The nation is our mother: Augusto Sandino and the construction of a peasant nationalism in Nicaragua, 1927–1934

This article explores the creation of a nationalist identity in Nicaragua during the guerrilla war of Augusto Sandino against the occupying United States. The social base of Sandino was the mountain peasants of northern Nicaragua; a social sector usually described as unlikely to become the creators and carriers of a national identity. Yet by using a gendered and familial discourse, which described Nicaragua as the ‘madre patria’ (mother homeland) and the members as his army as brothers, Sandino was successful in activating strong nationalist feelings amongst his peasant followers. The article examines both Sandino's discourse, and how it was interpreted by his peasant followers. It is this attempt to bring their perspectives into the discussion that contributes to this new assessment of the construction of a national identity in Nicaragua.     

No hay ganancia en la milpa: the agrarian question,food sovereignty,and the on-farm conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Guatemalan highlands

Although they receive little recognition for their contribution, peasant farmers in the global South play a fundamental role in securing the long-term global food supply. Via their self-sufficient agricultural practices, they cultivate the crop genetic diversity that enables food crops to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In this paper I draw upon empirical data from the Guatemalan center of agricultural biodiversity to investigate the concern that market expansion will displace peasant agriculture and undermine a cornerstone of the global food supply. I find that even though peasants' livelihoods involve multiple forms of market provisioning, they also engage in a Polanyian ‘double movement’ to protect their subsistence-oriented agricultural practices from the potentially deleterious effects of markets. I also investigate the so-called ‘agrarian question’ about the effects of market expansion on the viability of peasant agriculture, finding that although new forms of market provisioning are likely exacerbating rural inequality, the income from market activities actually enables rural Guatemalans to reproduce the conditions for peasant agriculture. Ultimately, I observe that the conservation of agricultural biodiversity and, consequently, global food security are contingent upon the ‘food sovereignty’ of peasant farmers.     

企业社会责任研究中的几个重要问题

近几年来,企业社会责任已经成为学术界和企业界的热点问题。无论是学术界还是实业界更多的从法律的视角看待企业社会责任,主张企业社会责任认证与立法。其实,企业社会责任的实质是企业对社会的道义责任。道德责任是一种理性而自觉的责任,强制推行只能解决形式问题,解决不了实质问题。企业社会责任的推行和普及,应当分三步走。第一,通过宣传使企业树立社会责任理念和公民意识;第二,企业依其不同发展阶段和不同实力水平来承担相应社会责任;第三,企业社会责任立法阶段。     

Rural employment and agrarian markets in transition: Nicaragua (1979–89)

The article deals with state intervention in agrarian produce markets and the rural labour market in post‐revolutionary Nicaragua. Basing itself in the debate about the Nicaraguan agrarian class structure, it analyses the development of the internal terms of trade, the rapid integration of the peasantry in the market and its positive response to recent liberalisation measures. The labour market seems to show developments contrary to economic logic. Detailed analysis concludes that labour demand declined more slowly than supply. However, only recently this led to higher real wages after a long period of deterioration. Further income differentiation also seems a possible unwanted outcome.     

Food and finance: the financial transformation of agro-food supply chains

This article draws upon existing literature to document and describe the rise of finance in food provisioning. It queries the role of financialization in the contemporary food crisis and analyzes its impacts upon the distribution of power and wealth within and along the generalized agro-food supply chain. A systematic treatment of key nodes in the supply chain reveals four key insights: (1) the line between finance and food provisioning has become increasingly blurred in recent decades, with financial actors taking a growing interest in food and agriculture and agro-food enterprises becoming increasingly involved in financial activities; (2) financialization has reinforced the position of food retailers as the dominant actors within the agro-food system, though they are largely subject to the dictates of finance capital and face renewed competition from financialized commodity traders; (3) financialization has intensified the exploitation of food workers, increasing their workload while pushing down their real wages and heightening the precarity of their positions, and (4) small-scale farmers have been especially hard hit by financialization, as their livelihoods have become even more uncertain due to increasing volatility in agricultural markets, they have become weaker vis-à-vis other actors in the agro-food supply chain, and they face growing competition for their farmland. The paper concludes by identifying themes for future research and asking readers to reimagine the role of finance in food provisioning.     

‘We are Like the Living Dead’: Farmer Suicides in Maharashtra,Western India

Findings presented here about farmer suicides in Amravati and Yavatmal districts, Maharashtra, are evaluated in relation to Durkheimian theory, which attributes such acts to an historically specific combination of social and economic causes. Lower and middle caste peasant smallholders found themselves trapped between enhanced aspirations generated by land reform and other post-1947 measures, and the reality of neoliberalism (rising debt, declining income). Suicides among large and medium farmers belonging to the higher castes in Maharashtra were occasioned by failures in business, trade and politics. Such cases are consistent with the argument put forward by Durkheim, that suicide is an effect of individualization, a process of socio-economic ‘estrangement’ from agrarian communities experienced by rural producers in the context of rapid economic growth.     

Unlocking from Community Stakeholders,Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects for effective Company–Community relationship

Abstract

Conflicts in mining fields that revolve around the type and perceived impact of CSR projects seem to be daunting to solve. Such conflicts emerge from misconceptions among community stakeholders’ that lead to a failed company–community relationship. This inimical situation threatens peace, security, lives, and properties at the community level. To resolve the company–community conflicts, it is important to minimize the misconception among community stakeholders’ by identifying their preferences of CSR projects. However, the challenge of identifying these projects in mining fields is yet to be fully explored and understood. The aim of this paper is to identify community stakeholders’ topmost preferences of CSR projects for an effective company–community relationship and propose a path for community engagement. A sample of 604 respondents comprising community leaders’ and local residents’ from three regions which host Gold Mining Firms with level ‘A’ membership from the Ghana Chamber of Mines were drawn for this study. Using a questionnaire made up of close and open ended questions, a survey was conducted. With SPSS 16.0, the data on the close ended questions were analyzed with ranking and factor analyses while the open ended were drawn into teams to support the former. The results of the ranking analysis show that different group of stakeholders’ had a different preference for CSR projects. The factor analysis revealed that for effective company–community relationship both stakeholders’ preferred a Streamline Social Intervention and Improve Stakeholder Economic related CSR projects. Base on these findings, the study recommends that Mining firms’ should give maximum consideration to projects that seek the welfare of both stakeholders’ and have equal engagement with all stakeholders’. Also, managing expectations before, during and after mining should be a shared responsibility of all the stakeholders’.     

Farming is easy,becoming Brazilian is hard: North American soy farmers’ social values of production,work and land in Soylandia

Since the late 1980s, North American farmers have been migrating to Brazil to produce soybeans and escape a general farm crisis in the United States. This paper analyzes their work, values, social relations and relations with the land in order to understand transnational farming and agrarian change from the perspective of transnational farmers. North Americans’ migration to Brazil and soy production in Brazil can inform our understanding of the mechanisms of the soy boom and unpack the relative significance of social values at play in intensive, technified and financialized agriculture. It also provides an evocative perspective of the soy boom as it engages with issues of transnationalism, crisis, migration and change in business and farming practices. Using ethnographic data, this paper explores the intimate and emerging realities of agrarian change by detailing four elements of transnational farming – migration, farm management, land use and work – through the narration of three farmers’ career histories. These cases address the transformation of social values of work, land and social relations through the processes of migration and agrarian change. Farmers’ work, it is found, emerges out of an entanglement of regulations, expertise, meanings of work and land, worker relations and the political economy of Brazil and the United States.     

浅析公司社会责任--对职工参与制度的法律思考

在公司社会责任中,对其职工的责任就是对公司职工(劳动者)利益的保护,职工的利益也是公司社会责任中最直接最主要的内容。只有保障了职工的权益,才能使人力资源充分发挥作用,从而更好地促进公司的发展,最终达到各方共赢。因此应当逐步完善我国的职工参与制度,使得职工不仅只是劳动者身份,还应当是公司的经营管理者、监督者。     

Finance capital and peasants in Colonial West Africa: A comment on Cowen and Shenton

The presence of finance capital in colonial West Africa was predicated on the presence of imperial administration and merchant capital. From these it derived its profits. Cowen and Shenton suggested finance capital was seeking to diversify its sources of profit by engaging cocoa farmers in credit. While this may have been true for the period of cocoa boom before the First World War, it is argued in this piece that in 1938‐more than 20 years later ‐ the banks’ motivation was entirely defensive. No diversification was intended, and the action was directed at salvaging current business. This comment does not question Cowen and Shenton's ‘Fabianism’ thesis but substitutes merchant for finance capital as being in conflict with Colonial Office attitudes.     

Adaptive strategies of smaller foreign investors in the Russian agricultural sector: identity,narrative and performance

This paper utilises a qualitative narrative analysis approach to examine smaller foreign investors operating within the Russian agricultural sector as private farmers: the foreign versions of the krestyansko-fermerskiye khoziaistva (peasant farms) that were the early focus of agrarian reform. With difficulty experienced by foreign investment in Russian agriculture, and with the Putin administration shifting its focus to larger scale agriculture, interest lies in the fate of these smaller foreign investors, set in the broader question of: ‘Is there really a future for smaller foreign investors in Russia?’ The investors were aligned along a performance and narrative spectrum, and the construction of their identities – guided by their adaptive processes on the ‘Turnerian’ frontier – were found to shape their business conduct, and interactions with labour forces and regional authorities. Negative prejudgment of the labour force existed amongst the investors – with associated negative notions of trust, inefficiency, laziness, morality, and sexual deviancy – and they were involved in explicit or ambiguous forms of gift-gifting, drawing parallels to Soviet blat behaviour. This paper concludes that despite efforts to construct identity, the narratives of the investors betrayed themselves in certain aspects, with elements of ‘undoing’ in the identity process.     

Gendered endeavours: women and the reshaping of business culture

Traditional approaches to business history have assumed masculine norms. As such, women have either been ignored or treated as marginal. Though women's and gendered history have changed the face and interpretations of most branches of historical research, business historians reacted slowly. The recent refocusing of the business ‘malestream’ is still in its infancy, but its potential to make profitable contributions is far reaching. To date American historians have done much of the refocusing, but Europeans are now involved in incorporating female endeavours. In examining the reshaping of male business cultures this article considers both the deconstruction of the ‘master’ narrative and the alternatives offered by gendered business histories     

Green grabs and biochar: Revaluing African soils and farming in the new carbon economy

Biochar currently attracts technological and market optimism, promising multiple wins – for climate change, food security, bioenergy and health – not least for African farmers. This paper examines the political-economic and discursive processes constructing biochar as a novel green commodity, creating new alliances amongst scientists, businesses, venture capital firms and non-governmental organisations. Carbon market logics are not only threatening large-scale land grabs for biochar feedstocks but also other forms of resource, labour and ecological appropriation through driving research and development and shaping small-scale pilot projects. In these, soil carbon is ‘chopped out’ of its ecosystem and social contexts and revalued as exchangeable pieces of carbon nature. Farmers are hailed as green actors and market winners, provided they discipline their practices according to these new technical and market logics. These discourses contrast strongly with the farmers' existing conceptual and practical repertoires; a case study from Liberia illustrates how farmers already manipulate soil carbon in creating locally valued anthropogenic dark earths, but within diverse farming repertoires, ontologies of human–nature interrelationship and historical and political ecologies.     

The marketing of corporate agrichemicals in Western India: theorizing graded informality

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the young men from agrarian backgrounds who work as field marketing agents for companies like Monsanto in western Maharashtra, India. They promote pesticides, herbicides and other agrichemicals to farmers who often belong to higher castes. My ethnography suggests that the promotion of agrichemicals deploys the idiom of agricultural extension, upsetting India's tenacious social hierarchies on the one hand, and driving corporate profits and indebtedness among farmers on the other. With respect to the subordination of agriculture to industrial capital, I contend that farmers and marketing agents can neither be arrayed against one another, nor is their relation to industrial capital alike. Agrichemicals marketing troubles dichotomous frameworks, such as farmers against industrial capital. Ultimately, I call for re-conceiving political economy in terms of graded informality, where opportunities and constraints for accumulation map onto a gradient, rather than fall on opposite ends of a binary.     

Race,immigration and the agrarian question: farmworkers becoming farmers in the United States*

As White farmers in the United States retire en masse, the racial and ethnic demographics of US farming are shifting to now include a significant number of Latino farm owner-operators. Yet this population of new farmers, contributing specific technical expertise and knowledge, is not represented in current discussions concerning agrarian transitions. This paper draws on interview-based research conducted in the states of California, Maryland, New York, Minnesota and Washington, with first-generation Latino immigrant farmworkers who have transitioned to farm ownership. The majority are practicing small-scale and diverse crop production, with limited synthetic inputs and mostly family labor, as this form of farming allows them to reclaim control over their own labor and livelihoods, while also earning a cash income. The farmers included in this study, and their rationale for farming despite race- and citizenship-based challenges, cannot be understood simply through a lens of class transition. This contribution provides evidence that Latino immigrants’ ascendancy to farm ownership is instead a result of their struggle to redefine their relationship to land and labor in a country where their race and citizenship status have relegated them to the working poor.     

Soft budgets and elastic debt: farm liabilities in the agrarian political economy of post-Soviet Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

Since Tajikistan’s independence, market reforms and pressure from international donors have brought changes to the state’s role in the economy. The official narrative holds that the post-socialist state reduced its control over agriculture, but there are still various mechanisms through which it exerts control over farming. In this paper, I examine Tajikistan’s post-socialist agrarian change through the prism of farm debt. Farm debt used to be an accounting nuisance in Soviet agriculture as a result of so-called soft-budget constraints. In the political economy of post-socialist transformation, farm cotton debt has been transformed into indebted land. I classify this debt ‘elastic’ for its ambiguous nature. It ties farmers to land and makes farmers’ independence illusory. With an in-depth analysis based on original ethnographic insights, I aim to provide a theoretical contribution to the way in which debt is conceptualised and politicised in post-Soviet Tajikistan.     

关于推进企业改革改制工作的几点思考

主辅分离、辅业改制,积极稳妥地安置富余人员是国有企业改革改制绕不开的结,也是改革改制工作必须突破的屏障。一要突破思想障碍;二要加强正确引导;三要坚持源头参与;四要把握政策依据。只有这样,企业改革改制工作才能顺利实施。     

中国城镇化长期趋势研究

城镇化决定着城乡劳动力市场的供给，对社会经济有重要影响。研究提出了无农村经济联系城 镇化率、基于居住地的城镇化率和基于职业的城镇化率的概念，并构建了城镇化经济动力学模型，以预测城镇 化的长期趋势。研究发现：如果存在城乡收入差距，则城镇化将持续；如果城乡收入差距较大，则城镇化进程 加快；如果城乡收入实现了均等化，则城镇化终止，这时所实现的城镇化就是长期的城镇化。研究使用中国、 美国、日本和韩国的数据验证了这一分析。研究认为，要提高我国城镇化的速度和质量，就要对相关制度进行 改革，使农业以自耕农的规模经营为主，让离开农村的城镇居民脱离与农村的经济联系。     

Unjustified optimism: why the World Bank's 2008 ‘agriculture for development’ report misses the point for South Africa

The World Bank Development Report 2008 sees agriculture as a crucial instrument for sustainable development and poverty reduction. It emphasises the need for a sharp productivity increase in smallholder farming, as well as more effective support to millions of subsistence farmers. However, while admitting that there are challenges in making this goal a reality, the report fails to fully acknowledge the legacy of colonialism and apartheid on land and agrarian relations in South Africa. Contrary to the World Bank's optimism about smallholder and subsistence agriculture, this legacy of inequality and land dispossession discourages farming by Blacks in countries like South Africa.     

失地农民就业稳定性影响因素研究

失地农民的就业问题是我国城市化进程中不容忽视的问题。研究以“被征地后平均每份工作的 持续时间”作为界定就业稳定性的指标，从微观层面研究失地农民就业稳定性的影响因素。研究发现，在个体 特征方面，年龄、婚姻状况、工作年限对就业稳定性的影响显著，而性别、受教育程度、职业资格证书等级等 的影响则不显著；在岗位特征方面，社会保险、单位类型和所属行业对就业稳定性有显著影响，而岗位类型的 影响则不显著。此外，就业创业培训对失地农民的就业稳定性没有显著影响，而征地补偿金、补偿房屋出租等 征地后收入来源则显著降低失地农民的就业稳定性。