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.
Agrarian Classes in Contemporary India: Illustrations from a South Indian Village
Madhura Swaminathan After several decades of economic growth, India remains an economy with a rural population of over 840 million people, the majority of whose livelihoods are linked to…
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Climate Breakdown, Green Transitions, Food and the Land Question
Benjamin Selwyn The land (or agrarian) question in the 21st century will become increasingly bound up with the climate question and the broader environment question. In the contemporary context…
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Egypt and North Africa: The determining context of imperialist interests for agrarian change
Ray Bush Agriculture in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) is shaped by family farming. Rural underdevelopment is determined by struggles over land access and ownership and devastating…
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Bernstein & Byres Prize 2023
We are pleased to announce that Yu Huang of the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Minzu University of China, Beijing, has been awarded the 2023 Bernstein and Byres Prize for her article ‘“Keep…
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Agrarian Questions in and between Brazil and China
Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira Discussion of “agrarian questions” usually take as their point of reference a “classic” debate within Eurocentric Marxist traditions around the turn of the 20th…
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Beyond the Household
PAULINE E. PETERS In response to Carmen Diana Deere’s blog in 2020 on this website, I made the comment that critiques of interviewing only the head of the household in…
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The Bernstein & Byres Prize 2022
CARLA GRAS, KEES JANSEN, JENS LERCHE, JONATHAN PATTENDEN, HELENA PÉREZ NIÑO, SHREYA SINHA & FORREST ZHANG We are pleased to announce that Kyla Sankey has been awarded the 2022 Bernstein & Byres Prize for…
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A Methodological Contribution to the Marxian Class Analysis of Peasant Differentiation
PARAMJIT SINGH AND MUKESH KUMAR In the face of the growing hegemony of neo-populist positions in agrarian studies, Marxian analysis needs to remain alert to the concrete dynamics of…
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Book Review: Ramesh Sunam’s Transnational Labour Migration, Livelihoods and Agrarian Change in Nepal
FRASER SUGDEN One of the defining features of agrarian change amongst the peasantry in the last two decades is the rising importance of labour migration to supplement fragile livelihoods.…
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Book Review: Neeladri Bhattacharya’s The Great Agrarian Conquest
MUHAMMAD ALI JAN Neeladri Bhattacharya’s monograph is a genealogy of the “agrarian” as a colonial project and an account of its transgression through rural agency, all rolled into an…
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AQs Shorts: Gerardo Otero
In this edition of the AQs Shorts series, Gerardo Otero elaborates on the concept of the neoliberal diet as a prism to analyse broader political and economic processes. He discusses…
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Book Review: Rebecca Tarlau’s Occupying Schools, Occupying Land
CLIFF WELCH Rebecca Tarlau’s new book, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land shows how the MST “transformed Brazilian education.” The book, which began as Tarlau’s 2014 University of California doctoral dissertation…
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AQs Shorts: Noaman Ali/Yahya Aftab
Our first AQs Shorts in 2023 features Noaman Ali & Yahya Aftab who discuss broader trends of agrarian development in northern Pakistan (Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). They point out to the…
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Book Review: Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás’ Capitalism and the Sea
MADS BARBESGAARD Capitalism and the Sea takes the reader on a wide-ranging history of capitalist development and argues that ‘the Earth’s separation into land and sea has significant consequences’…
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Review Essay: Contesting total extractivism
THOMAS F. PURCELL Within agrarian political economy, extractivism has emerged as a key concept to grapple with a whole host of politically urgent themes such as ecological destruction, global…
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The Bernstein & Byres Prize 2021
LIAM CAMPLING, CARLA GRAS, JENS LERCHE, BRIDGET O’LAUGHLIN, CARLOS OYA, JONATHAN PATTENDEN & HELENA PÉREZ NIÑO We are pleased to announce that Muchtar Habibi has been awarded the 2021 Bernstein & Byres Prize for…
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AQs Shorts: Leandro-Vergara Camus/Alice Soares Guimarães/Kees Jansen
This AQs Shorts interview draws on our Special Issue on Autonomy in Agrarian Studies, Politics and Movements, edited by Leandro Vergara-Camus and Kees Jansen. The two editors and a contributor…
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Book Review: Andrew Flachs’ Cultivating Knowledge
JOSTEIN JAKOBSEN Few questions have been more contentious to scholars, activists and broader publics concerned with agrarian issues than the rise of biotechnology—genetically modified (GM) seeds in particular. Among…
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AQs Shorts: Kirsten Appendini
Our tenth AQs Shorts features Kirsten Appendini who discusses the impact of the 1992 neoliberal land reforms in Mexico and their impact on agrarian change. She also reflects on the…
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Autonomy in agrarian studies, politics & movements: An inter-paradigm debate
KEES JANSEN & LEANDRO VERGARA-CAMUS Autonomy has been a word that has been rolling off the tongues of leftist activists and academics for decades and has been the subject…
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