Transcript Inleiding tot de Wereldgeschiedenis Prof. Eric Vanhaute Dr

Trajectories of Peasant
Transformation.
The incorporation and transformation
of rural zones
Eric Vanhaute
Ghent University
WHA Conference Beijing, July 10th 2011
1
Doing global history: structuring time
and place
- Comparisons and Connections
- … and Systems
how do scales of human action
interact?
 in a world that is not equal

2
Understanding a global process:
towards a world without peasants?
Equals de-agrarianization? Deruralization? De-peasantization?
After divergence more convergence?
3
In search for a methodology
-
Local, regional and global dimensions
Rural zones and frontiers
Combining a comparative analysis with
a (world-) systemic perspective:
multiple scales of time / place / unit of
analysis
4
1/ Defining actors: peasant /
peasantries
-
-
Peasants as a social group
Peasantries as a social process
Processes of ‘peasantization’ (deand re-)
5
Peasants are rural, agricultural producers who
control the land they work either as tenants or as
smallholders
- who are organised largely in households and in
village communities, that meet most of their
subsistence needs (production, exchange, credit),
- who pool different forms of income and
- who are ruled by other social groups who extract
a surplus either directly via rents, via (non
balanced) markets, or through control of state
power (taxation)
Key words are (some degree of) autonomy,
income-pooling, household based village
structures and surplus extraction outside local
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control
-
Redefinition / Recreation
Struggles:
-
Acces to land
Access to household labour
Access to commons
Access to knowledge
 Old and modern enclosures
7
2/ Defining spaces: zones and frontiers
- Frontiers as zones of sustained
contact between different social
systems
- External / horizontal frontiers
Internal / vertical frontiers
- Peasant zones as (peripheral) spaces
of exploitation and recreation
8
The redefinition of ‘peasant spaces’
-
-
-
16th century: peasant zones around
capitalist centers around North Sea
19th century: forced (re-) peasantization
in European colonies
21th century: (re-) peasantization as antisystemic force ?
9
Old and new peasantries?
The redefinition of ‘peasant spaces’
The reduction of ‘peasant spaces’ by
- Recreation/redistribution/appropriation of
wealth
- Redefining livability of local systems of
protection/support/credit
- The enclosure of ‘commons’
 An increasing vulnerability
10
Contextualizing ‘the European way’:
de-peasantization as a part of the
‘theory of progress’
-
-
-
Economic growth cum social welfare
From informal to formal protection
systems
From local/regional to national/global
scale
Externalizing (part of) social en ecological
costs (green revolutions)
11
Collective research project: trajectories
of peasant transformation
Different roads of transformation of
peasant societies: 1500-2000
-
-
North-Western Europe (North Sea Area)
China (Yangzi River Delta)
Latin-America (Central Andes)
Central Africa (Great Lakes)
12
Social and spatial differentiation
-
-
-
Uneven incorporation and uneven
commodification
processes of de- and repeasantization are also the outcome
of changing strategies of peasant
livelihood diversification
decrease of the margins of survival
13
Central field of struggle: Rights of
Access and Rights of Property
-
Property
Access
Rights
To means of production: labour,
capital goods, land and natural
resources, knowledge
Actors (who has rights / who defines
rights)
-
-
Peasant (families)
Village institutions
Lords
Markets
States (government)
Social movements
Trajectories of change
-
-
-
-
Defining rights / redistribution of
rights
Types of labour /surplus
accumulation
Types of peasant organisation /
resistance
Systemic changes: agricultural and
food regimes
Interconnected models of peasant
transformation
-
-
As internal frontiers (core processes)
As external frontiers (peripheral
processes)
‘hybrid/mixed models’?
 social and regional differentiation in
a global model
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