Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Re-peasantization »

Agrarian industrialization and new food regimes have radically changed socioecologies of local and global agrarian structures displacing traditional socioecological strategies of land use and management. This paper analyses this transformation from an agroecological perspective by raising the question of how the agrarian activities and the uses of commons have changed in the municipality of Baunei (Sardinia, Italy) with a special focus on livestock farming. Ethnographic research –through participant observation methods and open and semi-structured in-depth interviews– has enabled to reconstruct the traditional use of land and the strategies of its socioecological management as well as the changes produced by agricultural modernization and modernity at large, and finally, to unveil new perspectives of re-peasantization among Baunei’s shepherds to obtain more feasible and sustainable farms. This study highlights tendencies of re-peasantization in land management strategies and the seek for cooperative answers, including an internal reflection on the socioecological meaning of traditional strategies for managing the commons (in usi cicivi) and provides insights to the new potentials of such management and social cooperation practices together with new agricultural techniques and organizational structures in building more sustainable and just food and agricultural systems.

Bolstering the political formation of agrarian organizations has become a priority for La Vía Campesina and the Food Sovereignty Movement. This paper addresses the Spanish case study of the Escuela de Acción Campesina (EAC)—(Peasant Action School), which is a tool for political formation in the Global North in which the philosophical and pedagogical principles of the “peasant pedagogies” of the Training Schools proposed by La Vía Campesina are put into practice within an agrarian organization in Spain and in alliance with the rest of the Spanish Food Sovereignty Movement. The study was carried out over the course of the 10 years of activist research, spanning the entire process for the construction and development of the EAC. Employing an ethnographic methodology, information was collected through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, a participatory workshop, and reviews of internal documents. The paper presents the context in which the EAC arose, its pedagogical dynamics, the structure and the ideological contents implemented for the training of new cadres, and how there are three key areas in the training process: (1) the strengthening of collective union and peasant identity, (2) training in the “peasant” ideological proposal, and (3) the integration of students as new cadres into the organizations’ structures. It is concluded that the EAC is a useful tool in the ideological re-peasantization process of these organizations.

In Colombia, Rural Development Institutional programs have made of local agents imperceptible since their trajectories have not been considered in the search for solutions to the problems in their territories. The present work introduces an innovative system to the production of the leaves of the plantain variety ‘Cachaco’ (Musa ABB S). This improvement, which was developed independently by indigenous communities of southern Tolima (Colombia), has been studied in detail throughout the technical, economic and social aspects of the productive and commercial processes of some plantain leaves producing farms. Based on their relation with their natural and socio-cultural environments, these communities have prompted their own process of re-peasantization. This productive innovation improves the life quality of the families involved, ensures their permanence in the territory and favors its cultural appropriation.

Il neoruralismo come paradigma generale si configura come un movimento di persone dalla città e dalle aree urbanizzate alle aree rurali. Nel corso dello studio è risultato interessante indagare se il neoruralismo montano sia più accostabile ad una opposizione e resistenza rispetto ai modelli di vita e organizzazione dei contesti urbanizzati, praticata da “nuovi montanari” consapevoli di una nuova sensibilità ecologica, economica, socio-culturale che conduca ad una migliore qualità di vita e ad un benefico sviluppo territoriale locale o se invece il neoruralismo montano sia di fondo riconoscibile come “moda” urbana, desiderio edonistico di soggetti “rurbani” bucolicamente sospesi tra vita urbana e vita rurale e che in ultima analisi legittimano la loro matrice urbana anziché opporsi ad essa. Da ciò scaturisce la domanda centrale da cui ha preso avvio la ricerca: è possibile considerare il neo-ruralismo montano come movimento culturale in opposizione all’urbanesimo (inteso come stile di vita)? La scelta di ripensare il proprio stile di vita in chiave neorurale si riconosce come risposta a motivazioni esistenziali che prevedono un’uscita dalla dimensione urbana in cui non ci si sente più a proprio agio. I fini esistenziali di tale scelta, in quanto messaggio simbolico, possono essere efficacemente interpretati come una voce di protesta. Infatti, la scelta di un ripensamento per uno stile di vita neorurale è stata interpretata proprio come movimento culturale di resistenza, reazione ad uno status quo percepito nei contesti urbani. Osservandone i mestieri, si è evidenziata la condizione del “neorurale contadino” - osservata nelle pratiche attivamente costruite in Val Maira - come fondamentalmente volta a creare maggiori spazi di autonomia. Si è dunque propeso per una interpretazione del fenomeno neorurale conosciuto in Val Maira come più aderente alla visione di neoruralismo quale fenomeno antitetico rispetto all’urbanesimo occidentale, resistenza rispetto agli esiti ecologicamente e socialmente patologici della città moderna, che può essere riconosciuto come una contro-urbanizzazione espressa nei termini di «fuga dalla città».
Neoruralism as a general paradigm is configured as a movement of people from the city and from urbanized areas to rural areas. During the study it was interesting to investigate whether mountain neoruralism is more comparable to an opposition and resistance with respect to the life models and organization of urbanized contexts, practiced by "new mountain dwellers" aware of a new ecological, economic, socio-cultural sensibility that leads to a better quality of life and to a beneficial local territorial development or if instead mountain neoruralism is fundamentally recognizable as urban “fashion”, hedonistic desire of bucolic and “urban” subjects suspended between urban life and rural life and that ultimately they legitimize their urban matrix instead of opposing it. From this springs the central question from which the research started: is it possible to consider mountain neo-ruralism as a cultural movement in opposition to urbanism (understood as a lifestyle)? The choice to rethink one's lifestyle in a neorural key is recognized as a response to existential motivations that provide for an exit from the urban dimension in which one no longer feels at ease. The existential ends of this choice, as a symbolic message, can be effectively interpreted as a voice of protest. In fact, the choice of a rethinking for a neorural lifestyle was interpreted precisely as a cultural movement of resistance, reaction to a perceived status quo in urban contexts. Observing the trades, the condition of the "neorural peasant" - observed in the practices actively built in Val Maira - was highlighted as fundamentally aimed at creating more spaces of autonomy. It is therefore inclined towards an interpretation of the neorural phenomenon known in Val Maira as more adherent to the vision of neoruralism as an antithetical phenomenon with respect to western urbanism, resistance to the ecologically and socially pathological outcomes of the modern city, which can be recognized as a counter urbanization expressed in terms of "escape from the city".