Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question

360 Pages·2008·1.77 MB·English

by  A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi (Editor)

Peasants and Globalization
In 2007, for the first time in human history, amajorityof theworld’spopulation
livedincities.However,onaglobalscale,povertyoverwhelminglyretainsaruralface.
This book assembles a group of internationally eminent scholars in the field of
rural development and social change in order to explore historical and con-
temporary processes of agrarian transformation and its consequent impact on
livelihoods, poverty and wellbeing. After examining the agrarian origins of
capitalism in Europe, the impact of colonialism on rural change in colonized
countries,andprocessesofagrariantransformationthroughthetwentiethcentury
untilthepresent,thisbookoffersanumberofchallengingperspectivesontheextent
to which contemporary international capitalism, neoliberal globalization, and
transformationsintheworldfoodsystemhaveaffectedthecapacityofdeveloping
andtransitioncountriestofacilitatesustainableruraldevelopmentthroughegalitarian
agrarianchangeandpovertyeradicationinthecountryside.Thebookprovidesa
criticalanalysisoftheextenttowhichruraldevelopmenttrajectorieshaveinthepast
promoted, and are now promoting, a reconfiguration of rural production pro-
cesses,theaccumulationofruralresourcesandshiftsinruralpolitics–andofthe
implicationsofsuchtrajectoriesforpeasantlivelihoodsinaneraofglobalization.
Peasants and Globalization explores continuity and change in the debate on
the ‘agrarian question’, from its early formulation in the late nineteenth century
to the continuing relevance it has in our times. Collectively, the contributors
argue that in deepening the market imperative governing contemporary agri-
culture,neoliberalsocialandeconomicpoliciesnotonlyhavefailedtotacklethe
underlying causes of rural poverty, but also have deepened the agrarian crisis
currently confronting the livelihoods of peasant farmers and rural workers
around the world. This crisis does not go unchallenged, as rural social move-
ments have emerged, for the first time, on a transnational scale. Confronting
developmentpoliciesthatareunabletoreduce,letaloneeliminate,ruralpoverty,
transnational rural social movements are attempting to construct a more just
future for the world’s farmers and rural workers.
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi is Professor of International Development Studies at
Trent University, Peterborough, Canada.
Cristóbal Kay is Professor of Development Studies and Rural Development at
the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Routledge ISS Studies in Rural Livelihoods
Editorial Board: A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi (Trent University), Saturnino M.
Borras, Jr (Saint Mary’s University), Cristóbal Kay (Chair) (Institute of
Social Studies) and Max Spoor (Institute of Social Studies)
Routledge and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, the
Netherlands have come together to publish a series of books on key issues
confronting contemporary rural livelihoods in developing and transition
countries. The series will include volumes critically covering themes includ-
ing rural poverty, agrarian transformation, land policies and land rights,
foodpolicyandpolitics,waterissues,migration,ruralsocialmovements,and
rural conflict and violence, amongst others. All books in the series offer rig-
orous, evidence-based, cross-national comparative and inter-regional analy-
sis.Thebooksaredesigned to be theoreticallystimulating butalso accessible
to policy practitioners and civil society activists.
1 Land, Poverty and Livelihoods in an Era of Globalization
Perspectives from developing and transition countries
Edited by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Saturnino M. Borras, Jr
and Cristóbal Kay
2. Peasants and Globalization
Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question
Edited by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristóbal Kay
Peasants and Globalization
Political economy, rural transformation and
the agrarian question
Edited by A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi and
Cristóbal Kay
Firstpublished2009
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2009selectionandeditorialmatter: A.HaroonAkram-Lodhiand
CristóbalKay;individualchapters,thecontributors
TypesetinTimesNewRoman
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
PrintedandboundinGreatBritainby
BiddlesLtd,King’sLynn
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,
nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,
orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissionin
writingfromthepublishers.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Peasantsandglobalization:politicaleconomy,ruraltransformationand
theagrarianquestion/editedbyA.HaroonAkram-LodhiandCristóbal
Kay.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Ruraldevelopment–Casestudies.2.Peasants–Casestudies.3.
Globalization–Casestudies.I.Akram-Lodhi,A.Haroon,1958-II.Kay,
Cristóbal.
HN49.C6P4352008
307.1’412–dc22
2008008935
ISBN978-0-415-44629-7(hbk)
ISBN978-0-203-89183-4(ebk)
Contents
List of contributors vii
Preface x
List of abbreviations and acronyms xii
PART1
Peasant Livelihoods and the Agrarian Question 1
1 The agrarian question: peasants and rural change 3
A.HAROONAKRAM-LODHIANDCRISTÓBALKAY
PART2
Historical Perspectives on Agrarian Change 35
2 Peasants and the market imperative: the origins of capitalism 37
ELLENMEIKSINSWOOD
3 The landlord class, peasant differentiation, class struggle and the
transition to capitalism: England, France and Prussia compared 57
TERENCEJ.BYRES
4 Nineteenth century imperialism and structural transformation in
colonized countries 83
AMIYAKUMARBAGCHI
5 The invisible hand and the visible foot: peasants, dispossession and
globalization 111
FARSHADARAGHI
6 Peasant struggles for land and agrarian reform in Latin America 148
MIGUELTEUBAL
vi Contents
PART3
Contemporary Perspectives on Agrarian Change 167
7 The globalization of manufacturing production: Warrenite
fantasies and uneven and unequal realities 169
RAYKIELY
8 Gender justice, land and the agrarian question in Southern Africa 190
BRIDGETO’LAUGHLIN
9 The political economyof land and the agrarian question in an era
of neoliberal globalization 214
A.HAROONAKRAM-LODHI,CRISTÓBALKAY
ANDSATURNINOM.BORRAS,JR
10 Agrarian questions from transition to globalization 239
HENRYBERNSTEIN
11 The Southern question: agrarian questions of labour and capital 262
MICHAELJ.WATTS
12 Food sovereignty, social reproduction and the agrarian question 288
PHILIPMCMICHAEL
PART4
The Agrarian Question, Past and Present 313
13 Neoliberal globalization, the traits of rural accumulation and rural
politics: the agrarian question in the twenty-first century 315
A.HAROONAKRAM-LODHIANDCRISTÓBALKAY
Index 339
Contributors
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi is Professor of International Development Studies
at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada and has recently co-edited
Land, Poverty and Livelihoods: Perspectives from Developing and
Transition Countries and Globalization, Neo-Conservative Policies and
Democratic Alternatives: Essays in Honour of John Loxley. His principal
research interest is in the political economy of agrarian change, including
its gender dimensions.
Farshad Araghi is Chairof the Department of Sociology and Directorof the
Graduate Program at Florida Atlantic University. He is a co-editorof the
International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. His principal
research interests are globalization, world-historical methodology and the
political economy of agrarian change, and his work on global depea-
santization relates peasant studies, food regime analysis, land reform and
world-historical sociology. He is currently completing abookon peasants
and the global enclosures of our times. His article ‘Food regimes and the
production of value: some methodological issues’, published in the
Journal of Peasant Studies, won the Eric Wolf Prize.
Amiya Kumar Bagchi is Director and Secretary of the Institute of
Development Studies Kolkata, India and is perhaps best known for The
Political Economy of Underdevelopment, Capital and Labour Re-defined:
India and the Third World and The Perilous Passage: Mankind and the
Global Ascendancy of Capital.
Henry Bernstein is Professor of Development Studies in the University of
London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, UK. In addi-
tion to being former co-editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change and the
Journal of Peasant Studies, he has co-authored African Enclosures? The
Social Dynamics of Wetlands in Drylands, edited The Agrarian
Question in South Africa, and co-edited Rural Livelihoods: Crises and
Responses.
viii Contributors
Saturnino M. Borras, Jr is Canada Research Chair in International
Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. His
most recent books are Pro-Poor Land Reform: A Critique and On Just
Grounds: Struggling for Agrarian Justice and Citizenship Rights in the
Rural Philippines, co-edited with Jennifer Franco. His current research
interests include transnational agrarian movements and redistributive
reform in ‘non-private lands’.
Terence J. Byres is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy in the
University of London, and Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Agrarian
Change. His earlier writing was on agrarian change in India. His last
book, Capitalism From Above and Capitalism From Below, was a com-
parison of capitalist agrarian transition in Prussia and the USA. He is
currently working on the relationships, in the eighteenth century, between
the capitalist transformation of Scotland and the Scottish Enlightenment.
Cristóbal Kay is Professor of Development Studies and Rural Development
at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands. He has
co-edited Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and
Latin America, co-authored Latin America Transformed: Globalization
and Modernity, and written Latin American Theories of Development and
Underdevelopment.
Ray Kiely is Professor of International Politics in the University of London
at Queen Mary College. His principal research interests are in interna-
tional political economy, globalization, imperialism and social theory.
Among his publications, his most recent books are The New Political
Economy of Development and Empire in the Age of Globalisation: US
Hegemony and Neo-Liberal Disorder.
Philip McMichael is Professor of Development Sociology at Cornell
University. He has written Development and Social Change: A Global
Perspective, which is in its fourth edition, has edited Food and Agrarian
Orders in the World-Economyand The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food
Systems, and has co-edited New Directions in the Sociology of Global
Development. In addition, he has written Settlers and the Agrarian
Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia. His current
projects centre on the politics of globalization, including institutional
changes in the global order and globalization counter-movements.
BridgetO’LaughlinisAssociateProfessorofPopulationandDevelopmentat
the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands, is a co-
editor of Development and Change, and has published extensively in
journals such as the Journal of Southern African Studies, African Affairs
and the Journal of Peasant Studies. She is currently researching the
Contributors ix
gendered impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on rural livelihoods in
Southern Africa.
Miguel Teubal is Professor of Economics at the University of Buenos Aires
and researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological
Research, known as CONICET. He has published widely on the political
economy of food, agriculture and poverty in Latin America and
Argentina.Someofhisrecentpublicationsinclude‘Expansióndelmodelo
sojero en la Argentina: de la producción de alimentos a los commodities’
and ‘Tierra y reforma agraria en América Latina’, and he co-edited Agro
y Alimentos en la Globalización: Una Perspective Crítica.
Michael J. Watts is Professorof Geography and Directorof African Studies
at the University of California at Berkeley. He is author of an extensive
array of articles and chapters, and is currently working on two books, on
the history of oil in the Niger Delta and the history of postwar US
capitalism seen through the poultry sector. His concern with the agrarian
question extends backover 30 years.
Ellen Meiksins Wood was for many years Professor of Political Science at
York University, Toronto, Canada. Her books include The Pristine
Culture of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, Empire of Capital, The
Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, and The Retreat from Class, which
won the Deutscher Prize.