Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy

This article argues that for large masses of the workers, peasants, agricultural laborers, and petty producers, especially in the Third World, for whom freedom consists in their ability to struggle to improve their living condition, globalization entails a loss of freedom compared even to what they had enjoyed under earlier dirigiste regimes that had functioned within a democratic set up. They become victims of growing inequality and even of growing absolute nutritional poverty through the spontaneous working of the neoliberal arrangement that characterizes contemporary globalization. At the same time, their capacity to bring about changes through collective political intervention is also taken away from them because of this very phenomenon of globalization, under which finance is globalized while the state remains a nation-state. The article also argues that delinking is also extremely difficult, as it brings in its wake transitional difficulties which are not just immense in themselves but become even more formidable because of the sanctions imposed at the behest of advanced countries. The working people of the Third World are thus kept in a bind. Moreover, as globalization gets engulfed in an economic crisis, this bind is further tightened through the institution of authoritarian and fascistic political regimes that launch an assault on individual rights and democratic institutions: the abridgement of freedom is then carried to an even higher level.

Customary norms, as informal institutions, contribute to social order and stability, which support economic growth and agricultural production in most rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Customary rights on land are granted under this structure. Traditionally, grants of rights in these areas were unwritten, while the rights themselves were undefined and untradable. However, all this is changing under pressure of various factors. This article examines the key factors responsible for this change in three chiefdoms (Shimukunami, Shibuchinga, and Fungulwe) in Lufwanyama District in the Copperbelt Province. The study finds that the demands of a cash economy, a pervasive land market, increased demand by foreign and local investors, and the state’s own actions were exerting pressure on customary tenure and contributing to increased insecurity and changing livelihood practices in the area. The response to these threats by traditional administrators is to formulate local documents, such as village and farm permits, in a bid to strengthen villagers’ rights to land. Data were collected using household questionnaires, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews.

The election of Jair Bolsonaro represents the culmination of a conjuncture featuring the rise of right-wing populism and authoritarian neoliberalism in Brazil. This article analyzes the role played by dominant and subaltern rural social classes in a process that brought the country to this situation by critically assessing the current Brazilian agrarian debate. A segmentation of distinct class fractions within the categories of patronal agriculture and family farming is proposed. The origin and significance of the institutional ambiguity that marked Brazilian agri-food policies, as well as the reasons behind their dismantling, are explored. The agrarian question remains the key to understanding the contradictory dynamics of Brazilian capitalism and the challenges of its national formation.

The transformations of the coffee sector have posed major challenges to rural farmers who have lost an important source of income. However, the way in which such shocks are experienced by families hinges on the gender relations governing families’ production and sale of coffee. In this article, it is argued that in Meru, Tanzania, which once had a strong coffee economy, the production of coffee depended on the subjugation of women by men. The collapse of coffee has created new opportunities for women. They do not mourn its demise, as one might expect from a merely financial perspective. At the same time, women’s new opportunities for income earning and business are also contested by men. The changes in this part of Tanzania in response to recent transformations can only be understood through the gender dynamics, and the contests, they fuel.

This article addresses the dynamics between three interrelated questions of agrarian transition in Punjab. The first concerns the role and nature of the state and the market mechanism for the transformation of traditional agriculture into its capitalist counterpart, by the development of the productive forces and changes in production structure. The second dwells on the impact of the state-driven capitalism on the production structure of agriculture and its contradictions. The third deals with the process of class formation and the precise nature of emerging classes in rural Punjab.

Despite sustained high growth in India over the past three decades or so, barring the recent turn of events, structural transformation has been characterized by deepening agrarian crisis, high unemployment, and a lack of remunerative and good quality jobs. These are the major contributors to the problem of burgeoning inequality in India. In this article, using various macro-level data sets, secondary case study reports, and one primary survey, it is argued that the neoliberal model of development cannot solve the ongoing rural crisis in India. This, in turn, calls for looking beyond this paradigm. Considering that agrarian (or broadly speaking, rural) distress has its own class dynamics, which lead to disproportionate suffering among the class of marginal farmers/tenants, agricultural workers, and others, it is argued that cooperativism presents itself as an alternative model for remedying India’s ongoing rural crisis. In this context, strong management and external support are key factors to ensure the success of cooperatives.

This article is a tribute to the late Thandika Mkandawire, who passed away on 27 March 2020. It remarks on Thandika’s essential simplicity and humour, and highlights his contribution to our understanding of the state and the peasantry in Africa. He put forward the thesis that post-colonial rebel movements have been largely urban-based aiming to conquer power whose seat is essentially in urban centres. This thesis needs to be revisited critically and debated, especially in the context of widespread land grabbing, which has shifted the terrain of struggle in the countryside.

Vikas Rawal and Dorian Kalamvrezos Navarro (Eds.) (2019). The Global Economy of Pulses, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization. ISBN 978-92-5-109730-4, 174 pp., available at http://www.fao.org/3/i7108en/I7108EN.pdf.