This collection of essays on Governing Global Land Deals provides new empirical and theoretical analyses of the relationships between global land grabs and processes of government and governance.

The book reframes debates on global land grabs by focusing on the relationship between large–scale land deals and processes of governance. The authors offer new theoretical insights into the different forms and effects of global land acquisitions, and illuminate both the micro–processes of transaction and expropriation, as well as the broader structural forces at play in global land deals.

Governing Global Land Deals provides new empirical data on the different actors involved in contemporary land deals occurring across the globe and focuses on the specific institutional, political, and economic contexts in which they are acting.

From the back cover: Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in large–scale land deals, often from public lands to the hands of foreign or domestic investors. Popularly referred to as a ‘global land grab’, new land acquisitions are drawing upon, restructuring and challenging the nature of both governance and government. While ‘the state’ is often invoked as a key player in contemporary land deals, states do not necessarily operate coherently or with one voice.

This collection of essays brings clarity and understanding to the entity of ‘the state’, analyzing government and governance as processes, people and relationships. Focusing on relations of territory, sovereignty, authority and subjects, the essays in this collection explore the highly variable form and content of large–scale land deals in different settings around the world, illuminating both the micro–processes of transaction and expropriation, as well as the broader structural forces at play in global land deals. The authors do not assume a priori that there is a necessary character to land deals, rather they frame the deals themselves quite broadly, as embedded in complex multi–scalar webs of relationships shaped by power, property and production.

These articles have previously appeared in a special issue of Development and Change.

• Edited by Wendy Wolford, Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones and Ben White
• Publisher: Wiley Blackwell
• Buy from the publisher