Politics of the global land grab

Posted on June 8, 2010 by - FAC blog

Conference focus

The focus of the conference will be on the politics of global land grabbing and agrarian change. Papers should address some of the most urgent and strategic questions around global land grab, including:

  • What is the nature and extent of rural social differentiation – in terms of class, gender, ethnicity – following changes in land use and land property relations as well as organisations of production and exchange?
  • Have land deals undermined local level and national food security?  To what extent have agrarian political struggles been provoked by the new land investment dynamics?
  • What are the issues that unite or divide the rural poor, organised movements, and rural communities around the issue of land deals?
  • Have global land policies of different international development agencies encouraged or discouraged land deals? What are the strengths and limitations of ‘code of conduct’, certification, regulation, information dissemination, and capacity-building strategies?

The organisers invite papers that offer rigorous analysis of the issues from various critical perspectives including:

  • agrarian political economy
  • political sociology
  • political ecology.

The organisers also welcome papers offering comparative studies and proposals for thematic panels.

How to participate

To submit an abstract (200 words), email jpsworkshop@gmail.com, including your contact details and institutional affiliation.  The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2010.

Some papers presented at the workshop will be selected and considered for publication in The Journal of Peasant Studies.

About the conference

The conference is organised by The Journal of Peasant Studies in collaboration with the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI). It is hosted by the new land theme of the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC).

LDPI launched a small grants initiative in February 2010.  The initiative attracted 130 applications from around the world, 75 of which came from 24 African countries.  Through support from the FAC’s land theme, 20 small grants have been awarded for research on land grabs in Africa. A further set of small grants will be awarded shortly for cases from elsewhere.

The LDPI was jointly established by:

  • Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) currently hosted by Saint Mary’s University, Canada
  • Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) whose Secretariat is based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK
  • Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
  • Resources, Environments and Livelihoods (RELIVE) cluster at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in the Hague, Netherlands
  • Polson Institute of Global Development of Cornell University, USA.

08 June 2010 – Ian Scoones
Ian Scoones is Professorial Fellow and joint convenor of the IDS-hosted Future Agricultures Consortium.

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