Journal of Peasant Studies
Vol 37, Issue 4, 2010
The Journal of Peasant Studies special issue addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The collection’s starting point has been four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex, asking, ‘How do people interact with each other’? And, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, it also engages with questions about people-environment interactions, asking for example, ‘How do changes in politics get shaped by dynamic ecologies, and vice versa’?
At the same time, the collection is concerned with the politics of representation, that is, what are the discursive frames through which biofuels are promoted and/or opposed? And what are the institutional structures, and cultures of energy consumption on which a biofuels complex depends, and what alternative political and ecological visions are emerging to call the biofuels complex into question? Across 16 articles presenting material from five regions across the North-South divide and focusing on 14 countries including Brazil, Indonesia, India, USA and Germany, these questions are addressed within the following themes: global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity.
- This collection is also available as a paperback book.