social movements and rural politics

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Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 129–137

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Guest Editorial

Social movements and rural politics

1. Introduction

Social movements are an increasingly prominent featureof rural politics and social action in both the global northand the global south, attracting the growing attention ofrural researchers as both agents and products of social andpolitical transformation. From the land rights movementsof Latin America and Africa, to peasant farmers’organizations in Asia, to progressive campaigns and ruralcommunity initiatives in Europe and North America, toradical farmers’ groups in Europe, North America andAustralia, to indigenous peoples’ movements, back-to-the-land pioneers and environmental protests—rural restruc-turing has created the space for a mobilization of new ruralsocial movements that are actively engaged in the processesof re-making rural society.

The rise of new rural social movements reflects a shift inthe power structure of rural society. Historically, power inthe countryside has been vested with elites, usually basedon the control of key resources, notably land, and enforcedthrough hierarchical, paternalistic, and sometimes oppres-sive, systems of social stratification. Such structuresreinforced material inequality within rural society, embed-ding an underclass of the rural poor, and denied effectiveparticipation in the political process to the majority of therural population. Political struggles by tenant farmers andsmall-scale producers in the liberal democracies of Europe,North America and the British Commonwealth during theearly twentieth century won representation in nationalpolicy processes, but the farm unions and political partiesthat conveyed this representation were soon incorporatedinto elite structures through policy communities (Halpin,2004; Smith, 1993; Woods, 2005). In the developing world,post-independence governments frequently did little tofundamentally change the social and economic structuresof rural areas or to empower the rural masses.

In the late twentieth century, however, wider processesof social and economic restructuring undermined the tenetsof the established power structures. In the global north, thedeclining economic significance of agriculture and otherresource industries, the effects of mass migration both fromand to the countryside, neoliberal state reforms andchanging public attitudes towards the environment andanimal welfare, conspired to denude the power of the

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traditional elites but left a void of uncertainty. Newgrassroots movements of rural residents mobilized to fillthe leadership vacuum and defend cultural and economicinterests (Woods, 2003). Within the global south, mean-while, social movements proliferated in response to avariety of internal and external stimuli: greater education,new technologies, support from international agencies,incremental democratization, liberation theology, and theimperative to mobilize against neoliberal reforms (Moyoand Yeros, 2005; Stahler-Sholk et al., 2007).The identification of such mobilizations as new social

movements, however, and adoption of the terminologyand conceptual framework of social movement theory,implies more than simply a political realignment. Follow-ing Diani’s (1992) definition of a new social movements as‘‘a network of informal interactions between a pluralityof individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged inpolitical or cultural conflict on the basis of a sharedcollective identity’’ (p. 13), it suggests a shift in thetenor and architecture of rural politics: from rigid,hierarchical organizations to fluid and polycentric group-ings; from electoral and policy interventions to directaction and mediations; from sectoral representation tointegrative campaigning and coalition building; fromeconomic bargaining to post-materialist and identitypolitics (Woods, 2003).Furthermore, as new social movements, these new rural

actors are concerned with social transformation as much aspolitical transformation, and do not aspire in themselves toseize power or even to control the agricultural policyprocess. As such, their political campaigning and protestssit alongside more direct forms of social action. Theseinclude actions as diverse as community developmentprojects, the establishment of producer cooperatives andmarketing initiatives, community forestry schemes, pur-chasing land, and training and education programmes(see, for example, Larsen, this volume, also Halhead, 2006;Mooney, 2004; Perreault, 2003). Actions by these rural newsocial movements can also involve the literal claiming ofrural spaces that are both symbolic and practical, such asthe encampments of the MST in Brazil and other landreclamation movements (see Caldeira, this volume, alsoMoyo and Yeros, 2005), and the experimental colonies andcommunities of back-to-the-land and land rights activists

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ARTICLE IN PRESSGuest Editorial / Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 129–137130

in countries such as Britain (see Reed, this volume, alsoHalfacree, 2007).

2. Papers in the special issue

The papers in this special issue explore the detail anddynamics of these transformations through examples of arange of different rural social movements. The collectionhas its origins in a symposium on social movements at theWorld Congress of Rural Sociology in Trondheim in 2004,but has been expanded by invited contributions toencompass examples from both the global north and theglobal south, and ranging in focus from land reform tolesbian and gay equality.

Annette Desmarais’s paper opens the collection with astudy of the international farmers’ coalition La ViaCampesina. A network of over 140 organizations in over50 countries, La Via Campesina has established itself in theforefront of international campaigning against neoliberalglobalization, coordinating the actions and interests offarmers and peasants in both the developed and thedeveloping world (see also Desmarais, 2002, 2007).However, Desmarais reveals the complexities and difficul-ties involved in the organization of a social movement ofthis scale and structure, highlighting tensions betweenmembers and problems arising from inequalities in theresources available to regions. She argues that in nego-tiating these tensions, La Via Campesina has nonethelesssucceeded in presenting a radical challenge to neolibera-lism by articulating an ‘alternative way’ founded on are-assertion of ‘peasant’ identity.

Rute Caldeira, in her article, focuses on one of the mostprominent members of La Via Campesina, the BrazilianLandless Peoples’ Movement, Movimento dos Trabalha-dores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST). Over the course of twodecades, the MST has campaigned for a more equaldistribution of land in Brazil, combining protest marchesand political demonstrations with practical actions, mostnotably the appropriation of unproductive land for thesettlement of landless families (see also Issa, 2007; Wolford,2004). Caldeira outlines the development of the MST, andin particular examines the framing of its objectives and itsvision of the Brazilian countryside. In doing so, she revealstensions between the discursive frames of the MSTleadership and those of the encampment residents whoform its popular base. Encampment residents, Caldeirasuggests, tend not to share the leadership’s arguablyromanticized ideal of rural life, and have more materialisticand individualistic aspirations than the MST’s radicalcollectivism admits.

The paper by Krzysztof Gorlach, Michal Lost’ak andPatrick Mooney moves attention to Eastern Europe, wherethey document the evolution of rural social movements inthe late-communist and post-communist eras. Drawing onWoods (2003), they examine the evidence for the emer-gence of a ‘rural movement’, founded on the articulationand contestation of rural identity, in the three countries of

Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Describing anarray of organizations and groups involved in issuesincluding environmental quality, animal welfare, agricul-ture, rural culture and folk traditions, and communitydevelopment, they conclude that early signs of a developingrural movement are evident in Eastern Europe, but that theembryonic movement is, like that described by Woods,characterized by fragmentation, incoherence, and a diver-sity of targeted issues.Soren Larsen’s article shifts down in scale with a case

study of the relationship between place and grassrootsorganizing in the Anahim Lake region of British Columbia,Canada. Larsen examines the mobilization of a place-basedsocial movement in the region in response to controversialtimber harvesting operations undertaken by an externalcompany under license from the provincial government.In particular, Larsen details how the articulation of apoliticized sense of place enabled a movement to beconstructed that transcended different environmentalvalues in the community and united different referencegroups. As Larsen describes, the movement progressedfrom a protest phase aimed at resisting and disrupting theforestry operations, to a community development phasethat resulted in the formation of a community forestryboard, permitting the community to exert greater controlover local resources.Scott Prudham’s paper is also located in the logging

communities of British Columbia, and similarly concernsplace-based resistance. The focus of Prudham’s study is thelocal organizing that followed the closure of a sawmill atYoubou on the Vancouver Island, as part of the turbulentglobal restructuring of the forest products industry. AsPrudham reports, however, the redundant workers refusedto accept the script of being a small community written offby globalization and formed the Youbou TimberLessSociety (YTS) as a vehicle for campaigning for social andenvironmental justice and forest policy reform. Prudham’spaper uses the Youbou case study to explore the dynamicsthrough which globalization is both contested and repro-duced at a local scale; but it also raises interesting issuesabout the nature of rural social movement organizationand alliance-building—for example, the development oftensions between YTS and traditional labor movementallies, and its repositioning as part of a broader coalition ofenvironmental, first nation community, and radical laborgroups in the campaign for social and environmentaljustice in forest exploitation.Issues of social justice also permeate Lynn Stephen’s

paper on building alliances between social movementorganizations in rural Oregon, in the North WesternUnited States. Stephen examines the collaboration betweentwo progressive organizations, CAUSA—an immigrants’rights coalition and the Rural Organizing Project (ROP)—which campaigns for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights—in campaigning on the rights of migrant farmworkers. Inparticular, she discusses coordinated opposition to defeatproposed legislation for a new guestworker program,

ARTICLE IN PRESSGuest Editorial / Journal of Rural Studies 24 (2008) 129–137 131

known as the ‘the New Bracero’ program in 1997–98.Stephen’s account and analysis demonstrates the challengesin coalition building in rural social movements, but alsoreveals the potential for coordinated action by rural socialmovements to achieve outcomes.

The final article, by Matt Reed, explores why and howrural England has become a prominent arena for politicalconflict and campaigning. Adopting a skeptical stancetowards the thesis that contemporary political mobilizationin the English countryside constitutes an emergent ruralsocial movement (Woods, 2003), Reed emphasizes thediversity of groups active in British rural politics, focusingin particular on three examples: the militant farmers’group, Farmers for Action; the radical land rightscampaign, The Land Is Ours (TLIO); and the organicfarming movement. Reed argues that there has been a shiftto a new form of politics in rural England, but that this hasnot produced an over-arching rural movement but rather aplurality of social movements active in rural spaceresponding to different ideological drivers.

3. Trajectories of rural social movements

The papers in this issue, as briefly described above,illustrate the diversity of contemporary rural socialmovements, in size and scale, character, organization,tactics, campaign focus, and ideological inclination.Indeed, such is the variety that the proliferation of ruralsocial movements in recent years cannot be read as asingle phenomenon, but rather should be seen as theproduct of a number of different trajectories, oftenreflecting distinctive local and national circumstances andexperiences.

In the developed world, the emergence of new ruralsocial movements has been framed to some extent by theshared experience of social and economic restructuringdisrupting the settled rural order. Mormont (1987),in a seminal early paper describing what has later beentagged as ‘the politics of the rural’ (Woods, 2003),identified ‘embryonic social movements’ emerging fromthe economic, social and political contradictions of ruralrestructuring. These movements, Mormont contended,involved ‘‘the setting up and development of new ruralstruggles whose particular nature y is no longer tofocus on specific aspects of the situation of the ruralpopulation, but really to pose the problem of rural space’’(1987, p. 562). The rural social movements envisaged byMormont are clearly imagined as equivalents to Castells’s(1983) urban social movements, in that they are grassrootsmobilizations responding to change within particularlocalities; yet, unlike urban social movements they alsoexhibit a fundamental underlying concern with the mean-ing of rurality. Thus, examples include opposition tocertain types of development in rural space—for instance,quarries, windfarms, new roads, waste dumps, touristresorts, and so on—campaigns to protect rural servicessuch as schools, post offices and hospitals, and reactions to

the closure of major employers (see Larsen, this issue, andPrudham, this issue).Initially, at least, mobilizations of this type tended to be

localized and dispersed, resembling Oberschall’s (1980)description of social movements taking the form of aloosely structured collective conflict with ‘‘hundreds ofgroups and organizations—many of them short-lived,spatially scattered, lacking direct communication, anda single organization and a common leadership—episodically take part in many different kinds of localcollective action’’ (pp. 45–46). Mormont (1987), however,also pre-empted the subsequent development of this type ofrural social movement by observing that such mobiliza-tions had a real transformative political effect in theirlocalities, and that the local groups would coalesce intopluri-local movements. This is the trajectory that has beenevident in many developed nations since the 1980s.Not only have networks been constructed between local

protest groups with similar interests, but as the campaign-ing of these groups has been up-scaled, so connections havealso been made with other rural activists motivated byperceived threats to rural cultures or identities fromlegislation, environmental regulations, corporate decisions,or pressure group campaigns at the regional, national, orinternational scales (for example, proposals to prohibit orrestrict types of hunting in Britain, France, and Belgium).The resulting ‘rural identity movement’ is hence framedaround the notion of an urban–rural divide and a perceivedneglect or marginalization of rural interests. Key actorsin this movement include organizations such as theCountryside Alliance in Britain, the Irish Rural Dwellers’Association, and Platform Buitengebeid in Belgium; butmore broadly the movement might also be considered toinclude less formal actions such as the election ofIndependent Members of Parliament in rural seats inAustralia (Costar and Curtin, 2004; Halpin and Guilfoyle,2004), and initiatives to promote rural culture, such as theHungarian dance-house movement described by Gorlachet al. (this issue).Frequently allied with the rural identity movement, but

arguably separate to it, is a new wave of militant farmergroups. These have their antecedents in the farmers’movements of the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies that produced organizations such as the NationalFarmers’ Union in Britain, the Farm Bureau in the UnitedStates, and the Country Party in Australia (see Halpin,2004; Stock, 1996). The incorporation of these organiza-tions into agricultural-policy-making processes bluntedtheir radical edge, but was accepted by farmers as long asit delivered benefits and stability. However, apparentfailure to protect farmers from liberalization and economicrecession towards the end of the twentieth centurygenerated discontent and led to the emergence of a numberof small militant breakaway groups. One of the first wasthe American Agricultural Movement, a network of loosecells with no formal leadership that organized a farm strikeand two ‘tractorcade’ protests in Washington, DC during


the 1970s, but which had faded by the 1980s (Stock, 1996).Later similar groups include the Confederation Paysannein France (Woods, 2004), Farmers for Action in the UK(Reed, this issue; also Woods, 2005), the Family FarmDefenders in the United States and the Australian MilkProducers Association (Dibden and Cocklin, 2007). Intheir use of direct action tactics, their loose, dispersednetwork structure and often a fairly short lifespan, suchgroups strongly exhibit the characteristics of a new socialmovement.

The ‘rural identity’ movement also shares a degree ofcommon ground with what might be called the ‘ruralcommunity development’ movement. Like the rural iden-tity movement, this mobilization originates as a response tothe restructuring of rural communities and a perceivedneed for better representation of rural interests, but it hasadopted a stronger focus on practical initiatives rather thanprotests, and has a longer historical trajectory. Theantecedents of the ‘rural community development’ move-ment can be traced back to the Country Life movement inthe early twentieth century in the United States (Wunder-lich, 2003), as well as similar initiatives in Europe such asthe Community Council Movement in Britain, all of whichwere concerned to arrest the depopulation and urbaniza-tion of the countryside. Similar concerns about ruraldecline prompted the formation of ‘village action groups’in Scandinavia in the 1970s, the beginnings of a communityempowerment movement that spread through NorthernEurope and (since 1990) through the post-communist statesof Eastern Europe (Halhead, 2006). The movement has apolitical agenda in so far as it has fought battles such as the‘right’ to development in rural communities (Svendsen,2004), and has become a vehicle for representing ruralcommunity interests in policy debates by establishing ‘ruralparliaments’. However, in general, the movement haseschewed protests and overt political campaigning, infavor of promoting and supporting ‘bottom-up’ ruraldevelopment (Halhead, 2006). Parallel organizations suchas the Rural Coalition/Coalicion Rural in the UnitedStates and Mexico, and the Regional Women’s Alliance inAustralia (Halpin, 2004a, b) arguably have a sharperpolitical edge in their campaigning activity, but haveequally emphasized community self-help.

The fourth ‘rural movement’ that might be identified inthe global north is more strictly a lifestyle-driven coalitionof like-minded individuals than a network of organiza-tions, but is nonetheless infused with a radical politics.Embraced within this constellation are the so-called ‘back-to-the-land’ movement of rural settlers, individualsengaged in alternative forms of agriculture, including theorganic movement, and various forms of communes and‘eco-villages’ (Halfacree, 2006, 2007) as well as the Czech‘colourful’ people referred to by Gorlach et al. (this issue).Primarily, this ‘radical rural’ movement is engaged in socialtransformation through everyday-lived practice, yet suchpractices are often ideologically grounded and posechallenges to established rural policy (Halfacree, 2007).

More overtly, members of this movement have beenassociated with environmental direct action—for example,anti-road protests—and land rights campaigns (see Reed,this issue; also McKay, 1996; Parker, 2002). Clearly, thepolitics of the movement are of the radical left, yet,arguably, it has a shadow in the extreme right-wingsovereigntist movement of the United States, whose retreatto rural sanctuaries reflects some of the transformativepractices of the ‘radical rural’ movement, but withdiametrically opposed political and ideological objectives(Dyer, 1998; Stock, 1996).In the developing world, the trajectories of rural social

movements have been shaped by the context of postcolo-nial politics, underdevelopment and extreme social andeconomic inequality. As in the global north, rural socialmovements in the south have historical antecedents, in thiscase in rural anti-colonial insurgencies and peasant protestsduring the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Modern rural social movements emerged in many devel-oping nations during the 1960s and 1970s, influencedvariously by both Marxism and Liberation Theology,mobilizing protests against externally driven agricultural‘modernization’ programmes that threatened peasantlivelihoods, or repressive state action against rural com-munities. The apparent ‘de-peasantization’ of ruralsocieties under modernization led some commentatorsto discount the political potential of the countryside(Bernstein, 2002; de Janvry, 1981; Kay, 1998). Others,however, have argued that the rural poor have continuedto mobilize around progressive agendas in spite of adversesocial and political conditions, and empirical observationpoints to a ‘resurgence’ of rural movements across LatinAmerica, Africa and Asia (Moyo and Yeros, 2005). Petras,(1997) has identified this as a ‘new wave’ of socialmovements, characterized by a mixed social base of ruralpeasants and urban proletarians, leadership from ‘peasantintellectuals’, an ‘anti-political’ strategy and use of directaction tactics, an internationalist vision and the ideologicalfusing of Marxism and ethnic politics. Moyo and Yeros(2005) adopt a more cautious position, suggesting thatPertas model is subscribed to as an ideal that finds onlypartial actual articulation in rural social movements.Indeed, contemporary rural social movements in the

global south are as diverse in form and focus as in theglobal north. Nonetheless, two key over-arching concernscan be identified. Firstly, land rights have been the primaryfocus of many rural movements, especially in LatinAmerica. The Brazilian ‘landless workers’ movement’—Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra(MST)—examined by Caldeira (this issue), is perhaps thebest known example, but land rights struggles are also afeature of rural politics in countries including Ecuador,Malawi, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, andZimbabwe (Moyo and Yeros, 2005). In some cases, theemphasis has been on the redistribution of land in ruralareas—challenging the colonial legacy of large estates andcorporate land-holdings—in others on resettling homeless


rural migrants from urban favelas, or on resisting thesequestration of property from peasant farmers forurbanization projects (notably in China). These movementshave employed political protests and demonstrationsto place pressure on governments to introduce state-sponsored land redistribution programmes, but many havealso engaged in direct actions of social transformation,including land occupations and social experiments inthe resulting settlements (see Caldeira, this issue, alsoWolford, 2004).

Secondly, peasant farmers’ movements have mobilizedto defend traditional forms of agriculture against neolib-eral agrarian reforms, economic liberalization, and thepractices of transnational agri-food corporations. Suchstruggles have a become a prominent feature of ruralpolitics in many parts of Asia, including, for example, thesuccessful opposition of the Karnataka State Farmers’Union in India to the promotion of GM cotton seeds andfield trials by Cargill and Monsanto (Routledge, 2003). Inboth cases, the primary foci of rural movements on landand agrarian reform are frequently complemented byconcerns with wider aspects of social and economicconditions in rural areas, including campaigning forimprovements in electrification, sanitation, and education(Bentall and Corbridge, 1996).

Alongside social movements that have overtly ruralfoundations, a number of other social movements can beidentified operating in rural space in both the global northand the global south. The environmental movement, forexample, is clearly not exclusively rural, yet it is frequentlyengaged in struggles that are situated in rural space, and/orwhich are focused aspects of rural life, such as agriculturalpractice, commercial forestry, and hunting as Gorlach et al.(this issue) describe for Eastern Europe. Similarly, theindigenous peoples’ movement has a presence in urban aswell as rural society, yet it has become a prominent actor inrural politics in many countries through struggles over theownership of land, the protection of sacred sites, and thecontrol of natural resources, as well as for social andpolitical justice (Gedicks, 2001; Perreault, 2001). More-over, identity-based social movements can be foundchallenging the conservatism of traditional rural societiesin campaigns for social justice and equal rights, forexample, the work of the Rural Organizing Project inOregon, discussed by Stephen (this issue), for lesbian, gay,and transgender rights, or that of rural women’s move-ments (see, for example, Panelli, 2007).

In spite of the diverse trajectories of rural socialmovements, and the variety of their primary concerns,there are signs of increasing collaboration and convergencebetween different rural social movements, both withincountries and internationally. Neoliberal globalization, inparticular, has emerged as a unifying factor, recognized ascontributing to many of the specific issues motivatingindividual groups (Woods, 2007). The international farm-ers’ coalition, La Via Campesina, discussed by Desmarais(this issue), is one response, coordinating the actions of

farmers’ and peasants’ groups around the world incampaigning against globalization, and particularly, tradeliberalization. Actions such as the now infamous farmers’protest outside the World Trade Organization conclave inCancun in 2003 that witnessed the public suicide of Koreanfarmers’ leader Lee Kyoung-hae, have formed whatRoutledge (2003) labels ‘convergence spaces’—temporaryaffinities that permit diverse social movements to cometogether around particular objectives, expanding theirspatio-temporal horizons. Such convergence spaces disruptand displace conventional spatial and scalar restrictions onpolitical action, allowing messages to permeate to newaudiences—for example, the participation of Indian farm-ers in the Inter-Continental Caravan through Europe(Featherstone, 2003), or the elevation by Jose Bove of aprotest at a local branch of McDonald’s in France to aglobalized spectacle (Woods, 2004). More routinely, Reed(this issue), notes that the British land rights campaign, TheLand Is Ours, includes in its newsletters bulletins on landstruggles in the global south, whilst Stephen (this issue),observes that many activists in the farmworkers’ movementin the United States have experience of involvement inrural social movements in Latin America.

4. Researching rural social movements

The significance of social movements to rural studies isnot just in their proliferation and increasing prominence inrural politics, but also in the insights that they potentiallyprovide into the restructuring of rural space, andthe reconfiguration of social and political relations in thecountryside. The pursuit of this potential requires theframing of a new research agenda, building on a currentlyunderdeveloped scattering of studies, including thosereported in this collection. While this agenda mightconceivably address a wide range of issues, a number ofkey questions can be identified here as an indication.Firstly, what is the role of ‘rurality’ in framing the

character, objectives, and rhetoric of social movements,and how do social movements contribute to the discoursesof rurality circulating in the countryside? In an earlierpaper, I suggested that a ‘rural movement’ could beidentified that was based on, and characterized by, a senseof rural identity (Woods, 2003). This assertion is mostapparent when applied, as in the original paper, to socialmovement organizations that have developed from loca-lized conflicts over the regulation or development of ruralspace, or are framed around a perceived rural–urbandivide, such as the Countryside Alliance in Britain or theBharatiya Kisan Union in India (Bentall and Corbridge,1996). It is perhaps less obvious in the case of socialmovements with more materialistic or economic primaryaims, such as land rights campaigns and farmers’ protestgroups, yet, arguably, these movements also encapsulateparticular discourses of rurality. Farmers’ movements, forexample, often articulate concerns not only about marketconditions and industry support, but also about the place


of agriculture in rural communities—Desmarais, forinstance, in her paper in this issue, stresses the importanceof the ‘peasant’ identity to La Via Campesina. Similarly,Caldeira, in her paper, demonstrates that the land rightscampaigning of the MST in Brazil is strongly informed byan idealized vision of rural life.

Clearly, though, different social movements do notnecessarily subscribe the same understanding of ruralidentity, or the same vision of the countryside. InWoods (2003), I identified three different ‘ruralisms’that motivate social movement mobilization—a reactiveruralism, a progressive ruralism, and an aspirationalruralism (p. 318). In certain circumstances, groups inspiredby different of these ruralisms may find common cause, yetin other circumstances, incompatibilities between thedifferent ruralisms generate conflict between social move-ments in the countryside. Such cases are well documented,but what is less understood about these dynamics is therelationship between the discourses of rurality reproducedby social movements at an organizational level, and thoseheld to by individual participants—referred as ‘framealignment’ in social movement theory (Snow et al., 1986).Caldeira (this issue), for example, highlights the disjuncturebetween the conceptions of rural life held by leaders and bygrassroots participants in the MST; whilst Reed (2004) andothers have raised questions about the coherence ofmotivations of participants in British rural protests.Moreover, as social movement organizations seek toinfluence public opinion, the impact that they have onshaping the discourses of rurality circulating within bothrural and urban societies is a further, as yet under-explored, area for inquiry.

Secondly, what is the part played by social movements inthe re-making of rural places in the context of social andeconomic change? Social movements may frame theirmessage through discourses of rurality, but individualparticipants encounter the rural in particular places andare often mobilized into action by perceived threatsto particular sites. As demostrated by Soren Larsen(this issue) and Scott Prudham (this issue), place-basedmovements may be constructed as responses to moments ofcrisis within particular localities—such as the closure of amajor employer—and reflect the character of the locality intheir form, aims, and practice. Furthermore, through theiractions, social movements can serve to mediate the effectsof wider processes and have a direct influence in shapingthe outcomes of restructuring. These effects can be bothmaterial and discursive. On the one hand, material effectsinclude initiatives such as the West Chilcotin CommunityForest Board described by Larsen, which have a directimpact on a locality’s economy and environment; on theother hand, the representations of place articulated bysocial movements, and their success or failure in achievingobjectives, can inform the discourses of place circulatingwithin communities. Further analysis of these processescan help to build our understanding of how rural localitiesrespond to change, and in particular, of the hybrid

reconstitution of rural places under globalization (seeWoods, 2007).Thirdly, what does the organizational form of rural

social movements tell us about political participation in thecontemporary countryside? The proliferation of ruralsocial movements has been associated with an awakeningof grassroots action and participation, manifest throughsmall-scale, locally based groups with informal structuresand heavily dependent on the direct involvement ofmembers and supporters in their activities. This massmobilization has generally been celebrated as a progressivestep of community empowerment, yet its self-selectingnature can raise questions about inclusivity. Prudham(this issue), for example, in his case study of the YoubouTimberless Society, observes that several sections of thelocal community are under-represented or absent in thesociety’s membership, and similar biases can be found inmany local rural social movement organizations. On abroader scale, questions have been asked as to whetherorganizations that purport to represent ‘rural interests’,such as the Countryside Alliance in Britain, truly representthe diversity of interests and opinion in the ruralpopulation (see Woods, 2005).The emotional intensity involved in running small-scale

social movement organizations means that many crashand burn quickly. Those that survive often need toevolve as they seek to expand in size and stabilize theiroperations, adopting conventional, hierarchical, models oforganization, and introducing a distance between move-ment leaders and followers. The papers by Desmarais andCaldeira in this issue illustrate tensions in the ViaCampesina and MST, respectively, resulting from theimposition of hierarchical organizational forms on massmobilization movements. In this way, social movementscan become vehicles for elite representations of thecountryside.The question of political participation also brings into

focus the relationship between social movements andrepresentative democracy. In regions including EasternEurope and Latin America, the emergence of socialmovements has been associated with democratization,reflecting the restoration of political rights and the distrustin post-totalitarian societies of dependency on state action(see Gorlach et al., this issue; also, Houtzager, 2000). Inmore advanced liberal democracies, growth in socialmovement participation has been identified with dis-illusionment with electoral politics, although the objectivesof social movement actions are still commonly focused oninfluencing elected politicians (see for example Stephen inthis issue). In both cases, political parties have played alimited role in rural social movements, and ties betweenrural social movements and political parties are weak. Thiswas not always the case. Parties such as the Country Partyin Australia (Halpin, 2004), and agrarian parties in Europewere a core element of the putative rural movement of theearly twentieth century, and several rural social movementsin developing countries were fostered by Communist


parties. Yet, attempts to create new ‘rural’ parties withinthe contemporary rural movement have generally failed—the most successful being the Chasse, Peche, Natureet Tradition (CPNT) party in France which achieved 7%of the vote in the 1999 European Elections before fading.Even the Independent Smallholders’ Party, which, with itsslogan of ‘God, Home and Family, Wheat, Wine andIndependence’, was the largest party in post-war Hungaryand briefly resurfaced in the post-Communist transition,has been squeezed out by the assertion of a moreconventional left-right political cleavage (Meszaros et al.,2007; Swain, 1993). Rural discontent has, however,contributed to phenomena such as the election of populistIndependent parliamentarians in Australia (Costar andCurtin, 2004), and the precise nature of the relationshipbetween rural social movements and electoral politicsremains unclear.

Fourthly, how are alliances between rural social move-ments, and with other organizations, negotiated andconstructed? Individual protest groups become a move-ment through coalescence around shared agendas andinterests, and social movements also reach outwards tobuild coalitions of convenience with other social move-ments, political parties, and interest groups. All of the ruralsocial movements discussed in the papers in this specialissue involve some degree of alliance-building and as suchthey illustrate some of the questions and issues that result.Larsen, for instance, in his case study of Anahim Lake,demonstrates that even local place-based movementsinvolve the alignment of different ‘reference groups’ withina community. The challenges of building larger-scalecoalitions are highlighted by Desmarais in her examinationof La Via Campesina, including issues of differing interests,contrasting organizational cultures, and uneven resources.Most directly, Stephen investigates the dynamics ofcollaborative working between two social movementorganizations in Oregon, noting both the potential of co-operation, and the tensions and difficulties that can arise,often from differences in everyday practices such as time-keeping. Whilst these papers reveal something of theintricacies of coalition-building between rural social move-ments, the equally complex processes of constructingalliances with other (non-rural) social movements ispointed to by Prudham, as he notes the shifting positionof the Youbou Timberless Society as its ties with the labormovement weakened and new ties were forged withenvironmental and First Nation groups as the society’saims and activities evolved.

Finally, what factors inform the differential geographyof rural social movement formation and mobilization? Atthe local scale, this question relates to the different formsand degrees of mobilization of different localities inresponse to similar experiences of socio-economic restruc-turing. Why, for example, did the citizens of Youbou reactdifferently to the closure of the local logging plant—asdescribed by Prudham in this issue—than those of dozensof similar logging towns in the same region? Here we might

look at the composition of the local economy, the culturaland political heritage of the locality, and material and non-material resources available to residents. Similar issues canbe explored between countries—for example, the contribu-tion of greater dispersal and sectoral segmentation inmilitating against Australian farmers mobilizing in opposi-tion to neoliberal reforms with the same effect as in Europe(Cheshire and Lawrence, 2004; Dibden and Cocklin, 2007).The point here is that differences in social movementmobilization have a wider consequence in shaping theoutcomes of social and economic restructuring and thefuture prospects and well-being of the localities andindividuals concerned.In addressing these questions, rural researchers might

fruitfully draw on the analytical frameworks provided bysocial movement theory. Again, the papers in thiscollection illustrate some of the possibilities. Caldeira andLarsen both engage with the concept of ‘frames’ that havebecome paradigmatic in social movement studies followingthe work of Snow et al. (1986) (see also della Porta andDiani, 2006). Caldeira implicitly examines frame alignmentwithin the MST, that is, the correlation of the interpreta-tive frames of the movement leaders with those of itsgrassroots supporters. Larsen, meanwhile, employs thederivative concept of ‘place-frames’ developed by Martin(2003) as a way of understanding the territorially groundeddiscourses that situate activism in place. Reed, by contrast,makes comparisons with Castells’s urban social movementsto position contemporary rural social movements asreactions to an emerging ‘network society’. Finally,Prudham draws on the work of Karl Polanyi—not atheorist of social movements, but influential on socialmovement studies—and particularly his notion of the‘double movement’ (Polanyi, 1944), to situate the YoubouTimberless Society in a political struggle over the articula-tion of global capitalism on one hand, and local social,economic and environmental conditions on the other(see also Birchfield, 2005, for a Polanyian reading of theConfederation Paysanne).However, the flow of ideas need not be unidirectional.

One further reason for expanding research on rural socialmovements is to counter the urban bias within socialmovement studies and make contributions to the develop-ment of social movement theory. In particular, theexploration of rural social movements may conceivablycontribute to current debates on emotion in social move-ments (Goodwin et al., 2001), the geographies of socialmovements (Miller, 2000), and the role of non-humanagency in social movement mobilization (Lockie, 2004).Gorlach et al. (this issue) quote Mooney’s (2000)

assertion that ‘‘we might expect to find the future of ruralsociety, if there is such a future, in the field of socialmovements’’ (p. 36). This statement may read to some asover-playing the significance of social movements, but asthe papers in this collection demonstrate, there is a case forstating with some confidence that that social movementswill be prominent in the future of rural politics, and that


through the analysis of social movements we can findpointers to the future of rural society.

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Guest Editor

Michael WoodsInstitute of Geography and Earth Sciences,

Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, UK

E-mail address: [email protected]



mailto:[email protected]

social movements and rural politics

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