The view from below: Cuban agriculture in the ‘special period in peacetime’

This article examines the changes taking place in Cuban agriculture at the local level as a result of the demise of the socialist trading bloc and Cuba's subsequent economic crisis. Based on fieldwork in three municipalities of Cuba, the authors describe new developments in each of the three main sectors of Cuban agriculture: state farms, production co‐operatives and individual peasant producers. They conclude that the dominant trend of this period is the tendency toward decentralisation of the state farm sector ‐ culminating in the historic September 1993 decision to form production co‐operatives on the state farms — counterpoised to renewed attempts to impose greater state control over peasant producers. Overall, they find a good deal of experimentation and heterogeneity in the actual implementation of state policy at the local level.     

Constructing and Deconstructing Liberty: A Feminist and Poststructuralist Analysis

Debates about liberty have been dominated by discussion about the relationship between its negative and positive conceptions. In accepting this framework, political theorists have left unquestioned certain foundational ideas that both concepts share but which actully constrain our thinking about freedom. This relates in particular to subjectivity and our assumptions about the free self. This critique uses feminist and poststructuralist approaches and explores the implications of the spatial metaphors which both concepts of liberty invoke.