We Are Poor, So We Keep Quiet

Bibliographic Data

ID6015366
AuthorsAnna Berglund (0000-0003-3786-7321, Kristianstad University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume5
Issue1
Pages32-57
Publication date2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Legal Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1758-9584 • E-ISSN: 1758-9576
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/jla.2021.050102
OpenAlexW3208918604
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited31

Since 2006, the Rwandan government has been implementing policies to modernise the agricultural sector in a top-down manner. Small-scale subsistence farmers, making up the vast majority of Rwandans, are compelled to leave their traditional farming behind, form co-operatives and take up ‘modern’ farming techniques based on irrigation and state-approved crops. For my interlocutors in a Rwandan village, this policy resulted in reduced crop yields, difficulties in putting food on the table and a visible degradation of their lives. Yet people complied. They did not rise up in protest. They sought to meet the authorities’ demands. Although ‘government authoritarianism’ explains much of the lack of open resistance, Rwandans had their own ideas, values and practices which at times overlapped with oppressive state projects and ended up supporting the state’s agricultural modernization scheme. Here, compliance is part of how villagers wanted to project themselves to others and to themselves and how they pursued their aspirations for the future

Agriculture · Authoritarianism · Business · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics · Modernization theory · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology · Scale (ratio · State (computer science · Subsistence agriculture · Cambodian History and Society · International Development and Aid · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts

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