Walking Towards Justice: Democratization in Rural Life: Volume 9

Bell and Hendricks’ Walking Towards Justice is the first volume in the post-Schwarzweller era of Research in Rural Sociology and Development. Harry Schwarzweller – a Past President of both the Rural Sociological Society and the International Rural Sociology Association, and now Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Michigan State University – was the ideal person to mould and nurture Research in Rural Sociology and Development (RRSD) into becoming one of the world’s foremost publications in the fields of rural sociology and development studies. Harry had broad interests in rural sociology and development and a strong commitment to rural sociology as an internationally relevant enterprise. Schwarzweller was not only the Series Editor from the inception of RRSD in the mid-1980s, but he was editor or co-editor of seven of the eight volumes of RRSD that had been published as of 2000. The rural sociological community the world over owes Harry Schwarzweller its gratitude for paving this way for this important research publication.

Why would rural sociologists in particular have an interest in democracy? To begin with, rural sociologists have had a long standing concern with issues of community. During the 1970s and 1980s, the concept of community within rural sociology came under criticism as a simple-minded repetition of hoary stereotypes about fellow-feeling and neighborliness in small towns and villages, in contrast to the anomie of the city. But the disciplinary interest in how and when people get along and mobilize for the collective good (if we may reduce the concern for community to that base) remained. The study of rural democracy seemed a more sophisticated way of studying these issues without resorting to the old gemeinschaft-gesellschaft distinction. Several of the contributions to this book thus retain a focus on small associations of people, as the classic gemeinschaft literature did, but now with the analytic tools of the rural sociology of democracy.

Markets are a particular form of social organization in which exchanges are regularized. Capitalist markets are those in which: (1) most things traded are commodities, that is they are “identical” for purposes of sale (Appadurai, 1986); and (2) there exists a class of people for whom the end goal of selling in the market is not to buy goods but to “make money” (Marx, 1967 [1867]). Today, nearly everyone in the world lives in some form capitalist market society.

Legitimate exploitation confers status and dignity. That is why for peasants and their ideologists it was important to discover in the so-called “universal exchange” why the “surplus value” was snatched away from them. The famous San Garabato’s Law – “buy low, sell high” – was transformed, then, on the basis of exaction of peasant labor for capital, in the hostile but justifying mechanism, by which smallholder direct producers would acquire function and meaning within the modern system of accumulation of wealth. Thus paradoxically, despoilment became raison d’être and a symbol of identity.

Arguably democracy and globalization are among the most debated topics in contemporary scientific, political and cultural circles. Indeed, for some optimistic observers, these two phenomena are end points. Globalization is a process that generates economic prosperity and provides fresh opportunities for the emancipation of selves. Democracy is a product of previous phases of the evolution of society, but it has reached its most advanced form in this post-Fordist, post-cold war, global society (e.g. Friedman, 2000; Fukuyama, 1992). For critical thinkers, however, the growth of globalization problematizes the existence and practice of democracy. In an interesting convergence of opinions, this latter group includes radical conservative and progressive theorists alike. Radical Conservatives have argued that globalization engenders a crisis of democracy and that this situation is to be addressed through a retreat to the local and the ethnic. This new tribalism (Antonio, 2000; de Benoist, 1995) features attacks against the “move to the center” (the Clinton-Blair centralism) of many historically leftist and progressive liberal groups. The critics contend that the mainstream parties have converged and that neither the conventional left or right offer alternatives to the dominant neo-liberal approach, crisis-ridden post World War II idea of socio-economic development, or the erosion of sovereignty entailed by globalization. In this regard, the radical right proposes the replacement of “demos” with “ethnos” as the key organizational concept for contemporary society.

I don’t know why, but a few months ago I found myself reading Herbert Marcuse, the “improbable guru” of the Sixties, as Fortune, the popular U.S. business magazine, labeled him at the time. Fortune found him improbable on two counts. First, his age: Marcuse in the Sixties was himself in his sixties, leading the decade of those in their twenties who said they trusted no one in their thirties or above – except Marcuse and his paradigm-shattering One Dimensional Man. Second, his philosophy: a magazine like Fortune could hardly be expected, though, to approve of a writer who penned passages like the following (Marcuse, 1964, p. 9): We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality.Or this one (Marcuse, 1964, p. 3): By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For ‘totalitarian’ is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.Or this (Marcuse, 1972, p. 131): The fetishism of the commodity world, which seems to become denser every day, can be destroyed only by men and women who have torn aside the technological and ideological veil which conceals what is going on, which covers the insane rationality of the whole – men and women who have become free to develop their own needs, to build, in solidarity, their own world.Ripping good lines, steaming with the same liquid fire, as I once heard it described, with which Marx himself often wrote. But the Sixties have come and gone, quaintly registered now only in the gray hair of its dark-suited former activists, dressed for consensus about what they take to be the actual nature of human satisfaction: the fortunes of capitalism. It is, of course, in the nature of the true guru to be improbable, right?

Democracy can be viewed as an end state (structure) or as a process. In the 20th century, theories of the democratic structure and process (and thus the end state to be achieved and the structures necessary to achieve it) were highly contested. Some argued that only by freeing markets from state control could democracy materialize. Others argued that getting policies right would promote democracy – and a free market. A third group argued that the state was the problem, and that only by relying on civil society could democracy emerge and be maintained. We can classify differing approaches to democracy under three ideal types that drove debate and practice, depending on the sector seen as critical to the process. Stemming from 19th century theorists, three sectoral approaches were in conflict: those that stressed the market (neoliberalism), those that stressed the state (statism), and those that stressed “the people” or civil society (the populist approach).

Over the past 50 years, neoclassical, free-market capitalism has vanquished all challengers as the development paradigm. The collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe coupled with China’s turn down the capitalist road has left the door open for the unfettered spread of capitalism around the world. Today, traditional communities and local economies are being woven into global circuits of mass production and consumption. As more and more aspects of community life are commodified, local residents are transformed from citizens who have an active role in the civic life of their towns and village into consumers whose main goal in life is to keep the global engine of accumulation running. In the West, life is increasingly lived at work and the shopping mall. Home is a place to park the car, watch television and sleep.

Democracy is a process that depends on a vibrant civil society. Civil society is produced by individuals and groups making choices, innovating, and taking risks to act on public issues that they care deeply about. One of those public issues is water quality. Water quality affects the health and well-being of every person and business in every community. One-third of the world’s population live in areas with moderate to high levels of water contamination (United Nations, 2000). This is a problem that won’t go away; as economic development expands and world population increases, so will the need for clean water. “Global freshwater consumption rose sixfold between 1900 and 1995 – more than twice the rate of population growth” (United Nations, 2000). Government regulations and programs to decrease degraded waters have focused on point source pollution – the reduction of readily identifiable pollution sources such as effluents from municipal wastewater treatment plants or industrial factory discharges into streams and rivers. However, it has become increasingly clear that a large portion of the contamination of waters originates from land use around these waters (such as farm fields, streets, housing construction, and homeowner practices) rather than specific point sources (Novotny & Chesters, 1981; Thornton et al., 1999). In the U.S., non-point sources deliver four billion tons of sediment yearly to streams and rivers, contribute to approximately 80% of total nitrogen load and 50% of phosphorous load into receiving waters, and account for over 98% of fecal and total coliform counts (Novotny & Chesters, 1981).

European policy has had over time two main features: welfare state and democracy. Both issues have defined the model of development in Europe and have led to the European integration project. This model of development and continental integration based on the principles of democracy, freedom and solidarity has proven to work. But, nowadays challenges like globalisation or European enlargement require new instruments to promote and enhance this model.

During almost 30 years until 1992, two protracted wars provoked the massive dislocation of rural Mozambicans. During the 1980s, approximately four million people fled to zones of relative safety inside the country. Around two million more moved to neighboring countries. In the 1990s, the Mozambican government with the support of international donors faced the enormous problem of helping this population, between 40 and 50% of the total, resettle in their homelands.

One of the intractable problems in all democracies is how to deal with the paradox of political equality alongside economic inequality. All democracies uphold political and civil equality, yet they all maintain material inequality. A host of constitutional rights and liberties makes everybody in a democracy equal in a formal-legal way. Simultaneously, all democracies protect private property. Since property is always unequally distributed it follows that constitutional guarantees of property rights may undermine efforts to ensure material equality. If, as in South Africa, land was acquired by settlers through colonialism, then constitutional protection of property rights provides a legal sanction for colonial land theft.

In Zimbabwe, a curious set of events has occurred since early 2000. Land reform, usually taken to be in defence of rural democracy, is being employed by a government determined to remain in power and veering increasingly toward violent authoritarianism.

On 6th of March 1997, the President of the Republic of Chile, Eduardo Frei, inaugurated the hydroelectric dam of Pangue. This plant is the first phase of a mega-project which will involve the construction of six dams in the Bio-Bio River in the heart of ancestral territory of the Mapuche. The inauguration was accompanied by protests from political personalities inside and outside the country, ecological groupings, indigenous organizations, political parties, and international organizations. What at first glance may be considered as yet another one of those controversial dam constructions – situations that nowadays are occurring on all continents – in reality is a step in a sophisticated project of ethnicide on the Mapuche people which has been inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship.

Development has been one of the tasks of government and non-governmental institutions in rural environments. For decades, theoreticians of the hegemonic currents of development considered that there was just one solution for development and they did not take into account the fact that the knowledge and experience of the rural population and their practices could have numerous roads and options for development. They did not perceive that such a linear perspective not only caused many failures but also ecological disasters and injustices endured by those who hadn’t even participated in the decisions that affected them.

Robert J. Antonio is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA. His e-mail address is anto@falcon.cc.ukans.eduArmando Bartra is a Sociologist, Historian, and President of the Instituto Maya, in Mexico City, Mexico. The Instituto Maya has worked for the past 30 years with peasant and indigenous groups on leadership, capacity building, micro-credit, and related rural development projects. His e-mail address is circo@laneta.apc.orgMichael Mayerfeld Bell is Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, and Collaborating Associate Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. His e-mail address is michaelbell@wisc.eduGisela Landázuri Benı́tez teaches Rural Development at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico. Her e-mail address is giselalb@prodigy.net.mxAlessandro Bonanno is Professor of Sociology and Chair of Sociology at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, USA. His e-mail address is soc_aab@shsu.eduLawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. He is also Director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural Standards, and a Past President of the Rural Sociological Society. His e-mail address is Lawrence.Busch@ssc.msu.eduJorge Calbucura is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. His e-mail address is Jorge.Calbucura@soc.uu.seMaria del Mar Delgado is Assistant Professor of Rural Development at the Department of Economics, Sociology, and Agriculture Policy, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain. She is a member of the Rural Development Team at the University of Cordoba. Her e-mail address is mmdelgado@uco.esCornelia Butler Flora is Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. She is also Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development and a Past President of the Rural Sociological Society. Her e-mail address is cflora@iastate.eduRosemary Elizabeth Gali is the coordinator of the Sociology Module of the Master’s Program in Development Management sponsored by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the University of Torino, Italy. She has worked as a consultant for most of the major development agencies and was an adviser to the government of Mozambique during the 1990s. Her e-mail address is gallirose@hotmail.comFred T. Hendricks is Professor and Head of Department at the Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. He is also Managing Editor of the African Sociological Review. His e-mail address is f.hendricks@ru.ac.zaSusie Jacobs is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology of Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom. She is co-director of the Institute of Global Studies there. Her e-mail address is s.jacobs@mmu.ac.ukThomas A. Lyson is Professor in the Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. He is also Director of Cornell’s Community, Food, and Agriculture Program, and a past editor of the journal Development Sociology. His e-mail address is tal2@cornell.eduLois Wright Morton is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. Her e-mail address is lwmorton@iastate.eduEduardo Ramos is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Sociology, and Agriculture Policy, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain. He is also Head of the Co-operation for Development Chair. He is a member of the Rural Development Team at the University of Cordoba. His e-mail address is eduardo.ramos@uco.es