Sobre maldiciones y bendiciones: Los impactos de la explotación de los recursos naturales

Reseña de: Campos, Alicia y Carrillo, Miquel (eds) (2008), El precio oculto de la tierra, Icaria, Madri

Manuela Boatcă. Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism.

Las desigualdades sociales se han estructurado en procesos económicos y políticos de larga duración vinculados a la formación del sistema-mundo. No solo se han configurado desigualdades de clase, como lo plantearon algunos sociólogos clásicos, sino además desigualdades basadas en las categorías de raza, etnicidad y género. La perspectiva estándar y tradicional en el estudio de la desigualdad ha considerado que las desigualdades se generan por factores endógenos al capitalismo o elementos ligados a la Revolución Industrial europea, y esa perspectiva tomó como exógenas otras desigualdades relacionadas con procesos coloniales e imperiales. Este es el principal argumento del libro de Manuela Boatcă, quien es actualmente profesora de sociología de la Universidad de Friburgo en Alemania y una de las principales impulsadoras europeas de lo que podría llamarse una “sociología poscolonial”

Value Chains and Global Inequalities: Plantain, Contract Farming, and Vulnerability of the Small-Scale Farmers in Colombia (Discussion Paper)

The plantain is an important agricultural product worldwide. It is the staple food of millions of people, and represents a source of incomes for farmers participating in the international trade. In Colombia, the exportation plantain is chiefly harvested by small-scale farmers. However, they are in a position of vulnerability, facing several risks. Firstly, the obstacles to access the global markets, and the competition with the trader companies. Secondly, the volatility of prices and the exchange rate, which produce unequal effects on them. Thirdly, the environmental risks associated with windstorms and tree diseases. Amid the economic liberalization, the small-scale farmers lack a permanent governmental support to cope with those risks. And the international cooperation is unable to support all the growers. Thus, the small-scale farmers have created organizations to raise their demands, amid nationwide peasant protests against the Free Trade Agreements

Inequity, political violence, and agrarian reform role

This work tries to add new elements to the debate on relation between income and land inequality and political violence. Here is analyzed the role of land reforms on the relation between inequality and political violence. The methodology implemented is a statistical exercise of panel of data with fixed effects for a set of 31 countries of different continents for the period 1946-1999. The main conclusions are: agrarian reforms still have a great role as instruments for social, economic and political issues, considering the correlation between income and land distribution inequality and political violence. Although agrarian reforms tend to reduce political violence in long term, its capacity is poor due to the limited impact of some land reforms. That situation is a limit for coexistence of democratic political institutions with low levels of political violence. Therefore, the presence of democratic procedures and institutions doesn’t imply a reduction of political violence in high inequality environments.Buscando aportar nuevos elementos al debate sobre la relación entre inequidad y violencia política, en el presente trabajo se realiza un ejercicio estadístico de panel de datos con efectos fijos para evaluar esa correlación, teniendo en cuenta varias formas de inequidad y analizando el papel que las reformas agrarias tienen en esa correlación. El análisis se lleva a cabo para una muestra de 31 países de varios continentes, en el período comprendido entre 1946 y 1999. Según los resultados del trabajo, se encuentra que las reformas agrarias mantienen su relevancia dentro de los objetivos sociales, económicos y políticos, teniendo en cuenta que hay una correlación entre las diferentes formas de inequidad y la violencia política. Por su parte, aunque las reformas agrarias tienden a reducir la violencia política en el largo plazo, su papel no es muy significativo. Una posible explicación es el pobre alcance de muchas reformas agrarias, lo que limita la coexistencia de las instituciones políticas democráticas junto a bajos niveles de violencia política. Por tanto, la existencia de mecanismos e instituciones democráticas no implica la reducción de la violencia política en ambientes muy inequitativos

contemporary struggles for land in Brazil and Colombia

The struggles for land discussed in this paper have occurred in contexts characterized by some improvement of laws and policies designed to protect ethnic and cultural minorities in Brazil and Colombia, following the “multicultural turn” in international law. The paper discusses to a greater extent the cases of communities of Afro-descendants who live in areas disputed by agribusiness companies interested in expanding palm plantations mostly for biodiesel production. We found out that the introduction of new rights has first unleashed a local process of ethnic re-identification. In a certain way, minority rights themselves have created those minorities they are supposed to protect. Nevertheless, new minority rights have also reframed the conditions under which struggles for land are conducted and negotiated in Colombia as well as in Brazil. Seen as relays in an electrical circuit, minority rights serve to modulate power at the local level: in some cases, new rights amplify minorities’ power; in other situations, they can help contain the problems of abuses of power

Baquero Melo, Jairo

The struggles for land discussed in this paper have occurred in contexts characterized by some improvement of laws and policies designed to protect ethnic and cultural minorities in Brazil and Colombia, following the “multicultural turn” in international law. The paper discusses to a greater extent the cases of communities of Afro-descendants who live in areas disputed by agribusiness companies interested in expanding palm plantations mostly for biodiesel production. We found out that the introduction of new rights has first unleashed a local process of ethnic re-identification. In a certain way, minority rights themselves have created those minorities they are supposed to protect. Nevertheless, new minority rights have also reframed the conditions under which struggles for land are conducted and negotiated in Colombia as well as in Brazil. Seen as relays in an electrical circuit, minority rights serve to modulate power at the local level: in some cases, new rights amplify minorities’ power; in other situations, they can help contain the problems of abuses of power

The Role of Territoriality and Coloniality

The concept of “enclosures” provides useful perspectives for thinking about social inequalities. In this paper, we overcome the conceptual limits posed by Polanyi’s focus on the particular history of England as the trigger of the global transformation of economy and society. We follow the recent critique made by Nancy Fraser that inner-societal conflicts resulting from enclosures need a more decided and explicit analysis. We argue that these can be best addressed from the perspective of coloniality and territoriality. As examples of this post-Polanyi approach, we present research results on contemporary enclosures represented by exclusive urbanism in Mexico, agricultural plantation expansion in Colombia and seed regulations in Argentina