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Agrarian extractivism: what is it about and why does it matter?
March 12 @ 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
By Alberto Alonso-Fradejas (Wageningen University)
Online webinar & in-person seminar at Wageningen University (Room 68, Leeuwenborch building) and jointly hosted with UCL Institute of the Americas
12 March, 4:00 – 5:30 pm Netherlands / 3:00 – 4:30 pm UK time
Webinar recording available here: https://youtu.be/6js-MGuc_lA
The historical and growing global interest on natural resources for business, poverty alleviation, food security and increasingly for climate change mitigation purposes is putting a huge burden on human and non-human nature. Particularly, more, and more intensive forms of agro-commodity production are fueling crises of social and ecological reproduction worldwide that are very hard to counter or ‘mitigate’, let alone roll back. These ‘extractivist’ features of some forms of agrarian capitalism today, and of others before, resonate with the rationales and the workings of the mining oil and gas sectors. Thus, the notion of ‘agrarian extractivism’ or ‘agro-extractivism’ is arguably gaining currency as an analytical category with the potential to enhance our understanding of agrarian and environmental change historically and across the Global South-North and East-West world divides. Now, how is agrarian extractivism any different from agro-industry? Is there only one form or model of agro-extractivism? And is agrarian extractivism just about the deepening of the metabolic rift between agriculture and Nature? In short, what do we talk about when we talk about agrarian extractivism and why does it matter?
About the presenter
Alberto Alonso-Fradejas is Assistant Professor in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. Alberto has a PhD in Development Studies/Political Ecology from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR). He is part of the editorial team of The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS), an associate researcher at TNI in Amsterdam, and a fellow of the Guatemalan Institute of Agrarian and Rural Studies (IDEAR). His publications can be accessed in Google Scholar, ResearchGate and Academia.edu.
This webinar is part of the Spring 2024 Agrarian Change Seminar Series