Mnqobi Ngubane
(University of Johannesburg)
Guadalupe Satiro
(University of Brasilia)
George Mudimu
(MUAST)
Bao Nguyet Dang
(International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Enrique Castañón Ballivián
(SOAS, University of London)
Melanie Sommerville
(NMBU)
Chair:
Melanie Sommerville
(NMBU)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Rural & agrarian spaces
Sessions:
Wednesday 6 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Transforming the global countryside: Rural persistance and change in the ‘urban century’.
Panel P58 at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
The panel examines processes of rural transformation and change and underlying patterns of land use, labour regimes, institutions and development narratives.
Long Abstract:
Almost a quarter of the way into the ‘urban century’, rural change remains an important driver of development outcomes globally. Shifts in the global countryside continue to determine the livelihoods and wellbeing of a significant portion of the world’s population. Access to rural land and water is under constant pressure from deepening environmental degradation and climate change-induced scarcity. Industrial agriculture and boom crops expand steadily into new settings with corporate and financial conglomates and local elites alike engaged in practices of resource ‘grabbing.’ Evolving crises of productivity and efficiency rejig the balance between wage, contract, and unfree labour. Efforts at smallholder integration unfold alongside more obviously exploitative development models, kicking off new regimes of accumulation from above and from below. Rural factions retain a power that betrays their shrinking size and social movements shift and proliferate. And national development objectives tangle, sometimes uneasily, with local priorities.
This panel considers these and other trends unfolding in the global countryside and which indeed underpin urbanization and peri-urban densification processes. What official narratives and projects drive contemporary rural transformation? What new forms of subjugation and violence might result? How is environmental change redistributing or reconfirming socioeconomic differentiation? And what are the implications for social justice?
This paper examines how the intersection of climate change processes with micro-forms of capitalist exploitation is threatening the future sustainability of agrarian economies in Ghana, West Africa.
Paper long abstract:
In the examination of the interplay between capitalism and climate change and its effect on agrarian struggles, the idea of the intrusion of corporate and state-guided capitalism into the agrarian world has been preeminent. This focus on hard capital obscures indirect linkages, such as how soft capital, although disoriented towards the raping of nature, unlike the former, exacerbates climate change effects in ways that accelerate the destabilization of agrarian economies. This indirect connection is evident in agrarian settings in the Northern Region of Ghana, where the resultant peasants' revolt is directed neither at capital nor the state but at local landed-elites, who transfer the burden of the twin pressures of climate change and soft capital to their labourers. Using the Marxian concept of social relations of production as a theoretical lens, this paper unpacks how this interface plays out in Gushiegu, Northern Ghana. It concludes that because the relations of production in a society shapes the peasants' revolt undertaken in response to threats to their livelihoods, agrarian scholars should become more attentive to their diversity in order to recognize the different ways peasants are responding to the twin threats of climate change and capitalism.
This paper explores the viewpoint of to what extent FPIC has been exercised within the initial stage of a massive Food Estate Program in Indonesia and whether it has undermined or strengthened state-corporate power.
Paper long abstract:
Palm oil is one of the most polarising commodities in terms of its environmental and economic impacts. Despite having a high productivity rate, it is traditionally associated with industrial agriculture with massive land grabs, displacement and deforestation implications.
Indonesia is one of the world's leading producers of Crude Palm Oil (CPO). Palm oil produced from the provinces of Papua and West Papua will be the key focus of this study. The region of Papua enjoys a rainforest size of 33.8 million hectares (83.5 million acres), an area the size of Florida, and hundreds of indigenous communities living side by side with nature. Conflicts between the communities, plantation companies and the government have occurred in the past.
A National Food Estate program has been declared, including in Papua, purported to ensure domestic food self-resiliency, and bring development closer to the regions through renewed investment. However previous failed experience have only develop exported crops such as Palm Oil and did not cater to the economic or health needs of the indigenous peoples. This time around, there is a growing call to conduct stronger Free Informed Prior Consent (FPIC) consultations to meet the needs of the local population.
Research on palm oil has been mentioned as 'urgent' and needs to see the interaction between environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts. This study, therefore, attempts to explore the viewpoint of to what extent FPIC has been exercised and whether it has implications towards social justice.
The paper highlights the significance and mechanisms of social capital in sustaining farmers' livelihoods. It underlines how bonding social capital based on farmers' everyday relationships within villages elicits changes in farming practices and transforms information into localised knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates how small-scale farmers' social relations shape Colombia's market engagement and livelihoods. Agricultural food markets offer opportunities for farmers to improve their livelihoods. However, despite policy efforts aimed at successfully integrating small-scale farmers into food markets, many farmers face challenges in accessing these markets, and thus in accruing profits from agricultural commercialisation. It argues that different types of farmers' interpersonal interactions that generate bonding and bridging social capital can influence their choice of dairy market engagement and their livelihood outcomes, including total household income and the likelihood of being poor. This research contributes to understanding the role of farmers' social relations in improving livelihood activities and outcomes. It adopts a mixed-methods case study design and uses primary data acquired from a quantitative household survey and qualitative interviews with farmers and leaders of producer-led organisations. The paper examines how bonding and bridging social capital are linked to farm households' choice of dairy market engagement through various mechanisms. 'Bonding social capital', in triggering farmers' critical appraisal and adoption of innovative practices, supports the association with collective market engagement. 'Bridging social capital' was also found to predict farmers' engagement in collective commercialisation through prompting social learning based on exposure to extensive information and resources, despite its limitations in transforming farmers' practices and livelihood outcomes. These findings lead to policy recommendations of ways to assist farmers in enhancing market access and livelihood outcomes.
The urban-biased informality discourse ignore rural non-agrarian informal sector as a potential site of accumulation and rural development engine.It fails to capture the differential rural accumulation outcomes linked to the nature of agriculture labour productivity and market growth.
Paper long abstract:
The urban-biased discourse on informality ignores the role of rural non-agrarian informal sector as a potential site of accumulation and an engine of rural development. Although the existing literature acknowledges the role of rural non-farm sector in agriculture household income diversification, the role of agriculture labour productivity in the growth of rural non-farm accumulation is neglected. This paper argues that differences in agriculture labour productivity drive variations in rural accumulation processes in India. Using the 67th (2010-11) and 73rd (2015-16) rounds of NSSO all-India level survey data on informal enterprises, we find that labour productivity in rural informal sector is higher in higher agriculture labour productivity (HAP) states than in lower agriculture labour productivity (LAP) states. We also find that the differentiation within informal enterprises in rural manufacturing is higher in HAP states with a substantially higher use of wage labour than in LAP states. The period between 2010-11 and 2015-16 is also associated with worsening agrarian crisis in both HAP and LAP states, albeit of a different nature. During this period, the share of informal enterprises that do not hire wage labour declined in both rich and poor states. Consequently, there is deepening of differentiation within informal sector. On one hand, HAP states have higher share of enterprises that hire wage labour and LAP states have higher share of enterprises that do not hire wage labour but operate on subcontracting. Therefore, the paper argues the centrality of agriculture labour productivity growth in shaping the paths of rural non-agrarian accumulation.
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Guadalupe Satiro (University of Brasilia)
George Mudimu (MUAST)
Bao Nguyet Dang (International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Enrique Castañón Ballivián (SOAS, University of London)
Melanie Sommerville (NMBU)
Short Abstract:
The panel examines processes of rural transformation and change and underlying patterns of land use, labour regimes, institutions and development narratives.
Long Abstract:
Almost a quarter of the way into the ‘urban century’, rural change remains an important driver of development outcomes globally. Shifts in the global countryside continue to determine the livelihoods and wellbeing of a significant portion of the world’s population. Access to rural land and water is under constant pressure from deepening environmental degradation and climate change-induced scarcity. Industrial agriculture and boom crops expand steadily into new settings with corporate and financial conglomates and local elites alike engaged in practices of resource ‘grabbing.’ Evolving crises of productivity and efficiency rejig the balance between wage, contract, and unfree labour. Efforts at smallholder integration unfold alongside more obviously exploitative development models, kicking off new regimes of accumulation from above and from below. Rural factions retain a power that betrays their shrinking size and social movements shift and proliferate. And national development objectives tangle, sometimes uneasily, with local priorities.
This panel considers these and other trends unfolding in the global countryside and which indeed underpin urbanization and peri-urban densification processes. What official narratives and projects drive contemporary rural transformation? What new forms of subjugation and violence might result? How is environmental change redistributing or reconfirming socioeconomic differentiation? And what are the implications for social justice?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -