Eric Vanhaute Ghent University WHA Conference Beijing, July 10th 2011 Trajectories of Peasant Transformation. The incorporation and transformation of rural zones Eric Vanhaute Ghent University WHA Conference Beijing, July 10th 2011

Doing global history: structuring time and place - Comparisons and Connections … and Systems how do scales of human action interact? in a world that is not equal

Understanding a global process: towards a world without peasants? Equals de-agrarianization? De-ruralization? De-peasantization? After divergence more convergence?

In search for a methodology Local, regional and global dimensions Rural zones and frontiers Combining a comparative analysis with a (world-) systemic perspective: multiple scales of time / place / unit of analysis

1/ Defining actors: peasant / peasantries Peasants as a social group Peasantries as a social process Processes of ‘peasantization’ (de- and re-)

Peasants are rural, agricultural producers who control the land they work either as tenants or as smallholders who are organised largely in households and in village communities, that meet most of their subsistence needs (production, exchange, credit), who pool different forms of income and who are ruled by other social groups who extract a surplus either directly via rents, via (non balanced) markets, or through control of state power (taxation) Key words are (some degree of) autonomy, income-pooling, household based village structures and surplus extraction outside local control

Redefinition / Recreation Struggles: Acces to land Access to household labour Access to commons Access to knowledge  Old and modern enclosures

2/ Defining spaces: zones and frontiers - Frontiers as zones of sustained contact between different social systems - External / horizontal frontiers Internal / vertical frontiers - Peasant zones as (peripheral) spaces of exploitation and recreation

The redefinition of ‘peasant spaces’ 16th century: peasant zones around capitalist centers around North Sea 19th century: forced (re-) peasantization in European colonies 21th century: (re-) peasantization as anti-systemic force ?

Old and new peasantries? The redefinition of ‘peasant spaces’ The reduction of ‘peasant spaces’ by - Recreation/redistribution/appropriation of wealth - Redefining livability of local systems of protection/support/credit - The enclosure of ‘commons’  An increasing vulnerability

Contextualizing ‘the European way’: de-peasantization as a part of the ‘theory of progress’ Economic growth cum social welfare From informal to formal protection systems From local/regional to national/global scale Externalizing (part of) social en ecological costs (green revolutions)

Collective research project: trajectories of peasant transformation Different roads of transformation of peasant societies: 1500-2000 North-Western Europe (North Sea Area) China (Yangzi River Delta) Latin-America (Central Andes) Central Africa (Great Lakes)

Social and spatial differentiation Uneven incorporation and uneven commodification processes of de- and re-peasantization are also the outcome of changing strategies of peasant livelihood diversification decrease of the margins of survival

Central field of struggle: Rights of Access and Rights of Property To means of production: labour, capital goods, land and natural resources, knowledge

Actors (who has rights / who defines rights) Peasant (families) Village institutions Lords Markets States (government) Social movements

Trajectories of change Defining rights / redistribution of rights Types of labour /surplus accumulation Types of peasant organisation / resistance Systemic changes: agricultural and food regimes

Interconnected models of peasant transformation As internal frontiers (core processes) As external frontiers (peripheral processes) ‘hybrid/mixed models’?  social and regional differentiation in a global model