Grains and fruits : agrarian change and class relations in La Araucania, Southern Chile

Abstract

This thesis sheds light on agrarian capitalism by looking at the implications over social relations when new cash crops are cultivated in a new frontier. An ethnographic work was conducted over 15 months in La Araucania Region, Southcentral Chile, where the Mapuche indigenous people have part of their ancient land. While other rural inhabitants who are not indigenous also play a role in creating a complex rural social fabric, together a definite agrarian structure arises from the interplay between these rural inhabitants and the crops grown. The research employed ethnographic methods such as shadowing, participant observation, indepth interviews, and secondary sources to reveal the perceptions farmers and peasants have toward certain crops. This research offers a nuanced sociological understanding of the processes of agrarian change underlying the adoption of cash crops. It is an effort to re-install the link between rurality and food production. In turn, the present ethnography overcomes commodity fetishism by highlighting the human agency involved in food production. The ethnography draws its arguments on the comparison of grains and fruits. While the former lies at the heart of tradition, the latter has been portrayed as one of the prime examples of agrarian capitalism due to its high dependence on wage labour. By teasing out these crops, it is possible to obtain a narrative that underlines the material, the subjective, and the cultural meaning growers endowed to either cereals or fruits in terms of security, whether in the form of food security or as a sense of security in a somewhat troubled context. It follows that the elements hindering the establishment of orchards in a new agrarian frontier are rooted in family farm dynamics. Accordingly, the second main component of this research is the analysis of agrarian class relations. To this end, it pays attention to the variety of family farms coexisting within the same territory. It concludes that through the everyday interactions held by these family farms, one can improve the comprehension of family farming by identifying the common grounds and what makes each family farm unique from their neighbours.