Agricultural modernisation is a longstanding goal of China’s Party-state. Since the early 2000s, it has pursued this goal through policies designed to facilitate land consolidation and support the expansion of large agricultural enterprises – ‘New Agricultural Operators’ (NAOs). In this paper we explore the effect of these policies on the livelihoods of a cohort of smallholder orange growers in the mountainous regions of Hubei province and the local political economy. An analysis of data from a 2019 survey of 266 households (...) and interviews with villagers, agribusiness executives, cooperative leaders, and government officials, we find smallholder farmers are earning good incomes as independent commodity producers, withstanding attempts by local officials at land consolidation, and bypassing NAOs to self-determine their own modes of production and exchange. Our results speak to the ongoing debate about the future of smallholder farming in China, identify the strengths and limitations of recent state-centric analyses of agrarian transition, and re-iterate the pitfalls of the central government’s agricultural modernisation agenda. (shrink)

Critically analyzes and revitalizes agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution. Today, most historians, philosophers, political theorists, and scholars of rural America take a dim view of the agrarian ideal that farmers and farming occupy a special moral and political status in society. Agrarian rhetoric is generally seen as special pleading on the part of farmers seeking protection from labor reform and environmental regulation while continuing to receive direct payments and subsidies from the public till. Agrarianism should not (...) be viewed as a set of immutable claims about farming and political order, but as a tradition of moral and political philosophy that has evolved and deepened over the centuries. Agrarian naturalism--the belief that culture and conduct are conditioned by nature because they are of a piece with nature--becomes pragmatic naturalism, giving way to a new set of puzzles about how we are to understand the rural landscape and our responsibilities for its use. The agrarian idea that personality and sociability are integrated with the material transformation of the landscape can serve as the basis for a new, pragmatically grounded ethic of natural resources and rural development. The essays in this volume critically analyze and revitalize agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution in the classical American philosophy of key figures such as Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Dewey, and Royce. Three chapters address the belief that farming peoples develop moral virtue and a taste for democracy as it evolved in the American context, and four examine how a reconstitution of agrarian themes might invigorate our nation's thinking on environment, food, and rural development policy. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism will be of broad interest to scholars of American philosophy, rural history, history of ideas, geography, and agricultural or natural resource policy. (shrink)

The creation of humanity (Gn 1:26–2:25) marks the climatic point of the creation process because after it, God is said to have rested. A clear marker that humans are the epitome of creation is the fact that they were created in God’s image (Gn 1:26). Unlike animals, humans have the capacity to think, act with free will, exert self-control and also have a conscience. These distinctive characteristics earn humanity not only dominion over creation (Gn 1:28), but also the care towards (...) the created order. The fact of having been created in God’s image, imago Dei, or to be godlike, is therefore associated with certain rights and responsibilities over creation. Further, being created in God’s image implies that human life itself is sacred and thus should not be terminated in any way, either by the individual themself or by any other person(s) (Gn 9:6). Given that human life is so sacred, such a rationale is invoked in the absolute prohibition on murder. Above all, being created in God’s image connotes gender equality – ‘male and female he created them’ (Gn 1:27b). In view of the land reform exercise in Zimbabwe, so much has happened, but the big question which remains is whether women have received a fair share in the land redistribution exercise. Making a womanist contextual reading of Genesis 1:26, this article seeks to reflect on the Zimbabwean land reform exercise, challenging the lack of gender inclusion in the redistribution exercise. Contribution: Given that women theology is that of liberation, empowerment and affirmation, this research makes a unique contribution to women theologies as it pushes for women’s empowerment through fair land redistribution. By tapping into the implications of having been created in God’s image, the research has successfully argued that the current situation, whereby gender gaps in land ownership are still quite large, needs to be addressed as stewardship over creation was given to both men and women. (shrink)

Physiocracy is still sometimes seen as an oddly archaic programme of agricultural development. The aim of this paper is to show that one of the Physiocrats’ prime concerns was to take the subject of agriculture out of international relations. The fiscal regime that was central to Physiocracy was designed to make every large territorial state self-sufficient and, by doing so, to break the connection between modern great power politics, the international division of labour, and the politics of necessity. From this (...) perspective, the memorandum that Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, sent to the Berne Economic Society in 1759, contains an early indication of what, had the Physiocratic programme ever been implemented in full, a world reformed on Physiocratic lines might have looked like. (shrink)

The Forestry Pilot Plan set intomotion collectively-owned and managed forestry in overforty communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico and hasshown the promise of a forestry development model thatpromotes conservation by giving local people a genuinestake in sustainable resource management. Today, thelegacy of the PPF is under great pressure. Externally,neoliberal policy reform restructures agrarianproduction in ways that favor individual overcollective management of natural resources.Internally, organizational problems createinefficiencies within both forestry ejidos(cooperative agrarian communities) and theirintermediate level forestry civil societies. Peasants'capacity to defend (...) their interests and dealeffectively with their production problems throughstrong representative organizations is beingundermined by new rules for economic associationwithin the ejidos and by the turning over of technicalservice financing to the market. Though organizationalinnovations within the ejidos hold positive potential,existing civil societies merit continued assistance askey actors promoting sustainable forestry. Studyingcommon property management regimes across multiplelevels and dimensions reveals that in Mexico, policyreform overlooks the crucial social resourcesrepresented by peasant organization, undermining thepossibility of sustainable forest management whileassigning the peasant most of the cost ofconservation. If conservation is indeed encouraged bythe genuine participation of those with a stake insustainable use of natural resources, national andinternational communities that value Mexico's tropicalforests should also invest in both social and economiccosts of conservation. (shrink)

Gustav von Bergmann (1749–1814) was a Lutheran pastor in Livland, one of the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Being interested in Enlightenment ideas, he published a string of literary, historical and political works in German and Latvian. In these works, the tension between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ wings of Baltic Enlightenment becomes visible, and they can serve as an example of intertwined and often conflicting ideas concerning the education of the ‘common people’ and agrarian reforms within the context (...) of Volksaufklärung (Popular Enlightenment). In the article, an overview of the debates on serfdom and political reforms has been provided by sketching different approaches of Baltic intellectuals and also influences on their ideas from German-speaking countries. Bergmann wrote historical works that emphasised the need of social reforms, but at the same time opposed radical political changes; the shift in his views was influenced by French revolution. His publications in Latvian were in line with Volksaufklärung ideas and corresponded to the concept of gradual transformations by preparing peasants for freedom through the means of education. Belletristic fiction in almanacs, sermons, and translation of German bestseller Noth- und Hülfsbüchlein (1788) served this purpose along with the practical work such as smallpox inoculation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Appian and the Aftermath of the Gracchan ReformDaniel J. GargolaAppian's History of the Gracchan reform is arguably the single most detailed and coherent account of it. Early in the first book of his Civil Wars he outlines the development of a crisis in the countryside and the terms of the law Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (tr. pl. 133) proposed to remedy it; he describes the struggle to pass the measure (...) and efforts of the tribune's opponents to block it; he tells of attempts to implement the law in the years after Tiberius' death; and he summarizes the legislative agenda and the political activities of C. Gracchus, Tiberius' younger brother, when he was tribune of the plebs in 123 and 122. Appian brings his history of the Gracchi to a close with a description of a series of laws put forward in the years following the death of the younger Gracchus and the ways they reversed earlier gains. Land reform continued to be a central issue in the conflicts that would bring the Roman Republic to an end, and historians often have relied upon Appian's short description of post–Gracchan legislation to reconstruct the politics of the matter in the last two decades of the second century. After all, he provides the only surviving overview of the agrarian legislation of these years. But scholars have found it difficult to reconcile Appian's claims with other evidence. The problem, a closer inspection will show, lies in the assumption that Appian produced or intended to produce a straightforward and unbiased account and the resulting conviction that these measures should be easily and readily identifiable. Instead I argue here that Appian has presented a highly schematic version of events that reveals more about his methods as a historian than it does about the laws themselves or the policies of those who proposed them.Appian's Account and Modern Interpretations of ItAt first glance Appian's version (BC 1.27.121–24) of the aftermath of reform is simple and straightforward. Using the death of C. Gracchus [End Page 555] as his starting point, Appian first reports the passage of a law permitting recipients of allotments to sell them and then claims that the rich immediately bought the land from the poor or took it by force. After this, a tribune, Spurios Borios or Bourios in the manuscripts, successfully proposed a law ending the distribution of public land, which those in possession were to own on payment of a rent, and establishing instead a distribution of the funds raised in this fashion. Not much later, another tribune put an end to the rent and the distribution of money that depended upon it. As a result, Appian holds, the people lost everything, and there were still fewer citizens and soldiers. He finishes with a reference to a fifteen–year period, although an apparent lacuna makes its significance uncertain.Efforts to anchor this account firmly in the proper historical context have focused on a range of issues that have proven remarkably difficult to resolve.1 The first problem concerns the relationship, if any, between Appian's three laws and other agrarian legislation known to have been enacted in the years following the death of C. Gracchus. Cicero is the sole source for one measure. On two occasions he makes vague references to a law of Sp. Thorius that probably was passed in the latter half of the penultimate decade of the century.2 Neither is very informative. One merely records a jest involving the pasturing of animals on public lands made in the course of a senatorial debate on a lex Thoria.3 The second is potentially more useful. In Brutus (136) Cicero notes briefly the qualities as a speaker of a Sp. Thorius and connects him with a law regulating public lands: Sp. Thorius satis valuit in populari genere dicendi, is qui agrum publicum vitiosa et inutili lege vectigali [vectigale codd.] levavit. These brief remarks provide the sole grounds for emending [End Page 556] the name of the author of Appian's second measure, Spurios Borios or Bourios, to Sp. Thorius.4Unfortunately, Cicero's seemingly simple characterization of the Thorian... (shrink)

The late 60s of the twentieth century, in Sergipe, was marked by the outbreak of a series of conflicts over land tenure and lack of work. In a period in which social movements were seen as subversive demonstrations, the struggle of the peasants of the region Cotinguiba was treated as a police matter, through repression and arrest of leaders. This article seeks to analyze the process of negotiation between the peasants of Sergipe Cotinguiba and the political and agrarian elites (...) in the land reform process institution in the state under the mediation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Aracaju. This negotiation resulted in the creation of the Promotion of Sergipe Field Man and the formation of community farms under the supervision of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Aracaju, Dom Luciano Duarte. With this, it becomes possible to understand the actions of the clergy in the negotiation between peasants and landowners. (shrink)

The role of this article is to present a historical analysis of how the expropriation occurred and concentration of land in Brazil it has been since the arrival of the colonists to the present day. Evaluate how this event influenced, as a rule, expulsion and enslavement of indigenous peoples in their own lands, the enslavement of black Africans, in the Brazilian rural exodus, the swelling of the cities in recent decades; hunger in the field, the shortage of food commodities in (...) the cities and in the present family farming underdevelopment of the country as a whole and its consequent and continuous concentration in a few hands "the Brazilian agrarian oligarchy" preventing the implementation of agrarian reform and land distribution for families and landless farmers. (shrink)

I will, in this paper, set out the philosophical foundations and the basic structure of a new theory of justice. I will argue that both these foundations and the theory which is based upon them are intuitively attractive and theoretically sound. Finally, I will argue that both are supported by the fact that they lead to attractive implications such as the following: One can justify at least some governmental redistributive programs which presuppose that those receiving the wealth have a right (...) to it, without being committed to any form of egalitarianism. The justification for these redistributive programs respects property entitlements; it argues, in effect, that property entitlements and rights to some redistribution of wealth presuppose each other, rather than being in conflict with each other. The amount of redistribution to which each indigent person is entitled is directly proportional to the wealth of the society in question and inversely proportional to the number of indigents in the society in question. There are at this stage in the history of Western thought few entirely new ideas in philosophy. Too much has been written about the important issues to allow for entirely new approaches. My theory is no exception to these generalizations, for it draws upon the tradition of John Locke, of the agrarian reforms such as Paine, Spence, and Ogilvie, and of libertarian writers such as Robert Nozick. Nevertheless, I will argue, the resulting theory is a significant advance over the ideas of these earlier writers. (shrink)

Scholarly attention to sustainability transitions is rapidly increasing. This article explores how cultural politics constrain agricultural change. Cultural politics, or conflicting values about appropriate types of agriculture, are an underexplored variable influencing whether or not farmers adopt agroecological methods. The research focuses on the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that influence cultural politics. It analyzes the intersection of mechanisms and cultural politics in an Amazonian agrarian reform settlement of the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement. Insights into the factors confounding the (...) agroecological transition are derived from an analysis of longitudinal spatial data derived from historic aerial photographs and remotely sensed images, and ethnographic data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Drawing on a political ecology of education perspective, the cultural politics surrounding the agroecological transition are traced to the confluence of the region’s historical usage for cattle ranching, farmer’s conceptions of space and the combination of agricultural extension and government credit. The MST’s agroecological education initiatives hold the promise to drive the sustainability transition, but are also constrained by these cultural politics and associated mechanisms. (shrink)

The study presented is the result of a field survey conducted in Latvia in 1991. The brief of this research was to trace the role of the ‘private’ farm sector that has begun to emerge in the wake of the transition from a central-command to a market-oriented economy. Thus a look at the legislative acts embodying the agrarian reform is ccompanied by an analysis of the recent developments in local production systems. The study of ‘production systems’, or that part (...) of economic analysis that comes under the rubric of ‘farm systems’, was employed here for the first time to analyze a Soviet-type economic system in transition. The first and second sections, which focus on the historical evolution of Latvia's agriculture and the economics underpinning it, range in compass from the ‘first’ agrarian reform to collectivization and on to the present situation. This is followed by a look at the current, or ‘third’, land reform initiative (section 3), particular emphasis being accorded the emergence of new production structures and the problems posed by the transformation of the old ones (sections 4 and 5). The next section includes a discussion of the links between the farms of the socialized sector and of the nascent private one (section 6). The concluding remarks provide a recapitulation of the study's main findings. (shrink)

The author reviews some archival documents and materials of Pavlo P. Skoropadskyi, Hetman of the Ukrainian state, his personal memoirs and executive decisions on foreign policy issues over a period of April-December 1918. Pavlo Skoropadskyi's stand as to building the state and his commitment to the pro-Russian vector are demonstrated. Some examples of practical steps taken by Pavlo Skoropadskyi's government to gain understanding with the Entente countries after Germany and Austria-Hungary lost the war are given. Based on its organizational structure, (...) the type of the Hetman state is defined. An example of rapport with new temporary state formations on the Don and Kuban Rivers is given. The paper describes radical and prompt actions of the Hetman government, taken to draw the Crimea under the dominion of Ukraine. The fallacy of the pro-Russian line of policy of Hetman P. Skoropadskyi in the context of the German and Austro-Hungarian occupation is pointed out. The ambiguous course of Ukraine is exemplified by the formation of its Armed Forces, Cabinet of Ministers and delaying in the implementation of the agrarian reform. The attitude of Pavlo Skoropadskyi to the Ukrainians and the Galicians is demonstrated through specific references to his statements. The paper shows some practical steps in opening embassy missions and consular agencies in European countries, which point to the efforts of the Cabinet of Ministers to win international recognition and authority for the Ukrainian state. A situational geopolitical change of the diplomatic relations is demonstrated by the example of Romania. The main causes of the anti-Hetman uprising are defined as the lack of a negotiation process with representatives of socialist and democratic forces of Ukraine, incapability to enlist the support of rural masses and inferior moods in respect of Russia. (shrink)

An unanswered question on the making of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is when, where and how this book was written, edited, and published. The Preface of the original Portuguese handwritten manuscript is dated in Chile by 1967. Some scholars imply that the manuscript was finished sometime in March or April 1969. By then, Freire had left Chile and three of his books had been published by the Institute of Research and Training in Agrarian Reform, ICIRA. Freire himself had already (...) committed the English translation, from the original Portuguese manuscript with Herder & Herder in New York, together with the Spanish translation published by Tierra Nueva in Uruguay. This book explores the ways in which Freire's time and work in Chile proved to be decisive in the making of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, widely considered one of the most important books on critical pedagogy and adult learning and education in the twentieth century. The scope is confined to Paulo Freire's years of political exile in Chile, from late November 1964 to mid-April 1969. It builds upon evidence provided by scholarly research to answer four questions. What did Paulo Freire do during his years of exile in Chile. In which institutional contexts did he develop his pedagogical methods and political ideas? How was his literacy training method and participatory research approach shared throughout Latin America and the rest of the world? To what extent did his exile in Chile influence a paradigm shift in literacy training and adult education? (shrink)

Corporate actors in capitalist food systems continue to consolidate ownership of the means of production in ever fewer hands, posing a critical barrier to food sovereignty and to an agroecological transition. Further, corporate influence on the state is often direct and blatant, but there are also more insidious governance barriers– hegemonic structures of power and ‘common sense’ theories of value that exclude smallholders and local communities from participation in decision-making processes. This is especially pertinent in land use planning and in (...) building processing facilities, usually referred to as ‘value chain infrastructure’, or what I call the ‘intrinsic infrastructure of agroecology’. Using a case study approach, I evaluate the successes and failures of two campaigns for agrarian reform in the Australian state of Victoria, concluding that civil society must act collectively to gain the thick legitimacy needed to work with the state to enact enabling policies for an agroecological transition. (shrink)

In the last third of the 20th century, the social dynamic in the Ecuadorian Andes was subject to a series of significant changes : the emergence of a powerful Indian movement, on the one hand, and the reconfiguration of the role of the State, as a corollary of the implementation of structural adjustment policies, better known as “Washington Consensus”, on the other. In spite of the strengths of an Indian movement that found its roots in the agrarian reform of (...) the 1960s and 1970s, it became clear that the new neoliberal matrix led to the dissociation of rural development problem from the yet to be solved question of the concentration of land and wealth. By placing the emphasis on the politics of identity and on the organizational aspects of the Indian and peasant issue, the champions of ethno-development have downgraded any reference to the socioeconomic and political claims of the peasant populations. (shrink)

In the last two decades in Brazil, indigenous peoples have been struggling for their rights through the practice of what they call “retomada de terras” (reappropriation of lands), which consists of reoccupying ancestral lands that were invaded by farmers or other explorers. Inspired by indigenous perspectives, new social movements are struggling for land and territory. After years of reclaiming the legal demarcation of indigenous lands or agrarian reform without a resolution from the State, they decided to act directly in (...) the building of their territories. Within this process, there is also a production of another space, another ecology, another relationship to the land. If Carl Schmitt is right when he says that the original movement that makes law arise is the taking of land, which produces an ordering of space and defines borders that establish internal and external relations, what happens when lands are retaken and borders are reshaped? If we conceive of law in a very modern and technical conception, solely linked to an institutional image, it cannot help us to answer this question. The practice of “retomada” by the Tupinambá people and the agroecological experience of the Web of the People (Teia dos Povos) in Brazil can be an interesting path to investigate how the conditions of existence can be produced beyond abstract rights and more-than-human arrangements can change the way we live together. These practices produce justice spatially in a given territory and bring conceptions of rights rooted in the entanglements of bodies and their territories. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the meaning and function of Lycurgus in Machiavelli’s thought. While the exemplarity of the mythical Spartan legislator progressively fades in Machiavelli’s thought in favour of the Roman model, Lycurgus’ reforms are central in Machiavelli’s works on two issues of primary importance: wealth and land distribution. First, I analyse Machiavelli’s use of the ancient sources on both Lycurgus and other Spartan legislators to show how the former builds a selective and strategically balanced reading of the (...) ancient sources to build an image of the latter as a pro-popular ruler and of the subsequent Spartan reformers as followers not only of the mythical legislator generally, but also of his most controversial and popularly oriented attempts to reform property ownership in ancient Sparta. Lycurgus reveals how Machiavelli, far from seeing mixed government as the best form of government, promotes a strongly anti-aristocratic model. Second, I show that in Machiavelli’s thought the Spartan question can largely be seen as a background for his reading of Roman history, particularly its most crucial, conflictual and controversial period – that in which the Gracchi brothers’ attempted to achieve agrarian reform. (shrink)

Control over food supply was advanced in the kingdom of France in the Eighteenth century by Physiocrat economists under the seemingly advantageous label of 'freedom of grain trade'. In 1764 these reforms brought about a rise in grain prices and generated an artificial dearth that ruined the poor, some of whom died from malnutrition. The King halted the reform and re-established the old regime of regulated prices; in order to maintain the delicate balance between prices and wages, the monarchy (...) tried to limit speculation in subsistence goods and achieved some success in regulating the provisioning of public markets. Le Mercier de la Riviere concluded that executing these reforms required more effective political control. After 1774 the new king gave the Physiocratic reforms a second chance, reforming property rights and establishing an aristocracy of the landed rich. Again, this led to price hikes and as a result so-called 'popular emotions' erupted. Turgot ordered military intervention to dispel the protesters, marking a first rupture between the monarchy and the people over speculation on subsistence. Turgot's experiment failed and he was dismissed, but the Physiocracy had discovered that the market in subsistence offered new opportunities for economic power under the misleading legitimacy of 'economic laws'. Turgot's followers, Dupont de Nemours and Condorcet, continued to develop this 'theory' that was later translated into a 'scientific language' that ultimately asserted the autonomy of the economic sphere and its alleged independence from ethics and politics. The paper examines the continuity of events through the six great jacqueries and the French Revolution, including the all- important agrarian reform that ensued after 1792. Robespierre's concept of 'popular political economy' is analysed and compared with the notion of unfettered private property rights that lies at the heart of neoliberalism. (shrink)

This book is a tour de force in intellectual history. Kirmmse has brilliantly unearthed and synthesized the diverse social, political, ethical, and religious background of nineteenth-century Denmark from the onset of agrarian reforms to the shift from absolute monarchy to constitutional government. Kirmmse provides interesting chapters on such Golden Age cultural figures as Oehlenschlager, Mynster, Heiberg, Martensen, Grundtvig, Clausen, and others, and the romantic, Hegelian, elitist, populist themes and tensions elicited from their respective views. My brief review cannot (...) possibly do justice to the elaborate historical detail and interpretation found in Kirmmse's book. (shrink)

Capitalist reforms usually drive outmigration of peasants to cities, while elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind” in the countryside. The plight of these “left behind” populations is a major focus of recent agrarian studies in China. However, rural women are not merely passive victims of these transformations. Building on ethnographic research in Guangxi and Henan provinces from 2013 to 2017, and drawing on critical gender studies and feminist political ecology, I show how the (...) food safety crisis in China creates conditions for peasant women to increase control and income from organic food production, often establishing alternative food networks with the support of female scholars and NGO organizers. Thus, I shift focus of scholarship on rural women from “left behind” to leaders in struggles for justice and food sovereignty. (shrink)

The relevance of the study has two sides — individual and general. In its essential aspect, it is the development of achievements of predecessors by consistently taking into account the latest data on trends and changes in the interconnected spheres of education, economics and culture. In the individual aspect, it is about improving the professional means of improving the efficiency of teaching foreign languages in order to form students with a high level of linguistic-professional competence. Public relevance is the goal (...) of educating young people in a new patriotic direction, because today, due to various global influences, the classical principles of life in the agrarian system, created in recent centuries, or in the industrial society, are devalued due to various global influences. The purpose of the study in a broad sense was to highlight the causes and consequences of the European religious Reformation as the main factor in accelerating the movement of the whole of Western Europe to the position of the world leader that previously belonged to China. We see precis e tasks in the integrated analysis on the basis of the latest discoveries of many humanities and exact sciences in the educational, economic and cultural systems of Germany and other successful European states. On this basis, we hope to fulfill the public task which is to make significant proposals in the plans and practice of higher education reform in Ukraine. The methodology of the study relies on the best classical means, on the principle of historicism and the continuity of the connection between the material and the ideal, a modern multidisciplinary approach. For the highest effectiveness of the research, we will use the latest scientific data and recommendations of the innovators who collect and use these data. The results of the study mostly follow from the mentioned new discoveries. They testify that in ancientt history, in the role of locomotives of civilizational progress in the western part of Eurasia, direct descendants of the inventors of agriculture acted, among which the especially great contribution belongs to the ancestors of Ukrainians from the territories of Trypillya and the Great Trypillya. It is indicated that during the existence of the Great Trypillya, future German farmers acquainted themselves with the technologies of the Great Trypillya, so the German language, through borrowed words, became part of the Indo-European family. It is noted that after the collapse of the Great Trypillya, the Germans and Slavs became neighbors along the meridian Elbe. In the age of steppe invasions, future Ukrainians and Germanic tribes did not get in contact, and the influence of the Roman Empire was mostly experienced by western lands. Emphasis was placed on the evolution of ideological, religious and other paradigms in the territory of Germany after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, which determined the development of the nation for the next hundreds of years. The religious and philosophical paradigmatic origins of those unique features of culture and education that during the nineteenth century were emphasized. brought Germany to the position of the scientific and technological leader of the world. The high role of German neo-humanism and the Berlin Research University were noted. In the final section, special attention is paid to religious issues and to the destructive impact on social and other processes in the German immigration flows of Islamists. The conclusions focus on the competition of several important paradigms in the education of modern Germany and the proposals made to incorporate German experience in legislation and the use of the Bologna process. An important caution is made regarding the choice of Germany's strategy for the development of the scientific and educational complex 'within the framework of the Lisbon project. This country has become a world leader not only in alternative energy, but also in the implementation of the fourth industrial revolution. We consider an example of this leadership like the regular world conferences in Davos, which involve the majority of influential politicians and economists. (shrink)

The challenge of pursuing sustainability in agriculture is often viewed as mainly or wholly technical in nature, requiring the reform of farming methods and the development and adoption of alternative technologies. Likewise, the purpose of sustainability is frequently cast in utilitarian terms, as a means of protecting a valuable resource (i.e., soil) and of satisfying market demands for healthy, tasty food. Paul B. Thompson has argued that the embrace of these views by many in the consumer/environmental movement enables easy co-optation (...) by agribusiness. It also reflects a critical weakness in this movement: a lack of commitment to philosophical principles that depart from the utilitarian premises of the industrial model of agriculture. This paper draws on the writings of Thomas Berry and Liberty Hyde Bailey to identify the philosophical principles of what we call planetary agrarianism. From the perspective of planetary agrarianism, the pursuit of sustainability is a broad and challenging moral, educational, and political task. Berry helps us see that it is fundamentally a project of worldview transition, which requires a new cultural narrative that must rival, in form and appeal, the mythic power of the utilitarian industrial vision. Liberty Hyde Bailey, author of The Holy Earth (1915) and a leader in the land-grant education and nature-study movements, took up the project of worldview transition in his life work. While in some ways dated and flawed, Bailey’s writings are a valuable source of guidance for developing and pursuing a viable philosophy of agriculture for the 21st century. (shrink)

Most environmental ethicists adhere to a standard intellectual history of the field, one that explains and justifies the dominant commitments to nonanthropocentrism, moral dualism, and wilderness/wildlife preservation. Yet this narrative—which finds strong support in the work of first generation environmental historians—is at best incomplete. It has tended to ignore those philosophical projects and thinkers in the American environmental tradition that challenge the received history and the established conceptual categories and arguments of environmental ethics. One such figure is the agrarian (...) thinker, conservationist, and rural reformer, Liberty Hyde Bailey. A writer whose environmental philosophy combined biocentric attitudes toward nature with more humanistic concerns about intergenerational fairness and civic responsibility, Bailey remains an invisible figure in environmental ethics, despite his clear influence on the later work of such conservation luminaries as Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and others. We would benefit from a recovery of Bailey’s environmental philosophy, especially his articulation of a pluralistic ethical outlook defined by the melding of anthropocentric moral and civic concerns with biocentric commitments regarding the beauty and resilience of the properly cultivated landscape. (shrink)

For centuries, China’s farmers practiced agriculture in ways that sustained a high level of food production without depleting or deteriorating local resources. These were smallholder farmers, who came to be called peasants, or nongmin, in the early twentieth century. Narratives on the figure of the peasant have changed dramatically and often in the intervening years, expressing broader political debates, and suggesting the question, “what, then, is a Chinese peasant?” This paper attempts to answer that question in the context of reform (...) era China (post-1978). Using a critical discourse analysis of nongmin in contemporary political and popular discourse, the paper aims to further clarify politics on the figure of the peasant in China today, specifically in relation to state policy on rural and agricultural development. The central argument is that in addition to complex meanings and uses of nongmin, a Chinese peasant is also a social category used by political and economic elites to stand in for the ills of China’s agrifood system, and to promote a model of development that tries to separate the country’s current trajectory from its long agrarian history. In the context of state-led agroindustrialization aimed at developing a robust domestic agribusiness sector, both peasants as a social form and smallholding as an agricultural form are targets for capitalist transformation. Put another way, political discourses define peasants and small-scale farming as China’s agrifood “problems” for which further capitalist industrialization is posed as the only and inevitable “solution.” The paper concludes by arguing that changing China’s current trajectory away from the crises of industrial agriculture will require also changing the discursive frame: it is agroindustrialization that is the problem, for which nongmin and China’s tradition of smallholder farming are part of the solution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Political Economy and Classical AntiquityNeville MorleyThe literature of the ancients, their legislation, their public treaties, and their administration of the conquered provinces, all proclaim their utter ignorance of the nature and origin of wealth, of the manner in which it is distributed, and of the effects of its consumption.... The steadily increasing progress of different branches of industry, the advancement of the sciences, whose influence upon wealth we shall (...) have occasion hereafter to notice, and the direction of public opinion, at length estimating national prosperity as being of some importance, caused the science of political economy to enter into the contemplation of a great number of writers.J.-B. Say 1I. The science of political economy offered an entirely new way of understanding human society. 2 Say’s account of its emergence is teleological and self-serving, figuring his own work as the logical culmination of earlier enquiries, but it accurately reflects the way in which political economy was perceived and presented as a modern innovation. The more that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political economists turned their attention towards the economic rather than the political state of the nation, the more they became aware of their own originality in doing so. The writings of the ancients might still dominate discussions of political theory, but the moderns noted with satisfaction the failings and fumblings of classical authors in the study of the economy; they alone had discerned its significance and developed the tools with which to [End Page 95] analyze it. Moreover, there was no obvious reason why this new science should confine its attentions to the contemporary world; the economies of the past could be studied in the same manner, and thus political economy offered the possibility of understanding ancient society better than the ancients did themselves.Students of ancient society were slow to respond to this challenge. Neither Edward Gibbon nor George Grote had much to say about the ancient economy, despite their close relationships with economists of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Philosophic Radicals respectively. Gibbon was well aware of contemporary debates on luxury (see below), and he also disputed Montesquieu’s theory that taxes decrease according to the level of despotism in a state, but that was all. 3 A letter written by Grote’s wife suggests that his chapter on Greek colonization was intended to infuse useful doctrines on political economy and the principle of population, but in the published version this intent is limited to vague statements about the importance of agriculture in sustaining a colony. 4 Grote’s advocacy of comparative history—“not omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with the better-known forms of modern society”—was in practice limited to politics and the history of ideas, above all in the debate on the merits of democracy. 5 The sole exception was a comparison of Solon’s legislation restricting Athenian exports with the British Corn Laws, to the advantage of the former. 6With the lone exception of Boeckh’s 1817 treatise on The Public Economy of Athens, the subject of the ancient economy was almost entirely ignored by historians until the middle of the nineteenth century. 7 Their own interests and those of the ancient sources on which they relied led them to conceive of history in terms of events, above all of events in the fields of politics and war. Economic matters were touched upon in their accounts of certain episodes—the reforms of Solon, for example, or the Roman agrarian laws—but never in detail or with much analytical sophistication, let alone drawing upon the theoretical insights of political economy. William Ramsay’s Manual of Roman Antiquities in 1851 devoted much more space to economic topics than had been customary, but was otherwise indistinguishable from its predecessors; the chapter on Roman agriculture was little more than a paraphrase of the writings [End Page 96] of Vergil and Varro, and his account of state revenues merely compiled information from the ancient sources as an end in itself. 8The drought was not ended until 1854, when Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome not only devoted considerable attention to such subjects as agriculture, commerce, and... (shrink)

This article raises the issue of the extent to which a single nation can develop a “national agricultural policy,” pursuing internal goals in agrarian development, goals that vary significantly from those of other industrialized countries. What are the conflicts arising from such a policy and how do these conflicts interfere with the general agricultural crisis of these countries? The Norwegian case is explored as an example of a blend of social-democratic and center-populist agricultural policies. The decision in 1975 by (...) the Norwegian Parliament to establish the income level of farmers at the same level as workers is seen as an experiment. As agricultural policy, this new departure represented a deviation from the earlier policies of rationalization. The Social Democrats developed their new position as a result of internal and external pressure. A series of reforms financed by the new state incomes from oil production were undertaken, of which income equalization and a farm relief service were the most important. Most Norwegian farmers speak of the reform years as “the good years of escalation.” Equity was reached in 1982, but nevertheless several problems emerged: 1) the escalation of subsidized incomes led to overproduction and decreasing incomes from the market (after 1982), 2) the large budgetary transfers to agriculture caused a legitimation crisis, fueling the constituency of the right-wing Progress Party, 3) the large subsidies to agriculture contributed to the fiscal crisis of the state, 4) the problems mentioned above, contributed to the general crisis of the Norwegian Social Democracy which finds itself with dwindling support. The likely outcome of the present Norwegian farm crisis is the implementation of an agricultural policy that will protect the most vulnerable sector and open the more competitive sector to market forces. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art Education and the Emergence of Radical Art Movements in Egypt: The Surrealists and the Contemporary Arts Group, 1938–1951Patrick Kane (bio)So it wasn’t the aim of the artist to just toss out a work of art. A tradition of the exhibition of the natural, and its meaning was not that it fled from life, but that it had penetrated and plunged into reality. Its meaning was not a prescription (...) or plain exercise in the taste of the sublime, or harmony of forms and charming scenes; and its meaning was not as a decoration of life; it was in its expression of what life inspires in us to give back.—Henry Moore, as quoted by Ramses Yunan, in “The Aim of the Contemporary Artist”1In these crucial days of difficulty, the artists in this country live in tall aristocratic towers.... For this peasant has an art of his own that sustains him, and it is not that art of the educated class.—Kamil Al-Tilmisani (c. 1941–1942)By 1938, as the agrarian crisis in Egypt deepened, the Depression, food shortages, low wages, expropriations of crops, and forced rents opened a polemic among Egyptian intellectuals over the role of the state and the looming threat of fascism. With the dismissal of the government of Mustafa Al-Nahas at the end of 1937, the political turbulence underscored the weakening of the Wafd Party. Opponents of the old Wafdists and supporters of the monarchy resorted to openly fascist tactics, including the establishment of youth organizations and the Blue Shirts, the fascist front of the young Wafdists who modeled themselves on Mussolini’s Black Shirts. The serial crises of agrarian struggles and parliamentary stalemates between [End Page 95] nationalists and monarchists led to increasingly militant stances by the paramilitary fascist organization Misr Al-Fattah (Young Egypt) as a counter to the Muslim Brothers. When Mahmud Khalil resigned from the Wafd and assumed the presidency of the Senate in 1938, his ascension opened a new phase of struggle in politics through culture and the arts.2 In this context, caricatures and satirical sculptures of Khalil appeared in 1939 that parodied him as the icon of a “dictatorship of art.”3 Leading intellectuals from all political stances addressed these issues directly. The cultural journals were peppered with articles on the problems of everyday life and the material crises with such representative titles as ‘Abbas al-Aqqad’s “Food for the Rich,” in which he raised the problem of food shortages and inequity as an issue for reform.4 Within the year, articles in Al-Risala and Al-Thaqafa drew comparisons with French and Italian nineteenth-century landscapes as a model for the recognition of the countryside as a subject. In journalism and the arts, suffering became a part of the recognition of the everyday, as articles appeared on Millet’s nineteenth-century paintings of French peasants.As the war in Europe encroached into the cover pages of Egypt’s cultural journals, Zaki Muhammad Hasan wrote an essay for Al-Thaqafa entitled “The Angelus,” with a reproduction of the 1859 painting by Jean Francois Millet (1814–1874).5 Hasan wrote about Millet’s interest in the “the daily labors of the peasant” as a depiction of the conditions of French peasants. Hasan’s mention of Millet’s own peasant origins, and his listing of paintings of social conditions, including Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners), reflected a broadening interest in the artistic subject of the peasant and the rise of the peasant as artist. Although in Millet’s painting there is a prayer scene of a man and a woman in the fields that is generally regarded as the evening prayer with the sun setting, an Egyptian reader could link the prayer with the issue of workers taking breaks in the fields at a time when the issue of compensation of peasant farm workers was paramount.6 Hasan introduced “The Angelus” to his readers as a Catholic prayer in southern Europe offered at dawn, noon, and sunset and compared the origins of the prayer’s stanzas from the Gospel of Luke 1:28–31 with passages from the chapter on Maryam in the Quran... (shrink)

This article reflects on the dynamics of the public sphere in the early modern period by analyzing the figure of the peasant and the notion of the common(s) in dialogue pamphlets. Beginning with a discussion of what it means to speak of a public sphere in relation to the early modern period, it examines one of the most famous Reformation dialogues, _Karst-hans_, published anonymously in 1521 in Strasbourg. Just before the German Peasants’ War (1524–26), the Lutheran dialogue, polemically directed against (...) the theologian and satirist Thomas Murner, positions the peasant as a critically mature citizen, with the hoe (_Karst_) symbolizing his potential militancy. This article specifically draws on the notion of publicity that the dialogue articulates. Using it as an example, this article analyzes the transitions and mutual projections between fiction, urban culture, and peasant protest, the structures of which are significant for the literary representation of agrarian protest far beyond the Reformation. In its final section, this article closely examines the media genre of the dialogue pamphlet and outlines some horizons of its historical development up to the Enlightenment concerning its political use and its relation to the ideal of a dialogic and socially leveled public sphere. By arguing that there existed an implicit ideal of the public sphere as a common good in the early modern period, the aim is also to clarify what distinguishes this early modern understanding of the public sphere from its conceptualization as a marketplace that has dominated our understanding of it since the Enlightenment. The prehistory presented here should provide resources for reimagining the future of the public sphere at a time when its actual structure is once again very much at stake. (shrink)

Roman agriculture suffered traumatic changes during the 2nd century B.C. The traditional farmers who tilled their few acres and served family, gods and community were being squeezed out by large estate owners using slaves for investment farming. Politicians, scholars and poets tried to revive the ancestoral rustic life.In 133 B.C. the Gracchi legislated land reform to relieve the distress of the farmer soldiers who had won the empire. Although their efforts led to political confrontation that deteriorated into civil war, programs (...) for the traditional farm became a permanent part of government policy from the late Republic until the end of the empire in 476 A.D.Scholars and poets made a contribution to the revival of agriculture with knowledge for improving the farm and by encouraging an agrarian mentality. The agricultural manuals (e.g. Cato (c. 150 B.C.), Varro (c. 50 B.C), and Columella (c.65 A.D.), defined the nature of the desirable farm and gave practical advice. Profit was the goal, but good farming practices made for pleasure and virtue as well. The image of the ancestoral farmer was perpetuated as was the notion that farming was the only honorable and respectable occupation for a Roman gentleman.In the Augustan Age (34 B.C.—14 A.D.) poets were encouraged by the government to adopted a rustic theme in hopes it would stimulate a return to the land and aid in the rebirth of Rome and Romans. In the GeorgicsVirgil begins with the practical details of farming, but uses myth and philosophy to explore the nature and meaning of life. He admits that Jove made life perilous. But Jove also gave man the art of agriculture and with hard work man could know the pleasure of a simple, virtuous, productive life.Horace directed his poetry against the allure of city life and in praise of rustic living. Epicureanism and Stoicism, in the guise of life on the farm, could show that although fate was unpredictable, the world was orderly and, if one recognized and accepted its limits, one could make a garden of the world and live a simple but happy life.By 300 A.D. Rome missed the peasant-farmer-soldier and by the 470's life had returned to an agrarian condition. Bishop Sidonius, trying to furnish meaning and perspective for the emerging new age, resorted to the Roman agricultural traditions still cherished as that world disappeared. (shrink)

The relationship betweendiscourse and ideology can be described as thatof process and effect [Purvis and Hunt (1993)British Journal of Sociology 44: 473–499].Discourse, used within relations of domination,can result in the formation of ideology. Tostudy this relationship systematically requiresa methodology that contextualizes discoursewithin social relations and examines when suchdiscourse becomes an ideology. I use Thompson'stheory/methodology of ``depth hermeneutics'' tostudy documents produced by agriculturalinterest groups concerning the 1996 FederalAgriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Actand I assess the ideological status of thediscourses contained in (...) these documents. Thefindings suggest that the organizationsrepresenting the small-to-medium-sized farmerstended to use more agrarian themes, fewermarket themes, and fewer linguistic strategiesindicative of ideology. The organizationsrepresenting more concentrated,vertically-integrated interests andagribusinesses use fewer agrarian themes, moremarket themes, and more linguistic strategies.Therefore, market themes, not agrarian themes,form an ideology in this context. (shrink)

As Paul Thompson has argued, agriculture, and food systems more generally, can be usefully analyzed with tools from the philosophy of technology. Don Ihde’s framework of multistability of possible relationships with technology suggests Thompson is right when he argues for the possibility of societies reforming their food systems to be more sustainable, participatory, and just through a focus on agrarian ideals. Ihde’s framework also suggests that for those of us who interact with food systems as consumers, these technologies are (...) in a “background relationship” with us, in which the technologies of food systems are ignored if they are functioning properly. This background relationship can thus create epistemic deficits which pose a serious impediment to sustainability reforms. I examine this impediment and the opportunities in the disturbance of a system to reduce communities’ and individuals’ epistemic deficit. One recent example of disturbance to the food system this paper will examine is the COVID-19 pandemic. No one would wish for exogenous disruptions like the pandemic, and positive change coming out of them is not inevitable, but this paper will suggest that it is at least possible that we can emerge from disturbance with the resources to make our food systems better. (shrink)

Nowadays, almost everyone seems to agree that science is facing an epistemological crisis – namely the replicability crisis – and that we need to take action. But as to precisely what to do or how...

Corporate governance reforms are occurring in countries around the globe. In developing countries, such reforms occur in a context that is primarily defined by previous attempts at promoting "development" and recent processes of economic globalization. This context has resulted in the adoption of reforms that move developing countries in the direction of an Anglo-American model of governance. The most basic questions that arise with respect to these governance reforms are what prospects they entail for traditional development (...) goals and whether alternatives should be considered. This paper offers a framework for addressing these basic questions by providing an account of: 1) previous development strategies and efforts; 2) the nature and causes of the reform processes; 3) the development potential of the reforms and concerns associated with them; 4) the (potential) responsibilities of corporate governance, including the (possible) responsibilities to promote development, and; 5) different approaches to promoting governance reforms with an eye to promoting development. (shrink)