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Global Land Grabs: historical processes, theoretical and methodological implications and current trajectories

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01436597.2013.850190

1360-2241

Marc Edelman, Carlos Oya, Saturnino M. Borras,

Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development

AbstractScholars, practitioners and activists generally agree that investor interest in land has climbed sharply, although they differ about what to call this phenomenon and how to analyse it. This introduction discusses several contested definitional, conceptual, methodological and political issues in the land grab debate. The initial ‘making sense’ period drew sweeping conclusions from large databases, rapid-appraisal fieldwork and local case studies. Today research examines financialisation of land, ‘water grabbing’, ‘green grabbing’ and grabbing for industrial and urbanisation projects, and a substantial literature challenges key assumptions of the early discussion (the emphasis on foreign actors in Africa and on food and biofuels production, the claim that local populations are inevitably displaced or negatively affected). The authors in this collection, representing a diversity of approaches and backgrounds, argue the need to move beyond the basic questions of the ‘making sense’ period of the debate and share a common commitment to connecting analyses of contemporary land grabbing to its historical antecedents and legal contexts and to longstanding agrarian political economy questions concerning forms of dispossession and accumulation, the role of labour and the impediments to the development of capitalism in agriculture. They call for more rigorous grounding of claims about impacts, for scrutiny of failed projects and for (re)examination of the longue durée, social differentiation, the agency of contending social classes and forms of grassroots resistance as key elements shaping agrarian outcomes. Notes1 The three authors share equal contributions to the article and to the editorship of the issue. The order of names was decided by random selection between different combinations (picked by a five-year old child) in order to avoid the conventional tyranny of the alphabetical order2 See initial but basic discussion in S Borras, J Franco, S Gómez, C Kay & M Spoor, ‘Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 845–872.3 This is one of the most complicated and debated issues in global land grabbing today. The Journal of Peasant Studies’ ‘Forum on global land grabbing, Part 2’ has been dedicated to jump-starting a more rigorous debate on this matter. See, specifically, I Scoones et al ‘The politics of evidence: methodologies for understanding the global land rush’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 469–483; M Edelman, ‘Messy hectares: questions about the epistemology of land area and ownership’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 485–501; and C Oya, ‘Methodological reflections on land “grab” databases and the land “grab” literature “rush”’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 503–520.4 See, for example, H Akram Lodhi, ‘Contextualising land grabbing: contemporary land deals, the global subsistence crisis and the world food system’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 33(2), 2012, pp 119–142.5 J Fairhead, M Leach & I Scoones, ‘Green grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(2), 2012, pp 237–261.6 M Levien, ‘Regimes of dispossession: from steel towns to Special Economic Zones’, Development and Change, 44(2), 2013, pp 381–407.7 All contributors to this collection take a broader perspective on the issue of drivers and actors, to include foreign and domestic, state and non-state. For an extensive discussion on foreign and domestic land grabbers, see M Murmis & MR Murmis, ‘Land concentration and foreign land ownership in Argentina in the context of global land grabbing’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 33(4), 2012, pp 490–508. For the role of the state in either directly grabbing land or facilitating corporate land grabbing, see W Wolford et al, ‘Governing global land deals: the role of the state in the rush for land’, Development and Change, 44(2), 2013, pp 189–210; and Levien, ‘Regimes of dispossession’.8 For an excellent critical examination of the 2007–08 food price spike, see the contributions to the Symposium in Journal of Agrarian Change, 10(1), 2010, pp 69–129.9 Fairhead et al, ‘Green grabbing’.10 L Mehta, GJ Veldwisch & J Franco, Introduction to the special issue: water grabbing? Focus on the (re)appropriation of finite water resources’, Water Alternatives, 5(2), 2012, pp 193–207.11 S Borras, P McMichael & I Scoones, Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change, London: Routledge, 2010.12 J Ghosh, The unnatural coupling: food and global finance’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 10(1), 2010, pp 72–86.13 See Levien, ‘Regimes of dispossession’.14 See, for example, the critical discussion on the role of some European governments and companies in the case of Chikweti tree plantation in Niassa, Mozambique in Foodfirst Information and Action Network (fian), The Human Rights Impacts of Tree Plantations in Niassa Province, Mozambique: A Report, Heidelberg: fian, 2012. More academically, in the context of Europe, both as host of land grabbing and as land grabber, see J Franco & S Borras (eds), Land Concentration, Land Grabbing and People’s Struggles in Europe: A Report by the European Coordination Via Campesina (ecvc) and Hands-Off The Land (hotl), Amsterdam: Transnational Institute (tni), 2013.15 For Eurasia, see O Visser & M Spoor, ‘Land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia: the world’s largest agricultural land reserves at stake’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(2), 2011, pp 299–323; S Borras & J Franco, Political Dynamics of Land-grabbing in Southeast Asia: Understanding Europe’s Role, Amsterdam: tni, 2011; and S Borras, C Kay et al (eds), ‘Land grabbing in Latin America’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies (special issue), 33(4), 2012.16 For Russia, see O Visser, N Mamonova & M Spoor, ‘Oligarchs, megafarms and land reserves: understanding land grabbing in Russia’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3–4), 2012, pp 899–931. For India, see Levien, ‘Regimes of dispossession’.17 For a discussion on how they frame their datasets, for what purposes, and with what limitations, see W Anseeuw et al, ‘Creating a public tool to assess and promote transparency in global land deals: the experience of the Land Matrix’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), 2013, pp 521–530; and grain, ‘Collating and dispersing: grain’s strategies and methods’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(3), pp 531–536.18 TM Li, ‘Centering labor in the land grab debate’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(2), 2011, pp 281–298.19 K Marx, Capital, Vol 1, New York: Modern Library, 1906; and D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.20 See also relevant discussions in M Levien, ‘Special Economic Zones and accumulation by dispossession in India’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 11(4), 2011, pp 454–483; Levien, ‘The land question: Special Economic Zones and the political economy of dispossession in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3–4), 2012, pp 933–969; and M Kenney-Lazar, ‘Plantation rubber, land grabbing and social-property transformation in southern Laos’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3–4), 2012, pp 1017–1037.21 See, for example, PD Little & M Watts (eds), Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994; EF Fischer & P Benson, Broccoli and Desire: Global Connections and Maya Struggles in Postwar Guatemala, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006; and C Oya, ‘Contract farming in sub-Saharan Africa: a survey of approaches, debates and issues’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 12(1), 2012, pp 1–33.22 P Woodhouse, ‘New investment, old challenges: land deals and the water constraint in African agriculture’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(3-4), 2012, pp 777–794; L Mehta, GJ Veldwisch & J Franco, ‘Introduction to the special issue: Water grabbing? Focus on the (re)appropriation of finite water resources’, Water Alternatives, 5(2), 2012, pp 193–207; and T Allan et al (eds), Handbook of Land and Water Grabs in Africa: Foreign Direct Investment and Food and Water Security, London: Routledge, 2012.23 SM Borras, JC Franco & C Wang, ‘The challenge of global governance of land grabbing: changing international agricultural context and competing political views and strategies’, Globalizations, 10, 2013, pp 161–179; and P Seufert, ‘The fao voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests’, Globalizations, 10, 2013, pp 181–186.24 See Scoones et al ‘The politics of evidence’; Edelman, ‘Messy hectares’; and Oya, ‘Methodological reflections’.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMarc EdelmanMarc Edelman is in the Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY 10065-5024, USA. Email: medelman@hunter.cuny.edu.Carlos OyaCarlos Oya is in the Department of Development Studies, University of London, London WC1H 0XG, UK. Email: co2@soas.ac.uk.Saturnino M BorrasSaturnino M Borras Jr is at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands. Email: borras@iss.nl.