CALL FOR PAPERS: Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), San Francisco, CA, March 29-April 2, 2016.

Race and the Agrarian Question

Organizers:   Levi Van Sant (University of Georgia) and Emma Gaalaas Mullaney (Bucknell University)

Discussants: Julie Guthman (US-Santa Cruz) and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern (Syracuse)

Kautsky's classic formulation of the Agrarian Question remains relevant today, as it is continually reframed and re-examined in new historical and geographical conjunctures. It has, for instance, been the inspiration behind much of the recent scholarship on land grabs and "the new agrarian studies" more broadly. At its most basic, the Agrarian Question seeks to understand the role of agriculture - as opposed to other forms of (re)production - in the development of capitalism.

Though The Agrarian Question is as germinal in the 21^st century as when it was first published in 1899, we want to take this opportunity to grapple with the fundamentally racialized nature of capitalism, and to thus renew the Agrarian Question in the context of intersectional racial politics. Doing so suggests a series of questions to guide our efforts: How does racialization articulate with shifting regimes of land tenure and agricultural production? How might recognition of the racial politics inherent to the Agrarian Question illuminate new possibilities for emancipatory politics (and farming)? What is the specific role of capitalist agriculture in the reproduction of racial inequality?

We welcome papers that approach these questions from a broad range of positions. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

·         The racial politics of land grabs

·         Agricultural science as racial knowledge

·         Whiteness and agrarian identity

·         Reparations and racial justice

·         Agriculture as geopolitics in the colonial present

·         Dispossession as a racial project

·         Exclusionary rural development and agricultural extension

·         Farming as anti-racist praxis

·         Indigenous/aboriginal/diasporic/peasant agrarian knowledges and practices

If there is sufficient participation we are interested in using these sessions to propose a journal special issue. With that in mind please be specific as to how your paper will engage both racial politics and the agrarian question, and  send proposed abstracts of up to 250 words and a short CV by October 10^th to: Levi Van Sant ([log in to unmask]) Emma Gaalaas Mullaney ([log in to unmask]). We will confirm participation by October 17^th, with abstracts and AAG registration due on October 29^th.