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)
Melanie Sommerville
(NMBU)
Enrique Castañón Ballivián
(SOAS, University of London)
Chair:
Mnqobi Ngubane
(University of Johannesburg)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Rural & agrarian spaces
Sessions:
Thursday 7 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Counter agrarian reform in the Global South: dynamics of accumulation and change.
Panel P21a at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
This panel invites papers that critically examine the deepening of capitalist relations, and counter agrarian reform dynamics, in ongoing, and post land reform localities in diverse regions of the Global South.
Long Abstract:
Critical development studies and agrarian studies scholars have highlighted new ways in which capital resuscitates to regain control of land redistributed through land reform in diverse regions of the Global South. We seek papers illuminating deepening capitalist relations in ongoing, and post land reform contexts, highlighting forms, dynamics and consequences of deepened market relations for social reproduction of peasants and working classes, and papers examining resistance against counter agrarian reform.
Redistributive land reform deepens market relations for subaltern classes barred from market participation opportunities under oppressive political regimes. Deepened market participation can be engagements in land rental markets or various partnerships by recipients of land reform farmland without capital for agricultural investments, nor state agricultural subsidies, and without access to alternative forms of production beyond conventional agriculture. These deepened capitalist market relations can be exclusionary, and progressive. Exclusionary when they facilitate post land reform land dispossession, and resuscitating exploitative productive extractivism. Progressive when they facilitate alternative forms of production that are democratic, self-exploitative and beneficial to marginalised classes.
Processes of accumulation in ongoing, and post land reform contexts potentially reverse the gains of redistributive land reform and can lead to land grabbings of land reform land. Counter agrarian reform is justified by capital and infiltrated into agricultural policy through popular hegemonic narratives cushioned in incapacitating articulative languages opposed to alternative forms of farming in ongoing, and post land reform contexts, such as small-scale capitalist agriculture in Zimbabwe, and squeezed forms of the latter in Brazil, Kenya and South Africa.
Methodology:
The panellists will circulate papers to convenors in advance, and also upload their two minutes pitch presentations/voice or video recording in advance. The remaining time of the 40 minute panel will be used for a general discussion towards a journal special issue submission.
A grounded analysis of accumulation mechanisms and shifting land tenure arrangements within campesino communities in the municipality of Cuatro Cañadas, Bolivia's epicentre of soy agribusiness expansion.
Paper long abstract:
Analyses of agribusiness expansion are typically centred around the practices of large capital. The focus is usually on macro-level dispossession resulting from processes of market predation and land grabbing. Such focus obscures the processes of 'accumulation from below' and microprocesses of dispossession amongst small-scale farmers. Based on ethnographic work, this paper offers a detailed account of what agribusiness expansion has meant for landed campesinos in eastern lowland Bolivia. It focuses on the accumulation mechanisms and shifting land tenure arrangements within campesino communities in the municipality of Cuatro Cañadas, Bolivia's epicentre of soy agribusiness expansion. My analysis shows how a state intervention triggered an incipient process of 'accumulation from below' that radically transformed land relations. This in turn fostered division and distrust within the campesino population weakening their sindicatos - the historical campesino unions that have been crucial to defend their interests. Campesino settlements in this region of the country can be linked to the reverberations of the 1953 agrarian reform. These were part of a state-sponsored migration of highland campesinos to the lowlands to increase labour supplies. In this sense, the shifting land tenure arrangements that are gradually concentrating land on the hands of emergent capitalist farmers could be considered an instance of counter agrarian reform. But one that is unfolding slowly and 'from below' in a context where the intensification of commodification processes brought about by agribusiness expansion is shaped by historic-specific forms of social organisation and state intervention.
The paper investigates access to the land for ethnic minority villagers in five districts of Bac Kan province in the northern mountainous region of Vietnam using Bernstein's four political economy questions.
Paper long abstract:
The research investigated access to the land situation in Bac Kan province, which is located in the northern mountainous region of Vietnam. It found out that the effects of land reforms in the researched areas in the past had significantly shaped the current access to the land situation of different groups of village households. This challenges a common view that the state-led land reforms in Vietnam have created relatively equal access to land.
More specifically, research findings suggest that different waves of land reforms in the region have further legitimated and exacerbated the already existing unequal access to land between different groups of villagers. Furthermore, the degradation of the land quality over several decades has affected the local farming household's ability to benefit from the land they are titled to. Households in the poor category are the most affected by this given that a significant amount of land they owned was low in quality.
The paper suggests that it is productive to adopt a view of access to land as 'the ability to benefit from the land' in analyzing the historical process of 'proletarianization by dispossession' to reveal the hidden aspect of inequality in land access in contemporary agrarian change conversation. Findings were analyzed based on an ethnosurvey with 276 households and in-depth interviews with 65 villagers living in five villages of five districts in Bac Kan province of Vietnam.
We wish to share the latest information and often ignored story of Zimbabwe's land reform
Paper long abstract:
Dubbed the most redistributive land reform post-cold war, Zimbabwe's land reform is and has been under attack from neoliberal forces since day one. We trace, the reversal of this broad-based land reform from various fronts and the resultant outcomes in terms of the class configuration, accumulation trajectories, and politics ensuing. Evidence arising from multiple sites in the countryside reveals that neoliberal condescension at times at the behest of the state has reconfigured land ownership directly and directly through multiple maneuvers such as pseudo-win-win joint venture agreements; land leasing (virtual dispossession); outright (re) dispossession and new state-sanctioned land allocations. The most affected class is the poor peasants and a minority of large-scale land reform beneficiaries. The latter class is largely alienated from the land based on a rapidly shifting political terrain. The responses to these counter agrarian maneuvers spur a spectrum of successful resistance (pivot politics) and courtroom battles (legal fare). The implications of these findings reveal and point to the mysteriousness of capital and embeddedness and enduring nature of the struggle for survival at one pole and the Spatio-temporal fixedness of capital in a changing world and the enduring land question in a developing transitional state.
Keywords: Counter Agrarian Reform; land reform; neoliberalism; capitalism;
To re-insert into the debate on land reform the concept of racial capitalism, namely, how the interlocking of class exploitation and legacies of racial discrimination continue to stymie progressive land reform, especially if we critically review the outcomes of land restitution in South Africa.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of racial capitalism was arguably first coined by South African neo-Marxist scholars such as Martin Legassick, Dave Hemson, Neville Alexander, etc. In the USA, there has been a revival of the ideas of Cedric J. Robinson's conceptualisation of the relationship between class exploitation and racial oppression with a focus on racial capitalism. An assessment of land reform processes in South Africa in the 21st century, that is, in the post-apartheid post-colonial era, suggests that legacies of class exploitation and racial discrimination continue to influence power relations on the countryside and have significant consequences for land reform. In this paper, I will conduct an overview of the literature that assesses land restitution processes in South Africa using and testing the lens of 'racial capitalism'. Agrarian scholars such as Mnqobi Ngubane have argued that ideas that are racially based such as 'blacks can't farm' and other stereotypes seek to undermine rural actors because of their racial and class identities. This suggests that re-theorisation of land reform and restitution processes might benefit from analyses that locate themselves in the current revival of and debates around the concept of racial capitalism; especially the continuities and discontinuities of oppression and exploitation related to South Africa's apartheid past and, more broadly, the Global South's colonial past. The paper grapples with the relationship of class struggle to national liberation and suggests that the race/class conundrum is key in understanding the possibilities and limitations of nationalist and socialist aspirations in land reform in the Global South.
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Guadalupe Satiro (University of Brasilia)
George Mudimu (MUAST)
Bao Nguyet Dang (International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Melanie Sommerville (NMBU)
Enrique Castañón Ballivián (SOAS, University of London)
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers that critically examine the deepening of capitalist relations, and counter agrarian reform dynamics, in ongoing, and post land reform localities in diverse regions of the Global South.
Long Abstract:
Critical development studies and agrarian studies scholars have highlighted new ways in which capital resuscitates to regain control of land redistributed through land reform in diverse regions of the Global South. We seek papers illuminating deepening capitalist relations in ongoing, and post land reform contexts, highlighting forms, dynamics and consequences of deepened market relations for social reproduction of peasants and working classes, and papers examining resistance against counter agrarian reform.
Redistributive land reform deepens market relations for subaltern classes barred from market participation opportunities under oppressive political regimes. Deepened market participation can be engagements in land rental markets or various partnerships by recipients of land reform farmland without capital for agricultural investments, nor state agricultural subsidies, and without access to alternative forms of production beyond conventional agriculture. These deepened capitalist market relations can be exclusionary, and progressive. Exclusionary when they facilitate post land reform land dispossession, and resuscitating exploitative productive extractivism. Progressive when they facilitate alternative forms of production that are democratic, self-exploitative and beneficial to marginalised classes.
Processes of accumulation in ongoing, and post land reform contexts potentially reverse the gains of redistributive land reform and can lead to land grabbings of land reform land. Counter agrarian reform is justified by capital and infiltrated into agricultural policy through popular hegemonic narratives cushioned in incapacitating articulative languages opposed to alternative forms of farming in ongoing, and post land reform contexts, such as small-scale capitalist agriculture in Zimbabwe, and squeezed forms of the latter in Brazil, Kenya and South Africa.
Methodology:
The panellists will circulate papers to convenors in advance, and also upload their two minutes pitch presentations/voice or video recording in advance. The remaining time of the 40 minute panel will be used for a general discussion towards a journal special issue submission.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -