Social movements
Peasant politics, criminal persecution and authoritarianism in Colombia
SERGIO CORONADO The irregular arrest of three renowned leaders of the agrarian social movements in Colombia needs to be analysed as a counter-reaction against the recent wave of contentious politics in the countryside. It also points to increasing authoritarianism in Colombian politics. On December 15th and 16th 2020, three well-known defenders of Colombian land…
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Book review of Pablo Lapegna’s Soybeans and Power
CARLA GRAS In Soybeans and Power, Pablo Lapegna offers a thorough and challenging analysis of the contested terrain of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in Argentina. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the province of Formosa, in the North East of that country, he addresses key issues regarding the new landscapes produced by the expansion…
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Colombia’s new peasantries and social-territorial movements
KYLA SANKEY In Colombia, agrarian social movements have been at the forefront of struggles against neoliberalism and war. The rural poor have borne the brunt of half a century of civil war, which caused 260,000 deaths, 60,000 disappearances and 7 million displacements. They also suffered the worst effects of free market policies, which have resulted…
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Land reform in South Africa in 2018
BEN COUSINS Land reform has recently become an explosive political issue in South Africa. Progress in transforming racially unequal patterns of land ownership in rural and urban areas has been painfully slow since the transition to democracy in 1994.
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The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change for 2017
We are pleased to announce that R. Ramakumar, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, has been awarded the 2017 Bernstein & Byres Prize for his article ‘Jats, Khaps and Riots: Communal Politics and the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Northern India’.
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