Landlessness

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Landlessness is the quality or state of being without land, without access to land, or without having private ownership of land. Although overlapping considerably, landlessness is not a necessary condition of poverty. In modern capitalist societies, individuals may not necessarily privately own land yet still possess the capital to obtain an excess of what is necessary to sustain themselves, such as wealthy individuals who rent expensive high-rise apartments in major urban centers. As such, landlessness may not exist as an immediate threat to their survival or quality of life. [1] This minority of landless individuals as sometimes been referred to as the "landless rich." [2] [3] [4] However, for the majority of landless people, including the urban poor and those displaced into conditions of rural-to-urban migration, their condition of landlessness is also one of impoverishment, being without the capital to meet their basic necessities nor the land to grow their own food, keep animals, or sustain themselves. During times of economic prosperity in modern capitalist societies, the liabilities of landlessness may not be noticeable, especially to the wealthy, but during times of economic failure and rising unemployment, the liabilities of landlessness become more visible. [1] [5]

Contents

Indigenous Landlessness

Landlessness has since been identified as "one of the main causes of poverty amongst Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous women, making land rights critical to the alleviation of Indigenous poverty." [6] Indigenous people throughout the world have been displaced from their traditional lands as a result of settler colonialism, corporate imperialism, war, logging and mining, and even land conservation efforts, which has increased their social marginalization, lack of access to basic social services, and chronic poverty. [6] [7] [8] According to colonial logics, Indigenous people were not able to exercise their territorial sovereignty. [9] Indigenous peoples in the United States without a territory or a reservation, such as the Oklahoma Choctaws and the Winnemem Wintu, are nations without a land base, which affects their ability to assert sovereignty and self-determination while also leading directly to the loss of language, culture, and traditions. [10] [11] Māori in New Zealand have recognized how Indigenous homelessness is inextricably connected with landlessness as a result of the colonial acquisition of Indigenous resources to support European settlement. [8]

Landlessness in Rural Economies

Characteristics of Landlessness in Rural Economies

Landlessness can be defined as the lack of access to or absence of adequate land to provide basic needs and fulfillment of human rights. [12] [13] [14] A rural household is generally categorized as landless if it does not have land outside of residential or rented land. [12] Landlessness is usually also a manifestation of other societal problems such as poverty, insecurity, powerlessness, and inequality. [15] [16]

In agrarian economies, land is the primary source of income and employment for rural populations. [17] [15] As such, ownership of and access to land is a major determinant of "economic solvency, social power structure, and hierarchy [15] " and it is considered to be the most important contributor to poverty for rural households. [17] The rural landless are separated from means of production [12] and become dependent on non-agricultural sources of labor [17] which are often inconsistent and offer insufficiently low wages. [12] [18] As a result, they continue to be unable to access adequate land due to the lack of social and fiscal power and are confined to the poorest segments of society. [12]

Causes of Landlessness in Rural Economies

There are two main assumptions associated with the rapid rise of landlessness in rural economies over the past few decades. [15] [12] The first assumption stipulates that certain socio-economic circumstances such as low agricultural productivity, inequality, and colonialism would exacerbate peasant class differentiation. Therefore, poverty and landlessness increase in tandem. [12] [14] Low agricultural productivity is a concern especially in areas with land scarcity such as in certain parts of Asia, where the lower the productivity of land, the more land is required to provide an adequate level of living. [14] Inequitable social structures often characterize rural landscapes in underdeveloped countries. Corporate and commercial actors control large tracts of productive land, increasing the severity of landlessness and near-landlessness. This polarization continues to increase, exacerbating inequality and conflict. [19] Colonialism has direct consequences on landlessness, where it undermines existing social and organizational structures and generally enables exploitative land management practices. [14] [20] [16] The second assumption stipulates that rising landlessness signifies a divergence from farming and the emergence of non-agricultural economic opportunities. In this scenario, farming households can choose to sell their land to explore new opportunities, in which case rising landlessness can be associated with falling poverty. [14] [12]

Grassroots Activism

Various grassroots movements have emerged in response to escalating corruption, discrimination, and exploitative labor conditions. Notable movements and organizations include the Landless People's Movement in South Africa, the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil, the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest, and the Asian Peasant Coalition. [21] [22] [23]

Day of the Landless

The Day of the Landless on March 29 is inaugurated by the Asian Peasant Coalition to raise awareness and advocate for land rights for rural workers across Asia. [24]

Related Research Articles

Agrarianism is a political and social philosophy that has promoted subsistence agriculture, smallholdings, and egalitarianism, with agrarian political parties normally supporting the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy in society. In highly developed and industrial nations or regions, it can denote use of financial and social incentives for self-sustainability, more community involvement in food production and smart growth that avoids urban sprawl, and also what many of its advocates contend are risks of human overpopulation; when overpopulation occurs, the available resources become too limited for the entire population to survive comfortably or at all in the long term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rural area</span> Geographic area that is located outside towns and cities

In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are described as rural. Different countries have varying definitions of rural for statistical and administrative purposes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subsistence agriculture</span> Farming to meet basic needs

Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace."

Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporate food regime, in which corporations and market institutions control the global food system. Food sovereignty emphasizes local food economies, sustainable food availability, and center culturally appropriate foods and practices. Changing climates and disrupted foodways disproportionately impact indigenous populations and their access to traditional food sources while contributing to higher rates of certain diseases; for this reason, food sovereignty centers indigenous peoples. These needs have been addressed in recent years by several international organizations, including the United Nations, with several countries adopting food sovereignty policies into law. Critics of food sovereignty activism believe that the system is founded on inaccurate baseline assumptions; disregards the origins of the targeted problems; and is plagued by a lack of consensus for proposed solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ejido</span> Communal farming unit in Mexico

An ejido is an area of communal land used for agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights rather than ownership rights to land, which in Mexico is held by the Mexican state. People awarded ejidos in the modern era farm them individually in parcels and collectively maintain communal holdings with government oversight. Although the system of ejidos was based on an understanding of the preconquest Aztec calpulli and the medieval Spanish ejido, in the twentieth century ejidos are government-controlled.

Agrarian reform can refer either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land or, broadly, to an overall redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land reform measures. Agrarian reform can include credit measures, training, extension, land consolidations, etc. The World Bank evaluates agrarian reform using five dimensions: (1) stocks and market liberalization, (2) land reform, (3) agro-processing and input supply channels, (4) urban finance, (5) market institutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poverty in China</span> Economic issues in China

In China today, poverty refers mainly to the rural poor, decades of economic development has reduced urban extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms, which still stands in 2022. Chinese definition of extreme poverty is more stringent than that of World Bank, and is defined as earning less than $2.30 a day at purchasing power parity (PPP), Since the start of far-reaching economic reforms in the late 1970s, growth has fuelled a substantial increase in per-capita income lifting people out of extreme poverty. China's per capita income has increased fivefold between 1990 and 2000, from $200 to $1,000. Between 2000 and 2010, per capita income also rose by the same rate, from $1,000 to $5,000, moving China into the ranks of middle-income countries. Between 1990 and 2005, China's progress accounted for more than three-quarters of global poverty reduction and was largely responsible for the world reaching the UN millennium development target of dividing extreme poverty in half. This can be attributed to a combination of a rapidly expanding labour market, driven by a protracted period of economic growth, and a series of government transfers such as an urban subsidy, and the introduction of a rural pension. The World Bank Group said that the percentage of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.9 fell to 0.7 percent in 2015, and poverty line of $3.2 fell to 7% in 2015. At the end of 2018, the number of people living below China's national poverty line of ¥2,300 (CNY) per year was 16.6 million, equal to 1.7% of the population at the time.

Rural economics is the study of rural economies. Rural economies include both agricultural and non-agricultural industries, so rural economics has broader concerns than agricultural economics which focus more on food systems. Rural development and finance attempt to solve larger challenges within rural economics. These economic issues are often connected to the migration from rural areas due to lack of economic activities and rural poverty. Some interventions have been very successful in some parts of the world, with rural electrification and rural tourism providing anchors for transforming economies in some rural areas. These challenges often create rural-urban income disparities.

Rural poverty refers to poverty in rural areas, including factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the poverty found there. Rural areas, because of their spread-out populations, typically have less well maintained infrastructure and a harder time accessing markets, which tend to be concentrated in population centers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Causes of poverty</span>

The causes of poverty may vary with respect to nation, region, and in comparison with other countries at the global level. Yet, there is a commonality amongst these causes. Philosophical perspectives, and especially historical perspectives, including some factors at a micro and macro level can be considered in understanding these causes.

Poverty reduction in Guatemala remains as one of the key challenges to be dealt with before a more balanced and socially inclusive economic growth could be achieved.

The Journal of Agrarian Change is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 2001 covering agrarian political economy. The journal publishes historical and contemporary studies of the social relations and dynamics of production, power relations in agrarian formations and ownership structures and their processes of change.

Peasant economics is an area of economics in which a wide variety of economic approaches ranging from the neoclassical to the marxist are used to examine the political economy of the peasantry. The defining feature of the peasants are that they are typically seen to be only partly integrated into the market economy - an economy which, in societies with a significant peasant population, is typically found to have many imperfect, incomplete or missing markets. Peasant economics treats peasants as something different from other farmers as they are not assumed to be simply small profit maximizing farmers; by contrast, peasant economics covers a wide range of different theories of peasant household behavior. These include various assumptions about the maximization of profits, risk aversion, drudgery aversion, and sharecropping. The assumptions, logic, and predictions of these theories are examined and the impact of subsistence is typically found to have important implications in terms of producers decisions about supply, consumption and price. Chayanov was an early proponent of the importance of understanding peasant behaviour arguing that peasants would work as hard as they needed in order to meet their subsistence needs, but had no incentive beyond those needs and therefore would slow and stop working once they were met. This principle, the consumption-labour-balance principle, implies that the peasant household will increase its work until it meets (balances) the needs (consumption) of the household. A possible implication of this view of peasant societies is that they will not develop without some external, added factor. Peasant economics has been seen as being an important area of study by some development economists, agricultural sociologists, and anthropologists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gender and food security</span>

Gender inequality both leads to and is a result of food insecurity. According to estimates women and girls make up 60% of the world's chronically hungry and little progress has been made in ensuring the equal right to food for women enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Women face discrimination both in education and employment opportunities and within the household, where their bargaining power is lower. On the other hand, gender equality is described as instrumental to ending malnutrition and hunger. Women tend to be responsible for food preparation and childcare within the family and are more likely to be spent their income on food and their children's needs. The gendered aspects of food security are visible along the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes “the equal distribution of landed resources among collectivized peasant villages”. This socialist system places agriculture at the center of the economy instead of the industrialization efforts found in urban settings. Seen as more progressive in terms of social orientation, many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused and traditional. The emphasis of agrarian socialists is therefore on social control, ownership and utilization of the means of production in a rural society. Additionally, principles like community, sharing and local ownership are emphasized under agrarian socialism. For instance, in rural communities in post-Soviet Russia “social organization of labor in the peasant household is based upon highly dense networks of mutual trust and interdependences” that diminished the need for manager-employee styles of labor. Nationalist ideology can also be seen coupled with agrarian socialist ideology, sometimes serving as the foundation for peasant-led revolutions. For instance, nationalist propaganda from the fledging Chinese communist party during the Sino-Japanese war era, “furthered the mobilization of the masses and helped determine the form this mobilization took”.

Zhu Ling is a Chinese economist who served as the deputy director and researcher in the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), professor of graduate school and supervisor of doctorate student at Institute of Economics, CASS. She was elected a member of CASS in 2010. Previously, she was an executive member at International Association of Agricultural Economics (IAAE), Vice president of the Chinese Agricultural & Applied Economics Association, and had joined the research group of Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations.

Concentration of land ownership refers to the ownership of land in a particular area by a small number of people or organizations. It is sometimes defined as additional concentration beyond that which produces optimally efficient land use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisabeth Sadoulet</span> Economist

Elisabeth Sadoulet is an economist and Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley who has carried out field research in China, India, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Sadoulet was the editor of the World Bank Economic Review from 2010 to 2013, and is a fellow of several scholarly associations in the fields of agriculture and economics.

Agrarian change is the process by which the political economy of the agrarian sector alters in some way. It involves changes in the social relations and dynamics of production, power relations in agrarian formations and ownership structures in the agricultural sector of an economy. The kind of dimensions covered in the study of this typically include not only technological and institutional forms such as agricultural productivity and farm-size and organisation; land reform; paths of capitalist transition; the politics of transnational agrarian social movements; the environmental contradictions of capitalist agriculture; global value chains and commodity certification schemes; the agrarian roots of violence and conflict; and migration and rural labour markets but also issues around gender, migration and rural labor markets, social differentiation and class formation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental conflict</span>

Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources. The Environmental Justice Atlas documented 3,100 environmental conflicts worldwide as of April 2020 and emphasised that many more conflicts remained undocumented. Parties involved in these conflicts include locally affected communities, states, companies and investors, and social or environmental movements; typically environmental defenders are protecting their homelands from resource extraction or hazardous waste disposal. Resource extraction and hazardous waste activities often create resource scarcities, pollute the environment, and degrade the living space for humans and nature, resulting in conflict.

References

  1. 1 2 Berry, Wendell (2010). What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth. Counterpoint. pp. 23–24. ISBN   9781582436708.
  2. ↑ Proto, Eugene (2007). "Land and the transition from a dual to a modern economy". Journal of Development Economics. 83: 4–5. doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2005.11.004.
  3. ↑ "The Pope-Hartford Garage, St. Louis". Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal. Chilton Company. 15: 141. 1911.
  4. ↑ Monograph Series. University of California: Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute. 1968. p. 190.
  5. ↑ Forni, Nadia (2003). Fiorillo, Ciro; Vercueil, Jacques (eds.). Syrian Agriculture at the Crossroads. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Policy Assistance Division. pp. 329–330. ISBN   9789251049907.
  6. 1 2 Gender and Human Rights in the Commonwealth: Some Critical Issues for Action in the Decade 2005-2015. Commonwealth Secretariat. 2004. p. 258. ISBN   9780850928082.
  7. ↑ Vinding, Diana (2004). The Indigenous World 2004. IWGIA. p. 394. ISBN   9788790730833.
  8. 1 2 Brown, Deidre (2016). "Tūrangawaewae Kore: Nowhere to Stand". In Peters, Evelyn; Christensen, Julia (eds.). Indigenous Homelessness: Perspectives from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. University of Manitoba Press. ISBN   9780887555268.
  9. ↑ Simala, Kenneth Inyani (2014). El-Affendi, Abdelwahab (ed.). Genocidal Nightmares: Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 97–98. ISBN   9781628920734.
  10. ↑ Akers, Donna (2013). Culture and Customs of the Choctaw Indians. ABC-CLIO. p. 151. ISBN   9780313364020.
  11. ↑ "Resolution Chapter 128". Statutes of California and Digests of Measures 2008. University of California. 4: 5857. 2008.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Ravallion, Martin; Van De Walle, Dominique (2008-10-01). "Does rising landlessness signal success or failure for Vietnam's agrarian transition?". Journal of Development Economics. 87 (2): 191–209. doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2007.03.003. ISSN   0304-3878. S2CID   153937699.
  13. ↑ Shrestha, Nanda R. (2019-04-10), "The Politics of Land, Spontaneous Settlement, and the Prospect of Agrarian Revolution?", Landlessness and Migration in Nepal, Routledge, pp. 224–257, doi:10.4324/9780429042690-7, ISBN   978-0-429-04269-0, S2CID   197783739 , retrieved 2021-04-16
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Sinha, Radha (1984). Landlessness: A Growing Problem. Food & Agriculture Org. ISBN   9251013721.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Rahman, Md. Habibur; Manprasert, Somprawin (2006-02-01). "Landlessness and its Impact on Economic Development: A Case Study on Bangladesh". Journal of Social Sciences. 2 (2): 54–60. doi: 10.3844/jssp.2006.54.60 . ISSN   1549-3652.
  16. 1 2 Elisabeth, Wickeri (2009). "Land is Life, Land is Power: Landlessness, Exclusion, and Deprivation in Nepal". Fordham International Law Journal. 34.
  17. 1 2 3 Anwar, Talat; Qureshi, Sarfraz K.; Ali, Hammad; Ahmad, Munir (2004). "Landlessness and Rural Poverty in Pakistan [with Comments]". The Pakistan Development Review. 43 (4): 855–874. doi: 10.30541/v43i4IIpp.855-874 . ISSN   0030-9729. JSTOR   41261030.
  18. ↑ Jahan, Nilufar; Alauddin, Mohammad (1996-01-01). "Have women lost out in the development process? Some evidence from rural Bangladesh". International Journal of Social Economics. 23 (4/5/6): 370–390. doi:10.1108/03068299610121921. ISSN   0306-8293.
  19. ↑ Tait, Saskia (2003). "Property Matters: Synergies and Silences between Land Reform Research and Development Policy". Journal of Public and International Affairs. 14.
  20. ↑ Rammohan, K.T. (2008). "Caste and Landlessness in Kerala: Signals from Chengara". Economic and Political Weekly. 43.
  21. ↑ Vergara‐Camus, Leandro (2011). "Land, Protest, and Politics: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil – By Gabriel Ondetti". Journal of Agrarian Change. 11 (1): 129–132. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0366.2010.00292.x. ISSN   1471-0366.
  22. ↑ Popular politics in South African cities : unpacking community participation. Claire Bénit-Gbaffou, Human Sciences Research Council. Cape Town, South Africa. 2015. ISBN   978-0-7969-2464-3. OCLC   928364088.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  23. ↑ "The Asian Peasant Coalition". The Asian Peasant Coalition. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
  24. ↑ Ramakant, Bobby (2021). "Day of the Landless sparks call for reform of global food system". The Nation Thailand. Retrieved 2021-04-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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