Confronting agrarian authoritarianism: dynamics of resistance to PROSAVANA in Mozambique

Monjane, Boaventura; Bruna, Natacha

doi:10.4324/9781003162353-14

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Resistance combined with the surrounding political and global economic environment (crises and government unpopularity, Brazil's instability and Japan's democracy, global commodity price trends) to bring an early end to the project (127).…”

Section: Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary Populism and the Environment

Ofstehage

Wolford

Borras³

2022

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

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This review engages with literature on authoritarian populism, focusing specifically on its relationship to the environment. We analyze hybrid combinations of authoritarianism and populism to explore three themes from the literature: environmental governance, social and political representations of nature, and resistance. In the environmental governance section, we analyze how governments have increasingly resorted to populist politics to expand extractivism; certain commodities with national security implications have become key commodities to be protected; and borders, frontiers, and zones of inclusion/exclusion have become flash points. In the social and political representations of nature section, we analyze settler colonialism and sacrifice zones as organizing principles for relations with the environment. In our final section on resistance, we review literature highlighting pushback to authoritarian populism from peasant, indigenous, and worker movements. Variants of populism and authoritarianism are likely to persist amid increasing competition over resources as components of responses to environmental and climate crisis. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 47 is October 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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Section: Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary Populism and the Environment

Ofstehage

Wolford

Borras³

2022

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

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“…The Programme for Agricultural Development of the Tropical Savannah in Mozambique (ProSAVANA) was a large-scale agrarian programme, introduced in the beginning of the 2010s, aiming to transform the agricultural sector to be more investment and business-friendly (Monjane and Bruna 2020). It was a triangular programme, as it was proposed by the governments of Mozambique, Brazil, and Japan.…”

Section: Prosavana In Mozambiquementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main objective of this agrarian programme was to increase agricultural productivity, targeting millions of hectares in north-central Mozambique. The programme was earmarked to have access to 14 million hectares in the Nacala Corridor, and this constituted just half of the total 36 million hectares of arable land in Mozambique (Clements and Fernandes 2013;Monjane and Bruna 2020). The imposition of ProSAVANA in the 2010s sparked debates on whose interest this megaproject was serving.…”

Section: Prosavana In Mozambiquementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Mozambican case also emphasizes the negative implications of policymaking from above in the context of land reform. The hibernation-and later termination-of ProSAVANA can be explained as emerging from a combination of tactics intrinsic to the NPC, namely: (1) active agency from below; (2) an inter-sector civil society alliance; (3) communication, publicity, and media strategy; (4) transnationalization of the struggle; and (5) proposal of alternatives to confront the dominant narratives (Monjane and Bruna 2020).…”

Section: Prosavana In Mozambiquementioning

confidence: 99%

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Global Authoritarianism

2022

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once again discusses dependency, forms of subordination and exploitation, ecologies of territories and knowledge systems, the racist legacies of state forms, and the ways that capital metabolizes that which combats it. From my point of view, the initiatives of militant investigation develop a kind of sensitivity in composing statements and resolving conflicts. It's a form of action: it is not a mode of analysis that is devoid of imagination, and even less of calling on others to act. Understood in this way, militant investigation is less a thematization (in the sense of constructing an agenda) and more a question of method, and of a practical commitment. The gravity of the themes discussed here demands nothing less.whether the concept of authoritarianism can provide us with anything more than a formal description of what, in the worst case, is seen merely as a 'deviation' from the ideal liberal model of the state.We consider that it can, but this requires acknowledging, as Pedro Salgado argues, that "liberal values are not mutually exclusive with authoritarian practices, but simply rearrange them around a different conception of political subjectivity" (in this volume). Likewise, as the Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes pointed out, under capitalist democracy, the "authoritarian element is intrinsically a structural and dynamic component of preservation, strengthening and expansion of the 'capitalist democratic system'" (2019, 45). In this sense, Julieta Mira shows how authoritarian institutional practices are embedded within democratic regimes, and Hülya Dinçer in her text points towards the often processual authoritarian transformation when discussing Turkey's transition towards "autocratic legalism" and the systematic creation of "legal black holes" for arbitrary authoritarian rule.Thus, a critical global perspective on authoritarianism implies both to acknowledge its inherent inscription and embeddedness in (post)colonial capitalist states and societies, and to think of it in historically and geographically specific terms, as Inés Durán Matute and Mariano Féliz develop in this book. In this sense, we consider that the concept does not compete with other, sometimes more specific accounts-be they fascism or Bonapartism, authoritarian populism or authoritarian neoliberalism-but rather allows us to build a conceptual arc between the concrete and necessarily specific expressions of a global trend towards an increasingly weaponized regime of capital accumulation coupled with processes of de-democratization and brutalization of social and political practices and relations.At the core of the current authoritarian turn of global capitalism lies a shared experience of a world in crisis-a multifaceted or 'civilizational crisis', as some observers write. The ecological crisis coincides with overlapping national, regional, and international political crises, a global crisis of representation and, by extension, of the legitimacy of (neo-)liberal democracies, massive economic dislocations, and a long train of closel...

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“…In contrast to the package of neoliberal reforms, Mozambique adopted a land policy in 1995 and Land Law in 1997 that are widely viewed as progressive because they affirm the tenure rights of local communities, recognize customary practices, and promote participatory governance (Cabral & Norfolk, 2016; Hanlon, 2004; Palmer, 2006). Yet despite this legal framework, Mozambique has become a centre of land grabbing, and de facto land privatization has taken place (Bruna, 2019; Fairbairn, 2013; Twomey, 2014), triggering widespread peasant resistance (Bruna, 2022; Chambati et al, 2018; Monjane & Bruna, 2020). Progressive law, it now turns out, is an impediment to the state's plans for the expansion of the logic of capital in the countryside, which promotes commodification.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting agrarian neoliberalism and authoritarianism: Struggles towards a progressive rural future in Mozambique

Monjane

2022

Journal of Agrarian Change

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After nearly two and a half decades with a Land Law widely considered progressive, Mozambique is preparing to revise its legal framework for land. Land activists accuse the government of pursuing an authoritarian approach, excluding civil society participation, and falsifying public consultations. The revision would mark a major shift in Mozambique's land policy towards an even more neoliberal framework to allow the transfer of individual land titles. This turning point is a crucial moment for popular movements to mobilize against the consolidation of agrarian neoliberalism and fight for pro‐poor land policy that benefits small‐scale food producers and rural communities at large. While recognizing different rural and agrarian class formations and interests in Mozambique, I argue that embryonic forms of a cross‐class alliance are becoming apparent. As deagrarianization proceeds, the National Union of Peasants (UNAC) plays a key role in mobilizing the rural poor — petty commodity producers, farm workers, fishermen, small agrarian capitalists, and agrarian civil society at large — using left‐wing populism to oppose agrarian neoliberalism, which takes authoritarian forms.

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Confronting agrarian authoritarianism: dynamics of resistance to PROSAVANA in Mozambique

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Contemporary Populism and the Environment

Contemporary Populism and the Environment

Global Authoritarianism

Resisting agrarian neoliberalism and authoritarianism: Struggles towards a progressive rural future in Mozambique

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