The Agrarian Question and the Neoliberal Rural Transformation in Latin America
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21057/repamv12n3.2018.31201Keywords:
Agrarian change. Neoliberalism. Land and capital concentration. Labour precarization, Latin America.Abstract
Since the neoliberal turn in Latin America the rural economy and society has experienced a great transformation. Corporate capital and transnational agro-industries have taken hold of agriculture radically transforming the economic and social relations of production leading to the precarization and feminisation of rural labour as well as the intensification of work. Peasant farmers were further squeezed having to increasingly find off-farm incomes, largely through precarious wage labour activities, so as to make a living thereby furthering the process of proletarianization. The „new rurality”Ÿ and „territorial”Ÿ approaches tried to take account of these transformations but they are found wanting. Instead, a political economy view to the agrarian question is found more promising. A counter-movement to neoliberalism has emerged spearheaded by indigenous peoples and the rural poor, sometimes linked to the transnational peasant movement „Via Campesina”Ÿ. Their main aim is to construct an alternative agrarian system based on „food sovereignty”Ÿ which is promising but also controversial.
Downloads
References
AKRAM-LODHI, A. H., & KAY, C. (Eds.). Peasants and globalization: Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question. London: Routledge, 2009.
ALMEYRA, G; CONCHEIRO BÓRQUEZ, L; MENDES PEREIRA, J. M., PORTO-GONÇALVES, C. W. (Eds.). Capitalismo: Tierra y poder en América Latina (1982-2012), 3 volumenes. México, D.F. & Buenos Aires: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Ediciones Continente & CLACSO, 2014.
ASSIES, W.. “Self-determination and the „new partnership”Ÿ: the politics of indigenous peoples and states” In: T. SALMAN, S. MARTà I PUIG, G. VAN DER HAAR (Eds.), Dignity for the voiceless: Willem Assies”Ÿs anthropological work in context (pp. 154-185). Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014.
BERNSTEIN, H.. “Food sovereignty via the „peasant way”Ÿ: a sceptical view”. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41(6): 1031-1063, 2014.
BORRAS Jr., S. M., EDELMAN, M., & KAY, C. (Eds.). Transnational agrarian movements confronting globalization. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley, 2009.
BORRAS Jr., S. M., KAY, C.; GÓMEZ, S., & WILKINSON. J. (Eds.). Land grabbing and global capitalist accumulation: Key features in Latin America. special issue of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies 33(4): 399-551, 2012.
BRETÓN SOLO DE ZALDÃVAR, V.“From agrarian reform to ethnodevelopment in the highlands of Ecuador”. Journal of Agrarian Change 8(4): 583-617, 2008.
BRETÓN SOLO DE ZALDÃVAR, V. “Etnicidad, desarrollo y „buen vivir”Ÿ: reflexiones críticas en perspectiva histórica”. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 95: 71-95, 2013.
DEERE, C. D.. “The feminization of agriculture? Economic restructuring”. Rural Latin America. Occasional Paper 1. Geneva: UNRISD, 2005.
GASCÓN, J., & MANTAGUT, X. (Eds.). Estado, movimientos sociales y soberanía alimentaria en América Latina: ¿Hacia un cambio de paradigma agrario?. Quito: FLACSO, 2010.
GWYNNE, R. N., & KAY, C.. The alternatives to neoliberalism. In R. N. Gwynne & C. Kay (Eds.). Latin America transformed: Globalization and modernity (pp. 253-267). Hodder: London, 2004.
HENDERSON, T. P.. Food sovereignty and the Via Campesina in Mexico and Ecuador: Class dynamics, struggles for autonomy and the politics of resistance. Unpublished PhD thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2015.
JANSEN, K.. “The debate on food sovereignty theory: Agrarian capitalism, dispossession and agroecology”. The Journal of Peasant Studies 42(1): 213-232, 2014.
KAY, C.. “¿El fin de la reforma agraria en América Latina? El legado de la reforma agraria y el asunto no resuelto de la tierra”. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 60(4): 61-98, 1998.
KAY, C.. “Latin America”Ÿs agrarian transformation: Peasantization and proletarianization”. In: D. BRYCESON, C. KAY & J. MOOIJ (Eds.), Disappearing peasantries? Rural labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America (pp. 123-138). Bourton-on-Dunsmore: ITDG-Practical Action Publishing, 2000.
KAY & J. MOOIJ (Eds.),“Rural poverty and development strategies in Latin America”. Journal of Agrarian Change 6(1): 455-508, 2006.
KAY & J. MOOIJ (Eds.). “Reflections on Latin American rural studies in the neoliberal globalization period: A new rurality?”. Development and Change 39(6): 915-943, 2008
KAY & J. MOOIJ (Eds.). “Visión de la concentración de la tierra en América Latina”. In: A. BERRY, C. KAY, L. Martínez Valle & L. North, La Concentración de la tierra: Un problema prioritario en el Ecuador contemporáneo (pp. 15-42). Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2014.
KAY, C. & VERGARA-CAMUS, L. (Eds.), La cuestión agraria y los gobiernos de izquierda en América Latina: campesinos, agronegocio y neodesarrollismo. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2018.
MARTÃNEZ-TORRES, M. E., & ROSSET, P. M.. “La Vía Campesina: The birth and evolution of a transnational social movement”. The Journal of Peasant Studies 37(1): 149-175, 2010.
MCKAY, B., NEHRING, R., & WALSH-DILLEY, M.. “The „state”Ÿ of food sovereignty in Latin America”. The Journal of Peasant Studies 41(6): 1175-2000, 2014.
MCMICHAEL, P.. “Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please”. In: S. M. BORRAS, Jr., M. EDELMAN & C. KAY (Eds.). Transnational agrarian movements confronting globalization (pp. 37-60). Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley, 2010.
EDELMAN & C. KAY (Eds.). “Food sovereignty, social reproduction and the agrarian question”. In: A. H. AKRAM-LODHI & C. KAY (Eds.). Peasants and globalization: Political economy, rural transformation and the agrarian question (pp. 288-312). London: Routledge, 2009.
PAZ, R.. “El campesinado en el agro argentino: ¿Repensando el debate teórico o un intento de reconceptualización?”. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 81: 65-85, 2006.
VELTMEYER, H., & PETRAS, J.. The New Extractivism: A post-neoliberal development model or imperialism of the twenty-first century? London: Zed Books, 2014.
VERGARA-CAMUS, L.. Land and freedom: The MST, the Zapatistas and peasant alternatives to neoliberalism. London: Zed Books, 2014.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The published material is the property of the Journal, and may be reproduced in whole or in part with indication of the source.
Copyright: Authors will be responsible for obtaining the copyright of the material used. Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
a)Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution License which allows the sharing of work with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b) Authors are authorized to take additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (eg, publish in institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
c) Authors are allowed and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (eg in institutional repositories or on their personal page) at any point before or during the editorial process, as this can generate productive changes as well as increase the impact and the citation of the published work (See The Effect of Free Access).