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Widespread violence, legal chicanery and ruthless profiteering have come to characterise the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil. With the advance of this frontier, the pioneering peasants, on the one hand, and large landowners and large economic enterprise, on the other, have become locked in an increasingly bitter struggle for land. In his book, Joe Foweraker draws on extensive empirical research to demonstrate the dimensions and dynamics of the struggle. It is his contention that the process can only be understood in relation to the patterns of economic accumulation in the national society and to the typical forms of political intervention on the frontier. In this way the argument moves beyond descriptive, moral or realpolitik explanations of the political violence and bureaucratic malpractice on the frontier, and integrates these elements into a theoretical account of accumulation and class struggle on the frontier, and of the characteristic mediations of this struggle.
List of maps
Preface
Glossary of acronyms and abbreviations used in the text
Glossary of words and phrases in Portuguese used in the text
Part I. The Pioneer Frontier
1. The pioneer frontier; political violence and the peasantry
2. The process and stages of occupation of land on the frontier
3. Frontier expansion and the national economy
Part II. Political Mediation
4. The legal history of the land on the frontier and the question of dual authority
5. Law and lawlessness on the frontier and the problem of bureaucratic inertia
6. Private and public colonisation of the frontier and the pattern of bureaucratic entrepreneurship
7. The contemporary alliance of state and capital on the frontier and the contradictions within the State
Part III. Accumulation and Authoritarianism
8. Primitive accumulation and violence on the frontier
9. The frontier and the reproduction of authoritarian capitalism
10. The frontier and the formation of the Brazilian State
Bibliography
Index
