component of their pluriactive livelihoods, even in times of rising farm wage rates, mainly to ensure a supply of rice for domestic consumption. For landowners who are too busy, or unable, to manage cultivation themselves, share tenancy remains the most convenient, effective, and risk-free labour regime, and mechanism of surplus transfer from direct producer to landowner.

This article examines the legacy of war on environmental policy, contributing to recent literature on the linkages between armed violence, conservation, rural livelihoods and global value chains. It argues that environmental norms reshape agricultural practices, but also the means by which people claim control over land and labour. Using the case of cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire, this paper examines the impact of ‘zero-deforestation’ policies on the country's last agricultural frontier: its western forestlands, where migration and deforestation have driven the development of the cocoa economy for years. The region is now feeling the effects of global trade policies such as the European Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR), competition for the last remaining forests and social fault lines inherited from the war. This article traces the origins of the zero-deforestation policy, its national and local impact and its implications for social struggles over the control of land and labour.

What happens to popular organizations and leaderships when they take on the leading role in politics, winning over governments and running the state? To what extent does their potential for change materialize into structural transformations concerning the living conditions of historically subordinated social sectors? What are the limitations of these processes, and in what ways can paths be sought to overcome these limitations? Throughout the history of Latin America, many intellectuals, politicians and academics have pondered these questions. In different contexts, these issues have proven to be key problems for popular political forces that eventually managed to attain some degree of hegemony in society, being elected as governors of the state and placing themselves as the governing force in their countries and territories. Now we are in power seeks to answer these challenging questions, reflecting specifically on the ‘el proceso de cambio’ in 21st century Bolivia.

Now We Are in Power: The Politics of Passive Revolution in Twenty-First Century Bolivia (2023) by Angus McNelly is a compelling case study regarding one of the most important experiences of governments led by organizations and leaderships originating from the popular movement and elected within the institutional hallmark of the liberal state. The book is product of an extensive ethnographic research conducted between 2016 and 2019, with fieldwork in collaboration with social movements in La Paz, El Alto, Santa Cruz and other locations in Bolivia.

When arriving in Bolivia shortly after Evo Morales' defeat in the 2016 referendum that would have allowed him to run for a third presidential term, McNelly became interested in a significant sentiment of frustration towards the government. Ten years after coming to power, a feeling of distrust among important strata of the population and social movements with ‘el proceso de cambio’ (the process of change) was widely perceived. Therefore, McNelly's proposal is to reflect on the experience of the ‘first indigenous government in the country's history’ through some categories of Antonio Gramsci's thinking, such as catharsis, transformism, Caesarism, hegemony, integral state and, notably, the notion of passive revolution. The author considers that the transformations experienced by Bolivian society in the 21st century were imbued with a dialectic between restoration/revolution characteristic of processes that tend to incorporate (at least partially) the transformative force of some revolutionary impulses into strategies that preserve the historical structures of domination.

McNelly undertakes an analytical journey to understand the Bolivian case through a rich dialogue with the Latin American critical tradition that has dedicated itself to understanding the behaviour and relationships of popular organizations and leaderships with the state in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico. The author is caut

Cuba stands out among Latin American nations for its efforts to institutionalize food sovereignty (FS) through the promotion of alternative small-scale farming, making it a prime case study for this model. This paper examines the extent to which Cuba has institutionalized FS and the factors driving this process from an agrarian political economy perspective. Public policies, sustainable practices and key actors—including a ‘partner state’—have advanced agroecology as a core strategy to reduce food imports since the early 1990s. However, other entities, such as the military enterprise Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), may be seen as obstacles to this strategy. Whilst these struggles and tensions are not unique to Cuba, the island stands out for its decisive steps in institutionalizing FS. Cuba has achieved significant ‘pockets’ or ‘spaces’ of FS, despite lacking a fully consolidated domestic food system.