Re-Peasantization and Land Reclamation Movements in Malawi

Bibliographic Data

ID6029989
AuthorsDavide Chinigò (0000-0002-6683-6615, Center for Excellence in Education, corresponding author)
Year2015
Pagesadv057
Publication date2015-12-09
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9909 • E-ISSN: 1468-2621
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/afraf/adv057
OpenAlexW2324002453
LanguageEN
Citations received4

This article explores the emergence of land reclamation movements in contemporary southern Malawi through the case of the People's Land Organization in Thyolo. It shows that land reclamation movements are the result of a historical politics of land reform that has reproduced a dual agrarian system and shaped inequalities in land and labour since the colonial period. The article speaks to the debate about contemporary rural movements and employs the concepts of de-peasantization and re-peasantization to describe the tendencies toward the dissolution and reconstitution of the peasantry in the contemporary neo-liberal context. It concludes that the legacies of colonialism and the selective but incomplete integration of worker-peasants into the plantation economy have tended to reproduce the material and symbolic conditions necessary for people to reconstitute themselves as peasants. In this context, land has come to symbolize autonomy and to embody the struggle for socio-economic and political enfranchisement.

Agrarian reform · Agrarian society · Agriculture · Archaeology · Autonomy · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Economics · Economy · Geography · Land reclamation · Land reform · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Agricultural Innovations and Practices · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Land Rights and Reforms · Law

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