Trajectories of Peasant Transformation The incorporation and transformation

Trajectories of Peasant Transformation. The incorporation and transformation of rural zones Eric Vanhaute Ghent University ECNU, July 4 th 2011

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 (billion) % Africa Asia (billion) 1950 2, 51 71% (1, 79) 1970 3, 70 64% (2, 37) 1990 5, 28 57% (3, 01) 2000 6, 09 53% (3, 24) 2010 6, 84 49% (3, 37) 2030 8, 20 39% (3, 21) 85% 77% 68% 63% 58% 47% 83% 77% 68% 63% 57% 46% M-So North Am Am 58% 43% 29% 25% 21% 15% 36% 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% 50% 69% 66% 50% 49% 48% 1980 40% 2010 36% 2020 30% 17% 20% 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 60% 19% 3% 78% 59% 0. 15 0. 04 0. 92 1. 42 44% 6

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A 21 th century urban world ? Equals de-agrarianization? Deruralization? De-peasantization? -- more convergence? -- more proletarianization? 8

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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-) 11

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, incomepooling, household based village structures and surplus extraction outside local control 12

- Redefinition / Recreation Struggles: - Acces to land - Access to household labour - Access to commons - Access to knowledge Old and modern enclosures 13

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 14

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 15

The redefinition of ‘peasant spaces’ - - - 16 th century: peasant zones around capitalist centers around North Sea 19 th century: forced (re-) peasantization in European colonies 21 th century: (re-) peasantization as antisystemic force ? 16

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!) 17

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) 18

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 19

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 20

Central field of struggle: Rights of Access and Rights of Property - Property Access Rights To means of production: labour, capital goods, land 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!) 25

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? 26

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? 27