Issa G. Shivji

Utsa Patnaik

Sam Moyo

Capitalism manoeuvres to control agricultural production in developing countries where neoliberalism has already decreased food security. Unless the land rights of small producers are defended, their active resistance will undermine political stability.

Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry

The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era

Paris Yeros

Reclaiming the Land brings together original investigations of the new generation of rural social movements in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Dispossessed peasants and unemployed workers of diverse political and ideological orientation have used land occupations and other tactics systematically to confront the neoliberal state. This book provides both national and micro-level case studies of these movements. They seek to identify their social composition, strategies, tactics, and ideologies; to assess their relations with other social actors, including political parties, urban social movements, and international aid agencies and other institutions; and to examine more closely their most common tactic, the land occupation, as well as the responses of governments and landowners.

The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Reclaiming the Land

Neil Middleton

Philip O'Keefe

At the 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro 1992 the real agenda focused more on preserving the interests of the North than on concern for the environment and the peoples of the South. The authors criticise this attitude. With figures and tables on climate, energy, forestry and agriculture, water and waste management and human resources they show the links between poverty and environmental destruction

From Rio to Reality in the Developing World

The Tears of the Crocodile

The Land Question in Zimbabwe

Rural movements have recently emerged to become some of the most important social forces in opposition to neoliberalism. From Brazil and Mexico to Zimbabwe and the Philippines, rural movements of diverse political character, but all sharing the same social basis of dispossessed peasants and unemployed workers, have used land occupations and other tactics to confront the neoliberal state. This volume brings together for the first time across three continents - Africa, Latin America and Asia - an intellectually consistent set of original investigations into this new generation of rural social movements. These country studies seek to identify their social composition, strategies, tactics, and ideologies; to assess their relations with other social actors, including political parties, urban social movements, and international aid agencies and other institutions; and to examine their most common tactic, the land occupation, its origins, pace and patterns, as well as the responses of governments and landowners. At a more fundamental level, this volume explores the ways in which two decades of neoliberal policy - including new land tenure arrangements intended to hasten the commodification of land, and new land uses linked to global markets -- have undermined the social reproduction of the rural labour force and created the conditions for popular resistance. The volume demonstrates the longer-term potential impact of these movements. In economic terms, they raise the possibility of tackling immiseration by means of the redistribution of land and the reorganisation of production on a more efficient and socially responsible basis. And in political terms, breaking the power of landowners and transnational capital with interests in land could ultimately open the way to an alternative pattern of capital accumulation and development.

This empirically grounded study provides a critical reflection on the land question in Africa, research on which tends to be tangential, conceptually loose and generally inadequate. It argues that the most pressing research concern must be to understand the precise nature of the African land question, its land reforms and their effects on development. To unravel the roots of land conflicts in Africa requires thorough understanding of the complex social and political contradictions which have ensued from colonial and post-colonial land policies, as well as from Africa's 'development' and capital accumulation trajectories, especially with regard to the land rights of the continent's poor. The study thus questions the capacity of emerging neo-liberal economic and political regimes in Africa to deliver land reforms which address growing inequality and poverty. It equally questions the understanding of the nature of popular demands for land reforms by African states, and their ability to address these demands under the current global political and economic structures dictated by neo-liberalism and its narrow regime of ownership. The study invites scholars and policy makers to creatively draw on the specific historical trajectories and contemporary expression of the land and agrarian questions in Africa, to enrich both theory and practice on land in Africa.

Sam Moyo

About

Books

Join the club