Rural Development and Social Movements

Abstract

In most developing countries, a large proportion of the poor still live in rural areas, where poverty is far more severe than in urban areas. Rural poverty is a structural phenomenon with many dimensions and complexities. In the twenty-first century, rural poverty has been further exacerbated by natural resource degradation, climate change, growing landlessness, political violence, and increasing food insecurity. These are forces beyond the control of the poor. Despite rapid economic growth, impressive technological progress, expansion of educational resources, closer global trade integration, and significant foreign aid during the last six decades, rural poverty has persisted. Subsistence farmers and landless peasants make up the vast majority of the rural poor. In their desperate attempts to modernize traditional agriculture, developing countries embraced Western technology and strategies. Unfortunately, these strategies failed to take into consideration the structural dimension of rural poverty, which is intrinsically linked to “old” and “new” forms of capitalist development. As such, the outcome was increased poverty and environmental degradation.