Rural development through the construction of new, nested, markets: comparative perspectives from China, Brazil and the European Union

Abstract

This article discusses and compares the rural development processes and practices currently occurring in China, Brazil and the European Union. Although these are strongly rooted in the specificities of time and space, they also share important commonalities. We argue that rural development can be viewed as an evolving set of responses to market failures. A key element of these responses is that they are unfolding through the construction of new markets: a seemingly contradictory phenomenon that has, as yet, hardly been scrutinized or theoretically elaborated. We describe these newly emerging markets as ‘nested markets’ and support our argument with a careful reconsideration of the dynamics of long-established nested markets. We then extend this analysis, firstly, by arguing that the construction of such new markets occurs through a process of social struggle and, secondly, by exploring the strength of these newly emerging constellations in relation to the hegemony exerted by food empires. Our analysis puts common-pool resources, which underlie these new, nested markets, centre stage.