Jats,Khaps and Riots: Communal Politics and the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Northern India

Contrary to the general view that communal riots in India are urban‐centred, the rural areas of Muzaffarnagar in the state of Uttar Pradesh were the site of a major communal riot in September 2013. The majority of victims in the riot were Muslim labourers from the lower‐caste groups, and the alleged perpetrators were members of the relatively prosperous Hindu Jat households. This paper deals with how the leadership and membership of a ‘new farmers’ movement’ – the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) – actively internalized, and helped entrench, a communal discourse that preceded the riots. It argues that the reasons for why the identity of a ‘Hindu’ prevailed over the class‐neutral identity of a ‘farmer’ during the riots can be traced to the ways in which the BKU has historically sought to culturally construct the identity of a ‘farmer’. The political intermediation of the traditional institution of khaps is highlighted as central to this process. Khaps played a major role in spreading and sustaining a communal discourse and preparing the ground for the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.     

类体制身份:作为基层政府建构自主性的意外后果——以上海市奉城镇政府为例

本文认为出现在基层政府内部的多种“身份”,不同于传统的“社会性身份”和“体制性身份”,是一种新的“身份”现象,本文称之为“类体制身份”。以上海市奉城镇政府为例,本文梳理了奉城镇政府内部多种“身份”的形成过程。本文认为,“类体制身份”在基层政府内部的产生,逻辑上可以分为两个阶段:一是多层级上级政府约束下的基层政府人员扩张,导致具有多种身份的人员集聚在基层政府内部这一特定场域;二是基层政府混编混岗导致人员身份意识强化。本文认为,“类体制身份”本质上是基层政府在多层级上级政府的压力型体制及社会治理转型所导致的治理任务增多的背景下,建构基层自主性的意外后果。在中国多层级的政府组织中,保障乡镇一级基层政府的自主性,对于完善国家治理体系、实现有效治理具有重要意义。     

Capitalist development in hostile conjunctures: War,dispossession, and class formation in Turkey

This article analyses how periods of geopolitical conflict and violence have affected the development of capitalism and class formation in Turkey. We argue that all major episodes of conflict, violence and war—from forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of the non‐Muslims in the late 19th and the early 20th century, to Kurdish secessionist warfare in the 1990s and the Syrian Civil War—have become major historical turning points in the development of historical capitalism in Turkey. These “hostile conjunctures” transformed capitalism through their direct and indirect effects on dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation. Although each of these conflicts produced a violent dispossession process, none of them resembled the rural dispossession process in England. To make sense of Turkey's experience, we turn our attention to what we call the “Castilian/Spanish road,” and what Lenin called the “Junker/Prussian road” and the “farmers/American road.” Our analysis shows that these differential paths of dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation have produced highly variegated rather than uniform outcomes. We conclude that we are living in a new “hostile conjuncture,” which is pregnant to a major structural crisis and is generating the preconditions of another historical transformation in the way capitalism operates.     

Mapping historical and contemporary agrarian transformations and capitalist infiltration in a complex upland environment: A case from eastern Nepal

The relationship that mountain communities have with global capitalism are complex, being mediated by a diverse topography and ecology, both of which provide opportunities for capital accumulation, while also isolating older, “pre‐capitalist” modes of production. This paper takes a case study valley from Nepal's eastern hills, tracing over two centuries of agrarian change and evolving interactions between “adivasi” and “semi‐feudal” economic formations with capitalism. In recent years, the expansion of markets, rising demand for cash, and climate stress have solidified migrant labour as a core component of livelihoods, and the primary mechanism of surplus appropriation from the hill peasantry. Through a focus on three altitudinal zones, however, it is demonstrated how the trajectory of this transformation, including the interactions with persisting pre‐capitalist formations, is mediated by both political–economic processes and the local agro‐ecological context.     

The Institutionalisation of “Noise” and “Silence” in Urban Politics: Riots and Compliance in Uganda and Rwanda

Amid ongoing debates about institutions and development, the importance of informal institutions (or norms) is widely recognised. Relatively little, however, is known about how informal institutions form and persist over time in particular contexts. This paper combines a concern with the process of informal institutionalisation and a focus on everyday politics in urban areas. Drawing on a comparative study of Kampala (Uganda) and Kigali (Rwanda), it argues that in the former the regular mobilisation of urban social groups into protests and riots has institutionalised what might be termed “noise” as the most meaningful form of political participation. In Kigali, by contrast, comparatively “silent” processes of collective mobilisation that involve structured activities and community “self-policing” have become institutionalised. The paper analyses these differential patterns, considering the tacit norms of negotiation in each case and the incentives for urban social and political actors to adhere to them.     

Rethinking “development”: Land dispossession for the Rampal power plant in Bangladesh

In this article, we critically review the developmental claims made for the construction of the Rampal power plant in southwestern Bangladesh, in the light of evidence about transformations of land control related to this construction project. Land has become a heavily contested resource in the salinity-intruded southwestern coastal area of Bangladesh. Changes in land control for the construction of the Rampal power plant and similar projects have intensified decades of struggles over rights and access to land. The Rampal project is labelled as “development” and claims to contribute to the elimination of poverty. However, we find that, in reality, this project leads to a reorganization of land control, rights and access in ways that perpetuate and intensify waves of eviction and exclusion of small landholders and landless laborers, thus threatening agriculture-based rural livelihoods. We analyze how four actor groups involved in land control are differently affected by the project interventions, embedded in the context of historical land tenure developments. We find that the benefits of this “development”, primarily favoring rich and powerful social groups and investors, necessitates a critical rethinking of Bangladesh's development and its claims of poverty elimination in the light of related land control practices.     

基于Logistic回归模型的城市建设用地扩张影响因素分析——以深圳市为例

分析城市建设用地变化影响因素对于探究城市内在演化规律具有十分重要的意义。本文以深圳市为例,通过建立2002~2007年和2007~2012年两个阶段建设用地变化的Logistic回归模型,从空间角度分析了建设用地变化的规律及原因。研究结果表明,在第一阶段(2002~2007年),深圳市处于快速城市化时期,建设用地变化以新增建设用地为主,主要的解释变量是固定资产投资变化,第二产业产值变化,坡度和高程,而在第二阶段(2007~2012年),深圳市进入高度城市化阶段,建设用地变化表现为存量建设用地空间布局的变化,主要解释变量是固定资产投资变化,第二产业产值变化,人均GDP变化和人口密度变化。     

How Local Is Local? A Reflection on Canadian Local Food Labeling Policy from Consumer Preference

We conducted a nationwide choice experiment to gauge Canadian consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for local beef assigned with various mileage and geopolitical connotations. Results revealed that consumers are mostly indifferent between products labeled generically as “local” and as “local: from within 160 km,” implying that the 160‐km radius fits perception of local of the representative consumers. Additionally, consumers are willing to pay significantly more for home‐province products over products generically labeled “local.” We also found significant positive WTP for enhanced bovine spongiform encephalopathy tested beef as well as for grass‐ over grain‐fed beef.     

The politics of preserving gender inequality: de-institutionalisation and re-privatisation

ABSTRACT

A backlash against gender equality is a core component of the contemporary tilt away from liberal democracy in some contexts. The backlash has been enabled by two developments that can de-institutionalise women’s rights. First, the privatisation associated with neoliberalism, and the austerity imposed by financial crises, have hollowed-out public provision of social services. The loss or erosion of public social protection systems reinforces the demand for unpaid care work, imposing a partial re-privatisation of women in their mothering roles. Second, security and immigration crises have inflamed nationalist right-wing populist movements that make the de-institutionalisationof liberal equality protections – including attacks on women’s rights provisions – a core signifier of anti-establishment credentials. The result is a stagnation at the global level since 2016 in the rate at which the gender gap is closing. Today, the active construction of inequality by gender – and its contestation – are more explicit features of national and global politics than ever before.     

The maize frontier in rural South India: Exploring the everyday dynamics of the contemporary food regime

This contribution explores how new regions and crops are integrated in the contemporary food regime through a fieldwork‐based approach to maize cultivation in rural Karnataka, South India. As an intrinsic part of the industrial grain–oilseed–livestock complex, maize is an important component of the contemporary food regime. I argue that the expansion of maize at the village level follows commodity frontier dynamics, located at the conjuncture of processes “from above” pushing the industrial grain–oilseed–complex forward and processes “from below” that integrate maize in everyday livelihoods. Focusing on how villagers make use of maize in ways that cross, but simultaneously are differentiated along, lines of class and caste, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the everyday dynamics of contemporary food regime.     

Narco‐frontiers: A spatial framework for drug‐fuelled accumulation

Based on historical and ethnographic research conducted in a region of northwest Colombia and drawing on the stories of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, this article develops the analytical concept of “narco‐frontiers” to help disentangle the confusing political economy of agrarian spaces affected by the violence of the drug war. As socially produced spaces, narco‐frontiers emerge through the convergence of four interlocking processes: uneven development, internal colonialism, political violence, and narco‐fuelled dispossession. Although often depicted as “ungovernable” or “stateless” spaces, narco‐frontiers are wracked by extra‐legal regimes of rule in which the state is simply one actor among others. With the drug trade inducing violent agrarian change all over the world—from Colombia to Afghanistan, Burma to Central America—this article offers a spatial‐historical framework for understanding these dramatic transformations.     

The incremental construction land differentiated management framework: the perspective of land quota trading in China

Construction land plays a vanguard role in China’s rapid urbanization process. However, confront with massive loss of farmland resources, the highly centralized land-use planning and management system established by the central government in 1998 stipulates that the red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland should be guarantee to ensure food security. A series of land management system innovations such as “the replacement of basic farmland in different places”, “the compensated supplement of farmland in different places”, and “the land conversion quotas transregional transaction” in Zhejiang province have received increasing attention, under the premise that neither dissipating the economic development efficiency nor breaking the constraints of various planning quotas. Inspired by the “three-phase” efficiency improvement based on the concept known as the “adaptive efficiency”, this article first proposes the inherent policy shortcomings as incalculability, inseparability, and uncontrollability. Then, adopting the mathematical model derivation and economic analysis tool, we demonstrate that the “general allocation + competition allocation + rewarded allocation” of new construction land quota allocation scheme has improved the three-stage Pareto efficiency. Relying on the network analysis of the cross-regional trading in Zhejiang province, the “time hotspot”, “regional hotspot”, Siphon effect, price fluctuation and inequality of opportunity are also observed in the process of trading. The authorities should play a quasi “wedge-like” blocking role in due course. It is therefore suggested that a differentiated management scheme should be adopted considering the variance in regional resource endowments and social ecosystem. This paper expected to shed light on improving construction land-use efficiency for China and other similarly placed developing countries.     

Adapting to the gender order: Voluntary conservation by forest owners in Finland

In this article we explore the hidden gender order of the biodiversity policy and, in particular, the social and societal positions offered to male and female forest owners in voluntary conservation. Two studies were conducted in the region where the National Biodiversity Program for Southern Finland (“METSO”) has been implemented. Study 1 focused on forest owners’ discursive practices that construct different actor positions to female and male forest owners; 27 interviews with forest owners were analyzed. Three discourses – “conservation threatens forestry,” “forestry threatens conservation,” and “good forestry is conservation” – were identified. Forest owners typically described themselves as “loggers” who were explicitly described as masculine. This was paired with the feminine position of “bystander.” The other two positions found, “protectors” and “political agents”, by contrast, were discussed as non-gendered positions. In Study 2 we examined quantitatively how individual forest owners’ nature conservation preferences and willingness to conserve forests is mediated by gender. The responses of 965 owners were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The endorsement of nature conservation preferences was found to increase willingness to conserve forests only among male owners. The results illustrate how individual forest owners adapt their nature conservation preferences to forestry's masculine socio-cultural context.     

The Politics of Land Grabbing: State and corporate power and the (trans)nationalization of resistance in Cameroon

Approaching land grabbing as a site of politics wherein power functions in the challenge and/or stabilization of agrarian socioecological injustices, we capture agrarian relations in Cameroon in 2 fundamental ways. Drawing on Laclauian insights, we discuss power as a “counter‐hegemonic” practice, to characterize the resistance strategies of local NGOs, in terms of their articulated discourses around the socioecological effects of land grabs, on the one hand, and the political possibilities that this articulatory practice opens, in terms of (trans)nationalizing resistance across social identities and space, on the other hand. Here, the analysis adopts a Foucauldian‐inspired critique with strong commitments towards agrarian socioecological justice, in a context where policies to protect democratic access to land are absent. Second, framed as a hegemonic/governmental “form of rule,” we capture how state and diplomatic actors sought to override dissent and stabilize the contentious land deal. We also show how a moment of presidential “nondecision,” characterized by a hyper‐centralized bureaucracy conjoined with these hegemonic forces to disempower local administrative and judicial leverage, thereby fostering corporate power. The article thus contributes to debates on state and corporate powers, as well as the strategies of, or possibilities and constraints for resistance “from below” to irradiate and structure into a compelling force.     

新型城镇化背景下的四川省秦巴山区空间发展战略研究

研究基于新型城镇化背景,结合现状四川秦巴山区城乡空间结构与其区域内外的发展影响要素,从区域空间、城市网格、重点镇体系3个层面进行研究分析,提出了四川秦巴山区空间协调发展战略构想。其旨为通过建立新型一体化空间,城乡网格体系等结构,灵活运用"中心城市"、"人口集中"、"产业集中"等理念,形成一个区域协调发展,空间结构紧密,发展思路科学合理的空间发展结构体系。     

基于质量功能展开与卡诺模型的零食酸奶新品开发

通过调研发现,越来越多的消费者将杯装酸奶作为一种休闲食品食用.通过顾客需求(VOC)收集和反馈,分析出各层需求的重要度和用户的六大需求.通过卡诺(KANO)模型问卷调研和分析最终确定了产品的魅力指数,并形成了最终的质量规划.通过关系矩阵对VOC和技术指标(CTQ)进行强弱相关性分析,通过一级质量屋中的信息,形成与客户需...     

The value components of contract farming in contemporary capitalism

Contract farming (CF) has generally been understood as, essentially, a market institution—by both (approving) “mainstream” and (critical) “radical” perspectives. Analyses of relations of production have, meanwhile, tended towards a problematic “peasantist” frame, where contracts undermine farmer “autonomy” in processes of “flexible” corporate agro‐industrial restructuring. This paper argues that a materialist analysis of CF from within capital–labour relations offers a stronger conceptual foundation for re‐synthesizing questions of market‐power. It first argues that radical notions of “peasant subsumation” conceptually mirror Marx's “formal subsumption of capital” but underplay dynamics of “real subsumption” accompanying capitalism's wider development. Drawing on the “petty commodity production” concept, it then argues that CF's “flexibility” rests in its differential content. CF's fungibility to contradictory movements of “integration” and “dispersion” enables it to emphasize different methods of surplus appropriation under shifting conditions; each corresponding to a different dominant social tendency. On the one hand, conditions of market expansion inspire integration for relative surplus appropriation through raised productivity, and CF tends to act as a “tool of proletarianization” in the wider centralization of capital. On the other, conditions of contraction motivate the dispersal of unvalorized capital, prompting efforts to raise absolute surplus appropriation, and CF tends to act as a “tool of differentiation” to concentrate agricultural capital.     

Essential agriculture,sacrificial labor,and the COVID-19 pandemic in the US South

As farmworkers were reframed as “essential” workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, US growers demanded unfettered access to foreign farm labor. After initially announcing a freeze on all immigration processing, the Trump administration bowed to farmers' demands, granting a single exception for agricultural guestworkers under the H-2A visa program. Through a focus on H-2A farmworkers in Georgia, this paper highlights how the pandemic exacerbated farm labor conditions in the US South. The author interrogates these conditions through the lens of racial capitalism, exposing the legacies of plantation political economies and a longstanding agricultural labor system premised on devaluing racialized labor. These histories are obscured by the myth of agricultural exceptionalism—the idea that agriculture is too different and important to be subject to the same rules and regulations as other industries. Agricultural exceptionalism naturalizes the racial capitalist system and informs state responses that privilege agricultural production through the exploitation of farmworkers, remaking “essential” farmworkers as sacrificial labor.     

Applying economic sociology to understand the meaning of “Quality” in food markets

This article reviews the concept of the “market” and questions the standard view of the “market” developed by orthodox economic theory. The article highlights how Economic Sociology and Convention Theory is more useful in understanding markets and appreciating markets as social constructs, which are governed by institutions and social orders. This adjustment in the analytical framework to study markets and especially food markets, is useful in unpacking the various dimensions of “quality” in food products and illustrating that “quality” is an institution that is shaped by society and by culture.