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Reading Notes Contention and Rupture
Reading Notes Contention and Rupture
Politics of Provision
National Subsistence Settlements
Contending groups of different actors who decide their relation with one another on the basis
of the distribution of power and subsistence resources.
BoP shaped by the ‘holding power’ of different groups = demands from individual common
man for food when combined = mass scale demand + with leadership = source of power.
Competitive settlement vs dominated by single party: enhances/constrains change & in which
domains.
Nature of relations (client vs impersonalized): affects which policies are chosen
Is market controlled or unleashed affects stability regulation and protectionism?
States prioritize food security b/c of the effect of subsistence crisis: population displacement
(loss of labor) + civil unrest + urban unrest = politicization of affected groups + signals
state/regime vulnerability
Politics of Provision affected by:
1. Horizontal relationships: b/w those who are suffering food shortage
2. Vertical relationships between people and authorities.
Driving Forces affecting the Politics/Issue of Provision:
What factors influence the nature of the riots, extent of the crisis and nature of the response?
1. Global Food Regimes
Different arrangements of the production, finance, distribution and use of foodstuff in
different parts of the world depending on needs of time and place change in economic
functions + relations = change in food systems.
First GFR: Colonial: colonies exported surplus to provide to the West and promote their
industrialization integration colonialism causing food shortages.
Second GFR: Post-colonial: states focused on national economic development: import
substitution + self-sufficiency in food security.
Third GFR: Corporate Food Regime: mass production, standardized foods and global
supply chains dominate.
Each regime has reshaped the politics of development + influenced the direction of
technological and social change.
Reflects history of capitalism
Reserve Army of Labor: farmers who are forced to leave the land as it no longer pays in
competition with global agri-business, they become reserves for export processing zones.
This fundamental contradiction, whereby ‘free markets’ exclude and/or starve populations
dispossessed by their very implementation = characterizes the corporate food regime and is
one of the sources of today’s food riots. Era of globalization has been premised on the
food regime’s generation of cheap labor and its supply of relatively cheap industrial foods
to subsidize labor costs.
2. Global Food Price Crisis
Dramatic rise of food prices b/c (i) food shortage due to poor harvests in main supplying
countries (ii) high fuel prices affected fertilizer use (iii) deregulation of commodity markets
= capital was able to flood out of unstable subprime housing and commodity markets and
into other markets when money moved out of commodity markets = banking collapse =
pricing fell.
Concatenation of food, fuel and financial turbulence that transmitted to retail prices in the
developing world prices shot up everywhere
Mesh of global agricultural systems with global financial system price volatility.
2012: financial crisis over but left behind national crisis chronic subsistence stress +
sustained political unrest = belief that political economy of provision had drifted away
from natural justice.
3. Labor Value
Changes in people’s lives after period of spikey and volatile prices.
Wages never caught up with the rising cost of living for the poorest = more work more
burden.
How people viewed inflation poorer people in general disliked inflation but the extent
depended on the relationship between inflation and unemployment, and how it affected
their country and their individual efforts. Inflation as top priority for poor because they
suffer the most.
Threshold for inflation = key macroeconomic issue in the politics of provision.
Unemployment vs inflation: which is a bigger concern for poor? Higher current inflation
or unemployment creates the effect of improved optimism, not because the future is
assessed as more favorable but because individuals believe the present looks grimmer.
Double Movement:
In response to the dangers of economic liberalism.
1st Movement: towards greater commodification + free markets
But consequence of this will be destruction and wilderness = backlash
2nd Movement: towards greater protection move towards institutionalizing
redistribution, recognition and representation.
The Moral Economy:
Why did protests come onto the street despite possibility of state repression?
Defending traditional rights or customs = what is good for all (primordial righteousness)
when this law is violated consensus to riot/protest. This also explains why food riots
may persist across different economic cycles (b/c food = primordial right).
With each era of capitalism, roles (of citizens, state and market), relations and governing
laws have changed.
Critical events signal crisis Consequences (power of morals)
1. Generate mass suffering which leads to new modalities of political action Access to food
and employment had become a major contention due to price spikes and unmatched wage
increases = people hungry
2. All this changed political identities.
Why? b/c people out to protest loss of assets, patronage and erosion of traditional identities.
Others Mozambique: rioters treated as enemies of the state = “embattled urban class”.
3. Suffering becomes a narrative trope: state appropriates the suffering
4. Logic of the Riot:
Meant to demonstrate the presence of the nonexistent
16.2: Gary Marx – Issueless Riots
Past literature on collective action inconsiderate of riots w/o protests, ideology and grievance =
need to bring them in.
Early theorists focused on emotions of crowd opportunism + destruction as expression of human
impulses = “dirty people without name” irrational crowd composed of social misfits, criminals
and riffraff (lowest classes).
Marx agreed to contemporary theories (Smelser): crowd as rational moving towards a particular
goal.
Rude’s research: French & English crowd in 18th century + Black Riot = Debunks classical theory
Correct old theory
Crowd: Old riots: Composed of those well integrated into society but with specific
grievances such as the ordinary urban poor (laborers) -- employed people with settled
abode and without criminal conviction + Black Riots: consisted of amalgamated black
youth
Sympathy towards rioters today rational, instrumental and purposeful. tied to
injustice & strain.
Typology of Riots emerges based on two factors:
1. Presence of a generalized belief: fundamental changes in values or norms?
2. Whether the riot is instrumental in helping solve a group’s problem: if the violent action itself
directly solves the problem?
Forms of Riots:
1. GB + I: bread riots (more dissident)
2. GB + NI: communal rights (more diffused)
3. NGB + I: riots misinterpreted by authorities
4. NGB + NI: riots during police strikes, riots in victory
Principled Riots: 1 + 2
Presence of generalized belief
Develops out of prolonged community conflict
Unprincipled/issueless Riots: 3+4
Develop under 2 conditions: (1) in the face of a pronounced weakening of the agents of
social control (2) expressive outbursts which occasionally accompany victory celebrations
or ritualized festivals.
1. Riots when police go on strike
May increase violations of traditional rules.
1919 Liverpool police strike youthful rioters dominated the streets + looting, destroying
property, drinking… was less hostile in the beginning w/o belief
2. Riots in victory & celebrations
Less spontaneous (when to happen) + institutionalized
But some spontaneity as to how the riot will play out.
John Wikes case: show link b/w celebration & destruction (rest seemed like bs)
Hypothesis:
Type 1 more controlled and patterned + less damaging than type 2 or 4.
Type 2 + 4 psychological characteristics of crowd members & traditional crowd
processes more intense than 1.
Number of ideologically driver rioters diminishes as riot progresses and opportunists
join in to take advantage.
Selectivity in attacks
Generalized belief in 2 more magical than 1.
Riots of types 2 & 4 will inspire less serious and disciplined efforts at social control
than will I; although the nature of the social-control response plays an important part
in any collective outburst, variations in it will be felt to a greater extent in types II and
IV than I.
Rioters in type 4 more likely to be in lower social position + less integrated into society >
1&2
Type 1 powerful groups compared to 2
Type 2 more likely to involve an ethnic minority
Type 4 = less hostile and more playful attacks on authority based on self-defense
Ghetto Riots
Black ghetto riots of 1960s
1 + 2 focused on community conflict, clear grievances & slogans/symbols.
Generalized belief = key