RHN 5/2025 | Call, EURHO
Organisers: Alba Díaz Geada (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) and Alberto José Franco Barrera (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
Session at Rural History 2025, 9–12 September 2025, Coimbra, Portugal
Deadline for Submissions: 20 January 2025
Call for Papers:
Class differentiation processes in contemporary rural societies
Session S16 at Rural History 2025
At present, the dismantling of existing peasant communities and the creation of new forms of exploitation of the labor force in agrarian production continue to advance. At the same time, capitalism expands and renews its growth by dispossession, advancing in the plundering of nature. In this context, while the possibility of understanding historical processes is questioned, successive crises of capitalism once again invite the study of inequality. With this session proposal, we aim to continue to delve deeper into the research of the processes of class differentiation in contemporary rural societies. In order to do it, we propose to start from the field of Marxist discussion around the “agrarian question”. In this regard, it is necessary to keep in mind that, from the Marxist tradition, the efforts to understand the role of agriculture and the peasantry in the development of capitalism cannot be understood separately from the efforts to transform this mode of social relations. How have the advances of the capitalist mode of production, in its different historical phases, affected peasant social differentiation, within the framework of different concrete social formations? How has the articulation of this mode of production with pre-capitalist forms of exploitation affected the internal differentiation of rural societies? How can we explain the instrumental role of the State, in its accompaniment of the construction of a new hegemonic mode of social relations, in relation to peasant societies? How can we explain processes of privatization of the communal, access to land ownership, forced proletarianization, migration or return, in relation to the reproduction of peasant families? How can we explain the relationship between productive and reproductive processes, in their impact on social differentiation? How did class differences change, how did processes of social ascent or declassification occur, how were forms of distinction renewed, at different moments in capitalist society?
We welcome
a) theoretical studies or conceptual reflection on the study of class differentiation in contemporary rural societies;
b) systematic bibliographic reviews on the study of class differentiation processes in contemporary rural societies, in the field of human sciences;
c) studies on class differentiation processes in contemporary rural societies. Research on any people or territory and comparative studies are welcome.
Proposals should be submitted here https://ruralhistory2025.org/call-for-papers/ until 20 January 2025.