Blog
The JAC Blog hosts posts on agrarian and rural issues, both contemporary and historical.
It covers book reviews, photo essays, research essays and field notes. We welcome blog submissions.
Book Review: Mythri Jegathesan’s Tea & Solidarity
JAYASEELAN RAJ Tea and Solidarity is a fascinating monograph by Mythri Jegathesan that examines the lives of tea-plucking women and their families as they seek work outside the Sri Lankan plantations. It provides a powerful description of their struggle for a dignified life within and outside the plantations, what Jegathesan calls their ‘desires for…
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AQs Shorts: Shapan Adnan
Our new AQs Shorts features Shapan Adnan. He speaks about the impact of state violence against Rohingyas on the dynamics of agrarian change in Myanmar as well as its implication for our understanding of dispossession, primitive accumulation and the agrarian question of labour. As part of this, he also reflects on the survival strategies of…
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Contract farming in the developing world: a political economy approach
CAROLINE HAMBLOCH, NIELS FOLD, SUDHA NARAYANAN, HELENA PÉREZ NIÑO & MARK VICOL A new special issue in the Journal of Agrarian Change (Vol. 22, Issue 1) takes stock of critical developments in the political economy of contract farming on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Living under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation…
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AQs Shorts: Lyn Ossome
In our new AQs Shorts view, Lyn Ossome discusses the impact of neoliberal globalization on labour relations in the global South, especially in relation to forms of labour organizing. She also discusses the significance of reproductive labour for debates on the agrarian question(s) and why we need to focus on the issue of survival of…
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‘Finance going farming’: A review essay
SARAH RUTH SIPPEL In recent years, land has once again received a great deal of attention in critical agrarian studies. The most recent ‘land rush’, which began in 2008, has forced issues surrounding land to centre stage, not only in the Global South but also in the Global North. Madeleine Fairbairn’s and Stefan Ouma’s…
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AQs Shorts: Haroon Akram-Lodhi
The seventh part of our AQs Shorts series features Haroon Akram-Lodhi. He discusses the role of culture in shaping agricultural productivity in eastern and southern Africa and how we may approach the intersections between gender and class in agrarian political economy. Haroon Akram-Lodhi is Professor in the Department of International Development Studies at Trent University,…
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AQs Shorts: Carla Gras
In our new video for the AQs Shorts series, Carla Gras speaks about the challenges of capital accumulation in the Chaco region in Argentina and the strategies used by corporate agribusiness to overcome these challenges. She also reflects on how agribusiness expansion in shaping labour regimes, social differentiation and social reproduction. Carla Gras is Senior…
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Marx in the Field (Anthem, 2021): Book Launch Video
Marx in the Field has been edited by Alessandra Mezzadri, Senior Lecturer Development Studies, SOAS. The book launch was organized on June 11th, 2021 as a friendly conversation between her and the contributors, who include Henry Bernstein, Barbara Harriss-White, Muhammad Ali Jan, Susan Newman, Adam Hanieh, Ben Selwyn, Satoshi Miyamura, Farai Mtero, Brittany Bunce and…
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AQs Shorts: Vikas Rawal
In our fifth AQs Shorts video, Vikas Rawal speaks about the historic farmers’ protests in India – the role of a prolonged agrarian and employment crisis and of neoliberalism in giving rise to the protests as well as their social, class and regional basis. Vikas Rawal is Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,…
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Who is a farmer in India?
SEJUTI DAS GUPTA AND ISHITA MEHROTRA The farmers’ protests in India since November 2020 has resurrected the question ‘who is a farmer?’, and with it, the agrarian political economy exercise of identifying rural classes and examining their nature. In classical agrarian political economy scholarship in India, the capitalist classes or the rural rich are variously…
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AQs Shorts: Teo Ballvé
Our fourth video in the AQs Shorts series features Teo Ballvé. He speaks about how narco capital accelerates processes of agrarian change in the Colombian countryside, especially through land dispossession and deforestation, and about his concepts of ‘narco-frontiers’ and ‘Magical Marxism’. Teo Ballvé is Assistant Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies and Geography at Colgate…
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Book Review: Penelope Anthias’ Limits to Decolonization
ENRIQUE CASTAÑÓN BALLIVIÁN Limits to Decolonization is a rich ethnographic account of an indigenous struggle for territorial recognition in a context of intensifying extractivism. It traces the historical demand of Guaraní communities to regain control of their ancestral territory in the Bolivian Chaco where most of the country’s gas extraction takes place. While the…
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AQs Shorts: Lucilla Salvia
In the third video for our interview series ‘AQs Shorts‘, Lucilla Salvia discusses how agricultural commodity chains in central Italy have been reconfigured under neoliberalism and its implications for labour relations and labour contracting. And she reflects on whether the term ‘modern slavery’ is applicable to these labour relations. Lucilla Salvia teaches at ‘La Sapienza’…
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AQs Shorts: Tania Li
In the second video for our interview series AQs Shorts, Tania Li reflects on the nature of ‘development’ ensuing as a result of corporate plantations and agribusinesses, on the question of ‘surplus populations’ and smallholders for the agrarian question, and class differentiation – all drawing on her work on oil palm plantations in Indonesia. Tania…
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The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change 2019
LIAM CAMPLING, CRISTÓBAL KAY, JENS LERCHE, BRIDGET O’LAUGHLIN, CARLOS OYA, JONATHAN PATTENDEN AND HELENA PÉREZ NIÑO We are pleased to announce that Sébastien Rioux has been awarded the 2019 Bernstein & Byres Prize for his article ‘Capitalist food production and the rise of legal adulteration: Regulating food standards in 19th‐ century Britain’, Journal of Agrarian…
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AQs Shorts: R Ramakumar
Agrarian Questions is pleased to announce a new series of short video interviews with eminent and emerging scholars in the field of agrarian political economy, AQs Shorts. In our first interview, R Ramakumar speaks about the multi-dimensional impact of COVID-19 on the Indian countryside, on the nature of India’s agrarian crisis (differentiated by crop, class,…
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Peasant politics, criminal persecution and authoritarianism in Colombia
SERGIO CORONADO The irregular arrest of three renowned leaders of the agrarian social movements in Colombia needs to be analysed as a counter-reaction against the recent wave of contentious politics in the countryside. It also points to increasing authoritarianism in Colombian politics. On December 15th and 16th 2020, three well-known defenders of Colombian land…
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Land questions in the 21st Century Postcolony
M VIJAYABASKAR Labour may have become less relevant to capital accumulation in the 21st century as scholars like Sanyal, Li and Ferguson suggest. The recent spate of literature on ‘land grabs’ has, however, made the role of land in capital accumulation much more visible now than it was in the latter half of the last…
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Book review of Pablo Lapegna’s Soybeans and Power
CARLA GRAS In Soybeans and Power, Pablo Lapegna offers a thorough and challenging analysis of the contested terrain of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in Argentina. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the province of Formosa, in the North East of that country, he addresses key issues regarding the new landscapes produced by the expansion…
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Rule by Bosses? Criminal Political Economies in South Asia
MICHAEL LEVIEN In the past few decades, the term “mafia” has gained widespread usage across South Asia, and particularly India and Pakistan where there are said to be a variety of sector-specific ones: “land mafia,” “sand mafia,” “coal mafia,” “timber mafia,” “water mafia,” “contractor mafia,” and so on. The sum total of these mafia…
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