Peasant Resilience: Decolonization and Re-conceptualization

Introduction

Much is said about the urgent need to strengthen resilience, yet it is not a concept with a precise and generally accepted definition, ^{1 , 2} which generates a degree of somewhat counterproductive confusion when it is applied to the reality of peasant communities. We argue that broadening the definition of resilience, so that it also includes culturally and historically situated insights, could enhance its usefulness when applied to rural communities. For example, so-called “peasant rationalities” are widely understood to be non-capitalist ³ (see summary by Rosas and Barkin ⁴ ).

Several authors have analyzed weaknesses that make resilience a less than robust concept when addressing human realities; for example, Bush and Marschke ⁵ highlight difficulties in addressing the social dimensions of resilience. Other arguments along these lines are those of Lockie ⁶ on environmental justice, Béné et al. ⁷ on the social construction of resilience, Viera Butelho et al. ⁸ on “deep ecology,” giving voice to peasant coffee producers, and Carpentier, ⁹ who in an excellent review argues that we must address resilience on a human scale. Cretney ¹⁰ argues that the concept has been co-opted by neoliberal policy making, and as it is applied in fields ranging from risk prevention to psychology, it individualizes resilience and has contributed to the weakening of the responsibility of the state on vital issues of human welfare, thus empowering corporations with their vision of individualistic adaptation to market demands.

The pernicious ways in which Eurocentric capitalist thought pervades social and natural science worldviews, making other ways of being in, and seeing the world, exceptionally opaque and difficult to address effectively, have been called the “coloniality of knowledge” by Lander and other Latin American thinkers. ^{11 , 12} Resilience, it appears, is no different.

The objective of this essay, then, is to propose a decolonizing re-reading of the concept of resilience, with our attention focused on the perspective of the worlds of peasants. The challenge is to achieve a re-thinking from the peasant perspective. To situate the authors, the place of enunciation of the first author is as a rural woman from Chiapas, Mexico, interested in processes of decolonization made up of peasant families, and the other authors all have lifelong experience and practice in the accompaniment of peasants and their organizations.

We examine how the more conventional uses of the concept of resilience have a Western-Cartesian ontology based on Eurocentric epistemes, and a colonial temporality, which are distant from peasant worldviews and realities. We then revisit the concept of resilience, through the lenses of the peasant condition—as a category from the realm of peasant studies—decolonial thought, methodologies for epistemic decolonization, and the philosophy of liberation.

The Peasantry

What it means to be a peasant has seemingly been debated forever. ¹³ For Wolf, ¹⁴ peasant families are small agricultural producers who control the land and carry out agricultural work mainly as a means of subsistence rather than to accumulate wealth. The word peasant has a strong ideological charge, so it is necessary to clarify a bit of its origin. In English, both peasant and pagan come from the Latin pagus, meaning agricultural field. Robert (p.8) ¹⁵ uses Illich and Girard to call modernity a “progressive rupture with paganism,” and notes that modernity is seen as precisely the opposite of both peasant and pagan. Hence, the pejorative connotation is typically associated with peasant.

In this essay, we argue that peasant worlds have a basic economic framework that is non-capitalist, though they nevertheless exist within, and interact with, and simultaneously resist, the capitalist economy. ^{16 , 17} Peasants organize themselves, in cooperatives, for example, to produce and market their products in the wider capitalist economy, yet they simultaneously resist many of the manifestations of capitalism as it impacts their livelihoods and communities. We believe that what has been called peasant resistance ¹⁸ is a form of resilience when faced by capitalist market shocks, aimed at reorienting family production through agronomic changes, new approaches, and alternatives for community-level cooperation, to achieve or recover relative autonomy that protects themselves from the larger economy. ¹⁹ This is part of the ability of peasants to adjust and fine-tune their activity in constant and sometimes transformative adaptation to survive under changing economic, social, and physical environments, as argued by van der Ploeg ²⁰ in his recovery of Chayanovian balances.

Chayanov ²¹ argued that peasant economies are very different from the larger capitalist economies in which they exist, and to which they respond. Peasant economies cannot be analyzed based on Cartesian, capitalist logics, and they have significant internal strengths that help them survive changing conditions and difficult times. One of these strengths, Chayanov argued, ^{22 , 23} is their ability to adjust certain “balances” in accordance with changing conditions, including both internal conditions such as the family life cycle and external shocks. They can adjust their degree of relative autonomy versus market presence according to market conditions, ²⁴ and they can adjust their reliance on agroecological mechanisms of crop production (vs. dependence on external inputs, e.g.) to persist. Of course, they must retain sufficient autonomy to control these balances, and that entails resistance to outside attempts to subjugate them to increasing relations of dependence and dispossession. But in the language of contemporary debates, we can say that the ability to adjust Chayanovian balances—which requires some relative autonomy—is a key element in what we might call peasant resilience.

Thus, this concept of peasant resilience would manifest itself most clearly in the context of resistance, transformative adaptation, agroecologies, and in the construction of spaces of autonomy. ²⁵ An example of the construction of spaces of autonomy is the intergenerational coexistence that brings the knowledge of peasant grandparents to their grandchildren through planting and harvesting practices, without the need for external intervention. Going beyond the intergenerational, there is a relationship between autonomy and the discontinuities of modernity. For the contemporary Maya, for example, autonomy is closely related to community-embedded education at an early age and this, in turn, is closely related to the verb germinate. The community and the family make it possible for the child to “germinate,” that is to say, to self-educate within the family and community, achieving individuality yet within the bounds of community. Thus, each one is able to see themselves, to take from themselves what they need to become a wise person. Who is considered wise by the community is the one who has the ability to articulate personal initiative with the good of the larger group, helping the larger collective to see itself. Thus, an aspect of the autonomy ²⁶ of Mayan communities is to see themselves, and it depends on the autonomy within a collectivity that each one of its members achieves. In short: one way to see autonomy is as the paradox of achieving individuality and at the same time the capacity to reach consensus and strengthen the community. ²⁷

More Conventional Critiques of Resilience

The concept of resilience is under scrutiny in different disciplines where researchers are seeking greater precision to sharpen their analytical tools. In this sense, one of the main criticisms of the concept is how difficult it is to measure, particularly when the human element is taken into account. Carpenter et al. ²⁸ even argue that many aspects of socioecological systems are not directly observable at all, and these can only be analyzed indirectly. Other facets that are difficult to measure are the thresholds and limits of socioecological systems. ²⁹ A further difficulty is the period of time that should be evaluated in each system; where possible, it is preferable to study resilience over time. ³⁰

Walker et al. ³¹ reflect on what would be an appropriate methodology to investigate, define, and measure changes in the diversity of responses and their relationship to resilience, both in ecosystems and in the social system. How do multiple thresholds interact in socioecological systems, to constrain or otherwise influence possible future states of the system? Other authors reflect on the state of the concept and focus on community resilience for the purpose of reconstruction and garnering strength in hostile and threatening contexts without losing cultural identity. ³² For their part, Eakin at al. ³³ see the need to produce adaptation, to not only develop individual households' capacities but also improve their chances of contributing to the resilience of communities and landscapes.

A Non-Western Paradigm?

Quijano ³⁴ and Wallerstein ^{35 , 36} critique what has been called the “social-historical totality” of Western, capitalist thought within academic social research, which has contributed to opening the debate in Latin America regarding non-Eurocentric rationalities. Since the seventeenth century, the Cartesian-Western way of generating knowledge has been an emblem of modernity, with a strong emphasis on quantifying human–nature relations. ³⁷ Modern science has relied on determinism, linearity, and parsimony. ³⁸ This linear thinking has generally led rural sociology, for example, whether on the Right or the Left, to predict the eventual extinction of the peasantry. ³⁹ However, while severely pummeled by capitalism and by modernity, peasants most definitely continue to exist (and resist, and “re-exist”), and thus they are in some very important way(s) resilient. ^{40 , 41 , 42}

Quijano ⁴³ adopts a holistic vision in his study of society that challenges compartmentalization and proposes integrating the disciplines of social knowledge, as a means of understanding reality as a complex historical system. His epistemological proposal is similar to that of the Peruvian revolutionary thinker, Mariátegui. ⁴⁴ There are important and diverse theoretical tools that can help us to analyze the issue of socioecological resilience from a decolonial perspective and after calls to decolonize.

Decolonizing Resilience?

We begin by defining decolonial “as an unfinished worldwide movement of strategies that propose a radical change in the current dominant forms of power, being, and knowing,” ⁴⁵ and by distinguishing decolonial thought from processes of decolonization, the latter of which we call here “decolonizing methodologies,” since we need to differentiate between decolonial arguments and the methodologies that are implemented in social struggles in search of decolonization, or what Rivera Cusicanqui ⁴⁶ calls decolonizing practices. In this section, we delve into diálogo de saberes (DS; dialogue of knowledges and wisdoms) as one of these decolonizing methodologies, and we examine the coloniality of temporality as a part of decolonial thought. Decolonizing the concept of resilience could permit itis mobilization in collectivities under (re)construction from below. ⁴⁷ We cannot keep using resilience as meaning simply returning the world to its previous state, a state in which it was already on the unidimensional path toward continued capitalist domination, as Marcuse ⁴⁸ warned us in his essay on the ideology of industrial society.

Conclusions

Can we integrate the concept of resilience into the new–old way of relating and surviving, as taught by the peasant worlds? Or will it remain faithful to its Eurocentric and Cartesian origin as part of the problem and not the solution? We have the example of Zapatista thought, that through symbolisms and strategies sends messages full of emerging concepts that function as a mirror for the construction of other social movements. ⁷⁶ Peasant worlds are still strong, complex, productive, in movement, with abundant possibilities, and if the concept of resilience manages to imbibe from that source, it can become a part of transmodernity. ⁷⁷

The concept of resilience—at least as it is applied in the peasant worlds—must evolve, as it has done, since the Newtonian paradigm; it is now time to include the perspectives from peasant studies (i.e., Chayanovian balances), decolonization, DS, temporality, and the visions from the peasant worlds. Resilience can be found in peasant agriculture as resistance to the loss of autonomy, which gives space to adjust internal balances, and in the understanding of another temporality. This understanding of the peasant condition can be enriched with a decolonial approach, allowing for the construction of additional inclusive categories, growing not only in the cognitive sense, but also facing reality to build knowledge that is more relevant and non-alienating. Zemelman ⁷⁸ calls this a rescue of the historical subject. Resilience must be put into practice by the scholar, ⁷⁹ the professor, ⁸⁰ and rural youth ⁸¹ ; from there it can enrich theory and help the peasant worlds to survive.