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Symposia
Symposium on New Social Movements
Rural areas around the world have been profoundly effected by the processes of advanced globalisation. Forms of economic activity and organisation have been restructured by economic globalisation, the expansion of global trade and the emergence of transnational corporations. Increased global mobility has contributed to the social recomposition of rural communities and to new transnational networks of rural labour. Local cultural understandings of rural space and environments have been displaced by the commodification of rural landscapes and by the designation of protected sites under international initiatives. Traditional 'rural' activities and practices have been challenged by the globalisation of values informed by global media consumption. Patterns of spatial inequality and social injustice have been reconfigured and re-entrenched.
In response, rural protest movements have begun to emerge. Some are organised around specific concerns in agriculture or environmental protection. Others have built broader coalitions to confront a perceived threat to 'rural' society. By mobilising around a sense of identity as 'rural people', or 'farmers' or 'peasants' and by employing tactics that are as much about symbolic action as about political power, such groups have taken the form of 'new social movements'.
This symposium explores the role of new social movements in the rural reaction to globalisation. It is structured around four key questions:
- How have rural social movements organised in response to globalisation? How can theories of social movements help us to analyse the organisation, mobilisation and tactics of rural protest and campaign groups?
- What relationships exist between rural protest and campaign groups and other new social movements, including the anti-globalisation movement and the environmental movement?
- Is there a globalisation of rural counterglobalisation? In particular, what links exist between rural social movements in the north and the south? How might these develop?
- Can a 'rural movement' be identified that is mobilized around issues of rural identity and the meaning of rurality, as opposed to mobilization around social and economic issues in a rural context? What might be the characteristics of the 'rural movement'?
The symposium will be organised into two sessions, each of which will include presentations from up to four speakers plus time for a panel discussion. Invited contributors will be drawn from around the world in order to provide a global perspective on the theme.
Symposium Chair:
Michael Woods
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Symposium Participants:
Resisting the Global Countryside? Rural Movements in Europe and North America
Michael Woods, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Globalisation has become a pervasive influence in reshaping rural economies and societies around the world. As rural economic structures and practices are conscripted into global networks of trade, corporate ownership, tourist consumption and labour markets; as rural populations are reconstituted by migration; and as traditional rural cultures and lifestyles are challenged by a 'globalisation of values', so local resistance to rural change has been mobilised. In many cases political mobilisation is configured around a defence of 'rural identity' such that it has been argued that an emergent 'rural movement' can be identified. This paper draws on examples of rural campaign/protest groups in Europe (Confédération paysanne; Plaform Buitengebeid) and North America (Rural Coalition) to pose four key questions about the role of social movements in the rural reaction to globalisation: How have rural social movements organised in response to globalisation? What relationships exist between rural protest groups and other new social movements? Can a 'rural movement' be identified as opposed to social movements operating in a rural context? Is there a globalisation of rural counter-globalisation?
Social Movements in Rural Latin America: a New Cycle of Collective Action
Diego E. Piñeiro, University of the Republic, Uruguay
This paper suggests that during the decade of the eighties evolved a new cycle of collective action in rural areas of Latin America, social movements entering the political scene at the end of the century. They evolved in a favorable context due to political democratization with economic and social exclusion. Agrarian social movements are heterogeneous in their social composition (peasants, women, indigenous people), have antagonistic relations with political power, have a different relation with natural resources (land and territories) and an innovative repertoire of collective action.
Agriculture, Communities and New Social Movements: East European Ruralities in the Process of Restructuring
Kryzysztof Gorlach, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Mihal Lostak, Czech Agricultural University, Czech Republic
In the paper the authors examine usefulness of new social movement (NSM) paradigm in the changing context of East European post-communist societies and their agricultural systems and rural communities. Starting with the statements formulated in Western sociology in the context of Western democratic societies about new social movements as a protest against modernity, the authors try to analyze the role of such movements in a still under modernization East European reality. In order to address such a question the paper has been divided into three major parts containing consecutive steps of our consideration. In the first part we would like to examine very briefly some basic elements of NSM-paradigm both in European and American social science tradition. The main goal of this part of our consideration is not only to identify the basic characteristics of NSM phenomenon but also typical frames used by them. The second part of the paper will be focused on an attempt to identify some NSM even in the communist past. Basing on the idea of NSM as an indicator of "post-materialist shift" as well as "anti-establishment" and "pro-participatory democracy" we will try to examine the frames of democratic opposition in Eastern Europe before 1989. In the last part basing on several selected cases from Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary the authors will try to show the role of some NSM in the process of shaping new ruralities during the post-communist transformation.
Agroecological Movements in Latin America and Spain
Pilar Galindo
Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán
Joan Martinez-Alier
ISEC, Universidad de Córdoba, Spain
Abstract to be received.
Panel Discussion Structured Around Four Key Questions
Panelists:
Keith Halfacree, University of Wales, Swansea, UK
Beverly Nagel, Carleton College, USA
Matt Reed, University of Exeter, UK
Andrea Stach, University of Maryland, USA
Xóchtil Bada, Notre Dame University, USA
Luciano Concheiro Bórquez, Universidad Autónma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco, Mexico
Humberto González, Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico & Université Toulouse le Mirail, France
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XI World Congress of Rural Sociology