Engaging the Brazilian state: the Belo Monte dam and the struggle for political voice

This contribution uses the case of Brazil's largest infrastructure project, the Belo Monte hydroelectric facility, to examine the challenges and opportunities for resistance and claims-making in the face of contemporary development projects. It shows that the confluence of the privatized nature of hydroelectric projects and the government's purported commitment to democratic, participatory development has impacts. I argue that this context, on the one hand, contributes to the fracturing of civil society. On the other hand, it presents opportunities for the creation of surprising alliances among diverse resistance groups and the state. I further argue that direct acts of resistance in this context can encourage the state to work for the public good.     

On the margins of soy farms: traditional populations and selective environmental policies in the Brazilian Cerrado

In the Cerrado, the expansion of soybean cultivation since the 1990s has coincided with the strengthening of environmental regulations. We analyze how the two main environmental policies – Protected Areas and the Forest Code – have played out at the ground level in western Bahia state. These policies in Cerrado have not been designed to curb the expansion of this agricultural frontier. These norms have, on the contrary, accommodated this expansion because the way environmental managers selectively choose environmental problems and publicize them through specific information systems depreciates traditional fire-dependent production systems. These ‘politics of selection’ are likely to increase competition for resources in the margins of soybean agriculture, which is where traditional populations have now become confined.     

Strategies and hybrid dynamics of soy transnational companies in the Southern Cone

Economical liberalization, market globalization and soy expansion stimulated the advance of big transnational companies in the Southern Cone countries (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay). Currently, the main corporations acting on the last links of the productive chain are ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus (the ABCD firms), global leaders in the soy trade. The objective of this contribution is to analyze the different strategies these companies articulate in the Southern Cone, and their dynamics in local space through market relations with local producers. The results show the rapid and intense process of denationalization of the firms in the soy productive chain as well as the high level of market internationalization and company concentration. In spite of this, this study shows that all transnational power of ABCD firms, which seems so abstract and intimidating when seen in the global scale, depends on its basis of the formation, maintenance and exploration of relations of proximity, trust and reciprocity with local actors (especially rural producers), including family friendship linkages.     

The politics of flexing soybeans: China,Brazil and global agroindustrial restructuring

The political geography of the global soybean complex is shifting. While the complex has long been controlled by US-based transnational corporations, new agribusiness actors, business logics and power relations rooted in South America and East Asia are emerging, based in part on commodity flexing. We explore how soybean flexing is shaping and being shaped by global restructuring of the soybean processing industry. Using the divergent histories and uses of soy in China and Brazil, we propose that in order to understand the changing soy landscape, we must examine the relationships between soy's multiple-ness and flexible-ness, the political economy of soy processing, and the relationships between crop ‘flexors’ – those powerful firms that control the soy complex – with each other and with governments. We demonstrate that the agribusiness actors who are gaining more control over the soy complex are doing so in part through flexing, and that the ability to flex may ultimately determine the trajectory of global agroindustrial restructuring. Finally, we raise questions and make suggestions for further research on flex crops.     

Family farming in Brazil: evolution between the 1996 and 2006 agricultural censuses

This article compares the main findings of Brazilian agricultural census data of 1996 with the same of 2006 by applying the methodology known as ‘FAO/INCRA’ (Food Agriculture Organization/Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária) which allows the characterization of family farms in relation to the total universe of farms. In this comparison several variables are shown, including the share of family farming in the total value of production, in the total number of farms, utilization of modern technology and partial factor productivity. Census data shows that family farming has changed from 37.91 percent of total production value to 36.11 percent during a decade of strong expansion of agriculture as a whole, demonstrating the economic relevance of this segment which, besides producing food, is integrated in the most important productive agricultural chains of the Brazilian agribusiness. Family farming is a heterogeneous segment, with different sub-segments. During the studied period of ten years the most rich of these sub-segments (A) has increased participation in total production, while the poorer sub-segments (C and D) have only grown in absolute terms without a corresponding increase in production.     

Promotion of contentious agency as a rewarding movement strategy: evidence from the MST-paper industry conflicts in Brazil

The recent scholarship on social movement outcomes has called for explanations about how movements influence economic outcomes. This article demonstrates in practice how a dynamic and relational approach, coupled with a Bourdieuian analysis of social, symbolic, and territorial space, can be utilized in explaining the influence of movements in contentious politics around investment projects. Based on participant observation and comparison across the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) groups in areas of paper industry expansion, I assess the different movement strategies and their influence on pulp project outcomes. I reinterpret the ideal ‘MST model’ as constructed by specific strategies promoting contentious agency: organizing and politicizing, campaigning by heterodox framing, protesting, networking, and embedded autonomy vis-à-vis the state. A Qualitative Comparative Analysis comparing the expansion of 13 pulp holdings between 2004–2008 shows how these strategies influence investment pace. When both contentious and conventional strategies were used, movements managed to slow pulpwood plantation expansion.     

The Landless invading the landless: participation,coercion, and agrarian social movements in the cacao lands of southern Bahia,Brazil

This contribution draws on Nancy Fraser's concept of ‘participatory parity’ to analyze the reproduction and contestation of inequalities internal to land reform settlements affiliated with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) located in the cacao lands of southern Bahia, Brazil. These inequalities are variously manifest in unequal control over land and legal documents, disparities in status and what Fraser calls ‘voice'. These circumstances help account for quantitative evidence that shows a strong preference among local landless populations for land reform organizations that are more decentralized and less hierarchically organized. These circumstances also motivate direct actions undertaken by grassroots MST settlers seeking to destabilize the conditions that ground these inequalities. This research highlights the importance of attending to local histories and interactions through which participatory disparities are christened and reproduced; indicates potential methodological consequences; and examines the interplay of transgressive action, dialogue and recognition as settlers struggle to bring about ‘participatory parity' – or what they might call genuine ‘friendships' – in their communities.     

Ordenamento Territorial: Neo-developmentalism and the struggle for territory in the lower Brazilian Amazon

In this paper, I explore the tensions and conflicts arising from the territorial re-organization of western Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon associated with the paving of the Santarém–Cuiaba highway (BR-163). I argue that the set of forces, techniques and devices that constitute Ordenamento Territorial, or Territorial Ordering, re-territorialize the region with the spatialized logic of sustainable development, constituting a ‘green grab’, or a new strategy of governance over not only territory but also territoriality – the ways of life of Amazonia's inhabitants. Analyzing the formation of the Movement in Defense of Life and Culture of the Arapiuns River, I explore how social movements are shifting their strategies in relation to these new technologies of ordering.     

Lula's assault on rural patronage: Zero Hunger,ethnic mobilization and the deployment of pilgrimage

This paper explores the Workers’ Party government's attempt to use anti-poverty policy to disrupt rural patronage, and the implications of this effort for theories of patronage. I argue that state officials and race-based activists implementing President Lula's flagship ‘Zero Hunger Program’ (2003–2005) turned mundane program exercises into pilgrimage rites in an effort to build lateral solidarities among Afro-Brazilians and undermine their vertical patronage alliances. The partial success of such efforts suggests that there are circumstances in which vertical and horizontal alliances are compatible, and that investigating this compatibility entails consideration of local categories of exchange.     

Institutionalizing economies of opposition: explaining and evaluating the success of the MST's cooperatives and agroecological repeasantization

Dominant conceptions of social movements consider their constitutive feature the disruption of order, not practices around building it. In this paper, I challenge this notion by analyzing the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)'s relatively successful efforts to institutionalize the practices of agricultural production developed by its members in cooperatives and agroecology. Through this analysis, I show that the movement's administration of a democratically managed form of agricultural production exemplifies a unique form of social movement resistance – namely, what I call self-governmental resistance. Rather than reformist or revolutionary contention, self-governmental resistance – performed by movements like the MST – redevelops state policies by vying for and often taking control over the design and implementation of agricultural production.     

建筑产业工人技能素质提升的现实困境与路径选择

建筑产业工人是我国产业工人队伍的重要组成部分。培育壮大高技能素质的建筑产业工人队伍,既是新时代产业工人队伍建设改革的必然要求,也是推动高质量发展促进共同富裕的关键着力点。为摸清建筑产业工人技能素质提升的发展现状和基本需求,本研究采用问卷调查法和半结构化访谈法对建筑产业工人开展大规模调查。研究发现,建筑产业工人的生产技能与职业素质已在一定程度上得到普遍提升,但同时仍然存在系统性现实障碍。建筑产业工人技能素质提升是一项复杂的系统工程,建议以突破行业体制瓶颈作为发力点,完善社会保障制度和公共服务资源配置,推进技能培训与人才管理体系建设,同时积极发挥工会组织和社会组织的作用,营造有利于建筑产业工人技能素质提升的体制环境。     

‘A pretty kettle of fish’: United Nations assistance in the mass dismissal of labor in the Iranian oil industry, 1959–1960

ABSTRACT

This article examines the assignment of John Alexander-Sinclair, a British United Nations (UN) development expert, in Iran. In the late 1960s, Alexander-Sinclair was invited to arrange the ‘redeployment’ of 20,000 allegedly redundant oil workers and mediate between the consortium of European and American companies, which was in de facto control of the country’s oil industry, and the state-led National Iranian Oil Company, which was nominally in charge. His UN mission enabled the cooperation between Iranian officials and foreign companies, which eventually led to the severance of workers on a massive scale. Much of the existing scholarly work on the history of international organizations and labor has focused on the role of the former in advocating international norms to improve the lives of workers across the globe. This article, by contrast, examines the use of UN assistance as a means to circumvent workers’ existing protections and benefits. Second, the notion of a ‘rule of experts,’ which suggests that development practitioners gained unprecedented powers after World War II, dominates much of the secondary literature. By showing how the UN representative in Iran appeared as a rather impotent pawn in the politics of local interest groups, the article demonstrates the limits of this argument.     

Sexual frigidity: the social construction of masculine privilege and feminine pathology

This study examines how mid-twentieth century physicians used the term ‘sexual frigidity’ to disempower women. Conceptualizing medical texts as accounts, I focus on how medical authors saw, described and explained sexual frigidity from the 1930s to the 1960s in both scientific writings and in those aimed at the general public as sex guides, marriage manuals and advice columns. The study concludes, that behind the pretext of treating a woman’s frigidity, psychiatrists and gynecologists, using the language and theoretical structures of psychoanalysis, constructed a narrative in which ‘normal’, non-frigid women always see their man through a lens of unlimited patience, tenderness and altruism. Their attitude is always welcoming, joyous, and worshipful. By contrast, women defined as sexually frigid see their man through a lens of bitterness and resentment, an attitude which reaches its apotheosis during the man’s attempts to engage them in intercourse. Through the frigidity narrative, mid-twentieth century physicians managed to pass judgment, not only on women’s sexuality, but on their autonomy, their character, and the success or failure of their marriage: they are to blame when their husband leaves them for another woman; they are to blame when their husband is impotent; and they only have themselves to blame if they are unable to function in a sexually ‘healthy’ way. The discourse that seemed preoccupied with a woman’s genitals, with their feelings and contractions, was also interested in a woman’s heart, her intentions and activities, with particular emphasis on how she performed as her husband’s housekeeper and companion. There was scarcely an attitude, feeling, or interpersonal activity known to women from which mid-twentieth century physicians did not impute some connection to frigidity.     

Youth Development Outcomes of the Camp Experience: Evidence for Multidimensional Growth

Three thousand, three hundred and ninety-five families, whose child attended one of 80 different day or resident summer camps for at least one week, completed customized questionnaires that measured growth from precamp to postcamp in four domains: Positive Identity, Social Skills, Physical & Thinking Skills, and Positive Values & Spirituality. Parents, children, and camp staff reported significant positive change in these four domains; more than would be expected by maturation alone. Most gains were maintained or showed additional growth six months later. Few of the camp's structural elements correlated with growth, nor did striking gender, age, or ethnicity differences emerge. The study highlights the particular strengths of camp as an educational institution and social movement and suggests that different variations of summer camp can provide potent developmental experiences. Christopher A. Thurber is full-time faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1997. His major research interests include homesickness, youth camping, and developmental psychopathology. Margery M. Scanlin is the Executive Officer for Research at the American Camp Association in Martinsville, Indiana. She received her EdD from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, in 1982. Her major research interests include youth development outcomes, program improvement in youth organizations, and organizational aspects of effective camps. Leslie Scheuler Whitaker is a Senior Associate with Philliber Research Associates in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her PhD in social science research from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000. Her primary research areas include youth development, arts education, and program evaluation. Karla A. Henderson is a professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at North Carolina State University. She received her PhD in education from the University of Minnesota in 1979 and is currently a member of the American Camp Association Board of Directors. Her research interests include leisure behavior theory, camping and outdoor education, and gender and diversity issues.     

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.     

土地关联:家园依托与社会保障——新型工资劳动者角色规定及价值选择的基本条件

新型工资劳动者的身份具有二重性 ,其职业是工人 ,社会身份仍是农民。农民的“家园意识”以及他们承包的土地所具有的保险意义规定了他们的社会角色 ,并对他们的价值选择发生重要影响。割断新型工资劳动者同家园与土地的联系是必然的趋势 ,其根本途径是继续深化改革。     

The Capitalocene,Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis

This essay, in two parts, argues for the centrality of historical thinking in coming to grips with capitalism’s planetary crises of the twenty-first century. Against the Anthropocene’s shallow historicization, I argue for the Capitalocene, understood as a system of power, profit and re/production in the web of life. In Part I, I pursue two arguments. First, I situate the Anthropocene discourse within Green Thought’s uneasy relationship to the Human/Nature binary, and its reluctance to consider human organizations – like capitalism – as part of nature. Next, I highlight the Anthropocene’s dominant periodization, which meets up with a longstanding environmentalist argument about the Industrial Revolution as the origin of ecological crisis. This ignores early capitalism’s environment-making revolution, greater than any watershed since the rise of agriculture and the first cities. While there is no question that environmental change accelerated sharply after 1850, and especially after 1945, it seems equally fruitless to explain these transformations without identifying how they fit into patterns of power, capital and nature established four centuries earlier.     

Industrial relations strategy and construction in the UK oil industry: the case of the national agreement

Abstract

This paper is a case study chronicling and analyzing the strategic considerations given to industrial relations in a proposal to upgrade and renew a major production unit in a UK oil refinery. The study is based on interviews and substantial internal documents provided by the case study managers. This represents a unique illustration as to the extent a company goes through in considering the way in which a major capital project needs to consider industrial relations issues before being considered acceptable to the Corporate-level audience and its decision-makers. In particular, the context is interesting – that of an American multinational taking up a national agreement from a process of sector-wide multi-employer bargaining.     

The curious case of ecological farm interns: on the populism and political economy of agro-ecological farm work

This article examines how farm interns, as a new group of non-waged agricultural workers, have come to support marginally or non-profitable agro-ecological farms in Ontario, Canada. Are farm interns potential agents of social change alongside farmers or are they being recruited onto farms because of the precarious economic situation of their agro-ecological farm hosts? I engage with this question through drawing on debates in agrarian studies arguing that farm interns should be understood as a contemporary manifestation and negotiation of the agrarian question that re-works a number of historical agrarian trends.     

我国城市人才争夺战的比较与思考

人才是第一资源,是国家、地区经济结构转型的动力引擎,更是提升城市功能的关键要素。自2017年初以来,一二三四线约60城先后掀起"抢人大战",城市间的人才竞争愈演愈烈,如何吸引人才、留住人才、用好人才,已成为各大城市经济发展的关键突破口。在对比分析一、二线主要城市人才争夺现状的基础上,指出存在的问题,探索人才争夺战背后的深层次原因,提出了推进城市在人才争夺战中致胜的对策。