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FRIDAY,
DECEMBER 7
3:30
- 5:30pm, Room 1005
SESSION 1:
Transnational Movements and Moments: Alternative Visions
for Sustainable Development
Carmen
Diana Deere, Director of the Center for
Latin American Studies and Professor of Food and Resource
Economics and Latin American Studies, University of
Florida
“Rural
Social Movements in Latin America: Alternative Visions
for Sustainable Livelihoods”
This paper argues that the current
dynamism of the rural social movements in Latin America
is related to the unprecedented assault on natural
resources unleashed by the neoliberal model of development,
the repercussions of which have been particularly
acute for those whose livelihoods depend upon them.
Since the 1980s new national-level rural organizations
have emerged throughout the region representing sectors
previously excluded from the main peasant organizations
and rural unions of the past, such as the indigenous,
landless, environmental, and rural women’s movements.
In addition, many new movements have arisen in opposition
to large-scale development projects, such as dam construction
or mining. In the 1990s many of these have contributed
to building transnational associations and networks
at the sub-regional, hemispheric, and global levels.
As a result, the rural social movements in Latin America
have emerged as among the best organized as well as
the most fervent critics of the neoliberal model of
development in the region. After considering the origin
of these transnational movements, the paper analyzes
some of the difficulties in creating a truly hemispheric
movement of indigenous, women’s and peasant
movements. It also analyzes their individual and collective
accomplishments to date.
Tad
Mutersbaugh, Associate Professor of Geography,
University of Kentucky
"Peasant
Paradox: Mobilizing Natures and Neoliberalisms in
Rural Mexico and Honduras"
I argue that possibilities for
rural activism are paradoxically linked to and limited
by neoliberalism. Neoliberal-inspired state withdrawal
from governance and markets in the late 1980s and
1990s prompted peasant confederations to provide governance
and welfare functions to rural communities and take
charge of abandoned state-owned productive assets.
However, possibilities for peasant-led autonomous
institutions are limited by subsequent efforts –
also neoliberal in character – to recapture
'terrain' lost to popular organizations and NGOs:
initiatives include state efforts to refigure the
politics of wealth transfers, and transnational-institutional
efforts to privatize property (both real and intellectual)
and rationalize social relations via norms and standards.
These efforts, taken together, seek to recapitulate
the history of unequal global exchange relations;
peasant organizing understood within this context
challenges these particular state-capital configurations.
This paper addresses these points via case studies
of rural action in Mexico and Honduras. For the Mexican
case, Oaxacan (and Chiapas) 'nature networks' mobilize
a highly networked, organizationally complex structure
that joins villages, environmental NGOs, agro-food
networks, and state actors in ecological farming endeavors.
For Honduras, recent Garifuna struggles seek to protect
communal land claims that have foundered in the context
of a transnational privatization initiatives and a
weak Honduran state.
Additionally: Transparency,
Solidarity, and the Quality Imperative:
Notes on governance in fairtrade-organic coffee
SATURDAY,
DECEMBER 8
9:00
- 9:30pm, Room 1005
BREAKFAST
9:30 - 12:00pm, Room 1005
SESSION 2:
Peasants and the State: Alternative Visions of Rural
Citizenship
DISCUSSANT: Eunice N. Sahle, Assistant Professor,
Department of African and Afro-American Studies and
the Curriculum in International Studies, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Richard Schroeder, Associate Professor,
Department of Geography, Rutgers University
“Tiffany’s,
Terrorists and Tanzanite: Constructing Ethical Routes
to Market for Tanzania’s National Gem”
The gemstone commodity chain has come under increasing
scrutiny following bloody civil conflicts in West
Africa, which were partly funded by gemstone sales.
This paper explores the impact the “conflict
gems” debate has had on the mining of tanzanite,
a rare gemstone mined only in Tanzania. It analyzes
competing notions of mining ethics put forward by
corporate and small scale tanzanite miners, and argues
that different types of ethical claims have provided
distinct political-economic advantages for their proponents.
In the early 1990s, the core of the tanzanite mining
area was privatized by the Tanzanian government. Small
scale miners were forcibly removed from the most productive
mining zone, which was then placed under the control
of South African corporate interests. This set up
a pitched and often violent battle to control the
mining area. In 2001, allegations surfaced in the
Wall Street Journal that tanzanite was being
used by al Qaeda to launder terrorist funds. These
unsubstantiated reports led to a series of efforts
to more tightly control the tanzanite market chain.
Corporate miners have certified their gems as following
an exclusively ethical route to market through the
use of laser inscribed brands and a broad-based advertising
campaign. Small scale mining advocates have invoked
the immorality of foreign corporate control and a
series of shooting deaths at the hands of corporate
security guards to undercut corporate claims. The
alleged terrorist connections have nonetheless tilted
the state’s policies in favor of tight corporate
controls at the expense of unregulated artisanal mining
operators.
Sara Berry, Professor of History, Johns
Hopkins University
“Peasants
or citizens? Rural struggles over land, authority
and inclusion in West Africa”
Rather than connect to transnational peasant
movements critical of state and/or corporate power,
rural politics in post-colonial West Africa centers
around local struggles over land, authority, and claims
to social entitlement which are often framed in terms
of origin and community membership. In the wake of
colonial rule, contestations over power and resources
at the national level have intruded unevenly into
local processes of resource access and relations of
authority, destabilizing rather than controlling rural
economic and social life, and leaving the majority
of rural residents to solve their own problems of
security, livelihood and social conflict. Using case
histories of agrarian change and local politics in
rural ‘frontier zones’ in three West African
countries, this paper examines the way patterns of
land access, political competition and social conflict
in rural areas have interacted with national economic
and political processes, how they have changed during
the era of structural adjustment and neoliberal political
“reforms,” and how local political dynamics
have complicated or contributed to national struggles
over governance and citizenship in the postcolonial
era.
12:00-1:00,
4th floor
LUNCH
1:00-3:00, room 1005
SESSION 3: Our Food, Our
Farmers? Alternative Visions of Food and Farming in
the United States
Angela
C. Stuesse, Weatherhead Fellow, School
for Advanced Research
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University
of Texas at Austin
“What’s
Justice and Dignity Got to Do with It? Tyson Foods
and its ‘Team Members’ in an Age of Neoliberal
Globalization”
In 2001, Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest
poultry processors, was indicted on charges that it
recruited undocumented immigrants to work in its chicken
processing plants across the rural U.S. South and
Midwest. While prosecuting attorneys argued that the
company cultivated a corporate culture that encouraged
management to hire undocumented workers to increase
production, lower costs, and maximize profit, Tyson
alleged that company policy-makers had no knowledge
of the smuggling scheme executed by their middle and
lower-level managers. A federal jury deliberated for
less than a day and acquitted Tyson on all charges.
My research with poultry workers and organizers in
rural Mississippi since 2002 suggests that, in the
trial’s wake, Tyson has developed sophisticated
tactics that enable it to embrace a carefully-crafted
public image of corporate responsibility while continuing
to exploit the most vulnerable of workers. My paper
illuminates this ethical paradox through ethnographic
description of the ways in which differentially positioned
transnational actors—immigrant and U.S.-born
workers, their supporters, and corporate policy-makers—navigate
and experience the neoliberal immigration and employment
laws of the United States in the twenty-first century.
By demonstrating the effects of one corporation’s
manipulation of a broken system on people’s
lives and livelihoods, as well as workers’,
organizers’, and advocates’ efforts to
challenge this system, this paper illustrates some
of the most critical obstacles impeding transnational
workers’ mobilization for economic justice in
the U.S. today.
Leticia Zavala,
International Vice President, Farm Labor Organizing
Committee
"Transnational
Labor Organizing"
In 2004, FLOC won significant advances
for farmworkers in North Carolina with its historic
labor agreements. As a result, FLOC workers have experienced
significant improvements in wages and working rights.
Most important, these workers now have a direct voice
in their own conditions, through grievance procedures
in the fields and camps and through their union. At
its recent 10th Constitutional Convention, these tobacco
workers along with other FLOC members voted to begin
a new organizing campaign to bring more agricultural
workers in North Carolina under the benefits and protections
of FLOC’s historic union contracts. North Carolina
leads the country in tobacco production. In fact,
the North Carolina Department of Agriculture admits
that “The golden leaf is a bedrock to North
Carolina,” with “an approximate 2006 annual
farm income of $506.2 million dollars.” About
20% of FLOC workers help produce tobacco for RJ Reynolds.
FLOC now wishes to extend the same benefits to the
other tobacco workers in North Carolina.
Relevant documents:
--
Labor Recruitment in "Guest Worker" Programs
-- Testimony
of Baldemar Velasquez - Before the U.S. Congress Committee
-- Facts
about North Carolina Farmworkers
-- History
of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFLCIO
3:00-3:15, room 1005
BREAK
3:15-4:00 room 1005
CLOSING ROUNDTABLE WITH
ALL PRESENTERS
CONFERENCE PRESENTERS:
Sara
Berry , Professor of History
Johns Hopkins University
Carmen
Diana Deere, Director for the Center of
Latin American Studies and Professor of Food and Resource
Economics And Latin American Studies
University of Florida
Tad
Mutersbaugh, Associate Professor of Geography
University of Kentucky
Richard
Schroeder, Associate Professor, Department
of Geography
Rutgers University
Angela
C. Stuesse, Weatherhead Fellow, School
for Advanced Research, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of
Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
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