Commentary: Food regime for thought

This essay engages with Henry Bernstein's critical survey of food regime analysis, focusing on the claim that my interpretation of the food regime takes a misguided ‘peasant turn’. I argue Henry's representation loses sight of my reformulation of the ‘agrarian question’, as more than analysis of the uneven process by which capital subordinates landed property, and therefore of the class fate of the peasantry, as such. Rather it is about social and ecological fate on a global scale, involving questions of ecosystem survival, precarious labor circuits, urban slum proliferation, privatization of states, financialization, intellectual (property) rights, climate change mitigation and so on. Significantly, global recognition of these connections to processes of agro-industrialization and enclosure was informed by a ‘peasant’ mobilization that would be unthinkable within the terms of the classical agrarian question. Peasant organizations catalyzed challenge to the neoliberal food order institutionalized in the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime, in a time of massive dispossession. Politicizing neoliberal ‘food security’ as an agribusiness project, the ‘food sovereignty’ counter-movement used a politics of strategic essentialism to unmask the undemocratic and impoverishing architecture of the ‘free trade’ regime privileging corporate rights over state and citizen rights. In effect, this counter-movement performed a food regime analysis from within, importantly reaching beyond a peasant project. This essay revisits the comparative-historical method by which the food regime trajectory can be understood, as a contradictory set of interacting forces and relations that complicate and shape and reshape its politics, and yet allow identification of emergent possibilities.     

Managing the Re‐Entry Process of Returnee Government Scholars in an Emerging Transition Economy – An Embeddedness Perspective

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigates the factors affecting the re‐entry and readjustment process of returnee government scholars in Vietnam. These returnee scholars were originally sent overseas to study as part of changes introduced by the Vietnamese government to develop its domestic talent pool. Using the perspective of home country embeddedness, we find that career and community embeddedness factors, together with readjustment factors, have an effect on returnee scholars’ career and life satisfaction in their home country. These factors subsequently affected their intention to stay or re‐expatriate. The study contributes to public sector change management theory by examining factors affecting the re‐entry process of returnees within an emerging transition economy. It also adds to the limited studies on understanding and managing the re‐entry processes and state‐led diaspora strategies among returnee government scholars from emerging transition economies and their effectiveness.     

La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement

The origin and evolution of the transnational peasant movement La Vía Campesina is analysed through five evolutionary stages. In the 1980s the withdrawal of the state from rural areas simultaneously weakened corporativist and clientelist control over rural organisations, even as conditions worsened in the countryside. This gave rise to a new generation of more autonomous peasant organisations, who saw the origins of their similar problems as largely coming from beyond the national borders of weakened nation-states. A transnational social movement defending peasant life, La Vía Campesina emerged out of these autonomous organisations, first in Latin America, and then at a global scale, during the 1980s and early 1990s (phase 1). Subsequent stages saw leaders of peasant organisations take their place at the table in international debates (1992–1999, phase 2), muscling aside other actors who sought to speak on their behalf; take on a leadership role in global struggles (2000–2003, phase 3); and engage in internal strengthening (2004–2008, phase 4). More recently (late 2008–present, phase 5) the movement has taken on gender issues more squarely and defined itself more clearly in opposition to transnational corporations. Particular emphasis is given to La Vía Campesina's fight to gain legitimacy for the food sovereignty paradigm, to its internal structure, and to the ways in which the (re)construction of a shared peasant identity is a key glue that holds the struggle together despite widely different internal cultures, creating a true peasant internationalism.     

Where is the backward Russian peasant? Evidence against the superiority of private farming, 1883–1913

This contribution deals with agricultural dynamics in late-Imperial Russia. Based upon a comprehensive micro-level data set on annual yields between 1883 and 1913, we provide insight into regional differences of agricultural growth and the development prospects of Russian agriculture before WWI. Making use of the fact that contemporary Russian statistics distinguished between mostly communally governed open fields and privately owned land, we are able to test the implications of different land tenure systems for agricultural yield growth. In a broader sense, we seek to challenge the common narrative of Russia as an exception to the pan-European picture of economic development during the era of industrialization.     

Environmentalism of the malcontent: anatomy of an anti-coal power plant struggle in Turkey

This paper introduces the concept of the ‘environmentalism of the malcontent’ to characterise a type of environmental activism that is increasingly common in Turkey. It illustrates its argument by analysing the resistance movement against the proposed Gerze coal power plant. By so doing, it problematises the relationship between class and environmental consciousness as well as the ability of the existing literature to accurately characterise the underlying motivation of movements against development projects. It shows that the mobilisation in Gerze was not rooted only or primarily in environmental concerns but animated by disaffection with, among other things, neoliberal developmentalism, disregard of democratic policy-making and violent suppression of societal dissent by the state. ‘Environmentalism of the malcontent’ describes the way in which long-lasting dissatisfaction with broader processes marking the development trajectory of the country combined with personal experience in radical political action enabled a group of urban, mostly retired, residents of Gerze to successfully collaborate with peasant activists against the construction of the power plant by deploying arguments regarding its potential negative environmental impact.     

Meeting peasants where they are: cultivating agroecological alternatives in neoliberal Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Social movements increasingly embrace agroecology as an integral part of food sovereignty. This essay has two related aims: first, to highlight the barriers to agroecology and explore how these can be overcome; second, to deepen understandings of how agroecology can strengthen movements for food sovereignty or extend neoliberal governance. I ground these questions by examining state and social movement agroecological programs in Guatemala. I argue that strict rejection of conventional inputs and market production, in addition to insufficient state investment and redistribution, creates barriers to participation among a rural peasantry whose livelihoods have been transformed by decades of scientific, market-led development. Facing these limits, agroecology can work to strengthen food sovereignty movements, but can also reinforce the neoliberal food regime by promoting resilience and indigenous agriculture as sufficient to resolve the food crisis.     

转型期女性职工利益保障的制度选择

现行体制的不完善,造成女性职工利益保障制度的缺失。为了有效保护女性职工的群体利益,主要应做好两方面的基本制度建设:一方面建立、完善女性职工的利益保障制度,使女性职工权益保护向着社会化方向发展;另一方面用制度规范利益表达,实现女性职工的合理利益诉求,整合不同群体利益关系,提高制度创新与制度变迁速率,以实现社会不同群体利益均衡状态下的制度均衡。     

解决农民工就业问题着力点探析

当前二元劳动力市场在我国城市社会中仍普遍地存在,农民工还无法取得与城市居民完全同等的劳动力资格,公平就业仍是一种“理想状态”,其择业面受到很大影响。解决我国农民工就业要重视吸取世界上有关国家的成功经验,建立健全解决农民工就业的法律法规,把农民工就业问题上升到法律层次加以解决,这是解决问题的根本途径。     

农民抢劫犯罪研究

抢劫犯罪是当前影响社会治安的突出问题,而农民在抢劫犯罪中占的比例最大,社会影响也最严重,其中很多人既是害人者又是受害者.因此研究农民抢劫犯罪的特点、成因、对策,对于从根本上预防、遏制抢劫犯罪,构建和谐社会具有重要的现实意义.     

农民犯罪的概念及发展趋势辨析

农民犯罪一直是我国犯罪的主流,在一定程度上左右着我国社会治安形势。农民犯罪随着我国社会改革开放的发展而发生着较大变化,了解这一变化对制定预防、矫治犯罪政策,促进社会的和谐与稳定意义重大。以什么样的标准来界定农民犯罪,将影响人们对农民犯罪态势的分析。从事农业生产劳动的人进行的犯罪才是农民犯罪,随着农业、农村劳动力的转移,农民犯罪将逐步减少,预防、矫治犯罪的策略也应有所调整。