Book Review: Adam Mayer, Naija Marxisms: Revolutionary Thought in Nigeria

Abstract

(of, say, landowners) might result in different forms of resistance. Regarding the struggle against agro-extractive dispossession in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Masalam notes that ‘[t]he unequal agrarian structure, together with market pressure toward coconut commodification, exacerbated the general patterns of rural identity, shifting them from a land-based peasant mode of communal production to a labour mode being exploited by capital’, which in turn has led to the demand for cancelling ‘the commercial plantation permit and getting legal recognition from the state for individual property’ (Chapter 5, pp. 118). However, building solidarity networks and alliances, as in the case of the gendered intergenerational class alliances of the food sovereignty movement in Kenya, can resist and transcend such capitalist contradictions. Alternative modes of resistance (insurgencies, non-violent protests, legal struggles, popular mass mobilisation, cultural protest, to name a few), have been documented. These narratives suggest both the significance as well as the limitations of localised struggles against the onslaught of global capital on the livelihoods of the poor. These two volumes together offer a rich theoretical and empirical understanding of the dynamics of dispossession and resistance in the contemporary land question.