Peasants' rights and agrarian violence in transitional settings : From transitional justice to transformative agrarian justice

This article addresses why the rights of peasants and agrarian violence matter to justice promotion work that seeks to lay the groundwork for future peace and stability. Its central contention is that although rural people have participated in transitional justice processes, the field is yet to engage with peasants as a distinct social group, with the social, economic, and political issues they face, and with agrarian structures and processes that underlie ongoing violence against them. The article argues that peasant rights and agrarian violence matter in light of four rural trends: Peasants in post-transition societies are routinely exposed to complex patterns of direct and indirect nonwar violence; justice interventions may be expected in societies in which there have been large-scale agrarian protests; the root causes of conflict are frequently located in structures and processes of agrarian change; and rural grievances associated with poverty and marginalization are facilitating and enabling the rise of authoritarian populism. The article reflects on the demands these trends create for research and practice, arguing that developing responses to agrarian violence favors a radical, more transformative approach to agrarian justice that engages with wider agrarian political economies and issues of class and gender

Brazil's landless movement and rights 'from below'

Recent literature has recognised the value of food sovereignty and human rights frameworks in agrarian struggles. Relatively little attention has gone toward how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice. This study considers Brazil's landless movement (MST) between 1984 and 1995, revealing three distinct rights discourses that recruited and mobilised protest by linking local issues to the movement's broader political project. The findings illustrate the value of rights, frames and ideology as analytical tools, shedding light on how movement-generated rights emerge through processes of reflexivity and in response to dynamic social-political contexts

Transformative Justice in Practice : Reflections on the Pastoral Land Commission during Brazil's Political Transition

There has been a growing interest among transitional justice academics and practitioners in pursuing more transformative agendas for practice. There remain however few illustrations, if any, of work to deliver transformative justice in practice. This article considers the work of Brazil's Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) during Brazil's political transition as a potentially useful source of insights for practice. An organ of the Catholic Church and ecumenical in orientation, the CPT worked directly with marginalized communities to defend and promote the rights of small farmers and rural workers and peaceful solutions to land and labour conflicts. Its work was steered by a forward-looking vision of justice in which the violence, marginalization and exclusion of the past and present would be overcome by empowering rural populations to transform their social circumstances and address root causes. This article outlines the practices and activities through which the CPT sought to foster transformative change and reflects on what lessons these might hold for transformative justice in transitional settings

The needs of labour in times of transition: a case study of sharecroppers in Tunisia

Transformative justice has emerged in recent years as both a critical response to transitional justice and as a new practice agenda for challenging social-economic harms in post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. While the transformative scholarship is relatively new, it falls short of providing a way to capture the underlying mechanisms by which people’s needs are frustrated. This study explores this epistemological gap through an examination of the everyday injustices, grievances and priorities for change among a group of sharecropping farmers in Cap Bon, Tunisia. A critical realist philosophical and methodological research framework was adopted, and a total of 42 semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using techniques from grounded theory. The examination reveals a set of unmet or frustrated needs among this group of people that arise from their insertion into particular social relations that subjugate and exploit them. Enduring social structures and their properties are analysed for how they a) underpin need frustration among this particular group; b) act as a source of resentment directed towards local actors and the state; and c) shape farmers’ priorities for change. The study contributes to the development of an approach for examining the causes of enduring social-economic harms experienced by groups and communities in transition societies, and for generating new knowledge about relations and structures in concrete cases that might become objects for transformative change. Through this process, transformative justice is reconceptualised in terms of a wider body of theory, moving transformative theorising away from a narrow focus on its critical response to transitional justice and towards knowledge development for transformation