Pub Date : 2015-04-28DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1022867
Mathilde Gingembre
Drawing on a micro-level ethnography, this paper explores the process by which a rural municipality managed to pressure the state into temporarily halting the land extension of a large-scale biofuel project in an agropastoral area of southern Madagascar. It documents how the coalition of local leaders and wealthy cattle owners behind the protest resisted threats to their land access and local domination by finding spaces of expression outside the control of local consultation, and creating alliances with influential activists. In a moral economy veering between rationales of autochthony and extraversion, the transnationalisation of the protest sent shock waves through a state apparatus divided and focused on the prospects of coming elections. By analysing the environmental, cognitive and relational mechanisms behind the emergence and repercussions of this bottom-up struggle, this paper points to the varied bargaining endowments that exist within agrarian communities as well as to the issues of authority at stake within corporate enclosure of land. In states where the rural poor have been historically marginalised from decision-making, consultation processes generally offer little space for participation. This paper demonstrates that contexts of political uncertainty open up new spaces for them to claim their rights but that gains made in such circumstances are fragile and contested.
{"title":"Resistance or participation? Fighting against corporate land access amid political uncertainty in Madagascar","authors":"Mathilde Gingembre","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2015.1022867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1022867","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a micro-level ethnography, this paper explores the process by which a rural municipality managed to pressure the state into temporarily halting the land extension of a large-scale biofuel project in an agropastoral area of southern Madagascar. It documents how the coalition of local leaders and wealthy cattle owners behind the protest resisted threats to their land access and local domination by finding spaces of expression outside the control of local consultation, and creating alliances with influential activists. In a moral economy veering between rationales of autochthony and extraversion, the transnationalisation of the protest sent shock waves through a state apparatus divided and focused on the prospects of coming elections. By analysing the environmental, cognitive and relational mechanisms behind the emergence and repercussions of this bottom-up struggle, this paper points to the varied bargaining endowments that exist within agrarian communities as well as to the issues of authority at stake within corporate enclosure of land. In states where the rural poor have been historically marginalised from decision-making, consultation processes generally offer little space for participation. This paper demonstrates that contexts of political uncertainty open up new spaces for them to claim their rights but that gains made in such circumstances are fragile and contested.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"561 - 584"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2015.1022867","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-28DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1029461
Nicolette Larder
Recent years have seen a flood of pseudo-facts and falsely precise data on land deals. This has led some to call for a more careful approach to the study of land deals that moves away from the current hectare-centric focus towards a grounded case-study methodology. Heeding such calls, this contribution draws on fieldwork undertaken in Mali during 2011 to examine a well-known land deal, the Malibya project, which involved a contract for the transfer of control of 100,000 hectares of land within the Office du Niger. Locally and globally, the deal was denounced following the destruction of homes and gardens as a result of a canal development associated with project. In contrast, the Malian government has argued such projects are vital for expanded irrigation infrastructure and thus securing food self-sufficiency for Mali. Somewhere in between are the farmers of the Office du Niger, some of whom argue for the cessation of the project and others of whom argue the expansion of irrigation in the zone could benefit farmers, particularly those without sufficient access to land. This paper explores the differing viewpoints of the actors involved and the role the land-grabbing frame has played in mobilising these different responses.
{"title":"Space for pluralism? Examining the Malibya land grab","authors":"Nicolette Larder","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2015.1029461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1029461","url":null,"abstract":"Recent years have seen a flood of pseudo-facts and falsely precise data on land deals. This has led some to call for a more careful approach to the study of land deals that moves away from the current hectare-centric focus towards a grounded case-study methodology. Heeding such calls, this contribution draws on fieldwork undertaken in Mali during 2011 to examine a well-known land deal, the Malibya project, which involved a contract for the transfer of control of 100,000 hectares of land within the Office du Niger. Locally and globally, the deal was denounced following the destruction of homes and gardens as a result of a canal development associated with project. In contrast, the Malian government has argued such projects are vital for expanded irrigation infrastructure and thus securing food self-sufficiency for Mali. Somewhere in between are the farmers of the Office du Niger, some of whom argue for the cessation of the project and others of whom argue the expansion of irrigation in the zone could benefit farmers, particularly those without sufficient access to land. This paper explores the differing viewpoints of the actors involved and the role the land-grabbing frame has played in mobilising these different responses.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"839 - 858"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2015.1029461","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-27DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1016920
A. Castellanos-Navarrete, K. Jansen
Recent debates on land grabbing and biofuels tend to link oil palm expansion to rural dispossession, environmental degradation and rural resistance. In this paper, we examine to what extent ‘enclosure’, a central concept in two critiques – ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and ‘green grabbing’ – is intrinsically linked to oil palm expansion. We argue that where enclosure is absent, poor peasants may seek greater market integration over resistance to modernisation processes. We analyse how and why peasants engage in oil palm cultivation and how their involvement undermines green efforts to curb its expansion in Chiapas, Mexico. Our analysis suggests that an exclusive focus on enclosure as the main driving force behind contestation and agrarian social relationships is unable to explain agrarian dynamics and the multiple uses to which environmental narratives are put.
{"title":"Oil palm expansion without enclosure: smallholders and environmental narratives","authors":"A. Castellanos-Navarrete, K. Jansen","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2015.1016920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1016920","url":null,"abstract":"Recent debates on land grabbing and biofuels tend to link oil palm expansion to rural dispossession, environmental degradation and rural resistance. In this paper, we examine to what extent ‘enclosure’, a central concept in two critiques – ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and ‘green grabbing’ – is intrinsically linked to oil palm expansion. We argue that where enclosure is absent, poor peasants may seek greater market integration over resistance to modernisation processes. We analyse how and why peasants engage in oil palm cultivation and how their involvement undermines green efforts to curb its expansion in Chiapas, Mexico. Our analysis suggests that an exclusive focus on enclosure as the main driving force behind contestation and agrarian social relationships is unable to explain agrarian dynamics and the multiple uses to which environmental narratives are put.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"791 - 816"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2015.1016920","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-24DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1013098
Preeti Sampat
Conflicts over land-grabs for industry, infrastructure and urbanization are on the rise in emerging economies. A slew of policy measures undergird such land deals in India but have encountered successful resistance from peasants and citizens groups. In Goa, resistance led to the revocation of the state's special economic zone (SEZ) policy and cancellation of all approved SEZs, many developed by prominent realty firms. As battle over three SEZs continues in the Supreme Court of India, there is hope that commons will be returned to local communities. There is, however, an impasse on the ground that begs resolution if the gains over SEZs are to be secured. The Goan Impasse can be resolved with egalitarian and ecologically appropriate rights to land- and resource-use for all that counter existing inequalities. This requires programmatic social movements reconstituting relationships around and to land and resources from below.
{"title":"The ‘Goan Impasse’: land rights and resistance to SEZs in Goa, India","authors":"Preeti Sampat","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2015.1013098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1013098","url":null,"abstract":"Conflicts over land-grabs for industry, infrastructure and urbanization are on the rise in emerging economies. A slew of policy measures undergird such land deals in India but have encountered successful resistance from peasants and citizens groups. In Goa, resistance led to the revocation of the state's special economic zone (SEZ) policy and cancellation of all approved SEZs, many developed by prominent realty firms. As battle over three SEZs continues in the Supreme Court of India, there is hope that commons will be returned to local communities. There is, however, an impasse on the ground that begs resolution if the gains over SEZs are to be secured. The Goan Impasse can be resolved with egalitarian and ecologically appropriate rights to land- and resource-use for all that counter existing inequalities. This requires programmatic social movements reconstituting relationships around and to land and resources from below.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"765 - 790"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2015.1013098","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59430220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-24DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1013468
Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of agrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as a financialized and flexible type of agrarian extractivism. Meanwhile, Maya-Q´eqchi´ residents of the northern lowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agro-ecosystem that the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their subsistence in multiple and unfamiliar ways. Indeed, growing difficulties in dealing with (vital) grievances is leading many, even those who initially welcomed the corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations, to transform their unrest into a practice of resistance. Elaborating on what is presented here as a multiple politics perspective, this contribution discusses the nature and character of such contemporary political dynamics of agrarian change. The forms, strategies and practices of the two main and most antagonistic repertoires of contention are explored here: the one in ‘defense of territory’ and the one in the promotion of the ‘agrarian extractivist project’. The tensions across and within multiple corporate, state and social actors who are pushing for, resisting, complying with or operating at the most violent margins of the agrarian extractivist project are also examined. By assessing continuities and ruptures between current and previous cycles of contention around the control of land, water and other natural resources, this paper stresses the often forgotten lesson about trajectories of agrarian change not being a story foretold, but the product of multiple and dynamic politics.
{"title":"Anything but a story foretold: multiple politics of resistance to the agrarian extractivist project in Guatemala","authors":"Alberto Alonso-Fradejas","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2015.1013468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1013468","url":null,"abstract":"Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of agrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as a financialized and flexible type of agrarian extractivism. Meanwhile, Maya-Q´eqchi´ residents of the northern lowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agro-ecosystem that the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their subsistence in multiple and unfamiliar ways. Indeed, growing difficulties in dealing with (vital) grievances is leading many, even those who initially welcomed the corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations, to transform their unrest into a practice of resistance. Elaborating on what is presented here as a multiple politics perspective, this contribution discusses the nature and character of such contemporary political dynamics of agrarian change. The forms, strategies and practices of the two main and most antagonistic repertoires of contention are explored here: the one in ‘defense of territory’ and the one in the promotion of the ‘agrarian extractivist project’. The tensions across and within multiple corporate, state and social actors who are pushing for, resisting, complying with or operating at the most violent margins of the agrarian extractivist project are also examined. By assessing continuities and ruptures between current and previous cycles of contention around the control of land, water and other natural resources, this paper stresses the often forgotten lesson about trajectories of agrarian change not being a story foretold, but the product of multiple and dynamic politics.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"489 - 515"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2015.1013468","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59430267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-16DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.993623
C. Cavanagh, T. A. Benjaminsen
Protected areas now encompass nearly 13 percent of Earth's terrestrial surface. Crucially, such protection often denotes exclusion – of farmers, of pastoralists and of forest-dwelling people. Engaging with the biopolitical implications of these displacements, this paper explores the emergence of an increasingly widespread type of resistance to conservation in the developing world: guerrilla agriculture, or the illicit cultivation of food within spaces zoned exclusively for the preservation of nonhuman life. In doing so, it undertakes a comparative analysis of three groups of farmers at Mount Elgon, Uganda, which support an overarching strategy of illegal cultivation with a variety of nonviolent, militant, discursive and formal-legal tactics. Far from passive victims of global economic and environmental change, we demonstrate how the struggles of farmers at Mount Elgon are frequently effective at carving out spaces of relative autonomy from both conservationists and the Ugandan state apparatus.
{"title":"Guerrilla agriculture? A biopolitical guide to illicit cultivation within an IUCN Category II protected area","authors":"C. Cavanagh, T. A. Benjaminsen","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.993623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.993623","url":null,"abstract":"Protected areas now encompass nearly 13 percent of Earth's terrestrial surface. Crucially, such protection often denotes exclusion – of farmers, of pastoralists and of forest-dwelling people. Engaging with the biopolitical implications of these displacements, this paper explores the emergence of an increasingly widespread type of resistance to conservation in the developing world: guerrilla agriculture, or the illicit cultivation of food within spaces zoned exclusively for the preservation of nonhuman life. In doing so, it undertakes a comparative analysis of three groups of farmers at Mount Elgon, Uganda, which support an overarching strategy of illegal cultivation with a variety of nonviolent, militant, discursive and formal-legal tactics. Far from passive victims of global economic and environmental change, we demonstrate how the struggles of farmers at Mount Elgon are frequently effective at carving out spaces of relative autonomy from both conservationists and the Ugandan state apparatus.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"725 - 745"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.993623","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59430086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-04-13DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.992338
Bradley R. Wilson
In this paper I explore a land grabbing resistance movement composed of unemployed coffee workers in Central Nicaragua. Between 1996 and 2000, a private agro-export conglomerate appropriated worker-owned coffee estates previously designated as the Area Propiedad del Los Trabajadores (APT), or the Worker's Property. Following mass protests between 2001 and 2004, worker representatives from the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) and government officials negotiated and signed the Las Tunas Accords which provided redistributed land from 18 of those coffee estates to 2500 families. Drawing on interviews with movement participants carried out between 2003 and 2012, I argue that the roots of the control grab and the resistance movement can be traced to the contradictions of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)-led agrarian reform in the 1980s, the conflicts over property in the post-war period and the failed consensus on how rural labor should organize and be represented in the face of land re-concentration and capitalist consolidation.
本文探讨了尼加拉瓜中部由失业咖啡工人组成的土地掠夺抵抗运动。1996年至2000年间，一家私营农产品出口集团侵占了工人拥有的咖啡庄园，这些庄园以前被指定为“工人财产”(APT)。在2001年至2004年的大规模抗议活动之后，Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC)的工人代表与政府官员谈判并签署了《拉斯图纳斯协议》，将其中18个咖啡庄园的土地重新分配给2500个家庭。根据2003年至2012年期间对运动参与者的采访，我认为，夺取控制权和抵抗运动的根源可以追溯到20世纪80年代桑地诺民族解放阵线(FSLN)领导的土地改革的矛盾，战后时期关于财产的冲突，以及面对土地重新集中和资本主义巩固，农村劳动力应该如何组织和代表的失败共识。
{"title":"Reclaiming the worker's property: control grabbing, farmworkers and the Las Tunas Accords in Nicaragua","authors":"Bradley R. Wilson","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.992338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.992338","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I explore a land grabbing resistance movement composed of unemployed coffee workers in Central Nicaragua. Between 1996 and 2000, a private agro-export conglomerate appropriated worker-owned coffee estates previously designated as the Area Propiedad del Los Trabajadores (APT), or the Worker's Property. Following mass protests between 2001 and 2004, worker representatives from the Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) and government officials negotiated and signed the Las Tunas Accords which provided redistributed land from 18 of those coffee estates to 2500 families. Drawing on interviews with movement participants carried out between 2003 and 2012, I argue that the roots of the control grab and the resistance movement can be traced to the contradictions of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)-led agrarian reform in the 1980s, the conflicts over property in the post-war period and the failed consensus on how rural labor should organize and be represented in the face of land re-concentration and capitalist consolidation.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"747 - 763"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.992338","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-18DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.992884
Catherine A. Corson, Bridget Brady, A. Zuber, J. Lord, Angela Kim
Drawing on a collaborative ethnographic study of the United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) and its preparatory meetings, we examine how the official UN ‘participatory’ process for engaging civil society in Rio+20 negotiations simultaneously enabled and disciplined contestation through processes such as seeking consensus around a common statement, professionalizing civil society representatives and controlling protests in order to protect broad access to negotiations. We document how, in doing so, the official participatory process undermined the right to voice diverse positions. We also find that Southern access to negotiations was limited by lack of funding, human resources, location and language. Finally, we illustrate how a group of non-governmental organizations based primarily in the Global South utilized the official UN Major Groups ‘participatory process’ to build alliances to protect resource rights language in the negotiating text. Ultimately, we argue that, through the struggle to build alliances, activists critical of the green economy became enlisted in reproducing its hegemony.
{"title":"The right to resist: disciplining civil society at Rio+20","authors":"Catherine A. Corson, Bridget Brady, A. Zuber, J. Lord, Angela Kim","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.992884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.992884","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on a collaborative ethnographic study of the United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) and its preparatory meetings, we examine how the official UN ‘participatory’ process for engaging civil society in Rio+20 negotiations simultaneously enabled and disciplined contestation through processes such as seeking consensus around a common statement, professionalizing civil society representatives and controlling protests in order to protect broad access to negotiations. We document how, in doing so, the official participatory process undermined the right to voice diverse positions. We also find that Southern access to negotiations was limited by lack of funding, human resources, location and language. Finally, we illustrate how a group of non-governmental organizations based primarily in the Global South utilized the official UN Major Groups ‘participatory process’ to build alliances to protect resource rights language in the negotiating text. Ultimately, we argue that, through the struggle to build alliances, activists critical of the green economy became enlisted in reproducing its hegemony.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"859 - 878"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.992884","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-16DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.993621
T. Moreda
In Ethiopia, large-scale land acquisitions have been growing ever larger over the last few years, mainly in the lowland parts of the country. A substantial amount of land has already been acquired by both domestic and foreign investors in the Benishangul-Gumuz region. The land acquisitions pose apparent threats to the economic, cultural and ecological survival of local indigenous communities. In particular, Gumuz ethnic groups, who depend on customary forms of land access and control, and whose livelihoods are based heavily on access to natural resources, are being differentially affected. Through a case study in some selected administrative districts of the Benishangul-Gumuz region, this paper uses empirical evidence to examine how local indigenous communities are engaging with or challenging the recent land acquisitions. By doing so, the paper shows how the apparent silence of the Gumuz people regarding the land acquisitions is misleading. It shows how local communities, although not organized either politically or economically, express their discontent in differentiated ways against the state and social forces – particularly over land and access to employment, and around state politics. As I show in this paper, local reactions range from covert to more open forms of resistance.
{"title":"Listening to their silence? The political reaction of affected communities to large-scale land acquisitions: insights from Ethiopia","authors":"T. Moreda","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.993621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.993621","url":null,"abstract":"In Ethiopia, large-scale land acquisitions have been growing ever larger over the last few years, mainly in the lowland parts of the country. A substantial amount of land has already been acquired by both domestic and foreign investors in the Benishangul-Gumuz region. The land acquisitions pose apparent threats to the economic, cultural and ecological survival of local indigenous communities. In particular, Gumuz ethnic groups, who depend on customary forms of land access and control, and whose livelihoods are based heavily on access to natural resources, are being differentially affected. Through a case study in some selected administrative districts of the Benishangul-Gumuz region, this paper uses empirical evidence to examine how local indigenous communities are engaging with or challenging the recent land acquisitions. By doing so, the paper shows how the apparent silence of the Gumuz people regarding the land acquisitions is misleading. It shows how local communities, although not organized either politically or economically, express their discontent in differentiated ways against the state and social forces – particularly over land and access to employment, and around state politics. As I show in this paper, local reactions range from covert to more open forms of resistance.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"517 - 539"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.993621","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59430037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-03-16DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2014.992883
Jacobo Grajales
The entanglement of violence and legal institutions in Colombia has led some scholars to argue that this country is characterized by a ‘law without state’, or that the law has a mere ‘symbolic function’. This would explain an apparent paradox: high-intensity violence has been accompanied by the preservation of legal institutions and a common belief in their social importance. Yet the mobilization of the legal repertoire against violent land grabbing by peasant movements shows their belief in the legitimacy of legal institutions. Instead of measuring the efficiency of these actions, this paper will analyse the interaction between local orders and national legal institutions. This study argues that legal arenas have served to address land conflict, in a context of egregious violence. With their own dynamics and rules, they have not completely disrupted the logics of violent dispossession, yet they have defined land not only as an object of business transactions but also as an issue of human rights and collective identities.
{"title":"Land grabbing, legal contention and institutional change in Colombia","authors":"Jacobo Grajales","doi":"10.1080/03066150.2014.992883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.992883","url":null,"abstract":"The entanglement of violence and legal institutions in Colombia has led some scholars to argue that this country is characterized by a ‘law without state’, or that the law has a mere ‘symbolic function’. This would explain an apparent paradox: high-intensity violence has been accompanied by the preservation of legal institutions and a common belief in their social importance. Yet the mobilization of the legal repertoire against violent land grabbing by peasant movements shows their belief in the legitimacy of legal institutions. Instead of measuring the efficiency of these actions, this paper will analyse the interaction between local orders and national legal institutions. This study argues that legal arenas have served to address land conflict, in a context of egregious violence. With their own dynamics and rules, they have not completely disrupted the logics of violent dispossession, yet they have defined land not only as an object of business transactions but also as an issue of human rights and collective identities.","PeriodicalId":48271,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Peasant Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":"541 - 560"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2015-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/03066150.2014.992883","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59429928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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