Repairing rifts or reproducing inequalities? Agroecology,food sovereignty,and gender justice in Malawi

ABSTRACT

This Malawi study examines whether agroecology can be effectively used by smallholders to address food sovereignty. We build on the concept of the metabolic rift, arguing that repairing this rift includes social relations. Agroecological methods can be important strategies, but are labour and knowledge intensive, and require addressing power dynamics within and beyond households in order to address food sovereignty. The case study included participatory methods of dialogue, experimentation and horizontal learning to foster change. We argue that feminist concepts of intersectionality and participatory praxis are central to mobilizing agroecology to build food sovereignty and work to transform social relations.     

The adventure of capital with nature: from the metabolic rift to the value theory of nature

This paper suggests that the concept of metabolic rift situated in ‘the labor theory of value’ is not an adequate theoretical tool to historically explore capitalist development as a socio-ecological process and socio-historical domination of ecology. It situates the concept of nature in Marx’s critique of political economy and the concept of the metabolic rift in relation to his theory of value. Then, it explores two distinctive historical approaches to the relationship between ecology and capitalist development within the world-historical studies, i.e. the world-ecology perspective and the uneven ecological exchange perspective, in relation to their theoretical and epistemological premises. How they operationalize or recast Marx’s theory of value in understanding this relationship opens a realm to rethink the value theory in relation to nature and the socio-ecological nature of capitalist relations of production. Based on this, it proposes to reconsider the value theory as a value theory of nature in order to recognize the historical specificity of socio-ecological relations, and their historical transformation and alienation, as an integral constituent of the historical narrative of capitalist development.     

Reworking the metabolic rift: La Vía Campesina,agrarian citizenship,and food sovereignty

Amidst increasing concerns about climate change, food shortages, and widespread environmental degradation, a demand is emerging for ways to resolve longstanding social and ecological contradictions present in contemporary capitalist models of production and social organisation. This paper first discusses how agriculture, as the most intensive historical nexus between society and nature, has played a pivotal role in social and ecological change. I explore how agriculture has been integrally associated with successive metabolic ruptures between society and nature, and then argue that these ruptures have not only led to widespread rural dislocation and environmental degradation, but have also disrupted the practice of agrarian citizenship through a series of interlinked and evolving philosophical, ideological, and material conditions. The first section of the paper thus examines the de-linking of agriculture, citizenship, and nature as a result of ongoing cycles of a metabolic rift, as a ‘crucial law of motion’ and central contradiction of changing socio-ecological relations in the countryside. I then argue that new forms of agrarian resistance, exemplified by the contemporary international peasant movement La Vía Campesina's call for food sovereignty, create a potential to reframe and reconstitute an agrarian citizenship that reworks the metabolic rift between society and nature. A food sovereignty model founded on practices of agrarian citizenship and ecologically sustainable local food production is then analysed for its potential to challenge the dominant model of large-scale, capitalist, and export-based agriculture.     

The theory of unequal ecological exchange: a Marx-Odum dialectic

A world-system analysis of the ecological rift generated by capitalism requires as one of its elements a developed theory of the unequal ecological exchange between center and periphery. After reviewing the literature on unequal exchange (both economic and ecological) from Ricardo and Marx to the present, a new approach is provided, based on a critical appropriation of systems ecologist Howard Odum's emergy (spelled with an m) analysis. Odum's contribution offers key elements of a wider dialectical synthesis, made possible in part by his intensive studies of Marx's political-economic critique of capitalism and by Marx's own theory of metabolic rift.     

Non‐capitalist relations of production in capitalist society: The khammessat in Southern Tunisia ∗

The khammessat is one of the most ancient social institutions regulating agricultural labour in the Magrheb. This article seeks to answer three questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship between agricultural labour and landowner in a society dominated by a non‐capitalist mode of production? (2) What was the impact of capitalism on such labour relations? (3) Is there any possibility of the development, within the khammessat system, of a labour organisation and the demand for rights?     

Land grabs and primitive accumulation in deltaic Bangladesh: interactions between neoliberal globalization,state interventions,power relations and peasant resistance

This essay provides theoretical and empirical analysis of the interrelationships between land grabs, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession (ABD) in the context of capitalist development. Evidence from a multi-class peasant formation in deltaic Bangladesh indicates that land grabs have been propelled by interactions between neoliberal globalization, state interventions, power relations and peasant resistance. Key roles have been played by illegal violence and de-linking of poor peasants from production organization and clientelist relations providing access to land. Establishment of a shrimp zone for export production has led to systematic eviction of the poor, backed by state power. Poor peasant resistance has shifted towards overt forms involving coalition-building and collective action. It is argued that the concept of primitive accumulation can subsume both market and non-market mechanisms as well as voluntary and involuntary transactions involving different degrees of intentionality, inclusive of deliberate dispossession, unintended consequences and negative externalities. Primitive accumulation and ABD correspond to distinct historical phases of capitalism and are subsumable under a generic concept of ongoing capitalism-facilitating accumulation. The dynamics of ‘actually existing capitalism’ display a two-way and recursive causal relationship in which continuing primitive accumulation is as much a consequence of expanding capitalist production as its precondition.     

Class relations and capitalist development: Subsumption in the Colombian coffee industry, 1928–92

The concept of subsumption had a short life within Marxist analysis of family farming because analysts using the concept failed to appreciate the centrality of class relations in Marx's analysis of capitalist development. I argue that the concept of subsumption is best understood as a theorisation of the subtle cultural and historical processes through which labour is incorporated into capitalist development projects. I reinforce this theoretical discussion with an analysis of capitalist development in the Colombian coffee industry. This case demonstrates that capitalist development is as much project as process, as much the reformation of cultural identity as the restructuring of relations of production.     

English feudalism and the origins of capitalism

The specific historical basis for the development of capitalism in England — and not in France — is traced to the unique structure of English manorial lordship. It is the absence from English lordship of seigneurie banale ‐ the specific political form of parcellised sovereignty that figured centrally in the development of Continental feudalism ‐ that accounts for the peculiarly ‘economic’ turn taken in the development of English class relations of surplus extraction. In France, by contrast, the distinctly ‘political’ tenor of subsequent social development can equally specifically be traced to the central role of seigneurie banale in the fundamental class relations of feudalism.     

Beyond Liberalism: Marxist Feminism,Migrant Sex Work,and Labour Unfreedom

In this article, I use a Marxist feminist methodology to map the organisation of migrant sex workers’ socially reproductive paid and unpaid labour in one city and country of arrival, London, UK. I argue that unfree and ‘free’ (sexual) labour exists on a continuum of capitalist relations of (re)production, which are gendered, racialised, and legal. It is within these relations that various actors implement, and migrant sex workers contest, unfree labour practices not limited to the most extreme forms. My analysis reveals that many migrant sex workers have very limited ‘freedom’. This is in stark contrast to the classical liberal claim of sex worker rights activists and academics that the vast majority of migrant sex workers are free, and therefore not coerced, exploited or trafficked. I then consider whether the emerging labour approach to trafficking could help achieve ‘freedom’ for migrant sex workers. Advocates argue that anti-trafficking efforts must, and can, be refocused on extending minimum labour and social protections to all vulnerable workers. I argue that this approach is disconnected from material interests and history. Rather, migrant sex workers, sex worker rights activists, and all migrant and citizen workers and activists globally must collectively organise against ‘labour unfreedom’ and hence for meaningful control over their labour and lives.     

Proto-industrialization, sharecropping, and outmigration in nineteenth-century rural Westphalia

This article examines proto-industrialization and the social relations of production in a rural parish in eastern Westphalia that experienced large-scale outmigration to the American Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Relying on local and individual-level Prussian tax and emigration records, the study identifies and analyses the socio-economic background of the migrant cohort in terms of proto-industrial activity and peasant economy. Preceded by the downfall of domestic textile industries due to British industrial competition, outmigration was highly selective, drawing individuals from specific socio-economic niches. Landless sharecroppers - linked by debt and labour obligations to better-off peasants and landlords - were underrepresented in the migration, while smallholding peasants and day-labourers - 'free' to commodify their labour power through the sale of home-produced textile products or seasonal migratory labour - were overrepresented. The findings of the study have implications for an understanding of the localized nature of the relations of production in proto-industrial regions, the historical nature of German emigrations, and the dynamics of the German transition to industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century.     

Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work,Social Reproduction,and Jurisdiction

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction.     

Food regimes and the production of value: Some methodological issues

In critically re-examining the concept of food regime this article argues for an alternative formulation thatposits the concept on the foundation of the theory of value, rather than the developmentalist framework of the regulation theory within which it was originally posed. This is possible because while the insights of food regime analysis were rooted in a world historical perspective on global value relations, its presentation always subordinated the latter to the more abstract stage theory of the regulation school. Disentangled from regulationism, the concept of food regime is central for a labour-oriented perspective on imperialism as a relation of production embedded in global value relations. This is part of a broader methodological critique that locates the problematic of development (and consumption, in the postdevelopmentalist era) within the discourses of bourgeois modernity (and postmodernity) and seeks to differentiate these from the problematic of labour and labour emancipation. The article addresses the problem of a conflation of theory and history in connection with a developmentalist/positivist reading of Marx, and suggests 'global value relations', 'global working day', 'global worker', as world historically informed concepts that capture the 'unity of the diverse'. Global value relations include the politics of state relations, the world market, colonization and imperialism, and the (often geographically segregated) labour regimes of production of relative and absolute surplus value. The latter is posed as a contemporary relation of neo-liberal capitalism involving (postmodern) over-consumption on the one hand and (still modern) forced under-consumption on the other hand. 'World hunger amidst global plenty' is an expression of these relations.     

A materialist analysis of slavery and sharecropping in the Southern United States

The historical nature of Southern slavery and of the social relations established after its abolition have for a long time been a source of heated debate among American historians. During the last decades, historians have tended to divide into two camps: neoclassical economic historians, who identify slavery and sharecropping with capitalism, and social historians, more or less influenced by Marxism, who define them correctly as pre‐capitalist social relations. Yet the contributions of the social historians have been marred by their empiricist approach and by their reluctance to avail themselves of the theoretical tools provided by classical and Marxist political economy. This work examines Southern slavery and sharecropping in the light of the studies of the European Marxists on ancient slavery and of the works of the classical political economists and Marx on French metayage. This comparison reveals the pre‐capitalist though combined character of plantation slavery, and at the same time shows that the social relations established in the South after the abolition of slavery were, due to the defeat of the Radical Republicans’ plans for agrarian reform, akin to the social relations established in Europe during the age of transition from feudalism to capitalism. The result of these backward relations of production was to retard for a long time the economic development of the South, where the transition to capitalism took place from above’ (that is, through a compromise between the bourgeoisie and a pre‐capitalist class of landowners) in the most painful possible way for the working masses, and at the same time to sustain a system of oppression and discrimination against the black population which reinforced the racist prejudices born of slavery among whites — thus further weakening a working class already divided between immigrants and native white Americans, and strengthening the conservatism of American political life.     

‘De-pastoralisation’ in Uganda's Northeast: from livelihoods diversification to social differentiation

ABSTRACT

Over the past two generations, livestock loss and hunger, caused by violent conflict and drought, have driven many transhumant agro-pastoralists living in central Karamoja to resettle in unpopulated areas more suitable for agricultural production. These areas, mostly located in the southern and western parts of the region, were historically used by herders as dry season grazing rangelands, while they presently house permanent settlements populated by now sedentarised ‘marginal farmers’, town-based workers and patriarchal elites. In this article, I advance the concept of ‘de-pastoralisation’ to explain the process of dispossession of the major means of social reproduction, which causes an increase in livelihoods diversification and in social differentiation. Through the concept of de-pastoralisation, this article aims to investigate the historical dissolution of pastoralism and its socio-economic consequences, characterised by exploitative inter and intra household relations of production, leading to processes of general proletarianisation and male elite accumulation that reproduce inequality over time.     

Nurture,Pleasure and Read and Resist!: Abolition Feminist Methodology for a Collective Recovery?

COVID-19 has magnified intersecting inequalities that are central to the functioning of capitalism. At the height of the crisis, the value of an economy based on the exchange of goods and services faded away to expose the importance of care across the public and private spheres. Undervalued and underpaid labour suddenly became critical to the survival of many. Drawing on Abolition Feminism, we argue for the need to seize this revaluation of labour to centre nurture and pleasure within our post-pandemic recovery. We apply an Abolition Feminist framework that conceptualises the prison as part of a network of violence that deflects attention from the root causes of harm. We reflect on the development of our Abolition Feminist web platform, Read and Resist!, a space where theory meets reflection on praxis. We consider how activist strategies within Abolition Feminism may support us in reimagining our relationships with law and justice post-COVID-19.

     

Wage labour and capitalism: a comparative and historical analysis of Eritrea and Kenya

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the development of capitalism in Eritrea and Kenya from a labour history perspective. Indeed, the assumption in this research is that capitalism can only be explained by taking into consideration free wage labour as one of the sine qua non conditions for the existence of the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, the article looks at the paradigmatic socio-economic shifts: from unfree to free labour, from free to precarious labour and from unfree to precarious labour. These are the result of the complicated relationship that exists between capital and labour. The point of departure of the analysis is the Nieboer-Domar hypothesis on the structural origins of slavery, which despite severe criticism, it has been largely remained unchallenged until the present. In Eritrea, colonised by Italy, and Kenya, colonised by England, free wage labour fully developed between the nineteenth and twentieth century. This could be considered the era of the advent of capitalism, with the advent, for a fraction of the working population, of labour relations based on wages. The precarisation of life of free wage workers is also partially analysed in this article.     

Rethinking informal labor in peripheral capitalism: the dynamics of surplus,market, and spatiality

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a critique of the discourse of precarity that assumes that regulated era labor relations in advanced capitalist economies represent the norm, while ‘irregular work’ represents a historical aberration under capitalist employment. We argue that this approach fails to inform labor theorists in any meaningful way as it conceals the differences in the social relations under which work is performed. The catchall term ‘precarious labor’ makes it difficult to design policies for specific social groups who are non-homogenous in social relations. We propose a Marxian socio-spatial class framework that gives visibility to three key dimensions: 1) the manner in which surpluses are produced, appropriated, and distributed during the labor process; 2) the spatial component of where work is performed, and 3) the degree of market-orientation. Recognizing on the one hand that precarity will always be a ubiquitous feature of capitalist labor markets, and that there are differences within forms of work depending on the social context and location of work on the other, has a number of benefits for contemporary debates. These include a better appreciation of the multiplicity of processes in which labor participates and generates radically new ways of thinking about anti-capitalist resistance across national boundaries.     

De-naturalizing ecological disaster: colonialism,racism and the global Dust Bowl of the 1930s

This paper reinterprets the Dust Bowl on the US Southern Plains as one dramatic regional manifestation of a global socio-ecological crisis generated by the realities of settler colonialism and imperialism. In so doing, it seeks to deepen historical-theoretical understandings of the racialized division of nature and humanity making possible the global problem of soil erosion by the 1930s and forming the heart of the ecological rift of capitalism. The framework developed here challenges prevalent conceptions of the Dust Bowl, in which colonial and racial-domination aspects of the crisis are invisible, and affirms the necessity of deeper conceptions of environmental (in)justice.     

Substance abuse minimization: Conceptualizing prevention in adolescent and youth programs

This article provides an overview of the historical and theoretical work on adolescent substance abuse with implications for preventive interventions. The focus is on an illustration of the use of four basic prevention tools: education, competency promotion, community mobilization, and natural care giving.Research interests include mental health, family relations, adolescence, and primary prevention.Research interests include family and social relations, adolescent personality social development.     

Social relations and agricultural production in Nepal's Terai

The analysis of the process of surplus production, expropriation and realisation is central to the understanding of both the development process and the forces which are leading to transformation, particularly those arising from the relations of production [Frank, 1967; Laclau, 1971; Amin, 1974]. A central argument of this paper is that the details of the production relations, especially in agriculture, can vary very considerably, not only for historical reasons, but because of specific conditions in the technology of production and the conditions existing in the economy external to the actual process of production described. Institutions to control labour and property relations which best fit in with the maximisation of the expropriation of surplus value may not be those which are conventionally associated with industrial capitalism. This paper explores surplus production and expropriation in a specific situation: the production of the agricultural surplus in Nepal's Terai, in order to explain the social formations occurring within it.