Agrarian Studies

In December 2018, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. UNDROP is the product of 17 years of struggle by La Via Campesina, other transnational agrarian movements and allies that included NGOs, states, UN mandate holders, and academics. It recognises the dignity of rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and their ‘special relationship’ to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights to land and natural resources, seeds, biodiversity and food sovereignty. This Grassroots Voices forum includes interviews and articles by activists in the UNDROP campaign: peasants from Indonesia, Belgium, France, Germany, Senegal and Argentina; a US farmworker leader; a women’s rights activist from Spain; a Bolivian diplomat; the Indian leader of a transnational Catholic farmers’ movement; an advocate for fishers from Uganda; a Swiss jurist; a Mexican indigenous rights leader; and human rights advocates from the NGOs CETIM and FIAN. They describe a new kind of people’s diplomacy and an innovative, bottom-up process of building alliances, lobbying, and authoring international law.

Resistance against the appropriation of nature, especially land, has been one of the key struggles of the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) since its inception in 1993. The issue of access to land has become even more central after the food crisis of 2007-08, in a context increasingly marked by land grabbing and climate change. This contribution offers a critical examination of the emergence of the « right to land and territory », both as a collective action frame deployed by transnational peasant movements, and as a new human right in international law. It explores the various ways in which agrarian movements are using the human rights framework to question the establishment of absolute private property rights over land, and restore political limits on access to land. It argues that peasant movements are claiming a new human right to land through a combination of institutional and extra-institutional channels, in an effort not only to achieve increased protection of peasants’ land rights (against and by the state), but also to advance an alternative conception of human rights that resonates with their worldviews, and allows for the development of food sovereignty alternatives, including outside the state.

Esta obra coletiva surge como um dos mais palpáveis frutos da
atividade desenvolvida ao longo desses últimos três anos pelo Grupo de
Estudos Agrários – GEA, que surgido originalmente do encontro de alunos e professores das Faculdades de Direito e de Economia e Administração da Universidade de São Paulo, pôde também contar, com o passar do tempo, com a participação de estudiosos de outras origens, interessados nas questões agrárias analisadas pelo Direito e pela Economia

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox
reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx’s
200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian
capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and industrial
capitalism have been a vital part of debates over and within
Marxism for more than a century and have been central to the
social scientific and historical understandings of the modern world
system. At the same time, since the seminal debates associated
with the ‘classical agrarian question,’ agrarian studies is marked by
durable tensions and polarities in theoretical approach. While
Marxists have long criticized ‘populists’ for ignoring capitalism and
class, populists have charged Marxists with historical determinism.
It is the premise of this special issue that much of this debate has
reached something of an impasse. This is in part because new
empirical work addressing the complex contemporary patterns
and conjunctures of global agrarian capitalism, and because new
and generative theoretical reconstructions of Marxism itself, offer
exciting new horizons. Contributions to this special issue help
point the way beyond this impasse, and illustrate that agrarian
Marxism remains a dynamic theoretical program that offers
powerful insights into agrarian change and politics in the twentyfirst
century.

Brazil has endured multiple political, economic, and environmental crises-and now the COVID-19 pandemic-which have drawn social inequalities into razor sharp relief. This contribution analyzes the resilience of rural families facing these crises in southern Bahia. These families have benefited from various redistributive policies over the years, including redistributive land reforms (RLRs), conditional cash transfers (CCTs), and recent emergency aid (EA) payments related to the pandemic. Each (re)distributive approach involves different notions of distributive justice informed by competing background theories of "the good, " which hold implications for concepts of resilience. Drawing on long-term research with RLR communities in Bahia, this article considers the gains achieved by different redistributive programs. Families who acquired land through RLR projects appear more resilient, especially in the face of crisis.

This article addresses the dynamics between three interrelated questions of agrarian transition in Punjab. The first concerns the role and nature of the state and the market mechanism for the transformation of traditional agriculture into its capitalist counterpart, by the development of the productive forces and changes in production structure. The second dwells on the impact of the state-driven capitalism on the production structure of agriculture and its contradictions. The third deals with the process of class formation and the precise nature of emerging classes in rural Punjab.

El artículo analiza las diferentes labores agrarias que reciben las vides de una gran explotación dependiente del monasterio de El Puig entre 1671 y 1691 basándose en los libros de contabilidad. Se estudia también el proceso de elaboración del vino y aguardiente y el destino de la producción. La  explotación se caracteriza por un atento cuidado dentro
de una técnica tradicional, pero no excesivamente atrasada. El vino se vende en partidas importantes dentro del año agrícola, y únicamente si es malo o se acumulan excedentes se opta por destilarlo.

The central contention of this article is that early nineteenth-century Irish landlords were constrained in their ability to control their estates by the prospect of peasant resistance. The apex of that resistance took the form of what are generically known as whiteboy movements, and this article examines the impact of one particular such movement, the Whitefeet, active in the East Midlands and SouthEast in the early 1830s. The article argues that two forms of landlord versus tenant conflicts can be identified: an absolute form, in which landlords (or subletting rentiers called middlemen) behaved as if they had absolute rights over their properties and were the victims of retaliatory violence; and a negotiated form, in which landlords (or their agents) proceeded in a more restrained, and piecemeal fashion, and compromised in the face of opposition. The fact that the magistracy, at least in some instances, condemned the practitioners of absolute conflict would suggest that more measured approaches were the socially accepted norm, precisely because of the potential for retaliatory violence. The article will conclude with a discussion framing the foregoing in terms of moral economy. It will be argued that the balance between landlord power and tenant resistance created a grudging acceptance of respective rights.

Mallorca keeps an age-old biocultural heritage embodied in their appealing landscapes, largely exploited as an intangible tourist asset. Although hotel and real estate investors ignore or despise the peasant families who still persevere in farming amidst this worldwide-known tourist hotspot, the Balearic Autonomous Government has recently started a pay-for-ecosystem-services scheme based on the tourist eco-tax collection that offers grants to farmers that keep the Majorcan cultural landscapes alive, while a growing number of them have turned organic. How has this peasant heritage survived within such a global tourist capitalist economy? We answer this question by explaining the socio-ecological transition experienced from the failure of agrarian capitalism in the island, and the ensuing peasantization process during the first half of the 20th century through a local banking-driven and market-oriented land reform. Then, the early tourist specialization during the second half of the 2...

Agrarian transformations in Andean Peru, subject to larger sociopolitical and economic processes, entailed major material, environmental, and biological changes. The long history of sheep introduction in Andean environments, its specific impact on the central highlands, and the making of an Andean breed of sheep—the oveja Junín—illustrate how such transformations shaped rural Peru as a societal space. Following larger environmental patters in Latin America, sheep became the dominant animal of the upper Andean regions, populating depleted landscapes and refashioning otherwise hostile environments as areas of agrarian productivity. Many of the transformations that occurred during colonial times, particularly the consolidation of the hacienda system and the rise of sheepherding as a form of peonage, served manifold purposes in the transition to the national period. While the 19th-century liberal obliteration of corporate identities and property obscured the legacy of indigenous communities, sheep continued to thrive and set the conditions for the incorporation of the Peruvian countryside into the global world economy. In the 20th century, with the parallel arrival of state and capital governance, transforming sheep and sheepherding from vernacular expressions of livelihood into advanced forms of modern agrarian industrialism merged together scientific and veterinarian knowledge with local understandings, producing the oveja Junín as the ultimate result. As sheepherding modernized based on efficient husbandry, sheep modernity efficiently nurtured rural developmentalism, bringing together communal and capitalist interests in unprecedented ways. The state-sponsored project of granjas comunales devoted to capital-intensive grazing economies reveals how husbandry and modern grazing activities both reinforced and transformed societal organization within indigenous communities, sanctioning existing differences while providing a vocabulary of capital for recasting their internal social relations of production. When the state envisioned the centralization of otherwise profitable communal grazing economies, through the allegedly empowering language of agrarian reform, the cooperativization of land, labor, and animals led to communal, family, and individual disenfranchisement. Indigenous community members, turned into campesinos, sought new battlegrounds for resisting state intromission. Eventually, the very biology of the oveja Junín as an exclusive domain of state and capital became the target of campesino sabotage. As the agrarian reform collapsed and revolution engulfed the countryside, rural livelihoods—sheep included—faced their ultimate demise, often with severe degrees of violence. In this entire trajectory, sheep—and the oveja Junín—ruled the upper regions of the Andes like no political power ever did

En el presente estudio histórico se analizan los antecedentes en el ámbito agrario del Movimiento de los Trabajadores Sin Tierra (MST) de Brasil, entre los años de 1964 y 1985: las condiciones sociales, políticas y económicas que lo propiciaron, así como las formas de organización, movilización, demandas y propuestas campesinas en Brasil en ese período.

: Pada tahun 2019, Kabupaten Musi Rawas melaksanakan redistribusi tanah dari tanah eks kawasan hutan. Terbitnya Peraturan Presiden Nomor 86 Tahun 2018 diharapkan dapat mempercepat pelaksanaan reforma agraria. Regulasi ini mensyaratkan adanya standar teknis, kelembagaan, dan tahapan kegiatan yang berjalan dalam kondisi ideal. Oleh karena itu perlu dilakukan penelitian untuk menjelaskan sejauh mana kesesuaian komponen tersebut diterapkan dalam pelaksanaanya. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan deskriptif. Hasil penelitiannya menunjukkan bahwa mekanisme perubahan status kawasan hutan dilakukan dengan pengukuhan kawasan hutan dan pelaksanaan redistribusi tanah tersebut dilaksanakan sesuai prosedur. Kendala-kendala yang ditemui, yakni pelepasan kawasan hutan yang baru sampai pada tahap berita acara tata batas, revisi Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah (RTRW) sedang berjalan, dan beberapa kekurangan kelengkapan administrasi yang seharusnya bisa diselesaikan dengan tepat dengan koordinasi yang baik antara stakeholder yang terlibat.

That author of this study draws attention to a case of resistance against the communist regime, which occurred in a Czech rural district almost 60 years ago. The work deals with peasants’ protest rally in front of the District National Committee building in Dobruška. In December 1949, local private farmers decided to respond to official inspections of their homesteads (which forced them to deliver disproportionately large amounts of produce within the framework of the Czechoslovak Communist Party’s agricultural policies) by organising a protest march to the District National Committee. A Czechoslovak national flag was raised at the head of the procession and around 300 people took part in the event. The state security authorities responded with the mass detention of selected farmers, whom it then portrayed as a group of subversives. This resulted in the political trial of 18 farmers, whom communist propaganda disparagingly described as the “village rich” or “kulaks.” The case was heard before the Prague State Court in Hradec Kralove. Prison sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years were given to six people who were identified as organisers, while sentences of 1 to 9 years were meted out to the others. Fourteen people had all their property confiscated while five were subsequently forced out of their homes as part of a nationwide security clampdown known as Operation K (“kulaks”). The study describes what motivated the farmers to resist and gives an account of what went on behind the scenes during the investigation. It also outlines how the treasonous group was fabricated and provides details of the hardships suffered by those who were convicted as well as the difficulties subsequently experienced in their district. The paper draws on documents from both central and regional archives.

El objetivo de esta investigación es comprender la expansión de la soja en el Departamento de San Pedro (Paraguay) y analizar las relaciones comerciales establecidas entre productores rurales y empresas de esta cadena productiva. Esta investigación concilió instrumentos cualitativos y cuantitativos, como revisiones bibliográficas, análisis de datos estadísticos, visitas a las ferias agropecuarias, entrevistas a representantes de empresas y aplicación de cuestionarios a productores de soja. El mayor crecimiento de la producción del grano en San Pedro ocurrió a inicios del año 2000 y actualmente es posible identificar una gran diversidad de productores de soja (en términos de área, formas de posesión de tierra, infraestructura en la propiedad y origen) y empresas (tanto las líderes nacionales como firmas de actuación más local/regional). La relación comercial entre productores y firmas es necesaria para ambos, pero los primeros se encuentran en una condición de mayor dependencia y con riesgo de endeudamiento, sobre todo los que detienen pequeñas áreas y baja capitalización.

he reconfigured agrarian structure imposed new production and
commoditisation patterns across the settlement types in
Zimbabwe. From 2000, new markets were established, with
differentiated effects on capital accumulation for different sets of
farmers. After the Fast Track Land Reform programme, the impact
of the economy-wide challenges, climate change, capital and
global geo-politics on the agrarian economy remain relatively
unexplored. Using a case study of Hwedza District, this article
reveals the changing agrarian relations beyond the trimodal
agrarian structure, showing that smallholder farmers have
significantly relied on reinvestment of agricultural sales proceeds
rather than contract farming. Farmers exit the contract farming
arrangements citing their exploitative nature. The article
contributes to the debate on Zimbabwe’s agrarian and political
transition.

O contexto da segunda metade do século XIX no Brasil é caracterizado pela realização de uma série de iniciativas, particulares e estatais, voltadas a modernizar o país. Neste artigo, a partir da análise dos relatórios do Ministério da Agricultura, Comércio e Obras Públicas (1860-1889), o objetivo será discutir o sentido, os motivos e os significados da política indigenista imperial e sua articulação com a perspectiva de que o Brasil deveria ser modernizado. Dessa forma, a proposta visa debater o lugar que foi reservado às populações indígenas naquele contexto, demonstrando o papel que, segundo a ótica dominante, elas deveriam desempenhar para garantir o sucesso das metas almejadas.

ABSTRACT
The ‘Indian’ under the Eye of the Empire: Indigenist policies, modernization and conflict in nineteenth-century Brazil (1860-1889)

The second half of the nineteenth century in Brazil was characterized by a series of initiatives, both private- and state-led, aimed at modernizing the country. In this article, using the reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works (1860-1889), I discuss the logic, motives and significance of the Portuguese Empire’s ‘Indian policy,’ and its articulation with the view that Brazil should be modernized. I seek to examine the place
that was reserved for indigenous populations in this context, demonstrating the role that, according to the dominant perspective, they should play to ensure the success of modernization in Brazilian society.

The rural proletariat constitute a substantial proportion of the global poor. Leading better lives is central to their political practices. In this paper, I aim to elaborate the political practices that attend to these aspirations, interrogations and contests. I examine existing approaches to studying political practices of the rural proletariat. I do this with a focus on India, where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is in force since 2005. I first locate the program against the backdrop of economic transformations in India. I then examine the ways in which the rural proletariat engage with the program, even when other opportunities in the agricultural sector are available. Based on these examinations, I argue that the practices spawned by the program are to be understood as ‘encroachments’ into the extant social customs, norms and habits of rural India. This perspective, I contend, is more fruitful than locating the rural proletariat’s engagement with the NREGA as a coping strategy or a tactic of resistance against rural elites. The data which this paper draws on include official sources, in-depth interviews with workers in rural Bihar and West Bengal and ethnographic observations.

Презентация доклада на 24-й международной научной конференцим студентов, аспирантов и молодых учёных «Ломоносов-2017».
В докладе рассматриваются историографический поиск и выделение высшего слоя нетитулованной англо-саксонской светской элиты накануне Нормандского Завоевания (1066 г.) по материалам XII века. Последовательно разбираются и критикуются попытки в рамках конституционной истории (Р. Рид и Д. Рофф) и аграрной истории (У. Стаббс и П. Кларк). Докладчик приходит к выводу, что данные гипотезы не подтверждаются известными источниками (Книга Страшного Суда и нормандские переводы англо-саксонского права XII в.) при непредвзятом анализе и требуют насильного прочтения известных текстов. В заключении делается предположение, что подобные построения – это отражение современных представлений об устройстве общества (в том числе и английского), где относительно чётко выделяются имущественные классы.

A PowerPoint presentation at the 24th international academic student and young researcher's conference "Lomonosov-2017".
The presentation analyses the historiographical search for an upper layer of the titleless Anglo-Saxon lay elite on the eve of the Norman Conquest (1066). The presentation's consecutive study reveals the flaws in the constitutional (by R. Reid and D. Roffe) and agrarian (W. Stubbs and P. Clarke) approaches to the problem. The author finds that such hypotheses do not find support from the extant sources (the Domesday Book and Norman translation of the Anglo-Saxon law) when reading without any preconceived notions. The conclusion supposes that this kind of search might be a reflection of the modern-day view of the society (including the English one) as composed of more or less clearly defined classes.

Meend is a common place-name or toponym in and around the Forest of Dean. It is a name that is familiar to most people in the locality, and the majority of these could probably describe the principal characteristics of a meend. These could usually include an open character, uncultivated and accessible for informal recreational use. The word is often used in association with “forest waste”. These areas lay outside the forest plantation inclosures and were historically exploited by local communities for grazing and as a source of bracken, gorse and brushwood. These practices have declined over the last half century. Most meends that still exist have one or more of these attributes. However, many more have been lost over the years, and exist only as distant memories, have had their names corrupted or absorbed, or appear only as forgotten names on modern maps. This paper seeks to shed some light on the origins of what is possibly the most important group of place and field names in and
around the Forest of Dean and points to areas of research that would yield dividends in uncovering the social and environmental origins of the forest.

This study was carried out with the objective of assessing the general socio-economic status of Mukta Kamaiya after one decade of the liberation. Two village development committees (VDCs), namely Kohalpur in Banke and Kalika in Bardiya districts were purposively selected for the study. Household survey was carried out in 120 households and randomly selected 60 from each VDC. Focus group discussion and in-depth interviews were also carried out. The socio-economic status of Mukta Kamaiya was found poor in terms of access & ownership of natural and physical assets and education was limited basically in primary level. There were limited source of income and employment - heavily depended in casual wage labour and income was hardly sufficient to meet their daily basic requirement leading food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition. So, improving labour productivity through skill development and employment generation & enterprising is the most pronouncing way to improve their livelihood and social status. High cash generating agriculture like off-season vegetable farming, poultry and small livestock husbandry in the rural setting should support it.

The aim of the article consists in the research of transformations of ethnic identity in descendants of Belarusian peasantsmigrants
of Siberia and the Far East. The source basis of the research includes field data collected by the author in ethnographic expeditions
on the territory of 12 regions of Siberia and the Far East during the period from 2009 to 2017, the national structure of the
explored regions reflected in population censuses from 1897 to 2010 and also publications about local history of different years. Results
of the research indicate that at the time of mass agrarian migrations of the second half of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th
centuries the ethnic identity of most Belarusians was not created yet. Due to the internal nature of migrations, peasants identified
their homeland with Russia. Their identity had regional rather than ethnic differentiation. In Siberia Belarusian migrants began to live
near the Russian old resident population and received a new social and cultural status which found reflection in the wide use of the
name “samokhod” (lit. “self-movers”). After the establishment of the Soviet power, administrative and political factors initiated the
process of belarusization. Results of the All-Union population census of 1926 showed that most migrants already identified themselves
with Belarusians. In the 1930s–1940s the socio-political and economic factors of collectivization and industrialization as well
as the consequences of World War II led to serious demographic changes in places of compact accommodation of Belarusian peasants-
migrants. As a result of urbanization and modernization of the way of life of the Soviet village in the second half of the 20th
century, most descendants of Belarusian peasants-migrants began to identify themselves with Russians or just did not think about
their ethnic origin. Since the 1990s, the author observes a growth of interest of professional researchers and amateur enthusiasts in
the history and traditional culture of Belarusian peasants-migrants as in historical and cultural heritage. On this background, the Belarusian
ethnic identity begins to develop again among people who are interested in traditions of their ancestors. Today, mediated information
dominates in its formation rather than intergenerational historical memory. The author comes to a conclusion that during
different periods of time a number of demographic, political, social and cultural factors had impact on features of ethnic identity of
descendants of Belarusian peasants-migrants. Therefore, today it is considered more suitable to use the concept “descendants of Belarusian
peasants-migrants” rather than the ethnonym “Belarusian” when referring to offsprings of people who moved from Belarus to
Siberia and the Far East in the second half of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries.

Townsend Middleton's The Demands of Recognition is an invitation to think through the everyday dilemmas of ethnic minorities as well as the state anthropologists who certify them as 'scheduled tribes' in contemporary India. Through an extended case study of Nepali-speaking groups that are collectively known as 'Gorkhas', Middleton shows how late liberal governmentality and what he calls the 'ethno-contemporary' make and remake each other. As the postcolonial state has devised affirmative action policies to redress the historical disadvantages of socially marginalized groups, a new kind of 'ethnopolitics' has emerged to claim the loaves and fishes offered by the state. In turn, this new ethnopolitics has compelled the state to rethink its classificatory schemas and mechanisms in order to decide which groups ought to be considered as 'tribes', and hence, merit affirmative action. In most cases, the primary aim of ethnopolitics in contemporary India is to enter official lists or 'schedules' that record castes and tribes as well as other groups deemed to be 'backward' enough to warrant affirmative action. The situation with the Gorkhas was no different after their demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland went unmet a generation ago. By undertaking a fine-grained ethnographic exploration of the Gorkhas' ethnopolitics and the travails of their interlocutors within the postcolonial ethnographic state, Middleton challenges us to interrogate our received notions of ethnicity and about the place of anthropology in our world.

By Harry G. West and Celia Plender

This question and answer session with academic staff and students was held with James C. Scott after he delivered a Distinguished Lecture in the Food Studies Centre at SOAS, University of London, in December 2014. Scott reflects on his intellectual precursors and his place in the landscape of academic disciplines; the significance of food and agriculture in his work; the tenuous future of peasant agriculture and agrarian societies; globalization and the rise of corporate agriculture and the food industries; poverty and the struggle for justice; and his own experiences with farming and farm land conservation.

Aquest article pretén realitzar una primera aproximació al coneixement del paisatge històric del Segrià meridional, una regió que comprèn grosso modo els termes municipals d'Almatret, Llardecans, Maials i la meitat meridional del de Seròs. L'estudi agafa com a marc cronològic la longue durée, de manera que se centra en els principals processos que s'han anat produint al llarg de les diverses èpoques històriques i que han dut a la conformació del paisatge actual. D'aquests, pren una rellevant importància dins l'article l'anàlisi de les restes de centuriacions romanes, que sens dubte suposaren un abans i un després en el territori i marcaren fortament la seva evolució posterior. Entre d'altres aspectes, se centra també l'atenció en diverses partides creades en temps baixmedievals, que hom pot estudiar sobretot a partir de la documentació dels segles posteriors, així com en les transformacions d'època contemporània, principalment de l'any 1956 ençà.

[This paper aims to provide a first approach to knowledge on the historical landscape of southern Segrià, a region comprising roughly the municipalities of Almatret, Llardecans, Maials and the southern half of Seròs. The project establishes a long-term chronological framework focussing on main events from several historical periods that resulted in the current landscape arrangement. One of main events in the paper that set a milestone in the territory and played a key role in its evolution is the analysis of the remains of Roman centuriations. Other aspects touched upon are the 'partides' (Catalan land division) created in late medieval times, mainly studied through documents from later centuries, and contemporary transformations, particularly from 1956 onwards.]

This article discusses three main nodes of resistance (farmers, states and regional identities) to the BJP government’s farm laws and demonstrates that the linking wire between these three nodes is that these laws weaken the states’ federal agricultural rights through an increasing centralised agrobusiness restructuring of Indian agriculture. It also touches on the ecologically damaging consequences from the operation of these Acts through the destruction of locally - and state-based agriculture and its incorporation into all-India and global agricultural marketing systems. It argues for an eco-socialist vision to inform the farming laws debate in India as a critique of both the traditional right-wing and traditional left-wing discourses on agriculture and development. It concludes that protecting agriculture as a state subject within Indian federalism and resisting the influence of agrobusiness capitalism would be India’s key economic, political, social and cultural battle in the coming years. Grasping the seriousness of this issue would be a critical prerequisite of developing the perspective to strengthen federalism, decentralisation, diversity, democracy, local farming, small scale farming, cooperative farming and ecological sustainability.
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Grabbing Power outlines the history of agribusiness in Northern Honduras—from the United Fruit Company’s dominance in the 20th century to the rise of a powerful class of domestic elites in the 1980s and 90s including the brutal landowner Miguel Facussé, also known as the “oil palm grower of death.” The power of these elites is bolstered by international aid, “green” capitalism, a corrupt media, and US-funded militarization in the name of a tragic War on Drugs.

The current Ethiopian government originated in a Marxist revolutionary movement, which early in its struggle against the Derg regime recognized the widespread discrimination against women in Ethiopian society and placed gender emancipation at the centre of its revolutionary strategy. While political expediency and confrontation with patriarchal Ethiopian society has at times challenged its commitment to women, the EPRDF has, nevertheless, introduced a number of reforms which aim to promote gender equality. This includes recognition of equality between men and women in land rights, and a land registration programme that requires the names of both husbands and wives on certificates. This paper examines the gendered impacts of these reforms through analysis of three village-level case studies based on fieldwork conducted in 2009-10. The cases highlight the contingent nature of gender outcomes based on local state-society relations, and the government’s political and economic priorities, resulting in considerable variation within Ethiopia.

The Global Environmental Justice Documentaries collection includes the film "River Blue." RiverBlue connects the global consumer appetite for fast fashion with a rapid increase in the highly profitable but environmentally damaging production of “disposable” clothing. But under pressure, the industry is changing.