Announcement: Global Land Grabbing conference

Co-organized and hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium in partnership with the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI). This international academic conference on ‘Global Land Grabbing’ will be held on 6-8 April 2011 at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

The focus of the conference will be on the politics of global land grabbing and agrarian change. Papers are expected to address some of the most urgent and strategic questions around global land grab. Some suggested topics are below:

• (a) What changes in broad agrarian structures are emerging? Are these new forms of agrarian capitalism or repeats of the past?
• (b) What is the nature and extent of rural social differentiation – in terms of class, gender, ethnicity – following changes in land use and land property relations as well as organizations of production and exchange?
• (c) Have land deals undermined local level and national food security – or not? How, whose and to what extent?
• (d) To what extent have agrarian political struggles been provoked by the new land investment dynamics? What are the issues that unite or divide the rural poor, organized movements, and rural communities around the issue of land deals?
• (e) What are the various competing policy and political narratives and discourses around the multiple crises of food, energy, climate and finance, and how have these shaped and been reshaped by the land deal politics?
• (f) How have competing frameworks and views on land property been deployed by various camps around the contested meanings of ‘marginal lands’ (or, idle’, ‘waste’, ‘unoccupied’ lands)?
• (g) What are the emerging trends around dynamics of power, elites and corruption, and land as a source of patronage?
• (h) Have global land policies of different overseas development agencies (World Bank, FAO, EU, IFAD, and so on) contributed to facilitating/encouraging or blocking/discouraging land deals? What are the strengths and limitations of ‘code of conduct’, certification, regulation, information dissemination, and capacity-building strategies?
• (i) What are the dynamics of international politics of land grabs in the broader context of energy, mining, forestry and conservation; and the role of big capital and powerful interests?
• (j) What are some of the relevant emerging alternatives from key actors?