Researching rural conflicts: hunting,local politics and actor-networks

Conflicts over the definition, production, reproduction and consumption of rurality and rural space have become an increasingly important focus for research in recent years. Researchers have employed a range of conceptual approaches in the analysis of rural conflicts, including pluralism, class theory and regulation theory. This paper explores the potential of an alternative approach, based on the theory of actor-networks developed in the sociology of science. Actor-network theory, its potential contribution to the study of political conflicts, and its possible weaknesses, is outlined before being applied to a case study. The case study, which concerns the attempt by a local authority in south west England to prohibit staghunting on its land, is described in detail, and an actor-network account of the case constructed. The contribution of actor-network theory to researching rural political conflicts is then evaluated and a critique developed around its observed shortcomings.     

Wind,coal, and copper: the politics of land grabbing,counterinsurgency, and the social engineering of extraction

ABSTRACT

The multiplicity of violent techniques employed to impose land control and extraction remains under acknowledged. This article reviews research conducted between the years 2014 and 2018 and draws on three case studies: wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany, and copper mining in Peru. The idea of 'engineering extraction' is advanced through counterinsurgency to acknowledge the extent of extractive violence, arguing that the term ‘land grabbing’ is indeed a more appropriate term than ‘land deals’. Engaging with the land grabbing literature, the three cases seek to advance discussions around ‘the political reactions “from below”’ by emphasizing ‘insurrectionary’ positions with resistance movements fighting land deals and extractive projects. This is followed by offering a typology of ‘hard’ coercive techniques and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification that surfaced in each case. The conclusion reflects on the social technologies of resource extraction, recognizing how social discord, ecological and climate crises are engineered and enforced.     

Internal migration and the politics of place: a comparative analysis of China and Indonesia

Spontaneous and organized population movements have long been used as a means of promoting a country's goals of development and national integration. At the local level, on the other hand, these movements have frequently done the opposite, fueling local grievances, sharpening group distinctions, and at times creating ‘sons-of-the-soil’ conflicts. In this paper, I explore this apparent tension between the national political rationale for internal migration and the political impact such migration has had locally, in four minority regions of China and Indonesia. I argue that the specific manner in which migration affects local politics is influenced by a country's political regime. In Indonesia, the impact of migration is observed in electoral politics, where ‘politics of place’ have been allowed to emerge. In China, it is perceived in the curbing of national minorities’ territorial autonomy. The role played by local elites and group competition between indigenous people and migrants are also reviewed.     

Manufacturing Naxi’s original ecological culture in contemporary China

For over a decade, original ecological (yuanshengtai原生态) has contested ethnic (minzu) as an influential framework in representing minority folk culture in Chinese official and popular media. This article explores the ideological implications of such a shift in the context of state-minority relationships. By examining Han elites’ invention of the neologism and Naxi elites’ adaptations, I argue that YST transforms local ethnic categories into a transethnic, translocal, and transnational concept, and therefore allows both the nation state and the minority groups to promote their own versions of ethnic identities. Compared to the antagonistic model between state domination and minority resistance, YST reflects a shift from minority political self-determination to cultural self-representation in the drastically changing global environments.     

Strategic Framing of Adat in Land-Acquisition Politics in East Sumba

This article is about the strategic use of adat arguments in the politics of large-scale land acquisition. While customary (adat) communities are commonly depicted as small local minorities living in the forests and being guardians of the environment, in many situations such communities occupy a majority position within the district. Majority adat communities are internally differentiated into categories of actors with varying and conflicting interests. This article focuses on Sumba in eastern Indonesia, where state and adat powers are not opposed but historically aligned. We analyse how five common ways of framing adat in Sumba are currently being deployed in land-acquisition politics, in situations supporting plantation land acquisition or protesting against farmers’ land dispossession. We draw attention to what we call ‘strategic adat framing’ as a political activity. The article calls for analysing the historical and social context of local deployments of adat for understanding the impact of current government pro-adat policies.     

Inducing Development: Social Remittances and the Expansion of Oil Palm

This paper investigates the relationship between social remittances and land‐use change in the context of South–South migration. Focusing on the cyclical movement of Filipino oil palm workers between the Philippine province of Palawan and the Malaysian State of Sabah, we show how migrants transmit social remittances, such as ideas of prosperity associated with oil palm development and knowledge of production practices and land impacts of oil palm plantations. These social remittances affect farmers’ decisions to engage in oil palm development within the migrants’ home province, possibly transforming subsistence agricultural systems into large‐scale, monocrop plantations. We argue that such land development outcomes are an understudied aspect of how migration affects developing countries, especially in the context of South–South migration. Research findings also suggest how migrants’ social remittances are transmitted, diffused, and utilized at broader social and political units, beyond return migrants’ households and immediate communities in Palawan. Decision outcomes, however, are variable, with households and communities either engaging in or opposing oil palm development, depending on how social remittances are interpreted.     

Black Agrarianism: The Significance of African American Landownership in the Rural South

Agrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to operate as a site of racialized exclusion. Local white elites limit Black farmers’ access to landownership through discriminatory lending practices. At the same time, Black farmland owners articulate an ethos in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging. This we term “Black agrarianism.” They cultivate resistance to the legacies of slavery and sharecropping and contemporary practices of social closure. These Black farmland owners, then, view land as protection from white domination. Thus, we demonstrate how landownership is a site for the re‐creation of racial hierarchy in the contemporary period while also offering the potential for resistance and emancipation.     

Political origin and persistence of industrial policy in Africa

ABSTRACT

The literature on industrial policy in Africa has generally explained its political origins in terms of ruling elites’ distribution of benefits to their supporters. However, in competitive political contexts in which policies are deeply political and designed to satisfy clients, such as policies that support party donors, the problem of policy discontinuity is bound to arise because a change in ruling party is bound to alter the direction of distributional policies. The current paper uses Nigeria’s backward integration policy (BIP), an industrial policy on cement production, to sharpen the analytical distinction between the origins and persistence. Although the ruling elites’ political quest for survival explains the origin of Nigeria’s industrial policy on cement (ruling elites were in search of re-election funds and teamed up with domestic capitalists for donations, who in turn influenced the political elites to create policies in their area of business), it does not explain the continuation.     

Between Land Grabbing and Farmers' Benefits: Land Transfers in West Kalimantan,Indonesia

Rapid growth of oil palm cultivation in West Kalimantan, Indonesia has increased both the pace and size of land transfers from farmers to big companies and city-based investors. This process has been widely conceptualised as ‘top-down land grabbing’ but this perspective largely neglects the agency of the farmers. This paper seeks to shed light on the agency of farmers with respect to how they respond to land transfer schemes. Through a study of land transfers under nucleus estate schemes (NES), schemes that were introduced by the Indonesian government in which smallholding farms are integrated parts of a modern, large size plantation company, we will show that agrarian dynamics are shaped by notions of what is ‘fair’ and ‘just’.     

The politics of marginality in Wallowa County,Oregon: Contesting the production of landscapes of consumption

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s implementation of House Bill 3326, a 2001 law giving counties the power to define certain agricultural lands as “marginal,” and therefore exempt from restrictions on subdivision and development, illustrates the ways in which these tensions become magnified as rural communities attempt to govern private land use in the context of rural restructuring. Implementation of HB3326 highlighted the tensions between landowners interested in capitalizing on development opportunities afforded by HB3326, neighboring producers concerned about interference from future amenity migrants, and existing amenity migrants with interests in protecting their rural idyll. Contestations over nonfarm development took place in the context of a strong agricultural community identity, concerns about the effects of economic restructuring on producers, and local resistance to the rural gentrification process. The process of defining marginality came to encompass not only technical issues of land productivity, but also broader community contestations over the continuation of traditional land uses and the legitimacy of various actors to govern private land.     

Regulating Land Development: Local Market Structures and Structured Markets

Current rounds of economic restructuring together with the changing priorities accorded to agricultural production are leading to significant shifts in rural property and tenure relations. This paper analyzes these processes with reference to rural Britain; it reports on empirical evidence collected in the county of Buckinghamshire in southeast England. Two significant types of new rural land development are considered—small-scale industrial units arising out of the conversion of agricultural buildings and golf course developments and their ancillary leisure-based activities. Post-war productionist forms of regulation and particularly established types of agricultural tenure are now being modified by farmers and nonagricultural interests committed to the development of rural land. New demands and market structures are requiring more diversity and flexibility by which land is owned, occupied, and used. These emergent, more flexible macro tenures are based on new sets of social and political alliances between farmers, developers, and local planning systems. Agricultural land is increasingly being viewed as a capital rather than as a productive asset associated with more volatile and regionally defined markets whose regulation is formative.     

Flex crops neverland: finding access to large-scale land investments?

This paper explores a neglected aspect of the financialization of land grabbing. Whereas financialization is a multifaceted phenomenon, a straightforward link has been established between financialization and land grabbing. On the one hand, market-oriented views claim that large-scale land investments benefit both the agrifood industry and small-scale farmers. On the other hand, structuralist scholarship explains how financialization creates new ways to accumulate profits by dispossessing small-scale farmers. We build on the call for a more nuanced account of large-scale land investments’ impact on land access by considering the crops involved. While finance’s attraction for flex crops has already been touched upon, we reverse the perspective by exploring whether flex crops influence the way financialization in agriculture unfolds in three areas: megamergers, contract farming, and land commodification. Building on Allaire’s concept of quality, we argue that flex crops can exacerbate unequal power relations and limit access to land for small-scale farmers.     

Conflicts about water: A case study of contest and power in Dutch rural policy

The Dutch countryside forms the scene for pressing problems of management and allocation of land and water. These problems underscore the need for comprehensive rural policies. For that purpose, area-based rural policy has been initiated. This new policy is part of a larger policy shift, labelled in literature as ‘new rural governance’. Area-based rural policy co-ordinates the different interests of stakeholders and establishes consensus-based solutions. In this article we question this claim. We analyse the conflicts, rationalities and interests within a Dutch rural planning project. This project displays a power struggle in which actors try to (de)construct legitimacy. This observation contrasts sharply with the consensual rationality on which area-based policies are founded. Therefore, we conclude that a tension exists between ‘what should be done’ and ‘what is actually done’ in Dutch rural policy. Area-based policy does not guarantee the establishment of consensus among rural stakeholders. Therefore, Dutch area-based policies need to be contextualised to purposefully address spatial rural problems.     

Community-ness of a major economic development effort in a biracial community of Alabama

This paper uses case study data from a rural biracial community in Alabama to examine the community-ness of a major economic development effort and selected aspect of the ‘growth machine’ hypothesis. Results of the study suggest that the major economic development effort in the community was not a community-related action. In general, the findings provide support for some of the contentions of the growth machine model. Indeed, community can be an arena of action rather than a cohesive acting unit as posited by the ‘growth machine’ hypothesis and political economy models of community power put forth in the last two decades. The local elites utilized the community as a tool for the pursuit of personal gain at the expense of a majority of local residents. Capitalist development is divisive and the community, as (Molotch (1976) American Journal of Sociology 82(2), 309–332, 10) says, can be a ‘growth machine’ serving not the common good but the interests of those who manipulate that machine for profit. The implications of the findings for the future of biracial rural communities are discussed.     

The Political Dimension in the Agrarian Question: Strategies of Resilience and Political Entrepreneurship of Agrarian Elite Families in a Philippine Province1

ABSTRACT This paper on the rural political sociology of a Philippine province relates the strategies of political resilience of landed oligarchies to the political dimension of the agrarian question in the Philippines. Bukidnon in Northern Mindanao is used to illustrate how pioneer agrarian families have protected their economic privileges and survived the political challenge posed by migrant politicians. Despite differences in their economic bases and social backgrounds, pioneer families and migrant politicians share strategies of political entrepreneurship and rent-seeking that have maintained oligarchic rule: (1) establishment and maintenance of kinship networks, through intermarriage, and non-kinship, ritual ties; (2) diversification into non-agricultural economic activities; (3) control of political parties and state patronage (primarily electoral) machinery; (4) cooptation or mobilization of political symbols, issues, and movements; (5) use of political power to obstruct progressive legislation, particularly on land reform and taxation; and (6) the strategic management of political violence. Analysis of provincial and national political dynamics, as played out in Bukidnon, shows how the nexus of property, power, and privilege is consolidated, contested, and reconstructed in the ongoing competition among Bukidnon elites. These strategies are integral to the political practices of a landed capitalist class and have serious implications for agrarian transition and industrialization in the Philippines.     

Interest distribution in the process of coordination of urban and rural construction land in China

Since the onset of rapid economic development and urbanization, China’s land resources—rather than capital, technology and human resources—have become the lead limiting factor in constraining economic growth. Coordination of urban and rural construction land (CURCL) can be a very effective means for reducing conflicts between economic development and land protection. This research examines the roles of stakeholders involved in the CURCL process. The reasons why the interests of legitimated stakeholders were encroached upon are analyzed and countermeasures to protect the interests of legitimated stakeholders are proposed. Ambiguously defined property rights for owners of rural construction land, unclear conceptions of the public interest, and overlap of power and interest among multiple levels of authority are the reasons why legitimated stakeholders’ interests were encroached upon. Legitimizing construction land ownership clearly, better defining the multiple conceptions of public interest, opening up express channels for expression of the public interest, and clarifying governments’ functions in land interest adjustment are the countermeasures to protect the interests of legitimated stakeholders.     

Conflicts over knowledge transfer across the border: Korean international students and the conversion of cultural capital

It is common knowledge that international students are a major conduit of international knowledge transfer and that they become transnational managerial elites and highly skilled migrants. However, few studies show how this transfer occurs. Moreover, people often assume that knowledge transfer is a smooth process. Drawing on in‐depth interviews of former and current Korean international students and non‐migrant Koreans in the United States and South Korea, my study shows that knowledge transfer can, in fact, be highly conflictual. I argue that conflicts in the country of origin between international students (the transferors) and non‐migrants (the recipients) mediate knowledge transfer. I see the conflicts as struggles over the conversion of cultural capital from the Global North into local power and wealth, which reworks Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital for transnational social fields. In so doing, I develop a framework that links knowledge transfer and transnational social reproduction.     

Agreement on water and a watered-down agreement: The political ecology of contested coastal development in Down East, North Carolina

In 2006, land use planning emerged as a contested issue in the rural area known as ‘Down East’, Carteret County, in eastern North Carolina, USA. Down East is experiencing a transition from a commercial fishing to an amenity economy and concerns about related changes led to the formation of ‘Down East Tomorrow’ (DET), a grassroots group that proposed a one-year development moratorium in order to facilitate a community planning process. In this paper, we use political ecology to examine the fate of the moratorium as reflected in the public written record, primarily minutes of meetings of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners. We illustrate how issues of community, science, and governance were linked to an increasing focus on coastal water quality in the debate, and argue that this focus facilitated a switch by the Board from considering a development moratorium to adopting a conservation ordinance, one that fell short of addressing DET’s concerns. This outcome illustrates the power of formal political institutions in ’First World’ environmental conflicts and the difficulties of reconciling competing values associated with land use in areas of transition, especially where historical resistance to planning has been the norm.