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Project

Subaltern history as political culture: campesinos in Montes de María, 1960-2010

This research project seeks to improve our understanding of political engagement among Latin American peasants, building upon a case study on Montes de María (Colombia), 1960-2010. Social mobilisation by people with few chances of political representativeness has been a prominent research subject, not the least for the fields of social history, Latin America studies and peasant studies. In fact, the relevance of the case will be revised from Hobsbawm’s (1963) affirmation that Colombia was a key case to understand what he called social agitation in Latin America: widespread rural land occupations in several regions featured people identified as peasants rather than with a political party or otherwise. It was in the last 60 years that agrarian change and peasant studies consolidated academically, with a marked interest for understanding the political (Hobsbawm 1973) and economic (Dalton 1972) characteristics of peasants facing modernization and globalization. For scholars mainly interested in the now-called global South, their works were arguably driven by assumptions that a definition of peasants or analysis of peasant politics could be achieved using pre-existing European (or Western) references. Unsurprisingly, resulting works often missed (or hid) actual characteristics of peasants’ political engagement. Nowadays, for this study, it is still necessary to define who are peasants and what is meant by political engagement, although potential frames of reference are more flexible. In particular, the development of subaltern history, rooted in peasant politics (Guha 2002; Chatterjee 2015), invited researchers to construe political engagement upon observations on the ground rather than within foreign concepts. The incentives to do so can be summarized in terms of incorporating unattended sources, deepening historical understanding and challenging official histories; in rural Latin America, social scholars realised oral history was a powerful instrument to achieve the three of them (Rivera Cusicanqui 1987; Archila Neira 2005). Therefore, I choose on the one hand to focus on a relatively small geography over a fairly long period. This certainly indicates that the core of my enquiry are the changes in political ideas and practices of peasant struggles. Meanwhile, on the other hand I will construct definitions of peasants and political engagement based on the information specific to the selected geography and period. Despite a considerable amount of literature, from Fals Borda (1984) action-research history to Pérez (2010) autobiography of a peasant leader, actual conversations are expected to provide unique insights. The project comes ultimately as an updated effort to reflect a more comprehensive and inclusive narrative about how peasants in Latin America came about to (re)creating political consciousness and projects of their own during the second half of the 20th century.

Archila Neira (2005). “Voces subalternas e historia oral”.

Chatterjee (2015). “Subaltern History”.

Dalton (1972). “Peasantries in Anthropology and History”.

Fals Borda (1984). Historia Doble de la Costa, Tomo IV. “Retorno a la tierra”.

Guha (2002). Las Voces de la Historia.

Hobsbawm (1963). “The Revolutionary situation in Colombia”.

Hobsbawm (1973). “Peasants and politics”.

Pérez (2010). Luchas campesinas y reforma agraria.

Rivera Cusicanqui (1987). “El potencial epistemológico y teórico de la historia oral”.

Date:8 Mar 2018 →  8 Mar 2022
Keywords:Subaltern studies, Oral history, Peasant movements, Colombia, Political culture
Disciplines:Political engagement, political participation, Latin American history, Political inequality, Modern and contemporary history
Project type:PhD project