Global Integration and Subsistence Insecurity

Abstract

Global integration heightens the cyclical crises of capitalism by incorporating the subsistence sectors of advanced and peripheral economies. World trends show a contraction in industrial production; the rise of unemployment, an increase in military spending and decline in social welfare, a reversal of capital flows from developing countries to developed economies, and a worldwide drop in real wages. The impact of these trends on communities in Mexico, Bolivia, and the United States where the author has done fieldwork is assessed in relation to current economic crises and the social movements that respond to them. The author shows that collective action to oppose the devastating effect on subsistence is more prevalent in marginal economies that are just beginning to experience the effect of capital penetration than in the industrial wastelands of developed countries. Theories of the crisis neglect those arenas where resistance and protest are most active: the urban barrios struggling for food and water, the rural laborers forced off of their land base, and the hunters and cultivators of the jungle. Luxemburg's thesis asserting the importance of the subsistence sector in capital accumulation acquires increasing significance at a time when those economies are threatened with extinction. Expanding the notion of subsistence production to include nonwage work allows us to theorize the significance of social reproduction in crisis conditions.

Economic Integration, Rural Hardship, and Conservation on Guatemala's Agricultural Frontier

“…First, it leads one to question the degree to which meaningful environmental benefits can be achieved through conservation activities at the agricultural frontier and, for that matter, in many other local contexts in the developing world, when economic policies and trends at broader regional, national, and international scales overwhelmingly contribute to inequitable and unsustainable patterns of resource use (Reed, 1992;Nash, 1994;Barbier, 2000; UK Department for International Development [DFID], 2000;Easterly, 2001;Klepeis & Vance, 2003;Gwynne & Kay, 2004). The same applies to the more contemporary, integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) that seek to provide community economic benefits in conjunction with conservation activities.…”

Experiencing refugees: A review essay

“…Marxists typically assume that political and economic domination structure and organize social life in ways that have penetrating consequences for individuals, including the family forms they adopt, the alliances they enter into, and the ways they make sense of their fates (e.g., Godelier 1977;Williams 1977;Rosebeny 1989;Wolf 1982). Their work focuses on the expansion of capitalism and its impacts on peasant, pastoralist, gatherer-hunters, and other political economies, narrowing their focus further by examining the relations of power and resistance that accompany political and economic dislocation and displacement (Nash 1994;Roseberry 1983;Scott 1985;Stoler 1985;Sider 1987). These studies illustrate that the social conditions of displacement encourage the formation of leadership and the critical examination, by those displaced, of the processes and institutions that displaced them.…”

Changing taste preferences, market demands and traditions in Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua: A community reliant on green turtles for income and nutrition

“…Market pressures encroaching on Pearl Lagoon and migration to remote communities can affect consumption levels. Conservationists worry that market pressures in Caribbean Nicaragua are affecting green turtle harvests to a degree that is most likely too high and no longer sustainable (Nash 1994;Campbell 2003;Lagueux et al 2005;Lagueux et al 2009). In Tortuguero, Costa Rica, however, nonparametric regression models on the green turtle rookery indicate an increase of 417% in nesting between 1971(Troëng & Rankin 2004.…”