Power and property: commercialization,enclosures, and the transformation of agrarian relations in Ethiopia

The transnational agrarian social movement Vía Campesina is campaigning to have the United Nations negotiate and implement a Declaration, and eventually an International Convention, on Peasants' Rights. This article analyzes the origins and demands of the campaign and the place of the claimed rights in international law. Peasant organizations hope to follow in the footsteps of indigenous peoples' movements that participated in the negotiations preceding the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The peasants' rights campaign has succeeded in linking its demands to discussions of the right to food in the United Nations, where concern is growing over the approach of the 2015 target for realizing the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the halving of the numbers of people suffering from hunger. The campaign is likely to face stiff resistance from powerful UN member states, but could achieve substantial advances even if the path to a convention is difficult or never completed.     

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.     

Territories of peace: alter-territorialities in Colombia’s San José de Apartadó Peace Community

ABSTRACT

Scholars are increasingly re-theorizing territory beyond the nation-state given Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups’ demands for ‘territory’ as they confront land grabbing in Latin America. Yet alternative territorialities are not limited to such ethnic groups. Based on 16 months of ethnographic research between 2011 and 2016, I explore the relational territoriality produced by a peasant ‘peace community’ in San José de Apartadó, Colombia. By tracing the collective political subject produced by the Peace Community’s active production of peace through a set of spatial practices, places and values, which include massacre commemorations, food sovereignty initiatives and Indigenous–peasant solidarity networks, this contribution presents a conceptual framework for analyzing diverse territorial formations.     

Integración,mestizaje y nacionalismo en el México revolucionario. Forjando Patria de Manuel Gamio: la diversidad subordinada al afán de unidad

This paper analyzes the integration program in Manuel Gamio's Forjando Patria as a national project arising in the historical context of revolutionary Mexico, where cultural diversity is conditional on the idea of unity. Firstly, we trace the relationship of the integration program with its history, the concepts of “mestizaje” and “mestizo” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Secondly, we analyze the influence of some European models of nationality and socio-cultural change on Gamio's integrationism, in the context of socio-ethnic heterogeneity in Mexico during 1916. Finally, we highlight the links between the concepts of cultural diversity become visible, nation and nationalism in this author's work.     

Cultural citizenship and performing homecoming: Russian Jewish immigrants decipher the Zionist national ethos

The paper explores the mutual relation between cultural citizenship and national homecoming. Using the case study of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel, it refines the theoretical debate over cultural citizenship by showing how homecoming migration shapes the homecomers' bargaining power over the local cultural tenets. In particular, the research examines the ways in which the ‘Russian’ immigrants negotiate the national ethos of homecoming that constitutes the Israeli civic, discursive field, while dismantling it into its root components: affinity to the place, collective memory, and the warrior ethos. Each of these components constitutes a sphere of action that embodies the tension between Israeliness and Jewishness, nationalism and citizenship, and the personal and the collective. Our main contention is that in the case of homecoming migration, the inextricable affinity between citizenship and nationalism shapes the homecomers' cultural citizenship: on the one hand, it secures their right to participate in the local cultural discourse and avails bargaining power, while on the other hand, it neutralizes the homecomers' subversive voice, and reduces their capacity to undermine the constitutive, national tenets. The analysis is based on immigration stories gathered via in-depth interviews that were conducted with 43 Jewish university students who immigrated to Israel from the former USSR in the beginning of the 1990s.     

从时间观的差异探讨中国与西方传统思维方式的区别

在中外思想史上,一种自成体系的理论思维方式往往不可能脱离其文化背景而独立存在.先秦思想家阐释的中国传统思维方式,与从古希腊哲学家到黑格尔所阐释的西方古典思维方式,两者之间的主要特征存在着不可忽略的区别,这导致中西方古代思想史上对时间范畴及事物变化过程理解的差异,致使中西方古代科学家们采撷的智慧之果亦有所不同.如果摈弃思想史研究中的欧洲中心论,对中西方文化进行比较研究,将有助于发掘文化遗产;促进文化交流,并增进对世界文化多样性的认识.     

新生代农民工精神文化需求问题探析

新生代农民工作为一个新兴的群体,是实现构建和谐社会伟大战略的重要推动者。随着社会的不断发展,新生代农民工对精神文化的需求将呈现一个不断上升的趋势,但是,在多元文化、经济收入、社会制度、自身条件等因素的影响下,新生代农民工在思想文化、娱乐文化、科技服务、社会交往等方面的精神文化需求却难以得到满足。解决这些问题需要政府、社会、企业以及新生代农民工主体等多方面共同努力。     

毛泽东的文化观与政治信仰

毛泽东的文化观与其政治信仰是密不可分的。"大众化"是毛泽东文化观的一个显著特征。毛泽东认为,无产阶级革命开辟了文化大众化的新时代,文化应该为人民大众服务,为社会主义服务。发展民族的、科学的、大众的文化,坚持"二为"方向和"双百"方针,通过自下而上的群众性的"文化革命"运动,克服党内的非无产阶级思想,提高人民群众的政治觉悟,从而坚持社会主义方向,巩固马克思主义的政治信仰。这是晚年毛泽东建设社会主义文化的一个主导思想。探讨毛泽东文化观与政治信仰之间的关系,对于我们今天发展中国特色的社会主义文化、坚持党的群众路线、推进马克思主义大众化工作都具有重大启发意义。     

十六大以来党的生态文明建设思想探析

十六大以来,党的生态文明建设思想的形成和发展经历了准备酝酿、明确提出和科学定位三个历史阶段。生态文明建设思想的实现路径主要有五个方面。其中,调整经济结构和转变经济增长方式是根本途径,建设资源节约型和环境友好型社会是实践平台,建立健全法律法规和制度体系是坚实保障,扩大国际生态环境合作和交流是重要内容,强化宣传教育和扩大社会参与是重要方法。     

论《庄子》寓言中的技匠形象

与先秦诸子文章相比较,《庄子》寓言中出现了较多的技匠类人物形象。《庄子》作者深受上古文化观念的影响。其特定的社会地位、生活经历,也决定了《庄子》寓言的价值趋向。＂道＂是庄子哲学的本体,运用技匠类人物形象的目的在于以＂技＂释＂道＂,技匠技术之精妙正好说明＂道＂的自然无为。