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Paper short abstract:

I examine how agrarian relations in Pakistan are shaped by colonial and neo-colonial dynamics. Warning against blanket valourization of “pre-colonial” epistemologies, which could be oppressive and exploitative, and draw on the praxis of Pakistani Maoists to consider the politics of agrarian reform.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to offer a synoptic overview of emerging research on the agrarian question in Pakistan by engaging with recent articulations of decoloniality. I draw on my own historical and contemporary research as well as the emerging literature in and on Pakistan from a critical agrarian studies perspective to examine three themes. The first is how colonial and neo-colonial dynamics have shaped agrarian relations in Pakistan, spanning not only material allocations of land, labour, and nature, but also ideas. Here, I caution that pre-colonial epistemologies were themselves differentiated between popular democratic and hierarchal and so should also be handled with care. Second, I consider how the enduring relevance of the land and livelihoods questions in Pakistan both shape and disrupt urban-rural distinctions. Lastly, I draw on the decolonial praxis of Pakistani Maoists to critically consider class dynamics of the politics of agrarian reform in Pakistan; namely, whether and how a politics of national and food sovereignty can prioritize the lowest classes in an anti-imperialist united front.

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Paper short abstract:

I offer a theoretical exposition of the overlap of the circuits, processes, and labours of production and reproduction for agrarian and non-agrarian petty commodity producing households.

Paper long abstract:

Petty commodity production (PCP) is not simply capital in its infancy or labour in disguise, but a being to itself, a being that sustains. It is that combination of capital and labour in one unified entity that both exploits and accumulates—from itself, to itself, for (some parts of) itself (Jan and Harriss-White, 2019). As capital, PCP must create surplus value and expand. However, since the same entity is also the home and provider of the labour power used in production, biological and social reproduction must be accomplished by the same entity. While capitalist firms are able to “export” the costs and labours of social reproduction on to gendered households and the State, PCP households cannot do such exporting and must meet the bulk of both production and reproduction needs internally. Gender relations and kinship structures shape the division of the PCP household’s labour power between productive and (social) reproductive activities (Harriss-White, 2010). Moreover, PCP challenges the separation of the spheres of "life-making" and "thing-making" and so pushes against conventional Marxist value theory (Mezzadri 2021). Through this paper I develop theoretical language in the form of circuits of production and reproduction to explore the nature of the interweaving of production and reproduction processes in PCP households, both agrarian and non-agrarian. I extend the theoretical construction to include the hiring out of labour by PCP households, with implicaitons for the subsidy to capital by gendered and generational divisions of labour within the PCP household.

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Paper short abstract:

Rooted in the political economy framework, the paper studies the processes of accumulation and the crisis in rural India and discusses the restructuring of production and exchange relations and reconfiguration of the ways in which agrarian households reproduce themselves.

Paper long abstract:

Rooted in the political economy framework, the paper presents a regional study of agrarian transition and accumulation, and examines the implications of intensifying capitalist development in rural India. Changes in production conditions in agriculture and integration of the agrarian economy with capitalist market economy have resulted in restructuring of production and exchange relations in rural India and reconfiguration of the ways in which households reproduce themselves. The paper draws upon a unique dataset from a village-level study, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, conducted during 2018-19, and contests the claims of an overarching crisis in Indian agriculture. I argue in favour of the class-specific nature of growth and crisis within the sector. Capitalism is capable of exhibiting as well as accommodating diversity and powerful regional structures of capitalist accumulation, tied to agriculture, continue to exist. However, the process of agrarian transition results in unequal possibilities of growth and accumulation. Even as the majority of the agrarian population, comprising of labouring classes and small farmers, battles uncertainty and declining profits, there is a segment comprising of agrarian capitalists that successfully use state institutions and diversification opportunities to bolster their position as the accumulating agrarian classes.

The paper studies the processes of accumulation and the crisis in rural India from the axes of class formation and caste-based divisions, and attempts to provide insights into the contemporary agrarian question.

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Paper short abstract:

I intend to place agrarian labour within a long-term perspective that traces its development within the regional economy, and show the complexity of social differentiation and processes of commodification of agriculture and the difficulties of articulating a political agenda.

Paper long abstract:

This examines the complexities of agrarian labour in Ghana in the present period. It examines labour as a historical category arising out of pre-capitalist formations, extended family relations, and commodity market relations. It examines the following categories of labour relations:

1. long-distant migrants that characterised the cocoa economy from the 1920s-1960s;

2. the emergence of local casual youth labour in the 1970s, as youth experienced increasing difficulty in gaining access to land;

3. the demand for formal wage labour around the state farms in the 1960s and 1970s, setting off migrations to these areas, which resulted in surplus labour and absorption of migrants as casual labourers and smallholder farmers within the surrounding areas;

4. the increasing reliance of farmers on hired labour as the decline of lineage land results in many farmers seeking livelihoods outside of family land and retracting their labour from the extended family since they have insufficient access to land to maintain their households;

5. the appropriation of land for residential properties in periurban areas resulting in the migration of farmers to new areas, or the absorption of former farmers into the urban labour force;

6. Increasing appropriation of the farmland of smallholders as land markets become more prevalent.

As a result of these factors the agrarian structure is characterised by fluidity, increasing social differentiation, competition within communities, and long histories of migration of labour that complicate the emergence of platforms representing the interests of the rural poor.

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Paper short abstract:

My interdisciplinary approach, combining critical agrarian studies with comparative political economy, aims to foster a deeper understanding of the evolving agrarian landscape in the Himalayan region of Kashmir & its broader implications for socio-economic sustainability & political dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

This study delves into the intricate dynamics of agrarian transformations in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, specifically examining the impact of agro-extractivism and neoliberal developmentalism on the rural peasantry. By situating agrarian changes within an empirical framework, the study investigates the interplay between agrarian extractivism and state-driven neoliberal developmentalism in peripheral rural areas. Employing a mixed-method research approach across different regions of Kashmir, the study reveals a discernible agro-extractivist process, characterised by the maximisation of value extraction from farmers through the introduction of new agribusiness ventures and alterations in production regimes. Furthermore, the paper highlights how the state strategically supports this agrarian transformation to enhance its legitimacy and consolidate power and sovereignty in this politically contested region. Delving into the intricacies of neo-extractivism as a state-sponsored development strategy, the study systematically explores the state’s role in promoting large-scale mono-cropped export-oriented agriculture, concentrating value chains, and fostering the proliferation of large-scale farmers. Situated within the context of the Bernstein–Byres debate regarding the contemporary (ir)relevance of the agrarian question, the study offers compelling evidence supporting the assertion that, despite deviations from classical models of the transition to capitalism, each facet of the study brings back the agrarian question and retains its relevance. This research significantly contributes to a nuanced understanding of the evolving agrarian landscape in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, offering insights into agricultural development, political dynamics, and socio-economic sustainability.

Keywords: Agrarian transformations; Agro-extractivism; Neoliberal developmentalism; Socio-economic sustainability; Rural peasantry

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Paper short abstract:

the paper seeks to analyse rural labour relations as part of the process of accumulation and diffusion of capital in rural areas. The paper further highlights that the forms of unfreedom in rural labour relation have changed over time and this unfreedom has also encroached into non-farm wage work

Paper long abstract:

In the Gang Canal region of Rajasthan, the cropping pattern changed from a labour intensive crop, cotton, to a mechanised crop, cluster beans. The shift in cropping pattern not only displaced workers from farm wage work but also brought changes in labour hiring contracts with large scale conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece-rate contracts. Drawing on a primary survey in a village from Gang Canal region, the paper examines the change in the agrarian relations in rural Rajasthan by analysing the emerging development in the rural labour relations. For piece-rate work in farm wage work in some parts of Rajasthan the wage rate is unilaterally decided by the landlords and Big capitalist farmers and is denoted as the 'village rate'. The manual workers have negligible or low power to bargain regarding the village rate. The conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece-rate contracts has enhanced the duration of labour which involves a rise in the rate of surplus value. Access and availability of low wage labour facilitates the accumulation of capital. With the limited availability of employment in the non-farm sector (in both public and private sectors) workers are compelled to sell their labour power at wages which do not exceed the level of subsistence. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the agrarian political economy of the village .

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Paper short abstract:

This work aims to analyze the exploitation of salt from a socioanthropological perspective through theoretical and empirical research

Paper long abstract:

In rural areas, the division of social labor often confines women to particular types of activities that are invisible. This is how the exploitation of salt, in sereer environment, a predominantly, even exclusively female activity. However, these women farmers face difficulties such as the right of access to land, threats of land expropriation, sale of product, etc. These do not contribute to the growth of this socioeconomic sector in rural development. This is how and in a socio-anthropological perspective that it is appropriate to analyze the exploitation of salt by women.

Through the qualitative technic (interview, focus group, direct observation and documentary research, we will understand the following themes: (i) organization of production, (ii) organization of marketing and, (iii) organizational dynamics

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Paper short abstract:

What is the Bangladeshi version of the agrarian question? Is the family farm disappearing in favour of a rentier-contractor model for agriculture as waves of new capital intrude into post-feudal and minifundist modes of production? How do redistributed profits and rents underpin new politics?

Paper long abstract:

Quasi-feudal and small peasant legacies for Bangladesh at its liberation 50 years ago have been transformed especially through introduction of a late winter irrigated high yielding rice crop (irri-boro). Bangladesh now faces 3 competing agrarian trajectories: continuation of the family farm as petty commodity producers; steady spread of large-scale commercial farms, owned by corporate agri-business, using large scale equipment oriented entirely to producing for national and even overseas markets; thirdly a specifically Bangladeshi hybrid, combining ongoing attachment to land but with owners and tenants becoming rentiers, i.e. ‘leasing’ out their scattered plots for consolidated operation and efficiency gains to commercially provided agricultural services. Given heterogeneity of land tenure, including a new class of small tenants using other sources to access land, such services are provided at two levels of significance: larger more commercialised contractors; smaller local service providers-cum cultivators, renting out surplus operating capacity to neighbours.The paper predicts versions of the third option as a function of the socio-cultural affinity with land, reinforced by a weak state, whereby existing owners prefer to lease out rather than selling and new entrants thereby obliged to rent in land rather than purchase.These combined conditions lead to the hypothesis that the classic image of the family farm is being disarticulated through the intrusion of capital into agriculture and the agrarian system is being re-articulated into a rentier-contractor scenario.The agrarian question is whether this represents an early stage of an eventual Kautsky type outcome, underpinning an emerging urban delta & new sets of political interests.

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I argue that expansion of fossil fuel extraction in contemporary India must be understood in relation to two interconnected processes—accumulation by dispossession of land accessed and owned by indigenous Adivasi citizens, and the BJP’s repression of local agrarian resistance.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accelerated domestic production of coal, with the purported aim of building India’s ‘self-reliance’. While championing the transition to renewable energy in global forums such as the G20 Summit in 2023, the Modi administration has simultaneously sought to triple its coal output by 2028. Through its systematic weakening environmental and land rights legislation, de-regularisation of coal mining, and intimate ties with big businesses such as the Adani Group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Modi has launched a new era of neoliberal extractivism in India—one that violently intersects with its divisive, authoritarian, Hindu right-wing agenda.

In this paper, I argue that expansion of fossil fuel extraction in contemporary India must be understood in relation to two interconnected processes—accumulation by dispossession of land accessed and owned by indigenous Adivasi citizens, and the BJP’s authoritarian machinery aimed at crushing social movements, dissent and civil society alliances. I explore these twin dynamics through the case study of northern Chhattisgarh, a central Indian state with a sizeable Adivasi population (34 percent) and home to vast coal reserves that lie under fragile forested landscapes. Drawing on fieldwork in northern Chhattisgarh (2021, 2022), this paper explores the ongoing struggles over the Hasdeo Arand forest—the largest contiguous stretch of dense forest in central India— and unpacks the dynamics of coal mining projects , local resistance movements such as the Hasdeo Arand Movement, and the state-capital nexus implicated in violent silencing of activism against dispossession.

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Paper short abstract:

Contract farming enables capital accumulation without dispossession and control over land, labour and production by firms through intermediaries from socially advantaged castes to extort the quality of raw materials without direct controls on smallholders mostly from socially deprived castes.

Paper long abstract:

Critics of contract farming argue it is an alternative to rural land grabbing by agribusiness firms. However, how the agribusiness firms control the land, labour and production of smallholder farmers is not given sufficient consideration. Moreover, the social relations of production, labour arrangements and production controls are overlooked. Particularly in India where historical deprivation of socially deprived castes persists in access to inputs and output markets. We propose a mixed methods research approach and conducted two phases of fieldwork in two highly potato concentrate districts: Bankura and Hooghly of the smallholder farm dominant state of West Bengal. We argue that within the shrinking state support to agrarian and rural livelihoods, contract farming enables land and production controls by agribusiness firms through intermediaries. The unequal distribution of means of production, social status, access to capital and control over the farming community through farming-related business favour the upper caste rural elite to become commission agents in the alternative livelihood opportunities. In the context of limited access to agricultural land for agribusiness firms, contract farming serves as an alternative to the acquisition of rural land by facilitating a transition from land grabbing to power grabbing. This transition is arranged through intermediaries predominantly belonging to socially advantaged castes to take on control over the land, labour, and production activities of smallholders, primarily from socially deprived castes.

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Paper short abstract:

Known for beautiful parks, ranches, and wildlife conservation, Laikipia County is Kenya’s epicenter of conservation efforts, with 43 ranches occupying 50% of the total land area and 24 private conservancies. Drought has led to tensions in recent years between the conservancies and the pastoralists

Paper long abstract:

The idea that the African continent was uninhabited before the coming of the whites was a mythical statement. The perception that land was virgin and only wild animals roomed all over was a misconception. The African continent had people who although few practised subsistence farming and pastoralism.

The coming of European settlers led to the massive destruction of forest cover to clear land for plantation farming and intensive hunting and especially of elephants and rhinos for their precious ivory and horns. The end result of these activities led to the destruction of ecosystems. Unfortunately, the European settlers blamed the Africans for the ecological damage thereby creating hunting reserves that were no go zones for the Africans. The reserves were converted into national parks, ranches, and wildlife conservation.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) set out to conserve nature. This led to the creation of conservation institutions. This was supported at a conference in Arusha in 1961. Thereafter, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) funded European conservation experts to come and conserve nature in Africa. Although a report by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations observed that indigenous people ensure the protection of world territory, this does not apply in Laikipia. The experts believed nature could only be conserved by pushing away the natives from their ancestral areas to create protected areas for wild animals.

Pastoralism is a community’s way of life, their cultural identity that is pegged to land. The conservation carried out in Laikipia ought to have a mutual understanding among the inhabitants: both human and non-human, land for pasture and water for their animals. The hiving off and fencing of conservancies are tantamount to selling indigenous rights in the name of conservation. Compensation, savage remarks on the people’s culture and boardroom consultations may not end perennial conflicts in Laikipia.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the tension between two forms of social justice – land and welfare programmes – and intervenes in the scholarship that most often treats them separately. The paper does this through an ethnographic study of the demands for land by Adivasis (indigenous peoples) of Kerala, India.

Paper long abstract:

Landless Adivasis in Kerala, India, have been demanding land for over three decades, engaging in sporadic, but persistent, land struggles. They have been agricultural labourers for more than three centuries and are now hit by the larger agrarian crisis, pushing them into a severe crisis of reproduction. The state in Kerala, well-known in the literature for its welfare experiments, has been responding to these demands under pressure from social movements through the piecemeal distribution of land and the showering of welfare programmes in Adivasi settlements. The paper puts forth two key arguments, drawing on Polanyian analyses of countermovements and critical agrarian studies: (1) The piecemeal distribution of land is aimed at appeasing land struggles. This is a part of a world-wide trend that I call ‘landfare’, which moves away from radical land redistribution and addresses land demands through ad-hoc land distribution, (2) Land and welfare are in tension with each other in two ways. First, while the Adivasis demand land on which they can have substantive social and political control, the state tries to subsidise reproduction through welfare programmes. Second, the distributed land, by providing only a place to stay, is itself reduced to a welfare measure. The paper calls for rethinking the celebration of social justice experiments from the perspective of landless labourers in the global South. The paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted over 12 months (and continuing) in sites of land struggles, state bureaucracies, Adivasi settlements and sites of migration by the Adivasi labourers.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the disconnect between existing agrarian reform initiatives in the Philippines and the local conceptions of land redistributive justice, using the experience of Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) implementation in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Paper long abstract:

Land is acknowledged as one of the major drivers of armed conflict in the southern Philippine area of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), now the sole autonomous parliament in the country by virtue of its unique cultural identity and as a result of decades of peace negotiations. The Bangsamoro Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Agrarian Reform (MAFAR) is the lead agency implementing the national Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), intended to promote equitable land ownership by providing lands to landless farmers. However, previous studies have argued that historical and contemporary conflict in Mindanao has agrarian rootsm and that CARP is ahistorical and may even perpetuate historical injustice in Mindanao by not acknowledging prior claims. At the same time, post-BOL consultations indicate the need for more culturally-appropriate forms of land governance and redistribution in the BARMM (Fernandez, 2021). This paper summarises research conducted with MAFAR to ask one fundamental question. Is CARP in its current form appropriate to the Bangsamoro context? The 2014 peace agreement provide new powers for innovation and greater localisation, although arrangements still mirror and must be coordinated with national counterparts. Thus, what localised tenure and redistributive justice mechanisms might be appropriate to the Bangsamoro, and how might this inform the development of regional legislation and other land governance initiatives at the regional and national level?

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Paper short abstract:

1. Women's domestic work becoming more socialized due to rural tourism industry. 2. Men sustain social networks in rural tourism and women endure more specific work which reinforce traditional roles. 3. China's current rural restructuring hasn't markedly advanced gender equality.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the changes in gender equality brought about by rural development in China, represented by rural tourism. The main shift relates to the socialization of women's domestic work and, to a lesser extent, women's participation in rural development policies and practices, a trend linked to declining farm incomes and industrial subsidies.

Theoretically, both economic upgrading and rural development have the potential to promote gender equality. Rural tourism enhances rural women's economic empowerment and promotes their aspirations for more equitable participation in household decision-making. Rural development initiatives are seen as introducing a new form of governance that is more inclusive, representative and transparent. These initiatives have created space for the inclusion of women in political structures.

However, this paper argues that the existence of household division of labor, ideological and cultural barriers have allowed agricultural and rural restructuring to unfold in a gendered manner, thus maintaining the status quo. Men are required to maintain the social network structures on which rural tourism is based, and women take on more sex-specific labor. This does not mean that gender or cultural ideologies are static, as illustrated by the ideological conflict between China's rural revitalization strategy and traditional cultural practices, and despite these challenges, China's current agricultural and rural restructuring has not significantly advanced gender equality.

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Paper short abstract:

The research locates the changing political and economic structures with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and analyses their impact on the political, economic and social mobilities of the pastoral community of Bakkarwal in a period after the pandemic- marked by a changed federal structure.

Paper long abstract:

The Himalayas of South Asia are home to many tribal communities; some of which practice transhumant pastoralism as a tool of social reproduction and production. The Gujjar- Bakarwal tribe of Jammu and Kashmir are one of the largest groups which traverse across the Western Himalayas along with their flock. The community is intrinsically tied to nature as they undertake seasonal migration with their flock for access to pastures and other natural resources. Mobility, in terms of space and time, is crucial to contextualise the lived experiences of the Gujjar-Bakarwal tribe, as their political, social, and economic decisions have been shaped by the constant ability and need to move. The collaboration of modernisation project of neoliberalism during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic and rearrangement of the federal structure have reshaped the various spaces occupied by this pastoral tribe.

This research while employing pluralist analytical methods— political economy, social constructionist, eco-materialist — interrogates crystallised notions of identity, political and social understanding of community, and the future of social and cultural reproduction. For a grounded policy response, the session will locate the toll of phenomenal changes occurring due to hegemonic anthropogenic actions on three spaces inhabited by the Gujjar-Bakarwals — physical (land), epistemic and public identity. This would allow the creation of a communitarian response and grading of prevalent structures in their ability to justly include pastoral lives and aspirations.