Peasant Politics in Global Arenas

在美洲、欧洲和南亚等不同的世界区域，自由市场政策迫使小农改变其生产战略，否则将面临经济崩溃。 农民和小农组织曾经几乎完全致力于国家一级的努力，以获得地方一级的利益，现在越来越多地寻求跨越国界的盟友，试图影响影响其农村生计的全球力量。 在某些情况下，这导致了暴力行动，例如法国农民在抗议“快餐”时摧毁了一家麦当劳餐厅;印度农民烧毁了一块转基因棉花地，以抗议农业综合企业。这个人类学项目研究一个新的国际农民和小农组织，称为农民之路，成立于1993年，在大约60个国家有分支机构。 该项目将在五个地点采访小农积极分子和捐助非政府组织人员：欧洲农民联合会总部布鲁塞尔;网络技术秘书处所在地加拿大萨斯卡通;网络组织秘书处总部洪都拉斯特古西加尔帕;帮助建立农民之路的中美洲小农网络基地尼加拉瓜马那瓜;印度的班加罗尔是该网络最活跃的成员组织之一。在每个地点，访谈和文献资料分析将侧重于活动家个人的政治形成，组织巩固的历史，以及资源和联盟的动员。该项目将研究捍卫经济边缘选区的运动通过形成全球民间社会的一部分而获得和失去了什么，以及新的跨国政治如何在农业组织内部以及与其非政府组织支持者和反对者的关系中塑造农民和小农的身份。这一提议产生的新知识将促进我们对可比的基层和全球组织如何运作的理解。

In diverse world regions such as the Americas, Europe and South Asia, free-market policies have forced small-scale farmers to transform their productive strategies or face economic ruin. Peasant and small-farmer organizations that once were oriented almost exclusively toward national-level efforts to obtain local-level benefits are now increasingly seeking allies across national borders, attempting to affect global forces which impact their rural livelihoods. In some cases this has resulted in violent actions such as the French peasants' destruction of a McDonalds restaurant in a protest against "fast food"; and Indian farmers burning a field of genetically modified cotton as a protest against agribusiness. This anthropological project studies a new international peasant and small farmer organization called Via Campesina, or Peasant Road, which was founded in 1993 and has affiliates in about sixty countries. The project will interview small farmer activists and donor NGO personnel in five sites: Brussels, the headquarters of the European peasant confederation; Saskatoon, Canada, where the network's Technical Secretariat is based; Tegucigalpa, Honduras, headquarters of the network's Organizational Secretariat; Managua, Nicaragua, the base of a Central American small farmers' network that helped found the Peasant Road; and Bangalore, India, home of one of the most active of the network's constituent organizations. In each site the interviews and analysis of documentary materials will focus on the political formation of activist individuals, the histories of organizational consolidation, and the mobilization of resources and alliances. The project will examine what movements defending economically marginal constituencies gain and lose by forming part of global civil society, as well as how new varieties of transnational politics have shaped peasant and small farmer identities, both within the agriculturist organizations and in relation to their NGO backers and antagonists. The new knowledge generated by this proposal will advance our understanding of how comparable grass-roots and global organizations function.