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.     

Cooptation and non-cooptation: elite strategies in response to social protest

ABSTRACT

The risk of cooptation – of being absorbed by powerful elites without gaining new advantages – is an important concern in studies of social movements and social change. Through cooptation, elites undermine movements by stripping them of their credibility as agents of change. This paper aims to explain why, despite its powerful rationale, cooptation does not occur more frequently. Building on political process theory and relational sociology, it demonstrates that cooptation appears rational only on the condition that cooperation is valued lower than political domination. But elite-movement interaction may result in mutually strategic relationships that are conditional on each side’s recognition of the other’s interest. Two empirical cases illustrate this possibility: the US Civil Rights Movement and Latin American participatory budgeting. In both cases, the actors involved chose a strategy of ‘mutually assured autonomy’ over cooptation.     

Who are we? Prohlematising national identity1

While the concem with ‘identity politics’ has grown in recent years, there are few studies of the ways in which people order and negotiate their national identities. The study reported here focuses on the identities used by members of the arts and landed elites in Scotland in the assertion of perceived cultural differences between Scots and non-Scots. These two groups have good reason to be sensitive to the problematic and negotiated nature of national identity in a changing cultural and political context in Scotland. The raw materials of national identity, in particular, birth, residence and ancestry, are used by individuals in these groups to make claims which are sustained by and through social interaction in the course of which various ‘identity claims’ are made and received in various ways.     

Ethnic identity politics in Nepal: liberation from,or restoration of,elite interest?

The ethnic issue has dominated Nepal’s political landscapes since the birth of the Republic of Nepal in 2007. For decades, Nepal witnessed a series of peasant rebellions against the state and landed aristocrats. Ethnic peasants were at the forefront, demanding autonomy, dignity, and an end to state violence. Since the 1980s, however, the ‘ethnic question’ has become a development issue and the developmental idea of indigeneity has consolidated both ethnic elites and peasants. Recently, identity politics has become a dominant ideological force, rapidly unraveling the course of radical political developments in the country. Interestingly, this political movement emerged in a particular historical conjuncture where Nepali politics has been extensively shaped by the recent Maoist revolution and a long history of international development. This paper explores various aspects of ethnic peasantry and argues that the notions of indigeneity and identity politics have reinforced elite domination by depoliticizing ethnic peasant politics in Nepal.     

Neoliberal co-optation and authoritarian renewal: social entrepreneurship networks in Jordan and Morocco

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes social entrepreneurship networks (SENs) – composed of social entrepreneurs, business and political elites, and international actors – in Jordan and Morocco and how they foster processes of authoritarian renewal through neoliberal forms of co-optation. I argue that these new neoliberal networks and pre-existing patterns of social interaction complement each other, fostering linkages between well-established elites and hand-picked social entrepreneurs as well as societal groups. The two case studies illustrate different trajectories of the development of SENs and their embeddedness in the respective political, social and economic contexts. Importantly, such trajectories indicate a similar direction of travel: social entrepreneurship, rather than acting as a driver of progressive change, has been aligned with the authoritarian regimes and cements neoliberalism as a mode of governance. This mutation of neoliberal tactics towards more inclusionary and consensual patterns seeks to ensure the survival of both neoliberalism and of authoritarian governance. Thus, the article brings to light repertoires of authoritarian neoliberalism that have hitherto been under-studied. Moreover, it offers a critical perspective on social entrepreneurship as an increasingly popular phenomenon that, in academia and beyond, has all too often been approached from an uncritical and apolitical perspective.     

Farmers and Pawns: The Role of Migrants in Agrarian Conflicts and Rural Resistance in Sumatra,Indonesia

Land grabbing in relation to boom-crop production or nature conservation triggers displacement and dispossession of local communities as well as rural resistance often culminating in violent conflicts over land. In Indonesia, company-initiated oil palm production on debatable territories also stimulates migration into these contested rural areas by individual farmers who seek to become part of the boom-crop economy. Based on discussions on land grabbing and land rights this article deals with the appropriation of land by independent migrant farmers and their role as another new party in conflicts over land. The role of rural migrants in land conflicts in Jambi Province, Sumatra is shown through two case studies. The case studies highlight the importance of customary local elites and their strategic employment of social identity and political authority to facilitate land seekers’ access to contested land. The local elites transcend conceptual boundaries to generate a profitable counter-business with a set of individual stakeholders and brokers who profit from the dispossession of the masses. The case studies reveal that the migrants’ presence is essential to rural resistance and a contested resource of economic and political benefit to various stakeholders at the same time.     

The Occupy Movement and the Politics of Vulnerability

The Occupy movement has generated a significant amount of scholarly literature, most of which has focused on the movement's tactics or goals, or sought to explain its emergence. Nevertheless, we lack an explanation for the movement's broad appeal and mass support. In this article we present original research on Occupy in New York City, Detroit, and Berlin, which demonstrates that the movement's heterogeneous participants coalesced around the concept of vulnerability. Vulnerability is an inability to adapt to shocks and stresses, and it inhibits social reproduction and prohibits social mobility. Rather than specifically discussing the wealth of elites per se, Occupy participants consistently expressed the feeling that the current political economic system safeguards elites and increases the vulnerability of everyone else. We argue that the Occupy movement has reworked the relationship among a range of political struggles that were hitherto disconnected (i.e. ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements) and rendered them complementary through the politics of vulnerability.     

Political Economy of Standing against a Stand-By

What explains the actual and rhetorical defections of political elites in developing countries from the IMF programs even at times of severe economic difficulties? Scholars have focused on “domestic audience costs” of participating in IMF programs. This paper, on the other hand, suggests that as commitments to IMF programs require governments to make changes generating institutional, social and political consequences, governments choose to delay an agreement with the Fund, whenever the program is likely to antagonize key business groups that support the government. In the light of the Malaysian and the recent Turkish experiences, the paper will demonstrate that defection from an IMF program is likely to occur when the new Stand-By Agreement can jeopardize particular business interests backing the ruling political elites either through institutional reforms or economic policies.     

Military technology and socio-cultural change in the ancient Greek city1

The political culture of classical Greek civilization, with its distinctive twin ideals of citizenship and mass participatory democracy, represents a revolutionary development in the history of human society. The social origins of that momentous cultural breakthrough are examined in this essay, with specific attention being given to those forces – destructive as well as reorganizing – which undermined the bases of traditional aristocratic domination and which prepared the ground for the emergence of new institutional patterns. Pressures for structural and normative ‘democratization are shown to have been exerted primarily by changes in the military domain, the central axis of political and economic power within the ancient city.     

Political Elites and the Culture of Social Movements

While sociologists have paid a great deal of attention to how political elites matter for the emergence and development of social movements, they have focused less explicitly on how political elites matter for the culture of social movements. This essay reviews work that directly and indirectly addresses this relationship, showing how political elites matter for various aspects of movement culture, like collective identity and framing. It also reviews literature that suggests how movement culture comes to impact political elites. The essay concludes by drawing from very recent scholarship to argue that to best understand political elites and the culture of social movements, we need to think about culture and structure as intertwined and to understand how relations matters in the construction of meaning.     

Youth Migration,Stratification and State Policy in Post‐Soviet Russia

In principle, the fall of the Soviet Union brought democratic capitalism to the Russian people. In practice, during the post‐Soviet era power elites influence state policies governing social processes like migration to protect their power from democracy and shield their economic status from free market competition. Manipulating policy stalls social mobility and reinforces stratification as many Russian migrants, most of whom are young and poor, cannot assimilate into cities like Moscow in order to take advantage of the economic and educational opportunities exclusively available there and nowhere else in the country. While Russia is unique in being a newly established democracy with a free market, similar processes also create and reproduce inequalities in the west. Thus, sociologists should explore how denying access to space and the unprecedented opportunity some places offer migrants limits social mobility thereby maintaining the social stratification hierarchy.     

Brexit,Global Cities,and the Future of World Order

The emergence and role of global cities provide a rubric by which we can understand Brexit and illuminate the present tensions between those who favor open economic policies and those who favor closed economic policies. Economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, and social exclusion at the regional level are now driving a fresh interrogation of the relatively open world order that requires global cities—sites densely populated with institutions necessary for orchestrating global economic activity. While questions about the legitimacy of economic openness may undermine the economic output, political power, and cultural influence of global cities, those same cities may, if they harness economic output for broader regional benefits, demonstrate the potential of an alternative and newly legitimate open world order.     

Changing Meanings of Authority in Contemporary Rural India

The article explores political meanings in the context of recent economic and political changes in a village in south India. Cultural constructions of political relations emerged in conversations between the author and village informants in Andhra Pradesh. Informants perceived decline in the power and authority of former village lords and talked about the establishment of authority in the new setting. In processes of democratization which had taken place, showing and receiving honor and respect continued as political and social preoccupations. However, deserving honor and respect has become less a statement about political superiority and domination and more about individual moral qualities.

Chinese Transnationalism in Britain: A Longer History

This article looks at the early history of the British Chinese community in the light of transnational studies. It questions the belief that homeland and intradiasporic economic ties are predominantly new, save on the rare occasions that elites maintained them, and that early political transnationalism was less common still and even more sure to be elite based. In so doing, it draws attention to the role played by political elites in galvanising migrant communities. It also analyses the role played by class-based organisations in constructing transnational ties, a form of Chinese transnationalism that other studies fail to note. It finds that transnational practices and institutions pervaded the early community in its immigrant phases, both from below and from above. This immigration was overwhelmingly proletarian, but nonetheless transnational. Though basically economic, the transnational community was also political. Capturing a mass base among Chinese overseas was a central strategy of late-Qing dissidents. Crucially, China's early radicals shared a Cantonese origin with their compatriots in Britain, North America, Australia, and elsewhere. The article's findings challenge transnational theories, which stress contemporaneity, economics, and elites. The political cultivation of Chinese in Southeast Asia by Republicans and Communists has been the subject of numerous studies. Far less is known about analogous activities in Europe. By exploring early Republican and Communist influences on the Chinese in Britain, this article traces further paths along which diasporic nationalism spread.     

上海“新二元结构”问题的成因和缓解思路

上海是我国外来务工人员集中导入地区之一,＂新二元结构＂引发的社会问题较为突出。＂新二元结构＂是我国城市化进程中新出现的一种社会现象,它是在我国户籍制度基础上,城市外来务工人员因体制因素和自身因素的交织作用,导致其在经济、社会、文化等福利获取方面与城市居民之间存在较大差距而形成的社会群体分隔的社会现象。上海＂新二元结构＂产生了一系列社会问题,这些问题的形成和显性化意味着上海经济社会结构转型正面临着新挑战,如何回应这些问题成为上海现阶段亟需破解的重大社会课题。     

Separate education and hegemonic domination: civil society challenges in the Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa

The case of education in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa, Israel, demonstrates the dialectical role of education in conflict-affected societies. As scholars of transformative education and critical pedagogy have noted, education tends to serve as an instrument of the dominant ideology of social and political elites, yet it is also a significant arena of civil society, where diverse and often subversive identities and values can be asserted. This duality is particularly evident in conflict-affected societies, where, as Gallagher points out, education can either contribute to conflict or challenge it, through structure of schools, contents of the curriculum and the routes and opportunities available to young people. The education system in Jaffa demonstrates the ways in which schooling separation, lack of multiculturalism in the curriculum and discrimination in education enforce elite domination. At the same time, it demonstrates how community members and civil society organisations may use the education system as an arena for challenging the status quo of inter-community relations in conflict-affected societies, through initiatives that may occur due to necessity, response to negative change or ideological challenges to domination.     

‘Lady no be so’: the image of women in contemporary church posters in Nigeria

There is no doubt that churches are proliferating in Nigerian cities and church-going has become a popular culture. Mostly male, pastors are sacrosanct and unaccountable, just as their living standards far outweigh those of their members. In their domination of the contemporary Church in Nigeria, male pastors reproduce and use popular but subjective social images of women to apprehend female pastors. In terms of publicity, printed posters are the most prolific media churches employ. Yet, on these same posters, male pastors differentiate themselves and subordinate female pastors by using graphic principles of layout and visual placement of women's pictures vis-à-vis theirs. That the Church is male-dominated is clearly not in question. This paper interrogates how this domination is played out and the roles women are playing in re-presenting themselves in dominated church spaces. Using data from fieldwork, this paper analyses the image of women in Nigerian church posters, the vast collection of practices built around religious domination and the roles female pastors are playing in re-representing women in the Nigerian religious space.     

The Social Backgrounds of Nazi Leaders: A Statistical Analysis of Political Elites in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933

This article compares the social backgrounds of Nazi leaders and representatives of democratic parties in the Weimar Republic. It does not advance any overarching new narrative on Nazism’s social origins, but rather aims to present a nuanced statistical picture of Weimar’s political elites. The results of this analysis are derived from an index of German members of parliament and from a new dataset, which has recently been collected from the Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB), Germany’s largest biographical encyclopaedia. Together, these two samples cover more than 2000 German politicians, industrialists, diplomats, political writers, academics, high state officials, and important journalists. This article reveals sociological differences between the politicians who led the Nazi party in parliament and those elites that promoted Nazism in the media, in academia, or within the German civil service. While Nazi politicians in the Reichstag were recruited from a variety of social classes, ranging from industrial workers to members of the aristocracy, National Socialist elites outside the parliament typically belonged to the Bildungsbürgertum and sociologically resembled the highly educated members of democratic and liberal parties. Overall, the picture of a generation of Nazi leaders emerges that was sociologically far more heterogeneous than is often recognized by historians.     

Civil society,social movements and Democracy in Southern Africa

The article reviews the theory of civil society and social movements in a general perspective and relates the theoretical argument to recent economic and political changes in Southern African states. Salient aspects of civil society and its role in the democratic process is considered and the role of different key institutions and organizations in the democratic process are analyzed. The role of economic elites is equivocal, both because of the racial dimension in their composition and in the way they avoid addressing problems of living standards of the working class. The most important institutions of civil society seem to be the universities and the church, whereas the role of media is less important than one might have expected, because of widespread state control and state ownership. The article analyzes the particular role of different social movements and offers an interesting comparison of their strengths and weaknesses in democratization processes in various Southern African countries.