i “Right-wing authoritarian populist movements, parties, and governments arise in great part from the discontents fueled by the iniquities of neoliberal capitalist globalisation. This book breaks new ground in searching for the usually neglected rural roots behind and consequences of such authoritarian populisms. The book is comparative in scope, so that its central argument about the significance of the agrarian and rural order is adequately tested and confirmed. The book is also a call for further global research and study with the aim of identifying possibil- ities – a ‘rural politics’ and agential sources – that respectively can be articulated and mobilised to combat such populisms. The remarkable upsurge of farmers and rural workers against the Hindu nationalist Modi regime in India is a powerful testimony to the truth of the very politics that this book seeks to underscore.” Achin Vanaik , Retired Professor of International Politics and Global Studies, University of Delhi ii Critical Agrarian Studies Series Editor: Saturnino M. Borras Jr. Critical Agrarian Studies is the accompanying book series to The Journal of Peasant Studies It publishes selected special issues of the journal and, occasionally, books that offer major contributions in the field of critical agrarian studies. The book series builds on the long and rich history of the journal and its former accompanying book series, the Library of Peasant Studies (1973–2008) which had published several important monographs and special-issues-as-books. Agrarian Marxism Edited by Michael Levien, Michael Watts and Hairong Yan Gender and Generation in Southeast Asian Agrarian Transformations Edited by Clara Mi Young Park and Ben White De-centring Land Grabbing Edited by Peter Vandergeest and Laura Schoenberger Soy, Globalization, and Environmental Politics in South America Edited by Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira and Susanna B. Hecht An Endogenous Theory of Property Rights Edited by Peter Ho Global Land Grabbing and Political Reactions ‘from Below’ Edited by Marc Edelman, Ruth Hall, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ian Scoones and Wendy Wolford Critical Perspectives in Rural Development Studies Edited by Saturnino M. Borras Jr. The Politics of Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change Edited by Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Philip McMichael and Ian Scoones New Frontiers of Land Control Edited by Nancy Lee Peluso and Christian Lund Outcomes of Post-2000 Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe Edited by Lionel Cliffe, Jocelyn Alexander, Ben Cousins and Rudo Gaidzanwa Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature Edited by James Fairhead, Melissa Leach and Ian Scoone The New Enclosures: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Land Deals Edited by Ben White, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones and Wendy Wolford Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World Edited by Ian Scoones, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Lyda Fernanda Forero, Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford and Ben White For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Critical-Agrarian-Studies/book-series/CAG. iii Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World The rise of authoritarian, nationalist forms of populism and the implications for rural actors and settings is one of the most crucial foci for critical agrarian studies today, with many consequences for political action. Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World reflects on the rural origins and consequences of the emergence of authoritarian and populist leaders across the world, as well as on the rise of multi-class mobilisation and resistance, alongside wider counter-movements and alterna- tive practices, which together confront authoritarianism and nationalist populism. The book includes 20 chapters written by contributors to the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), a global network of academics and activists committed to both reflective analysis and political engagement. Debates about ‘populism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘authoritarianism’ and more have exploded recently, but relatively little of this has focused on the rural dimensions. Yet, wherever one looks, the rural aspects are key – not just in electoral calculus, but in understanding under- lying drivers of authoritarianism and populism, and potential counter-movements to these. Whether because of land grabs, voracious extractivism, infrastructural neglect or lack of ser- vices, rural peoples’ disillusionment with the status quo has had deeply troubling consequences and occasionally hopeful ones, as the chapters in this book show. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Journal of Peasant Studies. Ian Scoones is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. Marc Edelman is Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Saturnino M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, the Netherlands, an Adjunct Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and a fellow of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI). Lyda Fernanda Forero was, until April 2020, coordinator of the Agrarian and Environmental Justice (AEJ) program of the Transnational Institute. She is currently with the secretariat of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA). Ruth Hall is Professor of Land and Agrarian Studies at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. i v Wendy Wolford is Polson Professor of Global Development at Cornell University, USA. Ben White is Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. v Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World Edited by Ian Scoones, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Lyda Fernanda Forero, Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford and Ben White v i First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Preface, Chapters 1–6, 8– 10, 12–14, 16 and 18– 20 © 2022 Taylor & Francis Chapter 7 © 2018 Fikret Adaman, Murat Arsel and Bengi Akbulut. Originally published as Open Access. Chapter 11 © 2019 Noémi Gonda. Originally published as Open Access. Chapter 15 © 2019 Daniela Andrade. Originally published as Open Access. Chapter 17 © 2020 Antonio Roman-Alcalá. Originally published as Open Access. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978- 0-367- 75387-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 0-367- 75394-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1-003- 16235-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003162353 Typeset in Minion Pro by Newgen Publishing UK Publisher’s Note The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely the inclusion of journal terminology. Disclaimer Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. v i i Contents Citation Information ix Notes on Contributors xii Preface xv 1 Emancipatory rural politics: confronting authoritarian populism 1 Ian Scoones, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford and Ben White 2 Counterrevolution, the countryside and the middle classes: lessons from five countries 21 Walden Bello 3 People and places left behind: work, culture and politics in the rural United States 59 Jessica D. Ulrich-Schad and Cynthia M. Duncan 4 Power and powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley – revisited 80 John Gaventa 5 The rural roots of the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey 97 Burak Gürel, Bermal Küçük and Sercan Taş 6 Rural rage: right- wing populism and Patriot movement in the United States 120 Spencer Sunshine and Chip Berlet 7 Neoliberal developmentalism, authoritarian populism, and extractivism in the countryside: the Soma mining disaster in Turkey 154 Fikret Adaman, Murat Arsel and Bengi Akbulut 8 The vanishing exception: republican and reactionary specters of populism in rural Spain 177 Jaume Franquesa 9 Understanding the silent majority in authoritarian populism: what can we learn from popular support for Putin in rural Russia? 201 Natalia Mamonova CONTENTS v i i i viii 10 Authoritarian populism in rural Belarus: distinction, commonalities, and projected finale 226 Aleh Ivanou 11 Land grabbing and the making of an authoritarian populist regime in Hungary 246 Noémi Gonda 12 Authoritarian populism and neo-extractivism in Bolivia and Ecuador: the unresolved agrarian question and the prospects for food sovereignty as counter- hegemony 266 Mark Tilzey 13 Pockets of liberal media in authoritarian regimes: what the crackdown on emancipatory spaces means for rural social movements in Cambodia 293 Alice Beban, Laura Schoenberger and Vanessa Lamb 14 Confronting agrarian authoritarianism: dynamics of resistance to PROSAVANA in Mozambique 313 Boaventura Monjane and Natacha Bruna 15 Populism from above and below: the path to regression in Brazil 338 Daniela Andrade 16 ‘They say they don’t see color, but maybe they should!’ Authoritarian populism and colorblind liberal political culture 365 Michael Carolan 17 Agrarian anarchism and authoritarian populism: towards a more (state-)critical ‘critical agrarian studies’ 389 Antonio Roman-Alcalá 18 ‘Actually existing’ right-wing populism in rural Europe: insights from eastern Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ukraine 420 Natalia Mamonova, Jaume Franquesa and Sally Brooks 19 Unpacking ‘authoritarian populism’ and rural politics: some comments on ERPI 448 Henry Bernstein 20 From ‘populist moment’ to authoritarian era: challenges, dangers, possibilities 465 Marc Edelman Index 492 i x Citation Information The following chapters were originally published in different issues of The Journal of Peasant Studies . When citing this material, please use the original citations and page numbering for each article, as follows: Chapter 1 Emancipatory rural politics: confronting authoritarian populism Ian Scoones, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford and Ben White The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 45, issue 1 (2018), pp. 1–20 Chapter 2 Counterrevolution, the countryside and the middle classes: lessons from five countries Walden Bello The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 45, issue 1 (2018), pp. 21–58 Chapter 3 People and places left behind: work, culture and politics in the rural United States Jessica D. Ulrich-Schad and Cynthia M. Duncan The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 45, issue 1 (2018), pp. 59–79 Chapter 4 Power and powerlessness in an Appalachian Valley – revisited John Gaventa The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 440–456 Chapter 5 The rural roots of the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey Burak Gürel, Bermal Küçük and Sercan Taş The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 457–479 Chapter 6 Rural rage: the roots of right-wing populism in the United States Chip Berlet and Spencer Sunshine The Journal of Peasant Studies , volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 480–513 CITATION INFORMATION x x Chapter 7 Neoliberal developmentalism, authoritarian populism, and extractivism in the country- side: the Soma mining disaster in Turkey Fikret Adaman, Murat Arsel and Bengi Akbulut The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 514–536 Chapter 8 The vanishing exception: republican and reactionary specters of populism in rural Spain Jaume Franquesa The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 537–560 Chapter 9 Understanding the silent majority in authoritarian populism: what can we learn from popular support for Putin in rural Russia? Natalia Mamonova The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 561–585 Chapter 10 Authoritarian populism in rural Belarus: distinction, commonalities, and projected finale Aleh Ivanou The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 586–605 Chapter 11 Land grabbing and the making of an authoritarian populist regime in Hungary Noémi Gonda The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 606–625 Chapter 12 Authoritarian populism and neo-extractivism in Bolivia and Ecuador: the unresolved agrarian question and the prospects for food sovereignty as counter-hegemony Mark Tilzey The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 46, issue 3 (2019), pp. 626–652 Chapter 13 Pockets of liberal media in authoritarian regimes: what the crackdown on emancipatory spaces means for rural social movements in Cambodia Alice Beban, Laura Schoenberger and Vanessa Lamb The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 1 (2020), pp. 95–115 Chapter 14 Confronting agrarian authoritarianism: dynamics of resistance to PROSAVANA in Mozambique Boaventura Monjane and Natacha Bruna The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 1 (2020), pp. 69–94 CITATION INFORMATION x i xi Chapter 15 Populism from above and below: the path to regression in Brazil Daniela Andrade The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 7 (2020), pp. 1470–1496 Chapter 16 ‘They say they don’t see color, but maybe they should!’ Authoritarian populism and colorblind liberal political culture Michael Carolan The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 7 (2020), pp. 1445–1469 Chapter 17 Agrarian anarchism and authoritarian populism: towards a more (state-)critical ‘critical agrarian studies’ Antonio Roman-Alcalá The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 48, issue 2 (2021), pp. 298–328 Chapter 18 ‘Actually existing’ right-wing populism in rural Europe: insights from eastern Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ukraine Natalia Mamonova, Jaume Franquesa and Sally Brooks The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 7 (2020), pp. 1497–1525 Chapter 19 Unpacking ‘authoritarian populism’ and rural politics: some comments on ERPI Henry Bernstein The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 7 (2020), pp. 1526–1542 Chapter 20 From ‘populist moment’ to authoritarian era: challenges, dangers, possibilities Marc Edelman The Journal of Peasant Studies, volume 47, issue 7 (2020), pp. 1418–1444 For any permission- related enquiries please visit: www.tandfonline.com/page/help/permissions x i i Notes on Contributors Fikret Adaman is Professor at the Department of Economics, Boğaziçi University. His research lies within the fields of political economy, ecological economics, development studies and history of economic thought. Bengi Akbulut is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University. Her work lies within the fields of political economy, ecological economics, development studies and feminist economics. Daniela Andrade is PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. Her research interests include the political economy of agriculture and agrarian change from a macro perspective, especially in Brazil and Mozambique. Murat Arsel is Associate Professor of Environment and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research concerns the pol- itical economy of the relationship with capitalism and nature, focusing especially on envir- onmental conflicts and state-society dynamics. Alice Beban is Lecturer in Sociology at Massey University in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Her research focuses on the intersections between land rights, agricultural production, state formation and gender concerns to understand rural people’s changing relationships with land. Walden Bello is International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from 2009 to 2015. Chip Berlet is an investigative journalist and photographer recruited by progressive sociologists to help research right-wing movements. Active in the antiwar and civil rights movements, in 1977 he and his partner moved to Chicago and spent 10 years involved in labour and anti- racism projects, including challenging violence by neo- Nazis and Klansmen. Henry Bernstein is Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD), China Agricultural University, Beijing, and Professor Emeritus of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK. Saturnino M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, the Netherlands, an Adjunct Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing and a fellow of the Amsterdam- based Transnational Institute (TNI). NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS x i i i xiii Sally Brooks is Honorary Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work and a member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at the University of York. Her research centres on the critical examination of global development imaginaries, interventions, and institutions. Natacha Bruna is PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, in the Political Ecology research group. Her research is about the agrarian change brought up by the intersections of resource grabbing as a result of extractivism and environmental politics. Michael Carolan is Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Affairs for the College of Liberal Arts. He has published over 200 peer review articles and chapters. Dr. Carolan is also Associate Editor for the Journal of Rural Studies, Society and Natural Resources and Sustainability Cynthia M. Duncan is Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy, USA. Marc Edelman is Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA. Lyda Fernanda Forero was, until April 2020, coordinator of the Agrarian and Environmental Justice (AEJ) programme of the Transnational Institute. She is currently with the secretariat of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA). Jaume Franquesa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo, New York. His research focuses on the relationship between the commodification of resources, the making of local livelihoods and forms of political mobilisation. John Gaventa is former Research Director and a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the UK. He worked from 1971 to 1996 as a scholar-activist in the Appalachian Region, including with the Highlander Research and Education Center. Noémi Gonda is post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Urban and Rural Development of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She holds a PhD from the Central European University. Her PhD research (2016) was a feminist ethnography in Nicaragua focused on the politics of gender and climate change. Burak Gürel is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Koç University. His scholarly interests include political economy, historical sociology, rural development, social movements and welfare politics, with a focus on China, India and Turkey. Ruth Hall is Professor of Land and Agrarian Studies at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Aleh Ivanou is a Belarusian independent researcher with a PhD in Environmental Social Science from the University of Kent, UK. Bermal Küçük is PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Koç University. Her research interests are in rural development, sociology of food and political ecology, with a focus on the labour and the knowledge of women. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS x i v xiv Vanessa Lamb is Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. In research and teaching, she focuses on human-environment geographies and political ecology of Southeast Asia. Natalia Mamonova is research fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) in Stockholm and an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) of Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests primarily focus on contemporary rural politics in Russia and Ukraine. Boaventura Monjane is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), University of the Western Cape (South Africa), fellow of the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLS), and associate fellow at the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA) at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. Antonio Roman- Alcalá is an educator, researcher and organiser based in California. He has been involved in US food movements primarily through urban farming and participatory democratic network organising, and his research focuses on collaborative efforts to improve movement effectiveness. Laura Schoenberger is Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa. Her research interests are in political ecology, state power, land and property relations and feminist epistemology. Ian Scoones is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre. Spencer Sunshine has a PhD in sociology and studies organised racist, fascist and antisemitic movements and organisations. He is the author of the guide 40 Ways to Fight Nazis: Forty Community- Based Actions You Can Take to Resist White Nationalist Organizing published by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). Sercan Taş is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Koç University. His research interests include rural development, urbanisation, and environmental governance, with a focus on Turkey. Mark Tilzey is Associate Professor in the Governance of Food Systems for Resilience, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, UK. His research interests lie in political ecology, food regimes, agrarian change and agroecology, agri-environmental politics and governance and the international political economy of agri-food systems. Jessica D. Ulrich-Schad is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Rural Studies at South Dakota State, USA. Ben White is Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. Wendy Wolford is Polson Professor of Global Development at Cornell University, USA. newgenprepdf x v Preface Authoritarian populism and the rural world The rise of authoritarian, nationalist forms of populism and the implications for rural settings is perhaps one of the most crucial foci for critical agrarian studies today, with many consequences for political action. Responding to this, the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) 1 was launched in early 2017, and this book is a compilation of 20 articles published in the ‘Authoritarian populism and the rural world’ Forum in The Journal of Peasant Studies ( JPS ) as part of the Initiative. The ERPI emerged through a series of conversations amongst the founding group – and authors of this preface – in late 2016/early 2017. This was in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the White House, the Brexit referendum in the UK and the emergence of a number of authoritarian and populist leaders across the world – whether Narendra Modi in India, Recep Tayip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or Jacob Zuma in South Africa. Our conversations also centred on the rise of multi-class mobilisation and resistance alongside wider counter-movements and alternative practices that together confronted authoritarianism and nationalist populism. In different ways, we were all questioning why all this had happened and what should we do about it? In short, in the narrow corridor between rage and hope, we wanted to pursue a research initiative and political con- versation that responded to the political conjuncture, linking rigorous academic research with political engagement. The first chapter of this book, which came out in JPS online in mid-2017, provided an ini- tial framing for our work, fleshing out our questions in more detail and offering a starting point for a wider debate. 2 In this framing piece, we highlight the emergence of what we call ‘authoritarian populism’, and particularly its rural roots and consequences. We draw in par- ticular on the arguments of Stuart Hall and others made in the context of Thatcherism in the UK. 3 In Gramscian terms, authoritarian populisms can emerge when the ‘balance of forces’ changes, creating a new ‘political-ideological conjuncture’. Drawing on populist discontents a transformist, authoritarian movement, often with a strong figurehead leader, gains ground, mobilising around ‘moral panics’ and ‘authoritarian closure’, and generating, in Hall’s words, ‘the gloss of populist consent’. In 2017 – and still today – this sounded very familiar. The term ‘authoritarian populism’ has caused much debate in relation to the current con- juncture; some of it helpful, some of it distracting. Others prefer alternative terminologies, focusing on axes of left and right politics, the dimensions of nationalism and nativism and so 1www.iss.nl/en/ research/ research-networks/emancipatory- rural-politics-initiative 2www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ 10.1080/ 03066150.2017.1339693?journalCode=fjps20 3See Hall (1980, 1985, 1986). AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM AND THE RURAL WORLD x v i xvi on. Of course, across the world authoritarian populisms take many forms in different places and at different moments, with contrasting consequences for class dynamics, gender relations and economic and environmental outcomes. Despite the diversity, some core features are clear. This has provided a concrete political focus for the ERPI, and has guided the contributions to this book in chapters that equally reflect the array of contexts and interpretations of an emer- gent phenomenon. Debates about ‘populism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘authoritarianism’ and more have exploded in the last few years, but relatively little of this has focused on the rural dimensions. Yet wherever you look, the rural aspects are key – not just in electoral calculus, but in understanding under- lying drivers of authoritarianism and populism, and potential counter-movements to these. Whether it is because of land grabs, voracious extractivism, infrastructural neglect or lack of services, people’s disillusionment with the status quo , across often disconnected rural areas and small towns, is tangible across settings, as the chapters in this book show. Too often, this leads to the fragmenting of communities and loss of security and identity. Lack of jobs and livelihoods is blamed on outsiders – often immigrant populations working in agricultural industries in marginalised areas. Declining rural and small town livelihoods are often, in turn, linked to drug abuse and physical and mental ill-health and increasing despair. Across cases explored in the chapters of this book, the disenchantment and disenfranchise- ment felt in such areas is seen to be firmly the result of state neglect over decades, thanks to neoliberal policies that brought austerity, extraction and exploitation. The COVID-19 pan- demic has only exacerbated these fractures, exposing inequalities and the failures of main- stream neoliberal capitalism, and reinforcing patterns of authoritarianism in some settings. 4 Populist right- wing parties, despite the dissonance in values and messages, have appealed to many with promises of jobs, investment and renewal, combined with a nationalist anti- immigrant rhetoric that resonates with those who feel under threat. Meanwhile, the cosmopol- itan, mostly urban, educated ‘left’ elite has too often failed to engage with these real concerns and traumas in the rural areas, while organised labour has defended remaining formal jobs to the exclusion of others who are unemployed or surviving on the margins. Yet amongst much despair, disenfranchisement and deepening inequalities, more positively, there are emancipatory alternatives being created at the same time in rural areas and small towns that offer the opportunity for prefiguring a new politics. As chapters in this book, from very diverse settings, indicate these are rooted in communities, linked to rural skills, trades and cultures and encourage collectivity and solidarity, often around forms of ‘commoning’. Very often they make use of modern technology to encourage connectivity, sharing and building solidarities. Movements, such as around food sovereignty, for example, help mobilise around and extend such alternatives. As many cases documented in this book show, such initiatives can help to build a new economy, which is sustainable and addresses the threats of climate chaos. These efforts also serve as platforms for broader political conversations that concern matters far beyond self-help projects and their local communities, to discussing issues of system-wide transformations, class politics and political power. As many contributors to the ERPI have argued, unless progressive politics focuses on such alternatives, and helps articulate and scale them up, the prospects for countering the rise of authoritarian populism in rural areas looks slim. This counter-movement requires new forms of organising, movement-construction and coalition- building that are necessarily multi-class 4Leach et al. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105233 AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM AND THE RURAL WORLD x v i i xvii in character, focusing on real issues and people, and building from communities upwards and outwards. It requires different solutions for different places; not grand planning deals struck from above. And, as the basis for a politics of mobilisation and struggle, it requires attention to altered structures of rural class relations and changing dynamics in and between sites of eco- nomic production and social reproduction, as inflected by gender, generation, race, ethnicity, nationality and other differences. 5 Widening the conversation From our initial conversations and the writing of the framing paper in 2017, the ERPI moved to a wider engagement across different people and places. Through a small grants fund for writing up experiences – by academics, practitioners, movement activists and others – the Initiative mobilised a huge amount of comparative learning across the world. The importance of the rural dimension was confirmed, and in our major meeting at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague in early 2018, around 300 people from five continents came together to discuss these experiences. 6 From land activists from South Africa, to agroecology practitioners from Germany, to democracy and human rights activists from India, to organisers who worked with the Bernie Sanders’ campaign in the US, to activist Flamenco performers from Andalucía to a radical activist painter from the Philippines, a huge array of insights were shared. Emerging from the event, and in collaboration with the online plat- form, openDemocracy, we produced a series of videos and short articles, profiling a diversity of perspectives, summarised in a short film. 7 During the 2018 event, it was clear that, in order to embed our on-going research in political action on the ground, the ERPI network had to be polycentric, and a series of regional working groups were formed. They have continued the research and reflection – not only diagnosing the problems, but also exploring solutions. For example, ERPI Europe 8 has been engaged in a number of events, and has published a path-breaking special issue in Sociologia Ruralis , 9 while ERPI North America has produced an important series of papers in a special issue of the Journal of Rural Studies 10 ERPI Africa has been engaging in field-based exchange visits and writing up these experiences, feeding into activist initiatives. 11 ERPI Latin America is also collecting a set of papers in a special issue of Latin American Perspectives. 12 Meanwhile, ERPI South Asia met in Sri Lanka to exchange experiences from across the region, and ERPI Southeast Asia met in Thailand to foster a dialogue among academics and activists within the region. Finally, the ERPI group focusing on implications for human rights, linked to core ERPI partner the Transnational Institute (TNI), has also produced another significant piece, A View from the Countryside 13 5Borras (2020). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joac.12311 6https://steps-centre.org/authoritarian-populism-rural-world/; see also https://wakelet.com/wake/456372d5- 1d29-45d4-bcba-9dc97015ffd5 7 www.opendemocracy.net/en/authoritarian-populism-and-rural-world/ and www.facebook.com/open Democracy/videos/rural-populism/975798742603589/ 8 https://www.arc2020.eu/right-wing-populism-emancipatory-rural-politics-initiative-europe/;seealso:https://steps- centre.org/blog/ rural-resistance-and- the-far- right- news- from-erpi- europe/ 9 See Mamonova and Franquesa (2019). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soru.12291 10 See de Wit et al. (2019). www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ abs/ pii/S0743016719305200 11 www.pambazuka.org/land-environment/zimbabwe’s-shashe-agroecology-village-inspiration-emancipatory- rural-initiative 12 https://latinamericanperspectives.com/authoritarian- populism- and-the-rural-world/ 13 See Sandwell et al. (2019). www.tni.org/en/ countryside AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM AND THE RURAL WORLD x v i i i xviii Following on from the small grants competition and the ERPI event in The Hague, a series of articles began to be published as part of a special JPS Forum linked to the ERPI. This book presents a compilation of these, including contributions from Belarus, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Ecuador, Hungary, Mozambique, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the US, as well as sev- eral overview pieces with comparative regional assessments. The book concludes with two chapters reflecting on the work of the ERPI as a whole. These pieces come from very diverse experiences and are rooted in quite different conceptual traditions. Some make very direct use of the concepts laid out in the framing paper; others take a different tack. There has been no attempt to enforce uniformity nor require a singular analytical perspective. Indeed quite the opposite; as the ERPI decentralised and the initiative took on regional characteristics, different concerns arose, requiring distinct analytical frames that spoke to contrasting empir- ical contexts. This book must be read in this light. Beyond the ERPI, other efforts have of course engaged with these debates, increasingly with a focus on the rural dimensions. Important contributions to date include the special issue on ‘Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era’ in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers edited by James McCarthy; 14 a section of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies edited by Ben McKay, Gustavo Oliveira and Juan Liu; a special issue of Geoforum edited by Murat Arsel, Fikret Adaman and Alfredo Saad Filho and an anthology titled Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism edited by Jeff Maskovsky and Sophie Bjork-James (2020). 15 From different standpoints and using different analytical perspectives, these all add to the growing empirical resource. What ties all these contributions together is first and foremost a recognition that rural dimensions matter, and that the new politics of authoritarian populism (or whatever term is preferred for similar phenomena) reconfigures agrarian relations and politics in important new ways. This has major implications for how we conceive of ‘peasant studies’ or ‘agrarian studies’ at this moment in history and most significantly how we construct political alternatives that are progressive and sustainable. Common threads: rural populism and alternatives to authoritarian politics What emerges from this growing corpus of work and what are the implications? Reading across and beyond the contributions to this book a number of common threads emerge. They each suggest the importance of new areas of research, and new foci for action. First, the emergence of populism with a strong rural base needs a careful analysis of the social, cultural and class dynamics of rural change, asking why it is that young people, women, peasant farmers, rural workers and others are often strongly behind reactionary populist positions. Some liberals and leftists may argue that this does not serve their interests, but we need to look beyond such rationalist arguments and think harder about the politics of identity, belonging, recognition and community, and how these intersect with class dynamics. These themes come out strongly in the chapters in this book, yet are perhaps not central enough to the classic formulations of conventional writing in agrarian political economy. Interest-based analyses (centred on class or whatever category) and conventional political economy may be insufficient for explaining complex, personal, located, subjective phenomena. 14 See McCarthy (2019). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/ 24694452.2018.1554393 15 See McKay et al. (2020). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02255189.2020.1814707 AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM AND THE RURAL WORLD x i x xix Second, in developing a now globally comparative perspective across cases, represented in this book and beyond, it is worth exploring how different forms of populism – broadly characterised as authoritarian or progressive – emerge around the world. This depends very much on the historical, structural engagements with globalisation, as well as forms of imperi- alism and processes of decolonisation. Populists may mobilise either around ethno-nationalist arguments – for example when global migration flows create discontents – or around class divisions – such as when global trade has impacts on livelihoods. 16 The cases in this book begin to draw out how particular globalisation processes affect rural spaces in different ways – through forms of extractivism, land and resource grabbing, infrastructure development and so on. This contrasts with the impacts on urban metropoles – with different implications for class, gender, race or age – and so processes of political mobilisation. Critical agrarian studies needs to engage with these questions, moving beyond the singular local or national case to bring to the fore perspectives on global political economy, where the economic impacts and political consequences are taken seriously. Third, the politics of authoritarian populism provides an impetus to the continuation of extractive exploitation of rural resources – as land, water and resource grabbing continues apace. At the same time, green and conservation policies are generating authoritarian, neo- liberal dynamics in the countryside in many places. However, today there is also a nationalist tinge, with new capital-elite-state alliances being forged. These processes, which were initially a response to the 2008 global financial crisis and the desperate search for investment opportun- ities by global capital – extensiv