The Landless Workers’ Movement has been the principal protagonist developing an alternative educational proposal for rural public schools in Brazil. This article analyzes the MST’s differential success implementing this proposal in municipal and state public schools. The process is both participatory—activists working with government officials to implement MST goals—and contentious—the movement mobilizing support for its education initiatives through various forms of protest. In some locations, the MST has succeeded in institutionalizing a participatory relationship with government actors, while in other regions (...) the MST has a more limited presence in the schools or has been completely banned from participating. Drawing on the concept of coproduction—the active participation of civil society actors in the provision of public goods—the author argues that coproduction is a joint product of high levels of social mobilization and government orientation. The former is necessary in all cases, while the latter can take the form of either a left-leaning or clientelistic government. (shrink)

Brazil’s Movement of the Landless emerges from this collection as one of the great social movements of modernity. In historical chapters we see its evolution from confrontations with landowners and police in land invasions in the South of Brazil in the 1970s to become a multi-faceted movement with a presence throughout Brazil. More than a pressure group for Land Reform, it turned to mount a comprehensive challenge, on linked legal, cultural, political and economic fronts to Brazil’s dominant model of development. (...) Its ‘social movement approach’, conjoining challenge to Brazil’s massive inequalities with the formation of active citizens among the marginalised rural poor, has become a model for movements in the urban scene. We see this not just through the rich descriptive accounts of MST actions, but because the contributing editor, Miguel Carter, has pointed the action portraits with theoretical acumen, and, with other contributors, placed them in historical context. (shrink)

Recent statistics in South Africa shows that women mostly experience poverty as compared to their male counterparts. In the context of the experience of poverty by women, several Old Testament scholars have convincingly explored the theme of poverty in the Hebrew Bible. In her contextual rereading of the Naomi-Ruth Story, Madipoane Masenya links the issue of poverty to the theme of land. Also, from the historical-critical and partly, the contextual approach to ancient texts, Esias E. Meyer argues that Leviticus 25:8-55 (...) holds liberating possibilities for women who are invisible in such a text. Based on the argument made by the preceding scholars, firstly, this article argues that in the context from which the texts of Ruth 4 and Leviticus 25:8-55 emerged, some women were both landless and poor. Secondly, it is argued in this article that the context of these texts carries a striking resemblance to the situation of women in modern South Africa, as many women do not own productive land and are poor. Thirdly, this article poses the question: What implications do the ideologies of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and the hermeneutical approach of Fernando F. Segovia to ancient texts bear on the reading of Ruth 4 and Leviticus 25:8-55 in South Africa? (shrink)

Proponents of rising agricultural prices argue that enhanced farm profitability from higher commodity prices could generate positive spillovers for farm labourers by creating greater demand for their labour at higher wages overtime. We studied 75 households of fulltime and seasonal farm labourers engaged in rice-wheat production in Mandi Bahauddin district, Punjab, Pakistan, using cross-sectional survey data and interviews to examine how farm labourers’ food security and livelihoods have evolved amid rising market prices of rice-wheat crops and generalized inflation. For a (...) holistic analysis, we combined political economy framework and structural class analysis to unveil the contradictory role of non-market transfers of informal credit, and gifts extended by capitalist farmers in at once enhancing the farm labourers’ short-term food security while undermining their long-run food security. The latter occurs through informal credit mobilization, where growing indebtedness among farm labourers leads to wage squeezes. Structural capitalist farmer-labourer class exploitation combines with weak farmgate price response to undermine prospects for a positive trickle-down effect of higher food prices in the form of higher wages for farm labourers. We interpret these findings in the context of ongoing debates on the welfare implications of rising food prices for the poor in Global South countries. We propose policies including redistributive land and housing reform, minimum wage regulation, consolidation of public and civil society safety nets, and the creation of alternative low-and-semi-skilled livelihood opportunities. (shrink)

Political philosophers’ prescriptions for poverty alleviation have overlooked the importance of social movements led by, and for, the poor in the global South. I argue that these movements are normatively and politically significant for poverty reduction strategies and global justice generally. While often excluded from formal political processes, organized poor communities nonetheless lay the groundwork for more radical, pro-poor forms of change through their grassroots resistance and organizing. Poor-led social movements politicize poverty by insisting that, fundamentally, it is caused by (...) social relations of power that exploit and subordinate poor populations. These movements and their organizations also develop the collective capabilities of poor communities in ways that help them to contest the structures and processes that perpetuate their needs deprivation. I illustrate these contributions through a discussion of the Landless Rural Worker’s Movement in Brazil (the MST), a poor mobilization organization in Bangladesh (Nijera Kori), and the slum and pavement dweller movement in India. Global justice theorizing about poverty cannot just “add on” the contributions of such struggles to existing analyses of, and remedies for, poverty, however; rather, we will need to shift to a relational approach to poverty in order to see the vital importance of organized poor communities to transformative, poor-centered poverty reduction. (shrink)

This article examines the specific case of Brazil as an area in which Gramscian analysis has been put to practical use. It examines the application of Gramsci’s work to Brazilian reality in three different ways. First, the introduction of concepts derived from the Prison Notebooks in order to understand the development of capitalism in Brazil. This aspect deals in particular with the concept of ‘passive revolution’, and the relationship between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ social formations in Gramsci’s analysis. Second, the role (...) of Gramscian thought for political parties, particularly the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and later the Workers Party (PT), in particular the novel formulations of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony that appear during the PT presidencies. Third, the varied appropriation of Gramscian analysis by the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), situated in an appreciation of Gramsci’s concept of the ‘Modern Prince’. The purpose of the article is to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of translating Gramsci’s thought to new contexts, and how new developments may or may not maintain the leitmotif of his thought. (shrink)

Many commentators and experts arguethat extensive agricultural systems across theEuropean Union (EU) should be supported toreach the two main functions of the EuropeanModel of Agriculture (EMA): lively economicsystems and environmental awareness. We arguethat the main current policy instrument of theEMA, the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy),should be targeted to take advantage ofexisting regional diversity in social realitiesand agricultural structures. Community-basedresearch work has been carried out throughoutthe 1990s in the cereal–sheep farming system ofCastile-La Mancha (south-central Spain), wherea system of land-use operates in (...) which cerealcropping and sheep farming are carried out onthe same land. Local agricultural staff andfarmers acted as collaborators in rating themain constraints and devising proposals forstructural, social, and institutional reforms.Results showed that the two social groupsinvolved (cultivators and pastoralists) haddivergent interests and unbalanced numbers forcollective action to be effective. Governmentintervention is required, but current EUagricultural policy is not accomplishing therestructuring objectives. Results of theopinion survey also support switching the EUsubsidy scheme to sheep from a per-head basisto a per-hectare basis and making grazing landmore accessible to landless shepherds. Regionalpolicy schemes should be devised that aretailored to meet the circumstances ofparticular land areas, but sensible policyschemes can only be devised after properknowledge of the structure and institutionalframework of EU agricultural systems. (shrink)

Kant’s theory of citizenship replaces the French revolutionary triptych of liberty, equality and fraternity with freedom (Freiheit), equality (Gleichheit) and civil self-sufficiency (Selbständigkeit). The interpretative question is what the third attribute adds to the first two: what does self-sufficiency add to free consent by juridical equals? This article argues that Selbständigkeit adds the idea of interdependent independence: the independent possession and use of citizens’ interdependent rightful powers. Kant thinks of the modern state as an organism whose members are agents possessed (...) of rightful (productive) powers, whose interdependent mode of exercise independently of unilateral permission matters for right. The empirical form of that ideal, according to Kant, is a republic of independent commodity producers. I will show that this reading of Selbständigkeit can consistently explain Kant’s disenfranchisement of women, wage labourers and landless farmers; that it offers a robust alternative to influential republican, libertarian and proprietarian interpretations of the Kantian state; and that it can buttress an original account of community as productive interdependence. (shrink)

Developing countries have recently experienced a burgeoning of small-scale individual entrepreneurs (SIEs) – who range from petty traders to personal service workers like small street vendors, barbers and owners of small shops – as a result of market-based reforms, rapid urbanisation, unemployment, landlessness and poverty. While SIEs form a major part of the informal workforce in developing countries and contribute significantly to economic growth, their potential is being undermined when they engage in irresponsible and deceptive business practices such as (...) overpricing, sale of underweight or substandard products, or attempts to hoard goods, to name a few. Despite the growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of small businesses in developing countries, the SIEs have received almost no attention. To address this void in the literature, we explore the reasons for the less than optimal level of social responsibility demonstrated by some SIEs in developing countries. We do so by drawing upon the existing literature to develop a comprehensive framework of social responsibility of SIEs highlighting their unique characteristics and the different contextual factors that they encounter in developing countries. Based on this framework, we then present a set of propositions specifying the influence of these contextual factors such as business environment, cultural traditions, socio-economic conditions, and both international and domestic pressures on the business practices of SIEs. The framework offers an explanation for the lack of responsible entrepreneurship of SIEs and has important implications for promoting sustainable business practices in developing countries where businesses are striving hard to survive and compete. (shrink)

In The Vitality of Contradiction, Bruce Gilbert provides an exposition of Hegel's political philosophy to establish not only that societies fail because of their contradictions, but also how the unsurpassable oppositions of social life cultivate freedom. He moves beyond Hegel's works to consider the limits of liberal-capitalism and the contemporary social movements around the world that stretch us beyond the global economic system. Drawing on key Hegel texts such as Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right, Gilbert shows how (...) societies outgrow themselves as they come to recognize key aspects of freedom and justice. He argues that the dialectic requires that we recognize how liberal-capitalism has both cultivated freedom and yet fails to lead us to more sophisticated forms of freedom. Gilbert also highlights organizations including Brazil's Movement of Landless Workers and the Mondragon cooperative in Spain and the sophisticated ways in which they are teaching the world new and better ways to be free. Engaging and perceptive, The Vitality of Contradiction illuminates the basic principles behind Hegel's political thought and indicates the ways in which his work encourages people to strive for a form of socialist democracy. (shrink)

Property and political obligation are central issues of Locke's Two Treatises of Government. It is agreed that obligation is somehow contingent upon the government's protecting the property of its members. But ‘property’ in the Two Treatises had two meanings — in the state of nature usually referring to material possessions but in civil society meaning ‘life, liberty and estate’ — and its relationship to political obligation is complex. This complexity results from Locke's varying accounts of the movement from the state (...) of nature to civil society: he combined a traditional natural law justification of ownership with a legalist and semi-Aristotelian conception of the ends of and limitations on the state; he failed to provide a full account of the obligation of landless residents; he left unsettled difficulties inherent in the concept ‘property’ itself. Locke's notions of ‘trust’ and the ‘public good’ pointed to solutions to be worked out by future generations. (shrink)

The past decades’ substantial growth in globalized meat consumption continues to shape the international political economy of food and agriculture. This political economy of meat composes a site of contention; in Brazil, where livestock production is particularly thriving, large agri-food corporations are being challenged by alternative food networks. This article analyzes experiential and experimental accounts of such an actor—a collectivized pork cooperative tied to Brazil’s Landless Movement—which seeks to navigate the political economy of meat. The ethnographic case study documents these (...) livestock farmers’ ambiguity towards complying with the capitalist commodification process, required by the intensifying meat market. Moreover, undertaking an intersectional approach, the article theorizes how animal-into-food commodification in turn depends on the speciesist logic, a normative human/non-human divide that endorses the meat commodity. Hence the article demonstrates how alternative food networks at once navigate confines of capitalist commodification and the speciesist logic that impels the political economy of meat. (shrink)

Scholarly attention to sustainability transitions is rapidly increasing. This article explores how cultural politics constrain agricultural change. Cultural politics, or conflicting values about appropriate types of agriculture, are an underexplored variable influencing whether or not farmers adopt agroecological methods. The research focuses on the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that influence cultural politics. It analyzes the intersection of mechanisms and cultural politics in an Amazonian agrarian reform settlement of the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement. Insights into the factors confounding the agroecological (...) transition are derived from an analysis of longitudinal spatial data derived from historic aerial photographs and remotely sensed images, and ethnographic data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Drawing on a political ecology of education perspective, the cultural politics surrounding the agroecological transition are traced to the confluence of the region’s historical usage for cattle ranching, farmer’s conceptions of space and the combination of agricultural extension and government credit. The MST’s agroecological education initiatives hold the promise to drive the sustainability transition, but are also constrained by these cultural politics and associated mechanisms. (shrink)

La politique de « réformes et ouverture » vers l’étranger, initiée par Deng Xiaoping au sortir de la Révolution culturelle en 1978 s’est avérée, d’un point de vue économique, une véritable réussite qui a amené la Chine au rang des grandes puissances mondiales en à peine trente ans. D’un point de vue social par contre, le résultat est tout autre : transfigurée par ces réformes qui ont acté le basculement d’une économie planifiée vers une économie de marché, la société chinoise (...) s’est retrouvée bouleversée par la disparition de l’État-providence et la restructuration du secteur de production étatique, autant de dommages collatéraux qui vont brutalement vulnérabiliser et « précariser » des millions d’individus. Dès la fin des années 1980, vont se constituer de nouvelles « classes dangereuses » de paysans sans terres, de chômeurs et de pauvres, des « masses dangereuses » que l’État-parti chinois va devoir discipliner, puisque c’est sur leur exploitation que va se construire le miracle chinois. C’est donc un véritable arsenal discursif, une langue de bois élaborée et complétée sur trois décennies, que les dirigeants du Parti communiste chinois vont mettre en place pour formuler les perceptions et « corriger les consciences erronées » de ces populations vers une acceptation d’un ordre social qui leur est foncièrement défavorable.From the economic point of view, the policy for « reform and openness » to other countries initiated by Deng Xiaoping as the Cultural Revolution ended in 1978 was a genuine success that made China a top-ranking world power in the space of barely thirty years. The outcome was very different from the social point of view, however: the reforms that turned a planned economy into a market economy caused radical upheaval in Chinese society as collateral damage from the demise of the welfare state and the restructuring of the State-controlled production sector plunged millions into precariousness and insecurity. The late 1980s saw the emergence of a new « dangerous class » of landless peasants, unemployed workers and poverty-stricken individuals: the « dangerous masses » that the Chinese party-state would have to discipline so that the « Chinese miracle » could be built by exploiting their labour. Thus did China’s Communist party leadership deploy a whole arsenal of political doublespeak, developed and honed over three decades, designed to formulate perceptions and « correct » the « erroneous conceptions » of these populations to lead them to acceptance of a social order which is fundamentally opposed to their interests. (shrink)

In the research investigated the present state, conditions and possibilities on introduction the free circulation of agricultural land in Ukraine, highlighted the main problems of its development, analyzed experience of sale and lease of agricultural land in European countries. It is demonstrated the survey results of shareholders and agricultural producers in the two districts - Bila Tserkva, Kyiv region and Uman, Cherkassy region. The model of the agricultural land market should meet not only economic efficiency and expediency, but also contribute (...) to the sustainable development of rural areas, where the circulation of agricultural land should be preceded by the introduction of fuses and restrictions. In order to prevent landlessness of peasants and the formation of latifundists, the free circulation of land can be implemented in two stages. 1 stage: land inventory, cadaster and land management system, which includes four subsystems: 1) land rights ; 3) land use ; 4) infrastructure development. Second stage of the market opening for state and communal property land. The priorities on purchase to be provided for the local communities, restriction on access the market for the legal entities, foreigners, introduction of other restrictions on the sale of agricultural land, the application the taxes differentiations on land sales, fees, etc. (shrink)

This article offers a revised interpretation of the Scottish republican thinker and political activist Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun’s views on the issue of militias and standing armies. Reconstructing both its English and Scottish contexts, it is shown that Fletcher’s republicanism incorporated strong constitutionalist elements by engaging with several forms of political discourses and practices. On the one hand, his Discourse concerning Militias (1697) issued in London went much further than the moderate neo-Harringtonian propaganda of the anti-army camp, arguing for delivering (...) the right to use arms to the parliaments instead of the king. On the other, the second version of Fletcher’s tract published in Edinburgh in 1698 and his 1703 parliamentary ‘limitations’ enlarged the participation in the militia to landless subjects, transcending both the Buchananite ethos of the nobility in arms and James Harrington’s original agrarian model. As a result of this study, Fletcher’s idea of government emerges as much closer to English Civil War authors and the likes of Algernon Sidney and Henry Neville than to any of his contemporaries. The conclusions stress how Fletcher’s radical stance should be considered as the most important facet of his legacy, presenting some cases of reception in the age of revolutions. (shrink)

Poverty has continued to be an enormous challenge for Africa. Immoral political decisions and tactics have led to the continued suffering of the landless poor in the city of Harare. With no consideration for the dignity of people, the government of Zimbabwe through Operation Murambatsvina demolished shelters belonging to the poor in the city a decade and half ago. To this day, most of the victims of this destruction still lack adequate accommodation. The majority urban poor have been excluded from (...) the community and inhabit shanty towns around Harare. Deprived of justice, the poor are alienated from their right to land, nourishment and dignified life. This complete disregard for life and African community values ought to be challenged. Ubuntu moral theory presents necessary guiding principles for human progress that achieves genuine harmony and equality among all people. In light of the experiences of deadly but preventable poverty in Harare, the will-to-live for all requires confirmation. Every human being is endowed with irrevocable intrinsic worth. The elimination of poverty requires practical philosophical resolutions that are driven by sincere respect for human life. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the years preceding Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity in Chile (1970-1973) and, more precisely, on the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR). Since 1969, this Marxist revolutionary group had actively participated in the class struggle in Chile. However its political and social activism was not oriented towards the working class, but instead towards marginalized social sectors (inhabitants of informal settlements and landless rural workers). The paper thus seeks to elucidate the process which led the MIR to invest social (...) sectors that should have been considered as “unorthodox,” from a Marxist organization’s point of view. More generally, the analysis of a political experience taking place in a country where the working class was not as coherent or as massive as it was in 20th Century Western Europe and the United States aims at “deprovincializing” history and at using the concepts of “class” and “class struggle” in a manner which distances them from their potentially economicist and sociologizing implications. (shrink)

The role of this article is to present a historical analysis of how the expropriation occurred and concentration of land in Brazil it has been since the arrival of the colonists to the present day. Evaluate how this event influenced, as a rule, expulsion and enslavement of indigenous peoples in their own lands, the enslavement of black Africans, in the Brazilian rural exodus, the swelling of the cities in recent decades; hunger in the field, the shortage of food commodities in (...) the cities and in the present family farming underdevelopment of the country as a whole and its consequent and continuous concentration in a few hands "the Brazilian agrarian oligarchy" preventing the implementation of agrarian reform and land distribution for families and landless farmers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 292-296 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions. Edited by Daniel L. Smith-Christopher. Cambridge, MA: Boston Research Center for the Twenty-first Century, 1998. 177 pp. This work raises the challenge of peacemaking to all religious traditions from within each of these traditions. Touching on primary texts, personalities, theologies, (...) histories, and practices Subverting Hatred is a sampling of the rich religious resources for nonviolence. The eight primary chapters cover Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Hinduism, indigenous traditions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. There is a summary epilogue and each chapter has a bibliography. Subverting Hatred [End Page 292] ought to be read in religious study groups as well as in academic settings for the study of religion.Editor Daniel Smith-Christopher teaches theological studies and directs the Peace Studies program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles; he is also the author of The Religion of the Landless. In the introduction, Smith-Christopher sets out the intent of this collection. First, in the face of clear evidence that religious traditions "can be manipulated and used to justify all kinds of violence," it is vital to argue that religions are not inevitably "divisive and destructive" (p. 9). Second, the book presents the positive claim that it is "precisely the call to nonviolence that embodies one of the noblest values and sacred obligations of religion" (p. 10). Here, nonviolence means active peacemaking rather than merely refusal to engage in violence.It was exciting to see a chapter devoted to Jainism, and have it be the first of the book. The author, Christopher Chapple, is professor of theological studies and director of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University; among his publications is Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions. Rooted in the deep strand of nonviolence it shares with Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism powerfully advocates nonviolence. The earliest records of the religious impulse in the Indus Valley are also the earliest images most associated with nonviolence in these religious traditions. These cylinder seal impressions of figures seated in the yoga position surrounded by plants and animals can still evoke a sense of a calm and peace. Thus, in Indian traditions the connection of nonviolence to meditative practices is inseparable.Jainism has arguably made nonviolence a central teaching for all adherents to a greater extent than other traditions. The earliest text of the Jain tradition, the Acaranga Sutra (fourth or fifth century B.C.E.) makes this clear: "'All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure, unchangeable, eternal law." Further, the reason for this prohibition is also presented: the desire to harm arises from a false sense of self-interest, and violence ultimately comes back to harm us. Chapple then presents some striking historical examples of Jain scholarship and nonviolent action. In conclusion, though Jainism has focused upon individual spiritual liberation, Jains do not "disengage from worldly life" (p. 19), but act to promote violence reduction in society.The author of the next chapter, Christopher Queen, is at Harvard and is co-editor of Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia; his interest in the social dimensions of Buddhist nonviolence is reflected in this essay. He shows how the "Peace Wheel" of Buddhist nonviolence transforms the image of the wheel of the war chariot. As the Vedic tradition developed, it produced contrasts to the tradition of yogic nonviolence shared with Jainism. The sun-disk of Vishnu and chariot of Indra were associated with war, and their symbol was the chariot wheel. In contrast, Buddha turns the wheel "by peaceful means."Queen suggests that while much of the attention in the West has focused upon the "inner peace" offered by Buddhist meditation, it is vital that we see the social [End Page 293] setting of Buddhist practice. To understand the Four Noble Truths a person must begin with the proper social relationships as directed in... (shrink)

Against the well-established critical rejection of rights a growing literature in the tradition of agonistic democracy asserts their emancipatory role in the struggles for social change. However, agonistic theorists, invested as they are in the idea of democratic innovation as a process of gradual ‘augmentation’ of existing rules, institutions and practices, fail to account for the ruptural capacity, and hence for the full radical potential, of rights. Using the performative approach, I develop a conception of rights claiming as a defiant (...) practice to express the ruptural dimension of certain forms of rights politics. I demonstrate how defiant rights claiming articulates immanent critique by declaring the incapacity of putative duty-bearer institutions and governments to uphold the claimed right due to structural constraints, thereby generating inevitable contradictions within the extant order and creating the necessity for an alternative one. Moreover, in order to fully capture the emancipatory potential and creative capacity of rights, this article argues for understanding certain forms of rights politics both as augmentation and rupture, taking the two to be different dimensions of the same radical democratic practice. I present the creative use of rights discourse by the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil and the transnational network of agrarian movements, La Via Campesina, as precisely such a combination of the practice of augmentation and defiant claims, which has led to the transformation of the right to food and land into the right to food sovereignty, demonstration of the structural embeddedness of rights violations in the existing global regime of food production and distribution, and authorisation of an alternative vision of the future. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the centrality of permaculture design courses as the principal sociopolitical strategy of the permaculture community in Canada to transform local food production practices. Building on the work of Antonio Gramsci and political agroecology as a framework of analysis, we argue that permaculture instruction remains deeply embedded within market and colonial relations, which orients the pedagogy of permaculture trainings in such a way as to reproduce the basic elements of the colonial capitalist economy among its practitioners. In (...) the specific case of eastern Ontario, this embeddedness had the effect of diluting the transformative capacity of permaculture practitioners who were unable to create its own social movement organization. The paper then highlights key elements of the agroecological pedagogy used by the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement and the Escola Latinoamericana de Agroecología in Paraná, Brazil. The objective is to draw lessons from these inspiring experiences, in a rather unique context of struggles that can help to critically assess the pedagogical practices and principles presently informing permaculture communities in Canada and in advanced industrialized countries more generally. We then conclude by reiterating the key arguments and lessons drawn from the Brazilian pedagogical experiences, pointing out the importance of engagement and coalition-building with established rural and urban movements, as well as progressive farmer, Indigenous, and rural associations to foster a just and sustainable transformation of agri-food systems, starting at the local and regional levels. It also emphasizes the need for the most marginalized sectors to lead the way towards an agroecological transition. (shrink)

A family reconstitution study of the Krummhörn population (Ostfriesland, Germany, 1720–1874) reveals that infant mortality and children’s probabilities of marrying or emigrating unmarried are affected by the number of living same-sexed sibs in farmers’ families but not in the families of landless laborers. We interpret these results in terms of a “local resource competition” model in which resource-holding families are obliged to manipulate the reproductive future of their offspring. In contrast, families that lack resources have no need to manipulate their (...) offspring and are more likely to benefit from allowing their offspring to capitalize on whatever opportunities to reproduce present themselves. (shrink)

In rural Cambodia the rampant allocation of state land to political elites and foreign investors in the form of “Economic Land Concessions (ELCs)”—estimated to cover an area equivalent to more than 50 % of the country’s arable land—has been associated with encroachment on farmland, community forests and indigenous territories and has contributed to a rapid increase of rural landlessness. By contrast, less than 7,000 ha of land have been allotted to land-poor and landless farmers under the pilot project for (...) “Social Land Concessions (SLCs)” supported by various donor agencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two research sites in Kratie Province, this article sheds light on the mechanisms and discourses surrounding the allocation of ELCs and SLCs. Our findings suggest that large-scale and non-transparent land leases in the form of ELCs are discursively justified as land policy measures supporting national development, creating employment opportunities in rural areas, and restoring “degraded” and “non-use” land, while SLCs are presented by the government and its international donors as a complementary policy to reduce landlessness, alleviate rural poverty, and ensure a more equitable land distribution. We argue that the SLC pilot project is a deliberate strategy deployed by the Cambodian ruling elite to instrumentalize international aid agencies in formalizing displacement and distributional injustices, in smoothing the adverse social impacts of their very own land policies and in minimizing resistance by dispossessed rural people. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo propone que la 31ª Bienal de Sao Paulo entraña un afán emancipador para los "sin tierra" - errantes, migrantes y viajeros. Para ello se conforma como un cuerpo sin órganos, que despliega estrategias liberadoras promoviendo: desarticulación, experimentación, vagabundeo y tránsito de sujetos y pueblos. Esta Bienal, en tanto CsO, mueve intensidades como flujos sensibles por los intersticios de los proyectos artísticos dispuestos en organismo. Acá el CsO es un conjunto de prácticas reservadas a desterritorializar los estratos (...) del "organismo social" y hacer estallar los órganos estructurados en dichos sistemas.: This article shows that the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial has an emancipatory affinity for the landless - wanderers, migrants, and travelers. As such it becomes a Body without Organs that displays liberating strategies, promoting disarticulation, experimentation, wandering, and the transit of subjects and peoples. This Biennial, as a BwO, moves intensities as sensible flows through the interstices of the artistic projects inside the organism. Here, the BwO becomes a set of practices that deterritorialize the strata of the "social organism", making the structured organs in these systems explode. (shrink)

In this exciting new study, Eugene Gogol interweaves three strands that form the intellectual bedrock for the concept of the Other in the Latin American context: Hegel's dialectic of negativity, Marx's humanism, and autochthonal emancipatory thought. From this foundation, the book explores the relation of liberatory philosophic thought to today's social and class movements. Gogol considers the logic of capitalism on Latin American soil, the ecological crisis in Latin America, and the concept and practice of self-liberation. Still one of the (...) most contested terrains of Latin American thought, the Other has been of central concern for many luminary thinkers including Leopoldo Zea, Octavio Paz, and José Carlos Mariátegui. While these writers may not garner much publicity in the world press, the highly public and ongoing struggles of the Zapatistas and Brazil's Landless Workers Movement demonstrate the continuing need to theorize the volatile nature of Latin American social reality. (shrink)

When Jesus meets the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s well in John 4, it is a meeting between two colonial subjects in the Roman Empire. In this encounter we find the Samaritan Woman as a triply marginalised body, a woman subject to multiple, intersecting forms of oppression within her patriarchal context. Identified as a Samaritan Woman, Jewish rabbis regarded her as unclean, impure, and being menstruous from birth. It can also be deduced that she is an outcast in her own society (...) because she comes to draw from the well at noon, the hottest part of the day when people did not usually fetch water. This Samaritan Woman is nameless, landless and powerless in an imperial, colonial and patriarchal context. The poem of Diana Ferrus, I’ve come to take you home, in memory of Sarah Baartman, highlights how Baartman was dehumanised and treated as a sexual object by European colonisers. Through a postcolonial reading of John 4, I consider the intersections between the Samaritan Woman and the early life of Sara Baartman in their respective colonial contexts and invite the reader, as the poem invites Baartman, to come home to Africa and resist Western European imperial and colonial patterns and tendencies.Contribution: This article has interdisciplinary implications. This is an interdisciplinary study in the sense that it offers a biblical interpretation of John 4 that is informed by the life of Sara Baartman that has been uncovered through anthropology, history and sociology. It is also integrating the field of postcolonial biblical hermeneutics with the theory of intersectionality. (shrink)

Marx’s concept of bird-freedom or Vogelfreiheit— drawn from German legal history in which it meant “outlaw status” — describes the situation of free labor as “doubly free”: not enslaved as well as landless. The metaphorical valences of his satirical emphasis on the cynicism of the idea of “free labor” returns in many of Marx’s other satirical reworkings of concepts which refer to the state of nature. This essay looks at two such concepts engaged in explaining the process of “primitive accumulation” (...) in Capital, Volume 1: the notion of the idyll (“idyllic relations” or “idyllic proceedings”) and the notion of outlawry as “bird-freedom.” The essay exemplifies the ways in which both moments constitute “natural-historical images,” in Theodor Adorno’s terms: a concept of hybridity, historical texture, and transition that might add to the scholarship on Marx’s philosophy of nature. (shrink)

The following proposal explores and discusses the potential of Cartography as a methodological path in the development of research in Mathematics Education aimed at working with different groups that, in many cases, in addition to finding themselves in various situations of vulnerability and social neglect – taken in their potentiality of life –, are not necessarily linked to formal or informal academic training spaces, such as schools or universities. To this end, we begin with a general presentation of the doctoral (...) research carried out by five members of the research group Coletivo Cronopies+ (cronopiando.org) and, in addition, we invite the participants of the session to visit the first Hip Hop House in Brazil in Diadema/SP, which constitutes one of the settings that make up the fieldwork of one of the research projects presented. The research we share involves working with a Hip Hop cultural center in Piracicaba/São Paulo (SP), a Guarani-Kaiowá indigenous village in Coronel Sapucaia/Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), a traveling school in a Landless Workers’ Movement camp in Porecatu/Paraná (PR), a rural settlement school in Nova União/Rondônia (RO) and three collectives that operate with gender in the region of Rio Claro/SP. The construction of this proposal is methodologically based on Cartography, since the discussion aims to produce the field of this research and we propose “fieldwork”. (shrink)

Based on historical data pertaining to the Krummhörn population (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Germany), we compared reproductive histories of mothers according to whether the maternal grandmother (MGM) or the paternal grandmother (PGM) or neither of them was resident in the parents’ parish at the time of the mother’s first birth. In contrast to effects of PGMs, we discovered conditional differences in the MGM’s effects between landless people and wealthier, commercial farmers. Our data indicate that the presence of the MGM only (...) lowers the woman’s age at marriage (AAM) and her age at the birth of her first child (AFB) in the case of landless families. However, among commercial farmers, who can generally be characterized by a lower AAM and AFB, we found opposite tendencies for the MGM’s effect leading to a relatively small delay in AAM and AFB. Moreover, we also analyzed differences in the completed fertility (i.e., children ever born: CEB). Results indicate that landless families in general do have fewer CEB compared with commercial farmers except for those families in which the MGM has been present. Emphasizing that the adaptiveness of investment decisions should depend on the interaction of genetic, lineage-specific (intrinsic) and ecologically imposed (extrinsic) constraints, we conclude that kin strategies consequently address different fitness components under different conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Eminently Practical Mr. Hume or Still Relevant After AU These Years Nancy Davlantes The practice, therefore, of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused, in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent togive aprodigal son a credit in every banker's shop in London, than to impower a statesman to draw bills, in this manner, upon posterity. (David Hume, Political Discourses, 1752) If we do not act promptly, (...) the imbalances in the economy are such that the effects ofthe deficit will be increasingly felt and with some immediacy. (Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, 1988) When David Hume penned his essays some 250 years ago, he was concerned that Britain's rising national debt — a debt fueled by war andpoor debt management that saw fit to mortgage thepublic revenues, and to trust that posterity will pay offthe incumbrances contracted by their ancestors — would eventually bankrupt the country. What the poor man might think ofa country facing a budget deficit of $155 billion, a trade deficit of some $130 billion, and a national debt — can you count the zeroes? — of a staggering $2.6 trillion, one can only imagine. Now imagination, as it happens, plays a central role in Hume's science ofman — it is the imagination, after all, that is free to separate, combine, and transpose its ideas — but asking it to conceive ofthe U.S. economy as it nears the end ofthe 20th century might indeed by asking too much. Was Hume particularly prescient? Probably not. What he was was a keen observer of the human experience who believed the principles of human nature formed the foundation of the four sciences of logic, morals, criticism, and politics. And in those four sciences, he wrote, is comprehended almost every thing, which it can any way import us to be acquainted with, or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament ofthe human mind. It is within the science of politics that considers men as united in society, and dependent on each other (T xv) that Hume wrote his nine Volume XVI Number 1 45 NANCY DAVLANTES economie essays, all but one ofwhich were published in 1752 under the title?? Political Discourses. Before taking a look at the essays themselves, some consideration should be given to Hume's place in the history of economic thought, to his contributions to that "dismal science," and especially to some of the underlying principles in his science of Man. The World as Hume Knew It David Hume wrote in an England in which much of the groundwork had been laid for the Industrial Revolution that was officially to begin in the latter 18th century. It was a time oftransition, between the dying years of a guild system controlled by artisans and a rising merchant class that both owned the materials and marketed the finished goods, between a primarily agrarian society of landowners and tenants and one increasingly urban as the centers ofindustry andproduction moved into the cities. Hume, while it is unlikely that he foresaw the enormous social and economic upheavals that were to come with the mechanization of industry and the development of an extensive factory system, was certainly aware that an evolution was taking place in society, and one he was emphatic in his approval of. As he himself says in his essay, "On Interest," But when men's industry encreases, and their views enlarge, it is found, that the most remote parts ofthe state can assist each other as well as the more contiguous, and that this intercourse ofgood offices may be carried on to the greatest extent and intricacy. Hence the origin of merchants, one of the most useful races ofmen... Merchants... beget industry, by serving as canals to convey it through every corner ofthe state. In praise of the merchant class he differed from his close friend Adam Smith, for whom "merchants were more often anti-social monopolists than beneficent promoters of well-being." That is not to say that Hume thought all was rosy — indeed, as quoted above, he was alarmed at the Britain's mounting public debt, and no doubt realized that a growing landless class would bring with it a host of social issues and... (shrink)

Paradoxically, the political success of human rights is often taken to be its philosophical failing. From US interventions to International NGOs to indigenous movements, human rights have found a place in diverse political spaces, while being applied to disparate goals and expressed in a range of practices. This heteronomy is vital to the global appeal of human rights, but for traditional moral and political philosophy it is something of a scandal. This paper is an attempt to understand and theorize human (...) rights on the terrain of the social actors who put them to use, particularly radical activists that have a more critical relationship to human rights. Attempting to avoid the philosophical pathology of demanding that the world reflect our conception of it, we base our reflection on the ambiguous, and potentially un-patterned, texture of human rights practice—taking seriously the idea that human rights express a relationship of power, importantly concerned with its legitimate arrangement and limitation. In both the philosophical literature and human rights activism, there seems to be a consensus on basic rights as undeniable moral principles of political legitimacy. This use of human rights is contrasted with radical social movements that reject this conception of rights as ideological and illegitimate, making specific reference to the Zapatista movement (Chiapas, Mexico) and the Landless Peasant Movement of Brazil (MST, from the Portuguese Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra), which are critical of the human rights discourse, but also make strategic use of the idea and offer alternative articulations of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Of the three strategies available for managing common property resources (CPR)—centralized control, privatization and local management—this essay focuses on the last, which has proven quite effective in various settings throughout the Third World, with the key to success being local ability to control access to the resource. The major factors at issue in the Sundarbans situation are: historically external pressure on the forest; currently dense population in adjacent areas; a land distribution even more unequal than the norm in Bangladesh; and (...) a decentralized local government structure initiated in the mid-1980s. The first three factors have encouraged the local population to view this CRP as a frontier to be exploited,rather than as a resource to be preservedfor sustained yield. Thus to the extent that the new local government structure proves to be democratic and responsive to popular needs, it would most likely accelerate destruction of the Sundarbans, using the area as a cheap and easy way to provide some livelihood to the rural poor and landless. Accordingly, decentralization cannot be a viable strategy for preserving this unique forest resource; only a strong central control can ensure its survival into the next century. (shrink)

The Sundarbans represent the largest remaining tract of coastal mangrove wetlands in tropical Asia. The dynamics of the fish communities are poorly understood, and current research indicates a fragile ecology. Various development projects have had serious negative impacts on the estuarine fishes in nearby parts of Bangladesh. Impacts on the fisheries tend to affect the poorest elements of the society, the landless subsistence fishermen. The record of development assistance agencies is poor, with respect to the environment in general and fisheries (...) in particular. Taking steps to rectify the problem would include environmental review of projects prior to and during project implementation. Given the lack of a pure research base in the tropics, applied research is often modeled on temperate systems, which can be disastrous. Thus, it is also suggested that basic research on the environment be supported in order to build an understanding of tropical ecosystems prior to any attempts at manipulation of these ecosystems. (shrink)

In this review, I highlight the valuable contributions of Wendy Wolford’s latest book, which rest on her extensive understanding of the diversity of the Brazilian countryside and her acute ability to weave together the impact that land-tenure patterns, labour regimes and regional cultures have had upon settlers of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement. It also assesses the central claim of the book which suggests that the MST is often unable to retain its membership because the leadership reproduces an understanding of (...) peasant agriculture that is specific to the South of Brazil. The review argues that Wolford’s main argument falls foul of four shortcomings related to her methodology, her understanding of the MST’s ideology, her choice of not including the process of encampment and the MST’s commitment to radical social change in her analysis, and finally her problematic interpretation of the relationship between the grassroots membership and the leadership of the movement. (shrink)

In science and environmental studies, there is a general concern for the democratization of the expert-lay interplay. However, the democratization of expertise does not necessarily lead to more sustainable decisions. If citizens do not take the sustainable choice, what should experts and decision makers do? Should the expert-lay interplay be dissolved? In thinking about how to shape the expert-lay interplay in a better way in agro-biodiversity conservation, I take the case of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra/Landless People’s Movement), possibly the (...) largest rural movement in Latin America. The MST is in a process of turning towards environmentalism. It has adopted agroecology, a democratically oriented knowledge field. However, not all of the farmers were willing to adopt new environmentalist ideas and practices. Through ethnographic research, I analyze how expertise was recognized and redistributed within the MST, attending particularly to the role of MST coordinators and technicians. I explore how participation was framed and put into action. The adoption of agroecology brought to the MST a new and more inclusive map of expertise, but it also influenced new social distinctions within the communities. In part, farmers’ knowledge was labeled as ignorance. This may close down possibilities for dialogue as well as for sustainability. The paper suggests that experts’ power for discriminating among lay knowledges should come together with a responsibility for opening spaces for dialogue and action. One way of doing so could be by adding “interactional reflexivity” to experts’ expertise. (shrink)

Large tracts of European rural land, mostly in the less favored areas (LFA), are devoted to low-inputs and large scale grazing systems (LSGS) with potential environmental and social functions. Although these LSGS may provide harbor for a good part of European nature values, their continuity is facing contrasting threats of intensification and abandonment. These areas, however, may be characterized by particular grazing structures and social dynamics of change that should be unveiled prior to attempts to devise rural development strategies or (...) to adapt policy frameworks in general. To wit, stakeholder interactions and legal and institutional processes are described and analyzed for the cereal-sheep system of Castile-La Mancha (CLM) in the central Iberian plain. Farmers and pastoralists still share the use of the land, but their roles and interests have changed over time, and particularly in the last 50 years. Arable farming, mainly cereal cropping, has followed an intensification path, partially tempered by the environmental constraints of the Castilian plain. Extensive pastoralism is still a secondary option of land use; in the main, sheep farmers depend on, and look to, the management practices of arable farmers. A mixed cereal and sheep operation may deliver environmental and economic benefits, but successful implementation of this strategy is only possible when the system serves the needs of both types of stakeholders. Paradoxically, the main drivers of change in the countryside overall are arrayed against this sensible and traditional agricultural system. We argue that the recent legal and institutional frameworks do not favor social cohesion and that policy-support schemes of the European Union (EU) have been, and continue to be, devised without taking into account the particular structures and social dynamic of the farming system. (shrink)