Join us for our co-hosted webinar on 16 February 2022, unpacking Populism, authoritarianism and agrarian struggles. Register here.
Around the world emerging new exclusionary politics are generating deepening inequalities, jobless ‘growth’, climate chaos, and social division. These processes have been intensified or exposed in many places by the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it, but they are not new. Since 2017 the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) has used engaged research to better understand these destructive dynamics, and the social and political processes in rural spaces that are generating alternatives to them. We aim to provoke debate and action among scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers from across the world who are concerned about the current situation, and hopeful about alternatives and resistances.
Today, these questions remain urgent, worldwide. Yet organised movements and actions in and from rural areas have contributed to changing the political trajectories in many countries: the (qualified) success of the Indian farmers’ protests; the electoral victories of left-wing parties in Chile, Peru and other countries in Latin America; the repositioning of the Workers Party in Brazil and more. Other tensions and dynamics are playing out in many other countries: from Turkey to Tunisia, Mozambique to the United States of America. In some places regressive populism has turned into outright authoritarianism, as in Myanmar. How do we make sense of all these changes and continuities?
Speakers:
Achin Vanaik (TNI, India)
Garrett Lovelace-Graddy (American University, USA),
Attila Szocs (Ecoruralis & ECVC, Romania)
Ayala Ferreira (LVC & Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Brazil)
Moderators: Ruth Hall (PLAAS) and Katie Sandwell (TNI)
Background reading: Preface of ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, link pages xv-xxi,
Languages: English, Spanish, French
Click here to register.
Date: Feb 16, 2022 04:00 PM Central African Time (GMT +2)
A collective initiative of Journal of Peasant Studies, CASAS, PLAAS, ICAS, YARA, ERPI, PASTRES, RRUSHES-5, and the Transnational Institute.
