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This paper focuses on the legacies of paramilitary governance in the Colombian civil war. Using a local case study, we show that former militia strongholds have been shaped by the lasting effects of armed rule on the ability of impoverished peasants and rural workers to challenge existing forms of land tenure and labour organisation. Our case highlights the need to adopt a local view to understand the embeddedness of armed governance in existing socio-economic orders. Our conclusion emphasises the importance of integrating a political economy perspective when studying the legacies of armed governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of food, climate, energy, and the yet unfinished work of ending colonialism run square through questions of land. The classical agrarian question has taken on new forms, and a new intensity. We look at four dimensions of the agrarian question today: urbanization and labor; care and social reproduction; financialization and global food systems; and social movements. On this 50th anniversary of JPS, we as the journal's editors invite more research, vigorous debate, and scholar-activism on these issues in agrarian politics and beyond. We move into the journal's next era hoping we might continue to better interpret the world in order to change it.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary peasant movements in West Africa have their roots in local, national, and international activism dating back to the 1970s. Born in the context of structural adjustment and democratic transitions, today's organizations are critical actors in representing the interests of the region's peasants. Yet, today, they face numerous challenges, including the region's security meltdown, the persistence of kleptocratic states and elites, and the lasting impacts of colonialism. In this interview, Ibrahima Coulibaly sheds light on these issues through the situation in Mali and the whole West African region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarly interest in the implementation of land policies in post-conflict settings has been focused on 'best practices'. Yet defining land tensions as a risk for stability conceals the contribution of peace-making to the transformations of capitalism. This contribution links the analysis of post-conflict conjunctures to the renewal of developmentalist policies. I argue that peace-making policies contribute to differentiate the economy from the political sphere, and to define land as an economic problem, not a political matter. This produces what I call post-war agrarian capitalism. This proposition is put into application through a comparative analysis of Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many post-war countries, the relative security brought to rural areas is construed by government officials and business actors as an opportunity for development. This is particularly true for marginal areas, where opportunities for economic development had previously been hindered by the threat of violence. This provides a favourable context for the construction of commodity frontiers. Through the case of Colombia, I show that one of the main challenges faced by frontier policy narratives amounts to differentiating wartime dispossession from peacetime legitimate accumulation. This poses intractable challenges to policymakers and business actors, as it fuels the contradictions between peace consolidation and post-war development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entanglement of violence and legal institutions in Colombia has led some scholars to argue that this country is characterized by a ‘law without state’, or that the law has a mere ‘symbolic function’. This would explain an apparent paradox: high-intensity violence has been accompanied by the preservation of legal institutions and a common belief in their social importance. Yet the mobilization of the legal repertoire against violent land grabbing by peasant movements shows their belief in the legitimacy of legal institutions. Instead of measuring the efficiency of these actions, this paper will analyse the interaction between local orders and national legal institutions. This study argues that legal arenas have served to address land conflict, in a context of egregious violence. With their own dynamics and rules, they have not completely disrupted the logics of violent dispossession, yet they have defined land not only as an object of business transactions but also as an issue of human rights and collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the links between land ownership contention, private violence and the state. Colombia presents a context where criminal actors participate in the regular functioning of public institutions. The study rejects normative conceptions about the link between criminal actors and the state. Crime and violence are not considered as extraneous factors, separated from the political game; they are analyzed as constitutive of logics of competition, accumulation and economic development, ultimately, elements in the process of state formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]