The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a ‘self-study’ process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.     

The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

Agroecology has played a key role in helping Cuba survive the crisis caused by the collapse of the socialist bloc in Europe and the tightening of the US trade embargo. Cuban peasants have been able to boost food production without scarce and expensive imported agricultural chemicals by first substituting more ecological inputs for the no longer available imports, and then by making a transition to more agroecologically integrated and diverse farming systems. This was possible not so much because appropriate alternatives were made available, but rather because of the Campesino-a-Campesino (CAC) social process methodology that the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) used to build a grassroots agroecology movement. This paper was produced in a 'self-study' process spearheaded by ANAP and La Via Campesina, the international agrarian movement of which ANAP is a member. In it we document and analyze the history of the Campesino-to-Campesino Agroecology Movement (MACAC), and the significantly increased contribution of peasants to national food production in Cuba that was brought about, at least in part, due to this movement. Our key findings are (i) the spread of agroecology was rapid and successful largely due to the social process methodology and social movement dynamics, (ii) farming practices evolved over time and contributed to significantly increased relative and absolute production by the peasant sector, and (iii) those practices resulted in additional benefits including resilience to climate change.     

Gender and Australian history in the 1990s

Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors (Cambridge University Press) Melbourne, 1996. Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism (Cambridge University Press) Melbourne, 1997. Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1997.

Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors (Cambridge University Press) Melbourne, 1996.

Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism (Cambridge University Press) Melbourne, 1997.

Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History, Volume One (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1997.     

90年代乡土小说三种成因探索

90年代是中国乡土文学的多元化时期,我们试图从现代性的震动、后现代主义的整合和"人文精神"的反思来分析它多元化的原因     

The politics of peasant burden in reform china

This article analyses the changing nature and role of the state in rural China during reform by examining the issue of peasant financial burdens. It argues that, despite some successes in transforming China's countryside, the state has not been reduced since the reform began in 1978. Rather, it is being reshaped (with certain distortions) with its major role changing from ‘redistributive’ to ‘regulatory’. This transition, epitomised by continuing expansion of the state and growing unruly exaction from peasants by local state agents, has been in the direction of neo‐patrimonialism where resources are contested by state, officials, and the masses. This three‐way struggle has led to tensions among the state, cadres, and peasants.     

The impact of the women's decade on women of Sri Lanka

The International Women's Year awakened many to the position of women in Sri Lanka. The mass media flooded with discussions on women's issues; meetings and seminars were held. Women's organisations gained new strength with the grants placed at their disposal by foreign voluntary organisations for development projects for women. Women's seminars and conferences abroad increased significantly and more Sri Lankan women attended them. However, this is only a beginning: Sri Lankan women's organisations are composed largely of middle-class women—feminist groups must strive to reach all women in Sri Lanka.     

The Rise and Fall of the Norwegian Massage Parlours: Changes in the Norwegian Prostitution Setting in the 1990s

This article is an attempt to bring together knowledge about the Norwegian prostitution market, public debates on prostitution and prostitution laws and regulation in order to explore the processes whereby the prostitution setting is constituted. Norway has been the site of changes in the ways female prostitution takes place, changes that are being experienced by the women involved due to a growth in indoor prostitution. These changes seem to have been produced by, and to take part in, the production of new images of prostitutes and new means of prostitution control.     

The economics of bringing up children in the Netherlands

This paper provides an overview of the different methods used in the Netherlands to evaluate the costs and benefits of having children. A distinction is made between different types of costs and benefits. Most research in the Netherlands has dealt with the direct costs of children. Hardly anything is known about other child-care costs and collective costs and benefits.     

The peasant mode of production in the work of A. V. Chayanov

Is there a peasant mode of production? Chayanov's work can be construed as a theory of the peasant mode of production at the level of the labour process. This labour process is analysed in terms of the forces of production, the relationship between the peasant and the means of production, and that between the peasant and the product. When subjected to an historical critique, from the point of view of the formation and decomposition of the peasantry, Chayanov's theory of a peasant mode of production yields to the idea of peasantry as a specific combination of structures.     

Rural artisans and peasant mobilisation in the socialist international: The fasci siciliani

This article explores the conditions under which peasant cultivators and rural artisans participate in movements of social transformation, a case in point being the Fascio movement of Sicily in the late nineteenth century. It analyses the reasons why artisans could play a critical role in politicising local protest and articulating it with pan‐European socialist movements, by describing their relations to other classes in a differentiated peasant community.     

Islam,the Mappilas and peasant revolt in Malabar

Stephen Frederic Dale, Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498–1922, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 290, £17.50.

The Mappila outbreaks of the nineteenth century, culminating in the rebellion of 1921, have usually been seen as fundamentally either economic or religious phenomena, and have been treated in isolation from rural protest and revolt elsewhere in India. It is argued here that the outbreaks can best be understood in a specifically peasant context and constituted only one of several forms or strategies of Mappila peasant mobilization and protest: they shared, moreover, characteristics with many other peasant movements in India. In such a context religion and economics are not alternative causations, but intimately interwoven elements of peasant perceptions and self‐expression.     

A project for research on the peasant revolution of our time

Up to the present my work has centred on economic aspects of the peasantry. Starting from an analysis of the nature of collective farms (kolkhoz), which I found to consist of peasant agricultural units agglomerated rather than really structured, I was led to the study of peasant economy itself: its internal organisation, its specific rationality, its relations with the surrounding economy. The results of my enquiries brought home to me, on the one hand, the capacity of the peasant unit to adapt to the different economic systems in which it exists, and on the other hand, the pervasive stamp the peasantry impresses upon these systems. Accordingly, I believe it would be valuable at this point to study the consequences of the peasant imprint in the social and political as well as economic spheres, particularly in the socialist countries. Of course I myself could undertake only a small part of the research programme sketched in the following pages.     

The nature and logic of the peasant economy 1: A Generalisation 1

This article discusses the major specific aspects of a general type of peasant economy: the family farm production‐consumption unit, the village as an economic organisation, the market and money in the peasant economy, the political economy of peasant societies. It concludes with an examination of the differing ideas of analysts who agree on the existence of a specific peasant economy but disagree on the relative importance of its characteristics. The aim is to provide a starting‐point for a systematic discussion of the general, the diverse, the relatively stable and the changeable in peasant economy, and the way in which it is affected by state policies; the latter aspects are dealt with in part II?.     

Marriage and the crisis of peasant society in Gujarat,India

ABSTRACT

This contribution takes marriage as the example of a crisis of production and reproduction in rural India. Through the juxtaposition of ethnography separated by six decades, we detail a shift away from land and agriculture as the primary markers of status among the Patidars of central Gujarat, western India, in favour of a hierarchical understanding of international migration. The paper discusses the disconnect between a cultural revolution in favour of migration, and the failure of many to live up to their own cultural standards. More broadly, we reflect on the forces that simultaneously strengthen and dissolve caste inequality in the context of India's uneven growth.     

Outside earnings in the Russian peasant farm: The case of Tula province 1900 to 1917

Employment in, and income earned from, crafts and trades (promysly) played an important role in the peasant budget in Tula province before the revolution. This income was earned in both domestic and migratory occupations of various types—many directly related to the urban industries of the town of Tula. Overall, these side earnings played a reciprocal role to farming proper—a point which is demonstrated within the province geographically, according to the size and ‘scale’ of the farm and according to its organisation and layout. This income was therefore primarily supplementary, so that rather than weakening the peasant household farm as an economic unit, industrial or other ‘off‐farm’ work served to maintain the peasant farm at a time of economic change and industrial growth.     

Emigrants,spinsters and priests: The dynamics of demography in Spanish peasant societies

In Spanish peasant societies, aspects of social organisation such as patterns of marriage and inheritance and cultural traits like courtship and the concept of honour are examined as functional equivalents of demographic mechanisms such as fertility control and migration. Whether a demographic mechanism reinforces tradition or generates social change is found to be dependent on social structure.