The cultural revolution and modernity: The contradictory political implications of postmodernism in China

In order to understand the modern‐postmodern controversy in China, it is important to understand the contradictory political implications of postmodernism in that special context. Emerging in China as a post‐Cultural Revolution discourse, postmodernism has elicited both anticipation and distrust. The former comes from the promise of being liberated from the dogmas of modernity; the latter from concern about postmodern disregard of different orientations of modernity, especially conflicting totalitarian and democratic modes of modernity. While attacking modernity in general, Chinese postmodernism has so far failed to address the particular mode of modernity crystallized in the violence and brutality of the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre. To undermine the modernist notions of universality, subject and grand narratives without acknowledging and accenting the oppressive deeds done under the aegis of these notions is to practice a politically conservative postmodernism which endorses the existing order while pretending to be theoretically radical and avant‐garde.     

Bolivia's soy complex: the development of ‘productive exclusion’

A significant transition is underway in Bolivia where both domestic and foreign capital are monopolizing commercial agriculture and leading a highly mechanized, capital-intensive production model which has considerably diminished the need for labour. This paper explores mechanisms and processes of ‘productive exclusion’ in the soy-producing zones of Santa Cruz in relation to the expansion, concentration and mechanization of the ‘soy complex’. We provide an analysis of how the agrarian structure has developed since soy was adopted – from ‘putting land into production’ to ‘expanding the agricultural frontier’ and ‘controlling the agro-industrial chain’. We explore how and the extent to which the penetration of new capital is leading to new processes of agrarian change which exclude the rural majority from accessing the means of production. While a process of ‘foreignization’ of land began to take shape in the early 1990s, new processes of capital accumulation are eroding the ability of small farmers to engage in productive activity, potentially leading to ‘surplus’ populations no longer needed for capital accumulation.