Rural Unrest in Times of Economic Affluence

• In Event: The Politics of Natural Resources and Climate Management in Latin America

Abstract

Existing views in history, sociology, and political economy concur that sudden, sharp declines in the prices of cash crops fuel agrarian unrest. The 2000s commodities boom was a period of extraordinarily high agricultural prices, yet commercial farmers and peasants engaged in sustained cycles of contentious politics across the Global South. We propose an integrated theoretical framework that explains contentiousness by both farmers and peasants in times of price upswing, with a regional focus on Latin America. Our framework examines how capital-intensive agriculture's production, technological, and geographic changes generate new sets of grievances that can drive rural contentiousness when a positive shock to agricultural prices occurs. It also emphasizes the organizational resources that aid farmers and peasants in mobilizing and translating those grievances into contentious collective action. We rely on a large body of quantitative and qualitative evidence (primarily from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with stakeholders) from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay to support our theoretical claims.

Authors

• Maria Victoria Murillo, Columbia University

• Jorge G Mangonnet, Vanderbilt University