Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in sub‐Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the state–cooperative relations in which this “revival” takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and non‐state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The political–economic context in Uganda—and potentially elsewhere in Africa—contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflict‐free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way.     

内聚与开放:棉花对近代华北乡村社会的影响

20世纪20－30年代，美棉的推广使得华北乡村社会的封闭状态产生了变化。在美棉引种、种植、管理、收获及棉花销售的过程中，引种和销售两个环节加强了村庄对外界的依赖，体现出开放性。种植到收获各个环节中的生产联合则基本上局限于村庄内部，仍保持传统的内聚性。这种传统与现代的结合，体现出近代乡村社会的一种变化趋势。     

Experiencing primitive accumulation as alienation: Mangrove forest privatization,enclosures and the everyday adaptation of bodies to capital in rural Senegal

This paper examines primitive accumulation by studying changes in fishermen and mollusc collectors' labour before and after the privatization of 1,800 hectares of mangrove forest in rural Senegal through the creation of a tourism‐oriented protected area. Locating this privatization within a broader context of capital's enclosures, the paper shows a process of depeasantization, labour intensification (via the multiplication of petty commodity production activities and proletarianization) and changing socioecological relations. This is a process where enclosures continuously alienate workers by separating them not necessarily from the land, but, more generally, from the conditions of their labour even when these are already commodified. As workers cope with alienation, they encounter it anew, contributing to capital's survival through their search for money and other commodities (i.e., means of production and subsistence). Workers' everyday adaptations to capital, and hence alienation, need to become central in future research on primitive accumulation and agrarian change.     

The Role of Microfinance in Contemporary Rural Development Finance Policy and Practice: Imposing Neoliberalism as ‘Best Practice’

Microcredit emerged in the 1970s as a mechanism whereby virtually all poor individuals could supposedly escape their poverty through self‐help and individual entrepreneurship. Crucially, neoliberal policy‐makers found the microcredit concept ideologically compelling, and the international development community soon began to provide massive support to establish and expand the microfinance movement. Today, however, even long‐standing microfinance advocates now reluctantly accept that microcredit has actually had no positive impact upon poverty or ‘bottom‐up’ rural development. In fact, those rural communities most exposed to microcredit have been severely damaged in a number of ways, especially through sub‐prime‐style ‘boom‐to‐bust’ episodes. Largely because of its supreme ideological usefulness, the microfinance movement nonetheless still retains some support in the major neoliberal‐oriented international development institutions, pro‐globalization think‐tanks, and in a number of Western governments.     

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.     

霍山县"中荷扶贫项目"的实践与启示

本文通过对“中荷扶贫项目”在霍山实施情况及效果的描述，总结了该项目取得成功的有效经验，并提出了该项目后续管理方面的建议。     

三峡截流后神农架旅游业的机遇与发展策略

分析了三峡截流后神农架旅游所面临的机遇和现存的问题,针对这些问题提出了神农架旅游业发展的一些策略。     

退耕还林背景下桑蚕茧技术效率及生产弹性分析

在退耕还林工程和东桑西移工程的背景下,运用超越对数函数的随机前沿分析方法,测量桑蚕茧的技术效率及生产弹性,研究结果表明:2003～2008年桑蚕茧的平均技术效率呈现下降的趋势,各桑蚕茧主产区都存在一定程度的技术效率水平缺失;自然灾害能显著降低蚕茧的技术效率,农村居民生产性固定资产投资能有效提高技术效率水平;中西部单位面积桑蚕的劳动力投入出现过剩局面,单位面积桑蚕茧吸纳农村剩余劳动力能力有限。因此应在优化蚕桑业区域结构的同时,加快西部地区的技术推广和技术创新,加大固定资产的投入,提高桑蚕茧的技术效率;并调控单位面积桑蚕茧的劳动投入量,扩大退耕栽桑的面积,提高桑蚕茧生产的劳动效率。     

The Scottish Path to Capitalist Agriculture 3: The Enlightenment as the Theory and Practice of Improvement

The second in this series of articles traced the transformation of Scottish agriculture during the period between 1747 and 1815. The Scottish Enlightenment is usually seen either as a passive expression of these and related economic changes, or as a local variant on European-wide intellectual trends with little direct connection to economy or society. In fact, it was directly involved in the transformation in three ways: as a theory of socio-economic development ('political economy'), a programme for agrarian change and the movement for its implementation ('Improvement'). The Scottish Enlightenment theorists were always conscious of the oppressive aspects of the division of labour which were inevitable under their own model of 'commercial society'. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however, they became increasingly aware of how 'actually existing capitalism' concentrated power in ways that the model had not predicted. Faced with the counter-revolutionary onslaught on British radicalism which occurred in response to the French Revolution, the Scottish Enlightenment shattered under the weight of these contradictions into its component academic disciplines. The economic aspects of the Scottish Revolution accomplished, political economy increasingly shed all elements of critique and became reduced to an intellectually rigorous justification for the now capitalist landowning classes and the emergent industrial bourgeoisie.     

Land distribution and acquisition practices in Ghana's cocoa frontier: The impact of a state-regulated marketing system

Substantial differences in the size of landholdings among cocoa farmers in the Western Region – the last cocoa “frontier” in Ghana – are primarily a result of inheritance practices and the purchase of vast tracts of land by migrants in the initial period of the cocoa boom. Individual accumulation of land over the last decade has mainly taken place via inheritance (among indigenous farmers) without takeovers of land and dispossession of small-scale farmers outside the extended family. Land accumulation among migrant farmers is rare beyond the initial acquisition. Large-scale farmers transfer surplus from their higher volume of cocoa production into investments in non-farm activities and construction of new residential houses—and not in land acquisition based on market transactions. State regulation of the cocoa sector has spurred increased efficiency among private cocoa purchasing companies and thereby reduced the marginalization of farmers with small landholdings by preserving their access to a vital source of income. The unique character of the Ghanaian purchasing system is a major factor behind the relatively stable proportion in the access and control of land for cocoa between extended families.     

Revisiting the World Bank's land law reform agenda in Africa: The promise and perils of customary practices

This paper revisits the World Bank's land law reform agenda in Africa by focusing on two central issues: (1) land law reform as a tool for resolving land conflicts, and (2) the role of land law reform in addressing gender inequalities. While the Bank's recent land report provides insights for improving land governance in Africa, it fails to acknowledge the exploitative and contentious politics that often characterize customary land tenure systems, and the local power dynamics that undermine the ability of marginalized groups to secure land rights. Using insights from recent fieldwork, the paper analyses the links between land law reform and conflict in Ghana, and the gendered dynamics of reforming land governance in Tanzania. These “crucial cases” illustrate how land law reform can provoke conflicts over land and threaten the rights of vulnerable populations (e.g. migrants and women) when customary practices are uncritically endorsed as a means of improving land governance. As such, the paper concludes with a series of recommendations on how to navigate the promise and perils of customary practices in the governance of land.     

经典案例逻辑中的准征收理论和实践：中美差异和政策选择

研究目的:探讨美国经典准征收案例对中国的借鉴价值。研究方法:案例分析法。研究结果:中美两国规划管制等基本制度存在较大差异,但政府在行使警察权和保护财产权、给予被管制人互惠利益、审查目的和效果关联等方面值得中国借鉴。研究结论:中国具有准征收问题,对准征收的判定或财产权的保护适用征收保护条款,即公共利益、正当程序和公正补偿。中国需要对土地的初始权利进行明确定义,但这需要有关制度的配合。     

全球视角下的森林生态补偿理论和实践——国际经验与发展趋势

综合介绍和比较国际上主要森林生态补偿方式。重点通过各种森林生态补偿案例分析各种补偿方式的支付工具、参与主体、定价机制、应用中的优势和存在的问题。最后对森林生态补偿方式的发展趋势进行了分析,并且对未来的研究方向进行了探讨。     

Between dependence and deprivation: The interlocking nature of land alienation in Tanzania

Studies of accumulation by dispossession in the Global South tend to focus on individual sectors, for example, large‐scale agriculture or nature conservation. Yet smallholder farmers and pastoralists are affected by multiple processes of land alienation. Drawing on the case of Tanzania, we illustrate the analytical purchase of a comprehensive examination of dynamics of land alienation across multiple sectors. To begin with, processes of land alienation through investments in agriculture, mining, conservation, and tourism dovetail with a growing social differentiation and class formation. These dynamics generate unequal patterns of land deprivation and accumulation that evolve in a context of continued land dependency for the vast majority of the rural population. Consequently, land alienation engenders responses by individuals and communities seeking to maintain control over their means of production. These responses include migration, land tenure formalization, and land transactions, that propagate across multiple localities and scales, interlocking with and further reinforcing the effects of land alienation. Various localized processes of primitive accumulation contribute to a scramble for land in the aggregate, providing justifications for policies that further drive land alienation.     

京津风沙源治理工程建设内容探讨——以山西省为例

山西省京津风沙源治理工程取得了明显的生态、经济和社会效益。分析了恢复植被的优势项目—封山育林、农田林网、生态移民,并建议加大支持力度。对未列入工程建设内容的沼气、太阳能等可再生能源进行了探讨。建议扩大风沙源治理区域,加快风沙源治理的速度。     

涉水行业工程建设征地移民政策比较——以广西郁江老口枢纽移民工程为例

目前我国水利水电、交通（水运）等涉水行业工程建设征地移民安置政策方面存在一定差异,水利水电工程有明确的建设征地移民安置政策,而交通（水运）工程却尚未有明确的建设征地移民安置政策。以广西郁江老口枢纽工程建设征地移民安置规划设计为例,对水利水电工程和交通（水运）工程的建设征地移民安置政策进行梳理,从指导理念、移民安置与补偿办法、技术评审机构、移民后期扶持政策等方面进行多视角比较与分析,并建议完善与统一涉水行业的移民安置政策和移民方式。     

Repossession,Re‐informalization and Dispossession: The ‘Muddy Terrain’ of Land Commodification in Turkey

This paper examines the process of land commodification in the commercialization of agriculture and housing in Turkey. Specific mechanisms involved include cadastre modernization, land titling, land registration and land‐consolidation schemes. Through these techniques, the state increases its control over common‐public lands, reconfigures land‐use and access patterns, and deepens commodification. The paper traces historical variation in land use from the national developmentalist to the neoliberal phases of capital accumulation in Turkey, with comparative, contextual examples drawn from the Ottoman Empire. It highlights the combined and socio‐spatially differentiated processes of commodification across sectors that engender a multiplicity of outcomes in simultaneously framing commercialization of agriculture and housing. Contextual analysis of official documents and histories is complemented by information gathered from fieldwork and in‐depth interviews in several former wheat‐cultivating villages, a former gecekondu neighbourhood, and a small agricultural town in the province of Ankara.     

农村集体经济组织成员资格认定的理论与实践——以全国首批29个农村集体资产股份权能改革试点为例

从国家司法层面来看,中国有关农村集体成员资格认定立法缺位、政策法规口径不统一,削弱了司法地位的权威性。现有的农村集体经济组织成员资格认定三种标准各有欠缺。户籍标准会导致利益驱动下的富裕集体经济组织人口的膨胀。事实标准有很强的主观色彩,在实际操作时受到的争议比较大。"户籍+"的复合标准在地方实践中的应用比较普遍,但差异化的条件设置,增加了跨区域司法裁定的难度。从首批农村集体资产股份权能改革试点地区实践来看,试点地区对原始取得、法定取得的成员资格认定较为一致,对身份标签群体的成员资格保留规定更是高度一致。90%以上的试点地区对原始取得、法定取得的成员资格都严格绑定户籍。对成员资格丧失考量因素也具有趋同性,基本围绕户籍迁出、生产生活关系实质、生存保障等因素加以判定。目前成员资格认定矛盾主要集中在身份转换人群,"两头空"现象屡见不鲜。     

战后工业化的努力:乡村工业示范的兴起和发展

乡村工业示范是抗战结束后在联合国善后救济总署资助下建立的一个农业善后项目，联合国善后救济总署倾向于使之能为善后救济生产物资，而中国人则希望由此能促进中国乡村的工业化。结果，示范组未能有效的实现生产救济物资的目标，却为乡村工业示范做了大量的准备。联总结束后示范组改为示范处，示范处则明确了促进农村生产，改善农民生活的目的，宣称不再具善后救济性质，并积极开展了以技术推广为主要内容的乡村工业示范活动。然而，由于国内政治经济形势趋于恶化，乡村工业示范事业最终黯然结束。     

论流转语境下土地经营权的性质及内涵 ——以物债区分为视角

研究目的：确定土地经营权的权利性质及内涵,并以物债区分为视角对其流转关系进行研究。研究方法：规范分析法。研究结果：《民法典》在用益物权部分引入的土地经营权却呈现诸多债权化的法律特征,其根源在于立法者将其租赁关系一并纳入了物权法的规范视角,导致流转语境下的“土地经营权”并非严格意义上的一种权利类型,而是包含租赁权在内的集合性概念。研究结论：在承认流转语境下土地经营权包含租赁权的前提下,仍应坚持将狭义的土地经营权定性为用益物权,赋予农民专业合作社等入股企业用益物权人的法律地位。同时在法无明文规定时,坚持区分土地经营权的物权式流转和债权式流转,按照“物权优先于债权”的基本法理处理土地经营权之多重流转关系。