“This Is Our Bank”: Agricultural Associations and Their Role in Two Swabian Villages in Satu Mare From the Regime Change to the Present

The study examines the impact of the agricultural associations of two Swabian settlements – Mezőfény (Foieni) and Mezőpetri (Petrești) – on the local economy and society. Agricultural associations played an important role at the beginning of the process of agrarian transformation after the regime change in Romania. The successor organisations of the socialist agricultural associations, now established on a voluntary basis, were able to counteract the impoverishment caused by the reparcelling or forced reparcelling of land during the long transitional period, while at the same time exploiting their monopoly position to prevent the emergence of individual and family farmers. The risk-averse, self-reliant economic model of the associations is reminiscent of the peasant, self-sufficient farm organisation. The associations can thus be seen as a very specific form of post-socialist post-peasant production systems.

Rural and Agrarian Transformation 1984–2018 in Three Marginal Villages in Njombe Region, Tanzania

When the author of this chapter first visited the region he encountered a place that was characterized by very high levels of poverty. These villages had not been able to benefit from state investment in maize production. However, changes in agricultural production, migration of people outside the area, and remittances, and in particular the explosion of tree farming, tomatoes, and potatoes in a relatively rich area, combined with infrastructural improvements, have been transformative. Change here has been driven by a mutually interlinked set of processes entailing agricultural transformation involving changing farming and rural transformation in a changing rural economy. This is visible in changes to asset ownership as well as relational and social well-being.

Typology of Agrarian Structure on Transmigration Land to Achieve Agrarian Transformation

Land ownership and land mastery are two things that build rural structures in the community. In the peasant community, the Agrarian structure becomes the determinant of other aspects of life, such as agricultural production rate, income level as well as economic and other social factors. The importance of Agrarian structure in the peasant community makes researchers conduct a study aimed at analysing the typology of the Agrarian structure of transmigrant farmers in South Konawe Province of Southeast Sulawesi through a combination of ownership aspects and mastery aspects. This research used qualitative methods by taking one case, namely in the Transmigration Settlement Unit (UPT) Arongo in Southeast Sulawesi Province. The results showed that through the combination of aspects of land ownership and land mastery as a form of Agrarian structure, there are three typologies of Agrarian structure form in the UPT. Arongo, owning and mastering agricultural land, owning but not mastering land and not owning but mastering land. To achieve Agrarian transformation, the ideal typology of Agrarian structures for peasant communities is in the form of Agrarian structures in which people own land while mastering it so that land management is optimal.

Pedagogies of Feminist Resistance: Agrarian Movements in Africa

In the historical course of agrarian transformation in Africa, the reconstitution and fragmentation of the peasantry along the lines of gender, ethnic, class, and racial divisions which facilitate their exploitation remains a central concern in the analysis of the peasant path, of which the exploitation of gendered labor has been a particularly important concern for feminist agrarian theorizations. In contribution to these debates, this article examines the ways in which feminist concerns have shaped, driven, and defined the social and political parameters of agrarian movements in Africa. Even though agrarian movements articulating gender questions are not generalizable as feminist, their concern with social, political, and economic structures of oppression and their approach to gendered oppression as a political question lends them to characterization as being feminist. Through an examination of the changing forms of women-led agrarian struggles, the article shows how women’s responses to the dominant structures and conditions of colonial and post-colonial capitalist accumulation could be characterized as feminist due to their social and political imperatives behind women’s resistance.