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.
The Bernstein & Byres Prize in Agrarian Change 2020
LIAM CAMPLING, CRISTÓBAL KAY, JENS LERCHE, BRIDGET O’LAUGHLIN, CARLOS OYA, JONATHAN PATTENDEN AND HELENA PÉREZ NIÑO We are pleased to announce that Martín Arboleda has been awarded the 2020 Bernstein & Byres Prize for his article ‘Towards an agrarian question of circulation: Walmart’s expansion in Chile and the agrarian political economy of supply chain capitalism’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 2020, vol.…
Read MoreAQs 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…
Read MoreContract farming in the developing world: a political economy approach
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.
Read MoreAQs 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.
Read More‘Finance going farming’: A review essay
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.
Read MoreAQs 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.
Read MoreAQs 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…
Read MoreMarx 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…
Read MoreWho 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…
Read MoreAQs 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…
Read MoreAQs 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’…
Read MoreAQs 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreAQs 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,…
Read MoreLand 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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