Authoritarianism, populism, nationalism and resistance in the agrarian South

ABSTRACT

This special section contributes to the vibrant debates concerning the “new political moment” underway with regards to “authoritarian populism” and nationalism in the agrarian South. With neoliberal globalisation in crisis, nationalist-populist and authoritarian movements are gaining ground, often transforming state and class configurations in ways that appease landed, agro-industrial and political elites, while simultaneously seeking to neutralise forms of resistance. Rather than starting from an ambiguous concept that submerges these class conflicts and contradictions, we argue that re-centering class struggles that frame the new political moment offers a more useful framework for understanding agrarian transformation in the contemporary period.

RÉSUMÉ

Cette section spéciale contribue aux débats dynamiques concernant le «nouveau moment politique» en cours pour le «populisme autoritaire» et le nationalisme dans le secteur agraire du Sud global. Alors que la mondialisation néolibérale est en crise, les mouvements nationalistes-populistes et autoritaires gagnent du terrain, transformant souvent les configurations de classe et étatiques d’une manière à apaiser les élites politiques, foncières, et de l’agro-industrie, tout en cherchant simultanément à neutraliser différentes formes de résistance. Plutôt que de partir d’un concept ambigu noyant ces contradictions et conflits de classe, nous soutenons que le recentrage des luttes de classes qui structurent le nouveau moment politique offre un cadre plus utile pour comprendre les transformations agraires dans la période contemporaine.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• populism
• nationalism
• resistance
• agrarian change

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Haroon Akram-Lodhi, members of the CJDS Editorial Board, and Administrative Editors Martha Snodgrass and Matt Husain for their help in seeing this Special Section through to completion. The authors also thank Gillian Hart and Antonio Roman-Alcalá, members of the BRICS Initiative for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS), and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments which helped strengthen this article.

Note on contributors

Ben M. McKay is an assistant professor of development and sustainability at the University of Calgary in Canada. His research focuses on the political economy and ecology of agrarian change in Latin America, agrarian extractivism, and food sovereignty alternatives. He is the author of The Political Economy of Agrarian Extractivism: Lessons from Bolivia (Fernwood, 2020) and co-editor of The Edward Elgar Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies (Edward Elgar, 2021) and Rural Transformations and Agro-Food Systems (Routledge, 2018).

Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira is assistant professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine. He works on global political ecology and critical geopolitics, focusing on agroindustrialization and transnational investments in land, infrastructure, and finance between China and Brazil. He has co-edited special issues of Political Geography, Globalizations, and the Journal of Peasant Studies, the latter having been republished as Soy, Globalization, and Environmental Politics in South America (Routledge 2018).

Juan Liu is an associate professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University (COHD-CAU) and a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her research interests include political economy/ecology of agriculture, food and environment, internal migration and left-behind population, land politics, etc.

Notes

1 The term “agrarian South” emphasises rural areas, peoples, and agrarian change in the “Global South”. As Dirlik (2007) points out, the term “Global South” has limitations, but it succinctly captures ongoing socio-economic inequalities between countries with opposing histories as colonisers/colonised, and early/late industrialisation. This North/South distinction became particularly useful since the downfall of the Soviet Union, and the geopolitical reorganisation away from the “capitalist West / socialist East / and Third World non-alignment”. Including Tajikistan in the “agrarian South” reflects how it has more in common with countries that remain more agrarian than industrialised, and in a relatively subordinate position in histories of imperialism/colonialism. The fact we include Tajikistan in the “agrarian South”, however, does not suggest all post-Soviet countries would be included in this category as well. Russia, for example, might not fit adequately in this regard.

2 Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

3 The article on Tajikistan will be released at a later date and will be kept anonymous throughout this introduction at the request of the author.

4 Similar approaches are witnessed in leftist critiques of right-wing populism and authoritarianism in the Global North as well (Mamonova and Franquesa 2020; Roman-Alcalá 2020), which call attention to the convergences and continuities, as much as the transformations, of the class and racial configurations of right-wing populism, authoritarianism, and nationalism in the US and Europe.

5 But see Hall (2013) for an overview and critique of “primitive accumulation” and “accumulation by dispossession” frameworks with regards to the global land grab.