The agrarian myth, the ‘new’ populism and the ‘new’ right

Agrarian social movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right‐wing populism and exploring a socialist future

“…This was true of the 2016 elections in the United States, 6 the 2017 elections in Germany, 7 and the 2018 elections in Russia 8 and in Turkey. 9 In some countries, there is no clear urban-rural divide in electoral voting behaviour but rather an upsurge of support in both urban and rural spaces for right-wing candidates, such as in the 2018 2 Brass (1997) offers a critical examination of the relationship between the "new" right and what he clusters together and labels as new populism in the 1960s through the 1990s, in which agrarian themes form (Brass argues), a common bond for the two. This speaks to the themes explored in the present paper, but with different categorizations of objects of analysis.…”

Agrarian Crisis in Punjab and ‘Natural Farming’ as a Response

“…In this respect, it conforms to the model described by Brass, and elaborated by Nanda, as 'new agrarian populism'. 43 Nanda argues that the kind of populist rhetoric adopted by the Hindu Right has taken root amongst sections of the middle peasantry that were economically empowered by the Green Revolution, yet have been threatened by the breakdown of traditional caste and gender relations. The Hindu nationalist discourses, which naturalise and romanticise traditional hierarchies, serve to neutralise potential assertions from subaltern classes.…”

From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change

“…63 A much more comprehensive, and accelerating, 63 White (1986) appeared in the special issue edited by Scott and Kerkvliet, and took issue with Scott's influential Weapons of the Weak (1985) for its aggregation of a wide range of peasant practices as instances of 'resistance'. In this case White distinguished strategies rooted in petty commodity production and pursued by peasants whose position had been strengthened by successful political polemic was launched by Brass (1991Brass ( , 1997; see also Brass 1994aBrass , 1994bBrass , 1994cBrass , 1996 who attacked notions of the middle peasantry, moral economy, everyday resistance, subaltern studies, new social movements, post-modernism, culturalism, relativism, and all forms of agrarian mythology and populism, linked 'epistemologically' by peasant essentialism and ideologically by hostility to any project of social emancipation informed by Enlightenment ideals and optimism.…”