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This paper discusses autonomy as a set of practices that result in the production and reproduction of resources that allow for self‐organization. We define autonomy as a social construct that refers to the self‐organizing capacity of people, communities, and movements. Such capacity assumes both resources and agency. In that vein, our conceptualisation implies that autonomy is a relational concept: It can only emerge when and where struggles that aim at going beyond dependency (i.e., nonautonomy) concretely exist. Autonomy is three‐pronged, involving a set of goal‐oriented activities, a distantiation from capital, and the agency of social actors. Intertwined with these levels are peasant movements that have the capacity to develop and implement a political agenda that is not overshadowed and/or dictated by external influences. The paper illustrates this intertwining with the case of the Circuito (O Circuito), a Brazilian peasant movement that has constructed and operates an extended farmers' market and which simultaneously transforms farming practices. The Circuit is the outcome of collective action and shows the potential of multilevel performance of several actors engaged in concerted actions. In the conclusion, we suggest that the Circuit represents autonomy based on commonly pooled resources as well representing a countermovement to the destructive dynamics of food empires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Big Data' digital technologies are beginning to make inroads into peasant agriculture in the Global South. Of particular importance is the subset of technologies that appropriate agricultural decision‐making, here theorized as surveillance agriculture. These technological regimes aspire to not only remove decision‐making from the farmer, but eventually to replace the farmer with, for instance, 'autonomous' tractors. This paper looks ahead to ask what a technological trajectory that aspires to autonomy for the tractor may portend for autonomy for the peasant farmer. It compares surveillance agriculture to other forms of surveillance capitalism, noting that it shares a will to not only sell products and services but to manipulate behaviour but differs in that the behaviour being manipulated is professional productive behaviour. The paper surveys the vested interests of the entities behind surveillance agriculture and asks how informational relations of production may be changed between farmers and these entities. It then examines the informational relations of production among peasant farmers that may be interdicted by surveillance agriculture, especially the group‐level decision‐making dynamics that make 'individual autonomy' a misnomer. But surveillance agriculture is resolutely individualized, which raises concerns for peasant decision‐making autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On large estates, labour control has two dimensions: control of work itself and control of workers' private lives, including that of their families. Historically, plantation companies have always provided accommodation for their workers, and as a result play a central role in the supervision of the domestic sphere. This paternalistic aspect of labour relations has evolved from being coercive during the indenture system, through a progressive loosening. This paper analyses the history of paternalistic labour relations in Indonesia and Indonesian labour laws. It includes a description of compounds in Indonesian oil palm plantations, where thousands of permanent workers and their families are housed. The compounds are characterized by comprehensive and continuous supervision. Although they generally accept paternalistic labour relations as conferring them with a high degree of security, inhabitants also manage to develop particular ways of negotiating control and asserting autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the global restructuring affecting agrarian landscapes, we build on the concept of autonomy proposed by van der Ploeg and colleagues (but extended and critically complemented) to analyse how family farmers can build this autonomy to face rural capitalist tendencies and maintain their activities and identity. We offer insights from a case study in the Ecuadorian Andes, the BioVida organization that is linked to agroecological and social and solidarity economy movements. Our findings show that family farming autonomy is not being achieved homogeneously for the whole household but must be analysed through an intersectional approach. Furthermore, there are simultaneous processes to achieve different degrees of autonomy and (inter‐)dependency, which are co‐constitutive along gender and age lines and are conditioned by structural constraints. Therefore, for our case study area, agribusiness and family farming processes and spaces seem to operate co‐constitutively rather than antagonistically in practical terms. Agroecology‐based achievements so far act as a localized buffer against adversity rather than an emancipative territorial project of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomy has been a term often used in agrarian studies to express the ability of individuals or collective subjects to escape the rule of capital or the control of the state. Academic interventions on autonomy in different fields and disciplines discuss how global capitalism operates and what kind of subjects, spaces, and practices can resist it and build alternatives to it. However, a closer look at the literature reveals contending notions of autonomy. This special issue therefore aims to stimulate theoretical debates on autonomy. This introduction provides an overview of the general problematic and major theoretical debates around which the discussion on autonomy has been taking place. This problematic is not specific to rural social subjects but involves the discussion within the Left about the need and possibility for radical social change. This article explores how ideas about autonomy are used by radical agrarian movements and critical agrarian studies scholars. It also presents the key issues covered by and the arguments of the different contributors to this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the fight of the Kurdish movement against Islamic State (IS) received much coverage, almost no attention was or has been given to the reconstruction efforts of Rojava after its liberation from the Ba′ath regime and the defeat of the caliphate, let alone the political principles underlying the reconstruction of the agrarian economy. This contribution discusses the agricultural policy in Rojava from the perspective of autonomy. It focuses on the ways in which autonomy as a mode of ordering interrupts the ordering by state and capital. Moreover, the article will show how this third mode of ordering, autonomy, produces alternatives for a political economy in Syria in which the state's organization of production and markets had become vehicles of de‐development and dispossession, demographic engineering, and cultural homogenization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the Bolivian rural actors' projects and practices of autonomy. Autonomy is a polysemic concept and concrete projects—and their manifestations—of collective autonomy can only be defined, discussed, and evaluated based on specific understandings attributed to the notion by different collectivities. The authors explore the meanings of autonomy for indigenous and peasant agents in contemporary Bolivia, and to what extent their capacity to advance collective projects of autonomy was enhanced or hindered under Morales' government (2006–2019). The article's focus is the unfolding of these projects in relation to two of the main institutions of modern societies: state and market. The Bolivian case provides insights for the complexities that surround the concept of autonomy and its constant tension with heteronomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author reviews some of the conclusions of the literature on peasant rebellions in the light of current land struggles of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico. The author argues that conventional explanations of peasant rebellions are inappropriate for the analysis of current land struggles in Latin America in the midst of the process of neoliberal globalization. Neither struggle can be characterized as ‘quasi-feudal’, nor as conservative reactions, but instead should be interpreted as attempts to create a basis for self-subsistence and autonomy. Consequently, the author proposes Marx's concept of alienated labour as an alternative explanatory concept, because it highlights one of the main objectives of the members of the MST and the EZLN, which is the control over their livelihood through a struggle for their re-peasantization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]