Agency,global capitalism,and postcolonial patronage: Provocations on structural injustice through the system of smallholder corn farming in the Upper Pulangi

Abstract

In this paper, I take rural Philippines as the centre of my analysis to articulate structural injustice in a postcolonial rural context, inspired by Getachew and Mantena's suggestion of conceptual reanimation as a decolonial practice. I show how smallholder corn farmers in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon articulate a loss of agency, perpetuated not only by local economic-political elites but also by multinational seed corporations, building on colonial structures of power. This demonstrates Young's and Haslanger's assertion that material conditions and social-cultural structures are mutually sustaining, but also shows how structures of global capitalism intertwine with colonial relationships of patronage and the marginalization of rural and indigenous peoples. This decolonial approach to structural injustice is needed because much of the conceptual discussion of structural injustice, as well as practices of global capitalism, originate from the Global North; without contextual awareness, critical theory from the Global North can reproduce structural injustice in the Global South.