Rural Mobilisation and Agrarian Political Economy in Argentina, 2001–2020

In this article, we reconstruct the mobilisations of rural actors both from ‘below’ and from ‘above’ and their connections to Argentina's agrarian political economy between 2001 and 2020. We divide the analysis into three periods and review key protest events and the actions of movements and organisations, paying special attention to two dimensions. First, we consider how rural movements and organisations engaged with institutional politics and the state. Second, we analyse the collective identifications and claims at the basis of coalitions forged within and beyond the rural sector.     

Beyond the ownership question: who will till the land? The new debate on China’s agricultural production

A high-profile debate is taking place in China concerning the organization of agricultural land and production, with profound implications for China’s countryside. This debate is between those advocating for agricultural production to be taken over by large-scale agribusinesses, and those against this. Proponents regard agribusinesses as embodying modernity and progress, while those against forewarn of the channeling of profits out of peasant hands, the loss of peasants’ autonomy over labor and land, and the destruction of rural life. Recent English language publications on China’s agrarian change highlight the growing power of agribusiness and related processes of depeasantization, implying the Chinese debate on “who will till the land?” is futile. But this view obscures efforts by Chinese scholars and policymakers to promote forms of agricultural organization conducive to maintaining peasant livelihoods. By examining the Chinese debates on agribusinesses, family farms, and cooperatives, this article highlights points of contestation among policymakers and alternative possibilities, which may yet shape the course of China’s agrarian change. This article contributes to scholarship on China’s agrarian change, broader questions concerning depeasantization, and developmental possibilities under collective ownership.     

Conciliatory whiteness: white farmers’ accommodations and responses to land reform in Matabeleland South,Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to contribute to growing academic literature on land reform and whiteness in Zimbabwe, where there have been calls for nuance in the analysis of agrarian change. The research which underpins it explores differentiated responses to land reform on the part of a sample of white farmers (as well as A1 and A2 beneficiaries), in the environs of Matobo district, Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. It characterises a range of responses on the part of white farmers – dropping out, pushing back, accommodating and adapting – and charts the various outcomes of these strategies. I further utilise the concept of subjectivity to reflect on these diverse responses and to disaggregate essentialised or homogenised understandings of whiteness. The article focuses on the small number of white farmers who retain a connection to the land and agrarian production in the study area and argues they embody aspects of a particular subjectivity. This conciliatory subjectivity is characterised by openness to reconciliation, rapprochement and partnership-making. Specifically, it is located along the following lines: (1) in contrast to the perceived ‘islands of privilege’ of some of their peers; (2) within a challenging context where they no longer occupy a hegemonic position; (3) wherein they are inclined or required to (re)form collaborations and alliances in the new dispensation; and (4) the subjectivity of these farmers could be said to be pre-occupied less with issues of identity and belonging, than with surviving and ‘becoming’ amidst the multi-faceted challenges of contemporary Zimbabwean rural agricultural endeavours and socio-political life.     

Justice in Moscow?

The article explores Russians’ satisfaction with their experiences in court and with the legal system more generally. The analysis draws on a nationally representative survey of Russians, fielded by the Levada Center in 2010. The results show that most court veterans believe that the decision in their case was just, and that the judge treated them well. But these positive feelings do not extend beyond their case. Russians who have no court experience tend to have more favorable views about the legal system than do court veterans. These findings serve to remind us of the difficulty of building confidence in the legal system in post-Soviet Russia.     

Trapped between Promise and Reality in Colombia's Victims' Law: Reflections on Reparations,Development and Social Justice

Colombia's 2011 Victims' Law aims to return land to millions of internally displaced people and assist survivors in the difficult process of rebuilding their lives through individual and collective reparations. This article analyses the expectations, experiences and needs of two campesino communities involved in this process. Drawing on nine months of fieldwork using ethnographic and participatory visual methods, the article critically engages with transitional justice theory on transformative reparations, and identifies key lessons for the Colombian government to make the Victims' Law live up to its promise of transforming survivors' lives and restoring their trust in the state.     

Shifting the debate on land reform,poverty and inequality in Zimbabwe,an engagement with Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities 1

Zimbabwe's land reform: myths and realities 2 2. Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Crispen Sukume, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010, 304 pp., ISBN 9781847010247. purports to overturn the western media and academy's ‘myths’ of agrarian failure and cronyism in Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform with a study rooted in the ‘reality’ of its outcomes in the Masvingo area. Yet the positivist picture painted by Scoones, Marongwe, Mavedzenge, Mahenehene, Murimbarimba, and Sukume is another position in portrayals of a complex process entangling many local material struggles–including those seen as successful examples of the yeomanry admired by the authors–with the equally important processes of authoritarian nationalism they side-line. ‘Myth making’ is not counter to ‘reality’, but positions particular claims within it. By concentrating on the ‘local’ and celebrating what they see as non-technocratic successes, the authors ignore the context and politics of the state–which they later invoke to develop adequate supportive policy and stability for the new farmers. Their reality ignores as much as the myths they try to challenge, and thus fails to assist to develop the policies they would like.     

菲律宾农业的衰落与政府的对策

菲律宾作为“绿色革命”的策源地之一 ,其农业曾在 60 - 70年代取得过较快的发展。自 70年代初期起 ,政府在土地改革、垄断经营、保护贸易等方面的政策出现了失误 ,降低了农业生产的活力 ,从而使其走向衰落。本文对引起菲律宾农业衰落的原因加以分析探讨 ,并论述近年来政府为振兴农业所采取的举措。     

加入WTO后我国保险法制体系的完善

完善我国的保险法制体系是加入WTO后的一项重要任务。本文分析了世界贸易组织 (简称WTO)的金融服务贸易制度的透明度原则对我国保险法制体系的影响 ,并对我国保险法律、法规、规章以及其他规范性文件进行了系统的整理和分析 ,最后提出了完善我国保险法制体系的措施。     

Law and Disorder: The Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement

Abstract — The Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement (MST) occupies idle farmland and demands that it be expropriated under the terms of Brazil's agrarian reform law. The MST uses illegal tactics in the field to force the government's hand and at the same time asserts its legitimacy with legalism and invocation of public sentiment in favor of land reform. It confronts repression promoted by the landowning class and increasingly from the state itself. Through the combination of militant and legal tactics it has won expropriation of many farms and turned them into successful agricultural enterprises.     

State engagement with non-state justice: how the experience in Kyrgyzstan can reinforce the need for legitimacy in Afghanistan

Currently there is a question of whether and how Afghanistan should engage non-state councils of elders to resolve disputes. In order to harness their benefits (e.g. efficiency), control their abuses (e.g. occasional controversial resolutions), and stabilize the resolution of disputes, some have argued that formal links should be established between the state judicial system and non-state councils of elders in Afghanistan. Others argue that mere informal links between the two systems should be established. Still others suggest that prior models of state engagement in Afghanistan should be revived. In Kyrgyzstan, just 65 miles north of Afghanistan, the Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet administrations have used various methods to engage non-state councils of elders. Despite these vastly different attempts at controlling local dispute resolutions, elders independently resolved disputes outside of Tsarist and Soviet control and continue to resolve disputes outside of post-Soviet state control in Kyrgyzstan. This phenomenon highlights the need for legitimacy in any models of state engagement that are considered for Afghanistan. If, as observed in Kyrgyzstan, people do not use state-sanctioned local councils in Afghanistan, then their purposes may be frustrated. Therefore, in addition to reviewing the experience with state engagement in other parts of the world, policy makers in Afghanistan should also review the historical and contemporary experience with state engagement in Kyrgyzstan. As the need for legitimacy is reconsidered and applied to the design of models for Afghanistan, it may be more likely that those models will be used by more people in Afghanistan and that their purposes will be furthered.     

COVID-19 and Social Protection in Latin America

The paper considers the role of social protection in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on livelihoods and in addressing the impact of the economic crisis ahead.     

Debates about Ethnicity,Class and Nation in Allende’s Chile (1970–1973)

In 1964, Salvador Allende signed the ‘Cautín Pact’ with leftist Mapuche organisations in Temuco in which they pledged to support Allende’s presidential campaign and he vowed to introduce important socio‐economic reforms to benefit Mapuche communities and to respect their culture and religion. As has been argued in previous studies, there were limitations to the implementation of these reforms in practice. This article suggests, however, that even so, an important space was opened up for – and by – Mapuche people within the government’s left‐wing nationalist project. This shift was also reflected in the works of intellectuals closely linked to the Unidad Popular.     

Health Policy in Chile: The Return of the Public Sector?

Health policy in Chile has mirrored the main changes in economic policy in recent times. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed centralisation of public health care into a National Health Service. Neoliberal policies in the 1970s and 1980s refocused health policy onto extending the scope for private insurance and provision in health care. The return to democracy in 1990 has produced a reappraisal of health policy, with the emphasis on strengthening and improving public health insurance and care. This paper examines the extent to which recent changes in health policy signal a reappraisal of the private-public mix in the provision of basic services, and argues that a model for health care and financing built around a strong, modern, and efficient, public health care sector is more likely to succeed in addressing the health needs of the population in Chile and Latin America.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Naro, A Slave's Place, a Master's World: Fashioning Dependency in Rural Brazil
Brading, Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries
Campbell, Mexican Memoir: A Personal Account of Anthropology and Radical Politics in Oaxaca
Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920–1950
Montgomery, Peacemaking and Democratization in the Western Hemisphere
Walker and Armony (eds), Repression, Resistance, and Democratic Transition in Central America
Fiddian, Postcolonial Perspectives: On the Cultures of Latin America and Lusophone Africa
Mendoza, Shaping Society Through Dance: Mestizo Rital Performance in the Peruvian Andes     

El ser del varón y el diseño de políticas públicas e intervención social con perspectiva de género

The purpose of this work is to examine the design and management of social policies from a perspective of masculinities. Various sources are reviewed -cultural, academic, educational, technical methodological- in order to broaden the standpoints from which male participation and responsibility have been considered. Finally, the study offers a series of valid and formally assembled findings to support the design and management of public policies oriented to gender equity with and from males, as it is of chief importance to promote the development of different male alternative patterns in view of overcoming violence, inequality, intolerance, discrimination, and inequity by means of political, social, and educational options.