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Paper short abstract:

Oro Verde is a collective of vegetable farmers whose produce is consumed at the campsite of a nearby goldmine. This paper discusses the producers’ precarious position in-between employees and independent farmers, and their strategic ways to employ various self-descriptions to gain negotiating power.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on Oro Verde (Green Gold), a recently formed collective of vegetable producers in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The collective consists of families and individuals who grow small amounts of various fruits and vegetables. Through a local catering company, their produce ends up consumed at the campsite of Fruta del Norte, a nearby large-scale gold mine. Many of the members of Oro Verde are former miners themselves who, for various reasons, are no longer employed by the company, nor engage in artisanal gold mining. Becoming full-time vegetable producers has shifted their professional identities and placed them in a position where their work is guided by the needs of a single company, yet they do not enjoy the benefits of an employee status. Instead, they work in a highly precarious situation where their produce is regularly discarded, under-priced, and undervalued by the “experts” of the companies. Meanwhile, the mining company presents the producers as grateful local families producing organic vegetables, which distorts the truth but remains a useful tool for constructing a more “sustainable” corporate image.

In my paper, I focus on the ways the producers have attempted to renegotiate their position through forming a collective, Oro Verde, since 2022. In different contexts, the collective members strategically position themselves as producer-entrepreneurs, as small-scale farmers, or even as the mining company’s employees. I discuss how such shifting of the linguistic register (Agha 2005) is used by the producers to reconceptualise their rights and, ultimately, to improve their precarious position.

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Paper short abstract:

Direct agricultural marketing practices are seemingly contradictory. They include both entrepreneurial action and farmers' aspirations for autonomy vis-à-vis the market and the state. In doing so, they challenge common categorization and point to the complex interweaving of economy and morality.

Paper long abstract:

In my dissertation project I examine the entanglements of family farming and direct marketing in Upper Austria. The interlocutors market their businesses as “family farms“ and thus draw on discursively powerful notions of traditional agriculture. By referring to "family farming", however, I intend to focus on economic practices in the context of social relationships.

The practices of my research partners correspond to the image of a quasi Janus-faced farmer: at the same time being entrepreneurial, producing for commerce and industry, and being peasant-like, producing self-sufficiently and selling products on the farmers' market. This distinction, which is usually discussed as a consequence of the modernization process, turns out to be a mixture of these two orientations. Direct marketing requires entrepreneurial management, precise accounting and calculation of the business, a genuinely capitalist practice according to Max Weber. At the same time I observe multiple forms of „repesantization“: the farmers draw on old farming practices, which are made usable for today's requirements. I argue that these values, such as family, handicraft or regionality are utilized in the process of self-marketing while direct marketing at the same time enables local agency against market-dominated agribusiness. It is precisely this ambivalence of entrepreneurial action and farmers' aspirations for autonomy that cannot be grasped with conventional categories. Rather, it requires a dense description of the interweaving of economy and morality in everyday farming practice.

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Paper short abstract:

In Hungary, the scientific discourse deals with the agricultural population on the basis of several narratives. Different policies talk about the same population in distinct categories. The presentation examines the extent to which the analytical categories meet the practical categories.

Paper long abstract:

In Hungary, the scientific discourse deals with the agricultural population on the basis of several narratives or conceptual orders. Among these, the most important are theories of embourgeoisement and the embourgeoisement debate, modernisation, social mobility, de-peasantisation, repeasantisation, acculturation, post-peasantisation and some theories of rural studies. While academic interpretation has moved away from class analysis and social stratification studies (embourgeoisement theories) towards more process-oriented approaches (modernisation, de-peasantisation, repeasantisation, social mobility), the diversity of theoretical approaches has led to taxonomic diversity among the social sciences dealing with rural and agricultural issues. (See e.g.: peasant, post-peasant, small-scale farmer/producer, agricultural entrepreneur, peasant embourgeoisement, peasant practices and/or entrepreneurial patterns/mentalities, peasant farming, smallholding, agricultural enterprise, etc.)

Meanwhile, different policies talk about the same population in terms of statistical, taxational (primary producer/farmer, (individual) entrepreneur, joint enterprise), legal (agriculturist), employment categories and of form of business (family (primary producer) smallholding, joint enterprise). Drawing on theoretical knowledge, decades of empirical experience and documentary analysis, my presentation will provide a summary of theoretical approaches and then examine the extent to which the analytical categories of academic discourse meet the practical categories of bureaucracy. I am trying to find an answer to the question of whether the rural, agricultural stratum in contemporary Hungary can be better understood and interpreted in terms of the analytical categories of science or the practical categories of bureaucracy.

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Paper short abstract:

I seek to challenge the category of "producer" used by tobacco entrepreneurs in northern Argentina, highlighting the relevance of land to its definition and the traditionals features of local entrepreneurs that come up against a category that claims to be "modern" and international.

Paper long abstract:

Fabio, a tobacco owner-manager, politician and head of the biggest association of tobacco entrepreneurs, defines himself as a "producer". This category defines the person who commercializes tobacco, highlighting the recent interweaving of the agricultural and industrial sectors and the value given to administrative and managerial tasks in the trade, which is far from the imaginary of peasant agricultural work. This category erases the parameter of land and wealth, obscuring the differentiation between tenant-producers and owner-producers.

In Argentina, the extension of the intensive agricultural model does not imply the substitution of local and traditional models of labor exploitation, nor the total replacement of locals by employees of foreign capital. On the contrary, technical modernity is not reflected locally in the creation of a stable labor market, nor in the erasure of the elites historically associated with agricultural production. Farm labourers continue to work in precarious conditions, while the traditional elites succeed in renewing their economic status.

It is therefore necessary to pay attention to the continuities and renewals of "producers" in a relational approach, seeking to escape from a homogeneous categorization and making visible localized relational logics. In the case of Salta, the structuring of support policies and producers' associations has mainly served the traditional elite to renew their position of power. Thus, the homogenization proposed by the notion of "producers" invites us both to make visible the blind spots in the sociological profile of this group, while reflecting on the reasons behind its use by certain actors.

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Paper short abstract:

Farming identities in Namibian Karakul sheep farming are shifting in response to economic and ecological crises. Farming itself becomes a valorised lifestyle, not merely a way of winning a livelihood. Categories of farm worker or farmer depend on land ownership as much as on knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

The Namibian Karakul industry is a type of sheep farming focused on the production of lamb pelts for the fashion industry. Formerly one of the most important export products from Namibia, a combination of drought, falling pelt prices, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic now threaten the survival of Swakara, the Namibian Karakul. In this crisis situation, the identities and relations of sheep farmers and farm workers are being re-aligned.

Predation and predator control through fencing, herding, and hunting have shaped farming practices throughout the region. To farmers and farm workers, knowledge of sheep is entwined with knowledges of specific land and the ecologies of livestock and wildlife inhabiting it. The question of who is considered a farmer and who a farm worker depends as much on land ownership, which is concentrated in the hands of white commercial farmers, as it does on knowledge and skill.

Building on ethnographic fieldwork in southern Namibia, this paper investigates notions what makes ‘a good farmer’ in this complex field shaped by colonial injustices and ongoing economic and ecological crises. The categories of weekend-farmers, part-time farmers and hobby farmers are negotiated in pursuits of authenticity. White settler identities have undergone a shift from ‘hardy pioneers’ to ‘custodians’ of livestock, wildlife, land, and lifestyle. At a time when its economic benefit is uncertain, ‘the good farming life’ becomes something of value in itself, not merely a means of generating value.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the new use of term ‘peasant’ in Soule, a valley of the Northern Basque Country. Rather than a way to designate self-sufficient farmers, the term is used to assert an unorthodox cultural identity.

Paper long abstract:

In contemporary France, the term ‘peasant’ (paysan) is still used as a contemptuous insult to designate someone who lacks ‘culture’. As E. Weber indeed once showed, the modern French State was devised against peasant lifeworlds and their associated cultural and linguistic specificities (2007). The Basques, however, have resisted this acculturation process : the Northern Basque Country could indeed still be described today as a cultural and linguistic frontier of contemporary France.

In Soule, the smallest and most remote valley of the Northern Basque Country where I conduct fieldwork, I have noticed the widespread use of the word ‘paysan’ to designate oneself and to subsequently assert an unorthodox cultural identity. To be a ‘paysan’ is a source of great pride for the Northern Basques: indeed, the word ‘paysan’ comes from ‘pays’ which means country. To be a ‘paysan’ is to be someone who ‘makes the country live’ I was told. The use of the word ‘paysan’ is new, as I discovered speaking with an anthropologist who has done fieldwork in Soule some decades before me. While the term is mostly used by those who work in agriculture, I have noticed that people insist on the ‘peasant spirit’ that imbues life in the valley. I would thus like to contribute to this panel by deciphering the use of the category of ‘peasant’ in the valley where I work. While no farm in Soule is self-sufficient anymore, it seems like there has never been so many proud peasants there.

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Paper short abstract:

“Guardians of the land” is the epithet by which peasants and farmers represent themselves and are represented in Abruzzo, Italy, within various institutional and socioeconomic contexts. This ethnography-based contribution studies the rhetorical and anthropological ambivalence of such appellation.

Paper long abstract:

During my ethnographic fieldwork on agroecological experiences in depopulated mountain areas of Abruzzo (Italy), I came across a singular figure by which peasants and farmers are represented, especially within sustainable food production and marketing projects funded by local institutions as a response to the climatic and socioeconomic crisis. “Guardians of the land” was an epithet used initially in 2004 for the local farmers involved in the “Cultivating diversity” project promoted by the Majella National Park and dedicated to the “recovery, conservation, and enhancement of native agricultural genetic resources”. Later, other networks and consortia, established both within the three National Parks and outside (still funded by the Region), took the same name and involved also retailers, restaurant owners, entrepreneurs. In 2023 the Region created the registry of “guardians of the land” farmers and peasants in compliance with the local implementation of the European Common Agriculture Policy fostering biodiversity strategies related to the European Green Deal, which funds projects for agricultural development in disadvantaged areas in Abruzzo. My ethnography-based contribution aims to question such model of the “guardian” as (self-)representation of peasants: is it an effective metaphor for that reaction to the neoliberal empire named “repeasantization” by Van der Ploeg (2008)? Or else is it to be read as an actual oxymoron ambiguously shaping both nature as an inert object to be protected but also as an apocalyptical agent, and peasants as the survival of a premodern world but also as reassuring promoters of neoliberal sustainability and victims of a rhetorical marginalization?

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Paper short abstract:

The presentation focuses on the case of Transylvanian peasantry. The first part offers an overview of the most important works in the field; the second part is based on fieldwork highlighting the transformations of peasantry; the third part presents the (hidden) agendas of academia on these issues.

Paper long abstract:

The reorganization of the Romanian (and in a certain sense: the Eastern European) peasantry has been going on for about 250 years. The central regulation of landlord–peasant relationships in Transylvania (beginning of 19th century), the emancipation of serfs in Transylvania and in the two principalities (the middle of 19th century), the communist system and collectivization (just to name the most important processes) – they all shook the peasant world to its foundations. But even with this, the question of what happened to peasantry still arises in the social sciences. Postpeasants, depeasantisation, repeasantisation – and many other terms reflect the uncertainties around these issues. Meantime policy papers are in sharp contrast with this, and constantly refer to these people as farmers. The presentation starts from this uncertainty of social sciences and contradiction between academia and agricultural policies and tries to find out what processes took place that led to this situation. In the first part it offers an overview of the works of local and international scholars (mainly: cultural anthropologists) in Romania (and also in Hungary and other postsocialist countries); and in the second part, based on fieldwork carried out in Transylvanian villages, it shows – with a special focus on the last 30 years - how the peasant society and economy was transformed; and finally, in the third part presents the (hidden) agendas of academia in the understanding of the peasant problems, highlighting the endeavors for revitalizing peasant practices in the context of recent social, economic and climate challenges.

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Paper short abstract:

Rapid change of rural lands in Turkey cause concerns about the death of Turkish peasantry. In Karaburun villagers are unsure themselves. Their experiences of puzzling transformation are entangled with stories of non-human agents. Multispecies perspectives are needed to reconceptualise peasantry.

Paper long abstract:

In 2012 Turkish government removed the status of 16.230 villages as juridical persons, transforming them into neighbourhoods. This has resulted in loss of villagers’ political power, and caused the rural population of the country to drop from %22,7 to %8,7 overnight. Similar events like a change in mining regulations which would allow olive trees – which have special protection status in Turkey – to be ‘moved’ for mining operations, and a recent presidential decree which declared over 6 million square meters of forestland were forest no longer, resulted in grim outlooks for the future of peasantry, rural life and landscapes in Turkey.

However, declaring peasantry dead betrays the fact that many still do live in such settings, even when it becomes puzzling; even to themselves. Rural life is composed of more-than-just-humans and the stories of their agencies are abundant in the ways villagers of Karaburun understand and share their experiences of rapid transformation. Villagers lament the loss of previous ways of co-living with animals; shepherds miss the wolves they used to shoot and the goats they used to herd. But they also form new companionships in their survival; like planting olive groves to combat energy companies’ plans for reforming surrounding landscapes; and also for getting yields without intensive labour their bodies can no longer afford. More than just companions, non-humans display their own will during rural transformations.

The paper presents their stories which tie the agencies of non-humans (animals, plants, infrastructure) with humans and their politics to understand peasantry today.