Rural precarity: relational autonomy, ecological dependence and political immobilisation in the agro-industrial margin

ABSTRACT

Across the world, economic interests and state-making interventions have converged in dispossessing rural and urban dwellers. Drawing on literature on rural transformation, precarity, and life after dispossession, this paper explores how lifeworlds are constructed after dispossession. Based on ethnographic research in an Afro-descendant village in agro-industrial Colombia, I analyse five income-generating activities that together point to rural precarity, characterised by uncertain labour relations, fragile conditions of life, ecological dependence, and reconfigured rural relations. While villagers construct their lifeworlds around community, autonomy, and recognition, the constant search for income and reconfigured rural relations uphold and deepen inequalities in the agro-industrial margin.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural transformation
• precarity
• recognition
• community
• patronage relations
• Colombia

Acknowledgements

I send my dearest thanks to the villagers in Brisas del Frayle for receiving me and sharing their daily lives with me. I thank Irene Vélez-Torres for mentoring and facilitating the research in the Cauca Valley. I further wish to thank Christian Lund and Mattias Borg Rasmussen for constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the two anonymous reviewers for comments that helped shape the final version of this paper. I take full responsibility for any remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding details

This research was supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) [ERC Grant: State Formation through the Local Production of Property and Citizenship (Ares (2015) 2785650–ERC-2014-AdG–662770-Local State)].

Notes

1 All names are pseudonymised, while names of geographical locations have been kept.

2 I use the term ‘lifeworlds’ to refer to livelihood practices, i.e. ways in which people secure basic necessities such as food and shelter, and a broader set of relations, knowledges and values connecting people with each other and their environment (A. Escobar 2008).

3 I understand community as dynamic entity that is continuously constructed through relations between people and their surroundings (Agrawal and Gibson 1999; A. Escobar 2008; Malkki 1992).

4 For instance, Simandjuntak (2012) argues that votes from marginalised citizens are central to the functioning of the political machine of ‘patronage democracy’.

5 While rural precarity is cut through by gendered and racialised conditions (Chatterjee 2020), a full development of such analysis is beyond the scope of this paper.

6 Millar (2014) uses the term ‘relational’ to emphasise that ‘autonomy’ should not be understood in a liberal sense, since people are always woven into relations and social obligations.

7 ‘Ingenio’ means both ‘wit, ingenuity’ and ‘company’, yet in the Cauca Valley the term is used particularly for sugarcane companies operating highly industrialised production complexes.

8 According to a household survey conducted as part of this research, 61% of the households recognise themselves as ‘Black, Mulatto or Afro-descendant’, while 14% recognise themselves as ‘Mestizo’, 9% as ‘Indigenous’, and 6% as ‘White’ (Vélez-Torres et al. 2017).

9 Pancoger are food crops grown for subsistence and household consumption.

10 The ingenios have likewise formed the Association of Sugarcane Cultivators in Colombia (Asocaña).

11 A pub game involving brass rings thrown from a distance as dart to a square table with several holes, each yielding different points.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inge-Merete Hougaard

Inge-Merete Hougaard holds a PhD in Political Ecology from University of Copenhagen and has a background in International Development Studies and Public Administration. Her research interests include resource rights, state-making, climate politics, landscape change and the politics of recognition. While her earlier research project focused on small-scale sand extraction in Colombia, she is currently working on a project investigating the role of negative emissions and the risk of mitigation deterrence in Danish climate politics, and an action-oriented research project on landscape narratives and co-creation in multifunctional land consolidation in Denmark.