Agrarian conflicts

The floodplains of the river Yamuna in Delhi present a curious spectacle of agricultural rurality in a rapidly expanding megacity. Classified as Zone O for “Agricultural and Water Body” land use under the Master Plan of Delhi 2021, the floodplain—or khadar —has been witness to a series of contestations over the long decades of Delhi’s existence as the capital of India. The farmlands on both sides of the river have seen the establishment of thermal power plants and refugee colonies, the emergence of squatter settlements, waves of state-sponsored demolitions, and the quasi-legal construction of private and state structures. Most recently, they have attracted the punitive gaze of planning and judicial machineries as the larger project of cleansing, beautifying, and gentrifying the river and its banks become a symptom of worlding Delhi. Despite these varying, and often contrary, pulls and claims upon itself, the khadar remains predominantly agricultural, its resident farmers managing to exercise a tenuous right to stay put. This paper is interested in examining the political and cultural framework of this right being exercised and claimed by the khadar ’s residents. Given the intense transformative—or disruptive—pressure being brought to bear upon the khadar by various state and private agents, these farmers’ homes and livelihoods are in constant danger of being uprooted. Their identities as citizens of Delhi and as farmers in a megacity are, consequently, always almost-unsettled. Premised on archival and ethnographic work involving land records, court orders, oral life narratives, and key planning and policy documents, this paper will view the contested and constantly changing space of the khadar as emblematic of the deep unsettling wrought by models and mechanisms of urbanisation in contemporary Delhi.

Capitalismo: tierra y poder en América Latina (1982-2012) reúne un balance sobre la situación del agro en 17 países latinoamericanos, con ello se busca continuar el magno esfuerzo realizado hace tres décadas por Pablo González Casanova con su historia de los movimientos campesinos y, al mismo tiempo, se intenta reflejar los efectos del proceso de mundialización exacerbado y dirigido por el capital financiero internacional que arrolla al agro mundial desde hace más de 30 años. América Latina abarca regiones diferentes que poseen orografía, recursos hídricos y sistemas climáticos y son fruto de una construcción histórica del territorio que varía mucho. Por lo tanto, para facilitar el cotejo entre los diversos casos, consideramos esas diferencias al organizar los tres volúmenes que integran esta colección. A eso responde la agrupación en regiones vastas (el Cono Sur, el Arco Andino, Mesoamérica) de países que, grosso modo, tienen algunas características similares, a pesar de sus difere...

Abstract: The developmentalist gaze of the Fair Trade movement is on Global South producers. In this article we turn our analytic gaze toward North American fair traders to explore the racialized, neocolonial power relations in which these movement actors are implicated. Section One is a brief historical sketch of Fair Trade certification. We argue that the certification system is a multi-sited, global institution that is shaped by and shapes neocolonial power relations in Fair Trade by exploring the consolidation and more recent splintering of the international certification system. Section Two provides a postcolonial critique of developmentalism, with a focus on the timing of development, in order to lay a foundation for the remaining sections. In Section Three we analyze the spatiality of Fair Trade, with an emphasis on what and who are missing from or erased by the structural and conceptual frameworks of Fair Trade. In Section Four we explore the relationship between Fair Trade, commodity fetishism, and the developmentalist conception of space/time propagated by Fair Trade advocates. Section Five is a critical analysis of the neocolonialist and racist discourse of Fair Trade, with a focus on the “helping” discourse. We contend that as Global North fair traders strive to “help” Global South producers, they re-entrench neocolonial narratives of white supremacy and the desire to develop.

Les richesses naturelles de Madagascar font l’objet de fortes convoitises à l’échelle internationale. Les projets extractifs et l’accaparement des terres, à l’oeuvre avec l’aval de l’État national, génèrent des coûts socio-environnementaux et des contestations « glocales2 ». Pour autant, la société civile malgache peine à peser sur les rapports de force.

Following recent debates between Vivek Chibber and leading postcolonial theorists, I probe into what is missing in these exchanges. I focus on the figure of the 'tribal' in modern India in Ranajit Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India and Alpa Shah's In the Shadows of the State, both of which claim to offer emic perspectives on subaltern politics and history.

Kata Pengantar
APAKAH hubungannya Hak Guna Usaha dengan Hak Asasi Manusia? Hak guna usaha adalah suatu hak pengelolaan yang diberikan oleh negara kepada perusahaan di atas tanah negara selama 30 tahun sedangkan hak azasi manusia adalah hak-hak dasar sebagai manusia yang wajib dipenuhi dan diusahakan oleh negara. Yang satu diberikan oleh negara kepada perusahaan dan yang satu diwajibkan agar dipenuhi oleh negara. Di dalam buku yang berjudul ‘HGU dan HAM’ inilah ke dua hak tersebut diperbincangkan dan didiskusikan. Terdapat dua skenario berkenaan hubungan dua hak tersebut, pertama, ke dua hak tersebut saling menguatkan (sinergis) dan hal inilah yang diharapkan oleh Komnas Ham. Kedua, dua hak tersebut saling berkompetisi untuk saling mengalahkan. Saya melihat di dalam praktek-praktek pemberian HGU oleh negara telah mengabaikan bahkan kurang mempertimbangkan aspek HAM, buku inilah sebagai bukti awal terhadap tesa di depan.
Di dalam buku ini, hal yang paling menarik adalah lewat pemberianhak bernama HGU oleh negara (baca pemerintah) maka beberapahak ekosos dan hak adat masyarakat dilindih dan dikalahkan. Hal ini terbaca didalam kesimpulan-kesimpulan yang didapatkan oleh tim penulis buku tersebut. kesimpulan tersebut antara lain:
1. Kebijakan nasionalisasi dan konversi hak-hak barat di awal kemerdekaan tidak mempertimbangkan perjanjian pemakaian
tanah antara masayarakat adat dengan pengusaha perkebunan Belanda yang kemudian mendapatkan hak erfpach dari pemerintah kolonial Belanda.
2. Konfersi hak Erfpach menjadi HGU, menyebabkan diambil alihnya tanah-tanah masyarakat adat oleh negara.
3. Pengambilalihan tanah-tanah adat di zaman kemerdekaan juga dengan tidak menghargai hukum adat, sehingga menimbulkan konflik-konflik hukum dan sosial.
4. Proses pelepasan hak atas tanah-tanah adat menunjukkan indikasi kuat terjadinya pelanggaran-pelanggaran hak hukum masyarakat adat, maka HGU-HGU yang lahir di atas situasi demikian membawa serta merta cacat hukum.
5. Hampir tidak ada langkah-langkah penyelesaian hukum terhadap kasus-kasus HGU ini menyebabkan hak-hak masyarakat adat dilanggar, baik hak konstitusional maupun hak azazi mereka.
Saya secara pribadi ataupun Komisioner Komnas HAM menyambut gembira atas terbitnya buku ini. Draft buku ini sudah begitu lama dikarenakan kegiatan penelitian ini dilakukan sewaktu kepengurusan Komnas Ham era Bapak Hakim Garuda Nusantara. Saya berterima kasih terhadap berbagai pihak yang telah membantu penelitian dan terbitnya buku ini antara lain Perkumpulan Sawit Watch, BPRPI, Walhi Kalbar, Walhi Sulsel, berbagai komunitas masyarakat adat, dan beberapa pihak yang tidak dapat saya sebutkan. Terakhir, semoga lewat kerja kecil ini dapat menambah darah perjuangan bagi komunitaskomunitas penguatan masyarakat adat yang Hak Azasi Manusia-nya terus menerus dimarjinalkan.

"Opposing the neoliberal rhetoric of a shining middle-class India, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has, since 2004, called for a New Democratic Revolution. Indian Maoists dismiss parliamentary democracy as a sham insofar as it fails to address the concerns and aspirations of the majority of its citizens, nearly four-fifths of whom live below two dollars a day. In their party programme, Maoists characterize the postcolonial Indian state as ‘reactionary’ and ‘autocratic’ and seek a ‘worker-peasant alliance’ to overthrow ‘imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism’ via an armed revolutionary struggle. The CPI (Maoist) politburo, which constitutes its ideological leadership, is thus supported by an underground People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The party’s long-term objective is to establish a ‘people’s democratic state under the leadership of the proletariat’ that will ‘guarantee real democracy for the vast majority of people while exercising dictatorship over a tiny minority of exploiters’.

The CPI (Maoist) is active mostly in eastern and central India, where human development levels rank among the lowest in the world, forest cover and rugged terrain facilitate guerrilla tactics and protracted low-intensity insurgency, and tribal and lower caste groups are preponderant. According to the Indian prime minister, Maoist rebels pose the greatest internal security threat to India since independence. In reality, however, Maoist cadres are estimated to be anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 in a country of nearly 1.2 billion people, though this number does not include sympathizers and non-combatants. These thinly-spread cadres are concentrated chiefly in what journalists, policymakers, and scholars call the Red Corridor, running from the Nepalese border through the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh. In these areas, regular elections are held, state and non-governmental organizations routinely participate in rural development, and state police and forest officials coexist with armed rebels and their rural supporters. Since 2005-06, the state has deployed paramilitaries to supplement state police forces in combating Maoist guerillas, which has intensified state-sponsored violence and led to widespread human rights abuses, yet it has been incapable of establishing anything akin to a monopoly of legitimate violence. Shared sovereignty is thus the norm, not the exception, as in other insurgent zones in India such as Kashmir and the northeastern frontier. This state of affairs also suggests that the everyday realities of Indian Maoism are somewhat different from its ideological self-image as a vanguardist revolutionary movement."

Both the supporters and distractors of 'social movements–judicial activism nexus' project litigation strategies as the greatest challenge to neoliberal transformation in India. This fieldwork-based study on shrimp cultivation in Chilika Lake shows otherwise. By historically situating the developments in Chilika, it shows that in case of unpopular economic policies during the neoliberal period, the judiciary and other state agencies follow a revolving-door strategy and continuously externalise the problematic of resource conflicts by creating a regime of blame-avoidance. This regime nullifies the unity of the communities fighting dis-possession by reducing the social movements to immediate livelihood concerns of the masses.

Joko Widodo has been signed President Regulation Number 86/2018 on Agrarian Reform (Perpres RA) last year. This regulation plays important role as a regulatory framework and guidance for government to implement agrarian reform. There are three main focus highlighted by Perpres RA: establishment of Task Force of Agrarian Reform (GTRA), subject and object of agrarian reform, asset and access reform mechanism. Those main focuses intended to address bottleneck problems on implementation process and reducing mistargeted subject and object of agrarian reform. More than 4 years agrarian reform has been implemented by the government, but some of peasant organization and NGOs concerning agrarian reform claims that those problems remain occur. On the other hand, along with government attempts to tackle inequality and agrarian conflicts, the issuance of Perpres RA bring significant opportunities for government and civil society, including peasant/indigenous people’s organization to be maximized. But, the government has to find strategy to implement it that will solve those remaining problems in implementation process.

Keywords: agrarian reform, policy implementation

Hak atas tanah dalam konsepsi HAM harus diletakan dalam konteks hak seseorang untuk memperoleh penghidupan yang layak, yakni terpenuhinya kebutuhan sandang, pangan dan tempat tinggal; maupun dalam konteks hak sekelompok orang (komunitas tertentu) untuk melanjutkan kehidupan budayanya. Bagi kelompok masyarakat yang sumber kehidupannya baik secara ekonomi, sosial maupun budaya bergantung kepada penguasaan terhadap tanah, maka terjamin dan terpenuhinya haknya atas tanah menjadi mutlak: semutlak hak azasi manusia itu sendiri. Tersedianya atau terjaminannya hak mereka atas tanah dalam luasan yang memadai secara berkelanjutan akan membuat mereka mendapatkan penghidupan yang layak secara berkelanjutan pula. Dalam hal ini Negara harus menjamin terjadinya keberlanjutan hak mereka atas tanah (security of tenure) yang berarti memberikan jaminan atas kesempatan bagi warga Negara yang hidupnya sangat bergantung kepada tanah untuk berkembang dan meningkatkan kualitas hidupnya dan keturunannya baik sebagai warga Negara maupun sebagai manusia.

Este texto busca analizar las luchas por el control de la tierra en la región de los Montes de María, en el norte de Colombia, desde la producción musical agrícola de sus habitantes. La lucha por la tierra en esa región alcanza su momento más álgido a partir del año 1960 con la fundación de la Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos - ANUC, que rápidamente se volvió contra el mismo Estado debido a las condiciones de desventaja identificadas por los campesinos y las correspondientes acciones que llevaron a cabo para exigir sus derechos al Estado y a los grandes terratenientes. A partir de esa lucha, la región se enfrentó en una fuerte confrontación armada, con su pico máximo en las décadas de 80 y 90. Paralelamente a la organización política, esta disertación defiende que la producción cultural de los habitantes tenía particularidades asociadas con su cosmovisión que nos permite entender mucho mejor este proceso político. De esta forma, la música de gaitas aparece como una herramienta de análisis de la situación social, como expresión de la identidad y del pensamiento local de la región y como mediadora de lo político.  La relación música-cuerpo-tierra, inscrita en la práctica musical, nos permite a entender la situación social complicada y expresa la lucha por los objetivos de la lucha por la tierra como una lucha por la posibilidad de la existencia cultural de los de campesinos-gaiteros montemarianos durante las últimas cuatro décadas del siglo XX. Para ello, se analizan fuentes orales y documentos asociados a la producción agrícola y a las luchas por la tierra en la región.

PAPERBACK NOW OUT.

"The role of the peasant in society has been fundamental throughout China's history, posing difficult, much-debated questions for Chinese modernity. Today, as China becomes an economic superpower, the issue continues to loom large. Can the peasantry be integrated into a new Chinese capitalism, or will it form an excluded and marginalized class? Alexander F. Day's highly original appraisal explores the role of the peasantry throughout Chinese history and its importance within the development of post-socialist-era politics. Examining the various ways in which the peasant is historicized, Day shows how different perceptions of the rural lie at the heart of the divergence of contemporary political stances and of new forms of social and political activism in China. Indispensable reading for all those wishing to understand Chinese history and politics, The Peasant in Post-Socialist China is a new point of departure in the debate as to the nature of tomorrow's China.

    The first comprehensive, historically informed look at reform-era Chinese debates on the role of the peasant
    Radical appraisal of the development of reform-era Chinese intellectual politics
    Demonstrates the centrality of the peasant to the contemporary Chinese perspective on Chinese history"

    ‘Rural China, the source of the Chinese Revolution, has suffered marginalization, exploitation, and plunder under developmentalist reform policies since the 1990s, when the PRC leadership decisively embarked on a path of incorporation in global capitalism. In this well-researched and engaged study, Alexander F. Day critically analyzes the ideological debates occasioned by the ‘agrarian question’, and traces efforts by activists of various political stripes to resolve it. The ‘underside’ of the phenomenal so-called ‘China model’ is recognized widely, including by the regime itself, but is framed more often than not as a problem of sustained development. What makes this study unique and invaluable is bringing to light efforts to remedy it that also aspire to lend some credence to the regime’s ritual claims to socialism.’ Arif Dirlik, Liang Qichao Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professor, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

    ‘Across the past century, Chinese thinkers and political activists have returned again and again to the figure of the peasant. Some have seen a figure of dependency and backwardness, awaiting liberation from ‘the idiocy of rural life’. Others envision a figure of possibility: if rural energies can be mobilized for balanced development, then the Chinese economy will prosper, social justice will be achieved, and – most promising of all to some thinkers – China may yet open an alternative pathway to modernity more equitable than the one mapped by contemporary globalization and its theorists. Alexander F. Day brings a fine historical sensibility and a lucid political analysis to this study of an important, heated, and unresolved debate.’ Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa Cruz

    ‘In coverage and content, as well as in theoretical import, this book is the only one we have to date in English on the topic of the intellectual discussions on peasants in China’s reform period. It will not only spawn a cottage industry in peasant studies in the US academy, it will undoubtedly become the point of reference for all other discussions of the ‘Chinese development path’ and global economics. Given China’s centrality to the health and wealth of the world economy, Day’s work is well positioned to have a major impact far beyond the China field.’ Rebecca E. Karl, New York University

    ‘In this invaluable book, Day reminds us that despite China’s unparalleled record of economic development over the past few decades, the figure of the peasant remains at the very centre of Chinese politics. The modernisation of rural communities and integration of the agricultural labour force into global markets has not only transformed Chinese society, but also challenged our understanding of the processes of economic and political development. Day’s incisive summary of recent and contemporary intellectual debates about the role of the peasant in China’s past, present, and future offers an invaluable corrective to those who assume that it is Chinese cities and their residents who have driven China into the future. Instead, Day’s compelling analysis demonstrates that the persistence of the ‘peasant problem’ and its possible solutions may suggest alternative paths to a modernity not defined solely by the criterion of market efficiency.’ Patricia M. Thornton, University of Oxford

The article presents an Emerging Farmer Classification model and its
typologies, revealing the dominance of medium-scale farmers,
consisting of smallholder and medium-sized farms, in Hwedza
district. The article argues that the Emerging Farmer Classificatio
reflects ongoing reconfiguration in Hwedza district and is a result
of the changing workings of capital after the Fast Track Land
Reform era. The analysis is based on a case study involving 230
household interviews across five settlement models, and 20 in
depth interviews. The article identifies capital as a key driver
shaping agrariantypologies, revealing the dominance of medium-scale farmers, consisting of smallholder and medium-sized farms, in Hwedza
district. The article argues that the Emerging Farmer Classificatio
reflects ongoing reconfiguration in Hwedza district and is a result
of the changing workings of capital after the Fast Track Land
Reform era. The analysis is based on a case study involving 230
household interviews across five settlement models, and 20 in
depth interviews. The article identifies capital as a key driver
shaping agrarian relations following land redistribution in Zimbabwe.

Constructed from close analysis of village-level stories and intimate discussions with villagers, Ellen Oxfeld’s study of moral discourse combats the widely-held belief that
morality in rural China has disintegrated. Oxfeld finds that, while there is contentious debate and there are divergent moral views within the Hakka village that she studies,
moral discourse is still essential to the way villagers understand themselves and others. Oxfeld argues that the rural morality she investigates goes beyond issues of social status or political leverage, and she rightly focuses on daily life interactions to tease out the importance of moral discourse to villagers.

O artigo traça um panorama da luta por território do Quilombo de
Baía Formosa (QBF), em Armação de Búzios-RJ. Primeiramente, é
apresentada uma contextualização histórico-geográfica da região das
Baixadas Litorâneas a partir do séc. XIX, com enfoque nos efeitos
territoriais da presença do latifúndio de Campos Novos e em sua influência no processo de (des)envolvimento regional. Ainda, são analisados os impactos socioambientais do projeto de expansão do condomínio de luxo Aretê e os conflitos que se desenrolaram junto à comunidade, que estão influenciando diretamente a construção do acordo de retomada do território tradicional reivindicado pelos quilombolas. Por fim, é trazido o percurso de construção identitária do QBF e os processos que desencadearam na consolidação da luta pela terra e pelo reconhecimento do território tradicional, focando na atuação do GTAgrária da AGB Rio de Janeiro e Niterói junto a comunidade com o objetivo de registrar a história do QBF por meio da recuperação da memória coletiva, construção da linha do tempo comunitária e de produção da cartografia social.

This paper interrogates the concept of "millenarianism," which has been employed since the 1970s in South Asia and beyond to read subaltern religious movements in an anti-colonial, even proto-nationalist, light. I demonstrate that this anti-colonial reading of millenarian pasts rests on a secular understanding of subaltern politics that avoids a serious study of socio-religious change. Modern statecraft is treated by such scholars, following Max Weber, as secular, and subalterns are then taken to be an oppositional category in which secularization has not yet occurred. Against such a perspective on subaltern-state relations in modern colonial and postcolonial contexts, this paper deploys a range of oral and archival sources to delineate the relationship between socio-religious change and agrarian transformations, thereby revealing the curious modernity of millenarianism among the Mundas, an adivasi or "tribal" group in the Chotanagpur region of eastern India.

This essay engages with the commodification of land in an urban periphery of India. It argues against the tendency to reduce commodification of land to “primitive accumulation” or “accumulation by dispossession.” It presents an ethnography of the process of the commodification of land under speculative conditions. The growing demand for land for urbanization and industrialization, along with the availability of speculative finance capital in the real estate market, has made land a scarce commodity. In this land market, local capitals piggyback on finance capital and bid up the prices exponentially in the micromarkets. Speculation makes it impossible for the state to match the market price, and its compensation for the land losers is always quite low, which the latter refuse to accept. The landowning farmers, on the other hand, have developed a capacity to adjust to the speculative conditions and to control the supply of land in the market. Even though they can receive a very good price for their land, they show no urgency to sell it. As a consequence, the state’s plan to urbanize a given area, to create a stable arrangement of clear property titles, and to control land prices become uncertain.

Recent years have seen ambitious plans for sand iron mining projects in many coastal areas in
Indonesia. In Yogyakarta, some coastal areas included in these plans have for decades been
occupied and made cultivable by peasants, in a process of ‘commoning’ in De Angelis’ term
(2003). The peasants consolidated coastal land, distributed it equally amongst them, created their
own irrigation technology and farming techniques with low external input sustainable agriculture,
and created a local auction system as a ‘fair trade market mechanism’. But, as indicated by many
scholars, the processes of producing and managing the commons are always challenged by the
imperative and dynamic of capital to accumulate and find new frontiers.This paper then outlines
how the sand mining project was planned and legitimized, with particular attention to the Sultan
of Yogyakarta’s interlocking roles as provincial governor, feudal king and patron, and
businessman. Finally, this research will also reveal the peasants’ counter-movement against that
land dispossession.

In Tax Reform in Rural China, Hiroki Takeuchi puts rural governance reforms into the larger context of center-local relations under China’s authoritarian governance structure
of the 1990s and early 2000s, arguing that tax reform needs to be understood as an attempt by the central government to maintain an authoritarian system at the expense of local rural governments more than a response to the actual problem of excess peasant burden. In other words, in order to maintain an authoritarian system the central government chose not to expand political reforms at the local level—which might have led to good governance and a better provision of public  goods—and instead used the local governments as scapegoats for rural problems that were of central origin.

A partir de l’esclat del Guerra Civil a Espanya el juliol de 1936, l’organització de la rereguarda esdevé un element fonamental i controlar la producció un dels objectius principals del bàndol republicà. A partir de les confiscacions de propietats i finques als assenyalats com a partidaris de la rebel·lió militar, a la rereguarda republicana es plantejaren diferents models d’ordenació entre les que destacaren les col·lectivitats, un model de gestió i producció col·lectiva i de relació igualitària dels seus membres en la construcció d’una nova comunitat. Al llarg de la guerra, Catalunya fou un territori on aquestes organitzacions s’expressaren amb més força a les zones urbanes, atès el seu destacat teixit industrial. Malgrat això, també tingueren la seva manifestació a la resta d’un territori agrícola articulat després de dècades de mobilització pagesa. Les resistències i els suports que sorgiren en els diversos intents per organitzar-se col·lectivament van configurar la quotidianitat de la rereguarda catalana, així com els discursos i l’acció política de les diverses formacions antifeixistes.

O objetivo deste projeto de pesquisa é um estudo comparativo das análises sobre a questão agrária, em seus respectivos países, efetuadas pelo pensador peruano José Carlos Mariátegui e o líder bolchevique russo Vladimir Lênin, nas primeiras décadas do século XX. A hipótese a ser testada é a de que o emprego que Mariátegui faz do conceito leniniano de “hegemonia” (em termos sumários, a assimilação dos interesses materiais do campesinato pelo programa político do proletariado industrial urbano organizado) o leva a desenvolver propostas teóricas e práticas fundamentalmente divergentes da teoria leniniana com vistas à resolução da questão agrária (miséria camponesa, analfabetismo, opressão política e econômica oriunda da propriedade latifundiária), elevando o trabalhador rural e o pequeno camponês indígena a elemento protagonista da estratégia de transformação social no Peru, não o trabalhador urbano. A pesquisa se justifica porque, apesar de se debruçar sobre um período histórico localizado, pode fornecer aportes teóricos úteis à compreensão dos fenômenos políticos atuais relativos à questão agrária na América Latina e suas especificidades interregionais . O método a ser utilizado será o da “tradutibilidade” entre as formas de abordagem de questões sociais semelhantes em diferentes formações sociais. Tal método é preconizado pelo pensador italiano Antonio Gramsci (2001) e será detalhado na respectiva seção metodológica adiante.

In 2006, the Chinese central government abolished the agricultural tax. This came after several years of intense focus on the growing rural crisis, sparking a new debate on the shape of rural society. Putting these contemporary debates in the context of 100 years of rural governance reforms, this paper argues that contemporary rural advocates find themselves in a situation similar to that of the first half of the twentieth century, and their reimagination of rural governance draws on the ideas of that time as well. It focuses on the contemporary visions for rural reform of Xu Yong, Dang Guoying, Yu Jianrong, Wu Licai, Li Changping, Cao Jinqing and He Xuefeng.

Acequias is a small town located in the southern part of Granada, in the region of Valle de Lecrín (Spain). Taking this Andalusi location as example, this paper will show how its medieval irrigation system defined the whole settlement, connecting very diverse spheres such as its territory, urban distribution, street allocation, religious spaces and even its toponyms.

Kakatwa, ngunit tunay na nakatutuwa at nakatataba ng puso na matapos ang pangyayari sa Kidapawan ay agad na nagsiresponde’t tumugon, tumulong at nakiisa ang mga artista’t mga tunay na mga alagad ng sining ng Bayan.
Dagling nagtungo roon si kapatid na Robin Padilla, hindi lamang para makiisa’t dumamay sa ating mga kapatid na mga magsasaka, kundi upang bigyan din sila ng mga sako-sakong mga bigas.
Mabuhay ka, kapatid na Binoe!
Hindi din matatawaran ang ambag at pakikiisang tunay ng mag-asawang Aiza Segurra at Lisa Dino. Bukod sa kanilang suportang-moral mula pa noong umpisa, sila din ang nanguna’t nagpasimula ng pagkuha’t paglikom ng mga tulong at donasyong salapi na siyang gagamiting pangpiyansa ng mga kapatid nating patay-gutom na mga magsasaka’t Lumad na sa halip na tulungan ng gagong pamahalaan ay kinasuhan pa!
Mabuhay kayo!
Pagpupugay din ang ibig kong ipaabot kay Binibining Nora Aunor! Mabuhay ka Ate Guy! Tama ka, kahit noon pa! Walang himala, sapagkat ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao, nasa puso nating lahat! Mabuhay po kayo! Kayo ay hindi lamang tunay na artista ng Bayan, kundi lantay na Pambasang Alagad ng Sining! Mabuhay po kayo!
Pasasalamat at pagpupugay din kina kapatid na Angel Locsin, magkapatid na Anne at Jasmine Curtis, Daniel Padilla at sa lahat po nang nagbigay suporta’t pakikisa para sa labang ito. Mabuhay po kayo!
Maliwanag na ipinapakita ng inyong akto’t gawi na madilim man ang mga alapaap at ulap na dumaraan sa aking papawirin, ay tunay na may pag-asa at muling sisilab ang maluwalhati at makatarungang sikat ni Amang Araw.
Muli, mabuhay kayo mga kapatid! Mabuhay po kayo! Mabuhay po kayo! Mabuhay po kayo!!!!
Tuloy ang Himagsikan!
Padayon!
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En los últimos años he tenido la oportunidad de intervenir varias veces en los debates sobre el acaparamiento de tierras y de expresar algunas inquietudes sobre la forma en la que los científicos sociales y los activistas agrarios abordan este amplio problema, que azota tanto a América Latina como a otras diversas regiones del planeta .

Excerpt: While buying a cup of coffee at a local café one morning, I was transported to an exotic far-off land. Immersed in the aroma of coffee brewing and surrounded by pictures of farmers picking coffee and their children smiling, I could imagine who had grown the coffee in my mug. Marketing materials littered the countertop, thanking me for buying fair trade certified coffee and telling me that I was making a difference and that fair trade works. My single cup of coffee was said to help poor farmers. One of the posters declared, “every purchase matters,” and another said I was helping end poverty “one cup at a time.” The promotional materials explained that my purchase brought me into a direct and intimate relationship with farmers as if the handle of my coffee mug was a farmer’s hand I was shaking to congratulate him or her on a job well done.
          Fair trade marketing and advocacy rely on the idea that fair trade increases connectedness between Global South producers and Global North consumers. While fair trade does reduce the number of intermediaries in the supply chain as compared to the free trade system for most commodities (Raynolds 2002; Nicholls and Opal 2005; Adams and Raisborough 2008, 1169), it also serves to reinforce racist and colonial distinctions between the poor Global South farmer and the benevolent Global North consumer. Fair trade may channel slightly more income into agricultural communities, but it fails to address the colonial and capitalist structures that produce the impoverishment of farmers on an ongoing basis.

This paper draws from research on small-scale maize production in Mexico’s Central Highland region to discuss the geopolitical implications of everyday agricultural practices. An overwhelming majority of maize farmers in this region, as well as in the country more broadly, continue to cultivate locally-adapted maize varieties they have bred themselves – criollo maize is the vernacular term – despite decades of concerted government attempts to effect the widespread adoption of commercially-bred and licensed hybrid varieties. This state effort to restructure agricultural systems and food security according to nationalist and capitalist priorities is one tactic in a long and violent struggle for control over peasant land and labor in Mexico. By integrating feminist scholarship in geopolitics and in political ecology, I am following the lead of geographers who regard the materialities of everyday life as a foundation for political tensions and conflicts that are constantly unfolding along intersecting lines of difference. Though geopolitics has rarely turned its attention directly to theories of intimate socio-ecological relations, I argue that the field has much analytical and political leverage to gain by engaging with political ecology, and that feminist geographic imaginaries provide a crucial space in which to do so.  This approach allows for an analysis of how a dominant geopolitics of land and agriculture is being undermined through the routine production of criollo maize, revealing new potential for creating broad political alliances with social movements that are currently working toward alternative visions of agriculture and food security.

This research project aims to identify armed conflicts in Brazil caused by land disputes between companies (or political economic groups) and vulnerable groups such as indigenous peoples, riverine persons, peasants and/or countryside persons, smallholder farmers, social movements, and human and environmental rights defenders. Backed by literature review and documental analysis, through qualitative and quantitative data analysis, this research project seeks to map and identify vulnerable groups in conflict areas, showcasing and contextualizing the current framework of the agrarian issue in Brazil and the involvement of criminal organization, as well as negligent State and companies’ action, in disasters, murders and forced displacement. This research will be undertaken based on the United Nations Ruggie Principles for Business and Human Rights and the relevance of adopting integrated public policies between discipline and punish.

This article aims to analyze the power contestation in natural
resources (iron ore) conflict in Kulon progo. This contestation includes
ideologies in managing natural resources between the paradigms of
developmentalism and ecology. Developmentalism is represented
with high economy growth achievement based on natural resources
excavation. Meanwhile; ecology is represented with harmony among
human and environment in managing natural resources. The
exploitation of iron ore in Kulonprogo confirm the grand narration
wherein farmers fight against alliance of government and corporation.
Interestingly, these alliances were built from patrimonialism and
feudalism powers that ever exist in Yogyakarta. The implication is,
then, social movement from farmers becoming narrow and limited in
their environment.