Transcript Inleiding tot de Wereldgeschiedenis Prof. Eric Vanhaute Dr

Trajectories of Peasant
Transformation.
The incorporation and transformation
of rural zones
Eric Vanhaute
Ghent University
ECNU, July 4th 2011
1
Questions
1/ Where is the peasant?
2/ What is a peasant?
3/ Old (local) versus new (global)
peasantries?
4/ Trajectories of peasant transformation
5/ A new agrarian question: depeazantization as the global way to
modernity?
2
1/ Where is the peasant?
3
Rural population (% total population)
Total World
1950
1970
1990
2000
2010
2030
Africa
(billion) %
(billion)
2,51
3,70
5,28
6,09
6,84
8,20
(1,79)
(2,37)
(3,01)
(3,24)
(3,37)
(3,21)
71%
64%
57%
53%
49%
39%
85%
77%
68%
63%
58%
47%
Asia
83%
77%
68%
63%
57%
46%
M-So
North
Am
Am
58%
43%
29%
25%
21%
15%
36%
26%
25%
21%
18%
13%
Euro
49%
37%
29%
27%
26%
21%
4
Agricultural population (% total economically active
population) 1980-2020
80%
70%
66%
40%
63%
60%
60%
50%
69%
66%
50%
49%
48%
1980
40%
2010
36%
2020
30%
20%
17%
10%
4%
5
0%
World
Least deveoped
countries
East-Asia
South-East Asia
Afrika
Europe
World agricultural labour force
Ag. Labour force
Ag. Labour intensity
(ag labourers/ha)
World
1960 2000
High income Low income
1960 2000 1960 2000
60%
19%
3%
78%
59%
0.15
0.04
0.92
1.42
44%
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A 21th century urban world ?
Equals de-agrarianization? Deruralization? De-peasantization?
-- more convergence?
-- more proletarianization?
8
9
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2/ What is a peasant ?
-
In search for a definition
In search for a methodology
In search for a definition
-
Peasants as a social group
Peasantries as a social process
Processes of ‘peasantization’ (de- and re-)
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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
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Understanding peasantries in global
history
In search for a methodology
-
The global dimension?
Rural zones and frontiers
Combining a comparative analysis with a
(world-) systemic perspective:
multiple scales of time / place / unit of
analysis
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3/ 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
- Internalization of social and ecological
costs
- The enclosure of ‘commons’
 An increasing vulnerability
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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 ?
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Contextualizing ‘the European way’:
de-peasantization
-
-
-
Success: economic growth, social welfare
From informal to formal protection
systems
From local/regional to national/global
scale
Externalizing social en ecological costs
(green revolution!)
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4/ Our 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)
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Focus: 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
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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
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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
Debates
-
-
Institutional economics
Social power relations (competition
over peasant surplus)
Social distribution of property
Frontiers of commodification
‘new peasantries’
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 /
resistence
Systemic changes in the capitalist
world-system
5/ The European way = The
global way?
de-peasantization ?
-
-
-
-
Success: economic growth, social
welfare
From informal to formal protection
systems
From local/regional to national/global
scale
Externalizing social en ecological
costs (green revolution!)
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Europe’s Message
Theory of progress: modernization
- Industrialization / de-peasantization
- Economic integration / free trade
- Promise of individual wealth and
collective protection
 Processes of the core – examples
for the periphery?
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Limits of the European message?
From food security to food sovereignty?
A new ruralization? ‘peasants of the
world’
- New forms of sustainability
- Framework of organisation,
mobilisation, discours, identity
- New local and global movements?
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