Reclaiming the land: the resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: review essay , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61017 , vital:27913 , http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/asr.v9i2.23268
- Description: In the early 1990s, Rehman Sobhan (1993) argued that after two decades in which agrarian reform was a global non-event, ‘[vjotaries of agrarian reform’ had been reduced to ‘a fringe group of romantic throwbacks left over from the 1950s and 1960s’ (1993: p.3) He offered a broad overview of post-Second World War experiences in Asia, Latin America and Africa, and distinguished between radical and non-egalitarian reforms in terms of their effect on eliminating class differentiation and modes of domination in the countryside. He concluded by arguing that ‘ [t]he political mobilization needed to realize radical reforms in the contemporary developing world remains elusive’’ (1993: p.133, my emphasis). Nearly ten years later, Deborah Bryceson (2000), after discussing the post-Second World War academic literature on the peasantry, suggested that '[pleasant theory is on the retreat’ (2000: p.29); that it was critical to bring peasants ‘back into theoretical and policy debates’ (2000: p.30); and that the ongoing reproduction of the peasantry in Latin America, Asia and Africa through contradictory processes of formation and dissolution seemed to give them an ‘enduringpresence’ (2000: p.6). She concluded also by referring to an elusiveness, speaking about the multifaceted survival strategies of the peasantry under conditions of global neo-liberalism that make the peasantry - conceptually - ‘more elusive than before’ (2000: p.30, my emphasis). These brief comments on the status of the peasantry and agrarian reform provide an important historical and theoretical backdrop to the volume under review.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: review essay , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61017 , vital:27913 , http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/asr.v9i2.23268
- Description: In the early 1990s, Rehman Sobhan (1993) argued that after two decades in which agrarian reform was a global non-event, ‘[vjotaries of agrarian reform’ had been reduced to ‘a fringe group of romantic throwbacks left over from the 1950s and 1960s’ (1993: p.3) He offered a broad overview of post-Second World War experiences in Asia, Latin America and Africa, and distinguished between radical and non-egalitarian reforms in terms of their effect on eliminating class differentiation and modes of domination in the countryside. He concluded by arguing that ‘ [t]he political mobilization needed to realize radical reforms in the contemporary developing world remains elusive’’ (1993: p.133, my emphasis). Nearly ten years later, Deborah Bryceson (2000), after discussing the post-Second World War academic literature on the peasantry, suggested that '[pleasant theory is on the retreat’ (2000: p.29); that it was critical to bring peasants ‘back into theoretical and policy debates’ (2000: p.30); and that the ongoing reproduction of the peasantry in Latin America, Asia and Africa through contradictory processes of formation and dissolution seemed to give them an ‘enduringpresence’ (2000: p.6). She concluded also by referring to an elusiveness, speaking about the multifaceted survival strategies of the peasantry under conditions of global neo-liberalism that make the peasantry - conceptually - ‘more elusive than before’ (2000: p.30, my emphasis). These brief comments on the status of the peasantry and agrarian reform provide an important historical and theoretical backdrop to the volume under review.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Civil society and state-centred struggles
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71231 , vital:29821 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2012.641723
- Description: This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71231 , vital:29821 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2012.641723
- Description: This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012