AAG Annual Meeting 2019, Washington D.C.
After the Global Land Grab: Geographic Perspectives on Critical Agrarian Studies
Paper Session co-organizers:
Will Shattuck, University of Wisconsin-Madison
W. Nathan Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison
It has been ten years since the global land grab gained critical attention within geography. This literature highlighted the ongoing importance of rural spaces for the maintenance of global financial markets and the often violent exclusions that accompany investments in agricultural production (e.g., Hall et al. 2011). Since then, scholarship has moved beyond ‘the standardized package’ (Schoenberger et al. 2017) of the initial global land grab literature in order to investigate the complex spaces and processes of agrarian change (Peluso and Lund 2011). To do so, this more recent work has re-engaged with older debates within critical agrarian studies (Edelman and Wolford 2017).
Out of this post-land grab literature, scholars have raised a number of pressing questions. First, why do smallholder farmers persist as important producers within capitalist economies (e.g., Rigg et al. 2016)? This question is particularly salient given arguments about the ability of smallholder agriculture to ‘absorb’ the surplus labor that seems to be unneeded by capitalist production (Glassman 2003; Li 2010; Ferguson 2014). Second, in the context of new communication technologies and rural out-migration to precarious labor markets, how do urban processes continue to affect rural spaces? Third, as agrarian contexts are increasingly shaped by processes of financialization (e.g., Fairbairn et al. 2014), how have digital financial inclusion and commodities futures markets affected the political and ecological contours of agricultural production? Finally, recognizing the intersectional dynamics within rural society, in what ways do gender and intergenerational relations within families affect rural livelihoods and access to land (e.g., Young and White 2017)?
This paper session invites scholars to present on a wide range of research that responds to these and other questions. We are particularly interested in fostering a dialogue that explores how geographic concepts--such as the production of scale, the role of place in rural landscapes, global production networks, and spaces of social reproduction--can help to advance the interdisciplinary field of critical agrarian studies. Please send paper abstracts of 250 words to Will Shattuck ([log in to unmask]) and W. Nathan Green ([log in to unmask]) by October 6, 2018.
References
Edelman, Marc, and Wendy Wolford. 2017. “Introduction: Critical Agrarian Studies in Theory and Practice.” Antipode 49 (4): 959–76.
Fairbairn, Madeleine, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones, and K. Sivaramakrishnan. 2014. “Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (5): 653-666.
Glassman, Jim. 2003. “The Spaces of Economic Crisis: Asia and the Reconfiguration of Neo-Marxist Theory.” Studies in Comparative International Development 37 (4): 31-63.
Hall, Derek, Philip Hirsch, and Tania Murray Li. 2011. Powers of exclusion: land dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Li, Tania M. 2010. “To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection of Surplus Populations.” Antipode 41 (1): 66-93.
Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christian Lund. 2011. “New Frontiers of Land Control: Introduction.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (4): 667–81.
Rigg, Jonathan, Albert Salamanca, and Eric C. Thompson. 2016. “The puzzle of East and Southeast Asia's persistent smallholder.” Journal of Rural Studies 43: 118-133.
Schoenberger, Laura, Derek Hall, and Peter Vandergeest. 2017. “What happened when the land grab came to Southeast Asia?” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (4): 697-725.
Young, Clara Mi, and Ben White. 2017. “Gender and generation in Southeast Asian agro-commodity booms.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (6): 1103-1110.
########################################################################
To unsubscribe from the CRIT-GEOG-FORUM list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CRIT-GEOG-FORUM&A=1
|