Contenu du sommaire : Le sens du rural aujourd'hui

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South
This paper examines the intellectual and social context surrounding research on alternatives to western epistemologies. The paper outlines the challenges facing the western critical tradition – the old and the new; the loss of critical terms; the ghostly relation between critical theory and social change; the end of endless capitalism; the end of endless colonialism. The paper contrasts “the sociology of emergence”, i.e. the increase of knowledge, practices and agents, with “the sociology of absences”, i.e. forms of non-existence (e.g. “the ignored”, “the residual”, “the inferior”, “the local”, “the unproductive”). Finally, in considering new epistemological perspectives, the paper suggests that the epistemologies of the South are based on “the ecology of knowledge” and “intercultural translation”.

Augustin Berque, The Rural, the Wild, the Urban
In many languages, the words that refer to rurality are the same words that are used to describe wildness: “ye” in Chinese, “agreste” in Spanish, etc. Yet since Neolithic clearing, the countryside has been defined in opposition to the forest. The rural/wild equation indicates that the opposition was later superseded by another opposition defined by a specific vision originating from the city. In historic civilizations, it is this second opposition – between city and country – that has become the key structuring opposition, to such an extent that in the urban vision nature and countryside have tended to overlap. The new entity (the “wildside”) eventually came to be idealized by the crowds of the modern metropolis in search of a lost nature. In the final third of the twentieth century, this longing for nature resulted in the phenomenon of the “edgeless city” in rich countries, where a predominantly urban society populates rural spaces. This paper examines the foundations of this idea of “nature”, which represents the extreme of artificiality.

Hafez Ghanem, Policies and Institutions in Support of Small Farms
This paper argues that small farms need to be placed at the heart of the development process (primarily in southern countries), since half of the population affected by famine live in rural areas and have less than 2 hectares of land at their disposal, and nearly 2 billion people are dependent on family farming. The author, an eminent representative of the FAO, recommends that small farms should be integrated into agro-industrial networks. The aim is to develop a different policy aimed at bringing small farmers closer to markets by developing a value chain (i.e. contractual arrangements within agro-industrial value chains) and by proposing transition strategies.

Hubert M.G. Ouedraogo, African Endogenous Property Rights: from Knowledge to Acknowledgement
Customary land rights are at the heart of the agrarian history of West Africa. Beyond their apparent diversity, the various systems of land tenure and ownership share a number of common features. A critical perspective on the issue shows that it is important not to misconstrue and therefore underestimate them. Customary land rights are a highly topical issue at a time when Africa is seeking to develop new tenure and ownership policies capable of addressing the challenges of peace and development. Research in the area will need to meet two requirements: first, it will need to acknowledge the legitimacy of local rights based on custom; second, it will need to recognize the need for the benefit of inventory in traditional inheritance. This paper adopts a political perspective rather than a legal or technical perspective.

Gérard Chouquer, The New Global Triangular Trade. Or the Analogies of Contemporary Land Ownership
Contemporary land ownership, which often takes the form of large-scale international land-grabbing, is currently undergoing significant changes. Yet very little research has been conducted on the issue. In particular, scholars have shown very little interest in the highly diverse forms of domaniality. In parallel to large-scale land negotiations and acquisitions and the sanctuarization of protected areas, a utopia of a world in which relations are entirely fiduciary has emerged in recent years. In the new utopia, a global contract connects those with food needs, those with potentialities (i.e. lands that can be cultivated or areas that need to be protected) and those with the power or role to act as financiers or guarantors. A new global triangular trade has emerged on the basis of the delocalization of functions and has taken forms analogous to trust, idleness and land vacancy. The object of this paper is to analyze this new relation and to consider alternatives. The paper concludes by suggesting that we need to challenge and refute the myth of vacant lands that subtends this vision.

Jean-Pierre Berlan, Agronomy: from Industrial Serfdom to Freedom
Since the Industrial Revolution, plant breeders strive to replace farm varieties by copies of a selected plant that can be fitttingly called “clones”. Lines of the 19th and 20th centuries are homozygous clones; lines of the 19th and 20th centuries are homozygous plants; hybrids of the 20th century are heterozygous clones; and Gmos are patented pesticide clones. This devotion to cloning implements for living organisms the industrial principles of uniformity and standardisation. From the obtention certificate to hybrids that farmers cannot re-sow, it illuminates the permanent societal drive to separating production from reproduction. Since there is always a gain to replace a variety of “anythings” by copies of the “best anything” selected from the variety, no justification is whatsoever necessary. Thus, the endless debates about heterozis which, according to geneticists, made it necessary to hybridize maize and other crops appear as a mystification to naturalize a horrifying objective.

Édouard Conte, They Will Be As Sisters to Us. Marriage by Permutation in the Near East
This article suggests a systemic analysis of marriage by permutation of spouses, in particular of siblings, called badal in Arabic. Reconsidering of the notion of “exchange”, it is based on the study of a line of textual sources ranging from Dead Sea manuscripts to classical Arabic “lives of the Prophets” (qisas al-anbiy?`), on the one hand, and, on the other, a comparative ethnographic analysis of observations from Palestine and Turkey. This dual approach suggests, with regard to the gendered dynamics of kinship, not to ascribe a posteriori an a priori causality to descent and not to dissociate siblingship and affinity. Indeed, badal places siblingship at the heart of matrimonial alliance, while leaving intact the illusion of agnatism. Accommodating gender and generational hierarchy, it establishes siblingship as a source of filiation, while guaranteeing the prohibition of brother-sister marriage once instituted in the antediluvian traditions attributed to Adam.