Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Merisa Thompson
(University of Birmingham)
Jessica Eastland-Underwood (University of Warwick)
Ben Richardson (University of Warwick)
Natalie Langford (Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute )
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Ben Richardson
(University of Warwick)
Merisa Thompson (University of Birmingham)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Decolonization and knowledge production
Short Abstract:
Histories of race and colonialism are crucial to understanding the structural legacies underpinning agrarian change. Yet, they remain insufficiently acknowledged. This panel invites papers that examine how processes of racialisation and colonialism are produced and reproduced in the agrarian world.
Description:
Local and global agrarian systems are subject to an increasing range of socioeconomic, ecological and political crises, from climate change, extreme weather events and biodiversity loss, to inequitable labour and land relations, rising levels of hunger, and geopolitical upheavals. To fully understand our ability to respond to these challenges, and to make agri-food systems more just and sustainable, we must understand the deeper structural causes and legacies of these continuing inequities. Imbalances between the Global North and Global South, and unjust relations of land, trade and labour, are all intimately linked to long histories of capitalist development, which are themselves deeply structured by histories of race and colonialism.
Theoretically, a burgeoning racial capitalism, colonial capitalism and colonial political economy literature examines the constitutive role of race and colonialism in the development of global capitalism (Bhambra, 2001; Robinson, 2000; Tilley and Shilliam, 2018). Yet, the processes by which racialised and colonial legacies are produced and reproduced in patterns of agrarian change are less well understood. This panel consequently welcomes papers that examine the mechanisms by which race and colonialism continue to structure agrarian rural and labour relations across (post)imperial spaces. It is particularly interested in papers that explore these intersections in the contexts of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and engage with themes of capital, labour, political economy, social reproduction, rural/agrarian change, resistance, and possibilities for transformation. Convenors are keen to liaise closely with contributors in relation to a possible journal Special Issue.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
An overview of how race and colonialism have been treated in Agrarian Political Economy
Paper long abstract:
This paper sets out the premise that race and colonialism have been marginalized within the field of Agrarian Political Economy, preventing it from better addressing the unjust inequalities arising from present forms of racism and coloniality. It argues that these twin themes can be centred by replacing the agrarian question with the colonial question to provide an alternative starting point for enquiry, and by using political economy scholarship on the imbrication of race, colonialism, modernity, and capitalism to plot a route through it. The final section identifies colonially-rooted processes of racialized differentiation across the global North and South and suggests how these can deepen our understanding of how these have been brought into the service of capital but also mobilized in practices of resistance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers settler colonisation in agrarian change
Paper long abstract:
Development’s accounting of colonisation has largely been a story of ‘franchise colonisation’; a term used by Englert (2022) to describe struggles of independence against colonial powers, and the postcolonial struggle in a neocolonial global community. Yet, from the settler colonial experience -from Canada, to Southern Africa, Australia, Palestine to the US – the question lingers - what happens when colonised populations do not get their independence? What can be understood of agrarian change when the settler comes to stay? It is after all, an observation that Indigenous peoples, communities and scholars have long referenced is how very real and ongoing is this mode of colonisation, as well as how much is lost when their struggle is reduced to post-colonial studies.
It is the argument of this paper that development studies has not adequately appreciated settler colonialism as a distinct and ongoing form of colonisation impacting development and developmentalism at both local, national and international levels. Through considering agrarian change in settler colonies, the paper explores various aspects of settler colonisation including terra nullius and the stealing of land, elimination and genocide, labour and expropriation, and settler agrarian development and replacement.
Paper short abstract:
The racialised nature of contemporary capitalism has been paid relatively limited attention by scholars of critical agrarian studies, or it tends to be treated as an empirical issue. Therefore, this paper tries to centre race and caste in the food sovereignty movement and politics.
Paper long abstract:
The racialised nature of contemporary capitalism has been paid relatively limited attention by scholars of critical agrarian studies, or it tends to be treated as an empirical issue. Within agrarian politics and movements in the global south too, racialisation based on race and caste is often treated as peripheral or unimportant to class struggles. Scholars of racial capitalism have argued how racialisation is built into the very design of capitalist development and accumulation, as it allows for and legitimises the super-exploitation and oppression of the racialised workers. The corporate desire to cheapen food to accumulate surpluses cannot be realised without a constantly racialised labour force.
Against this backdrop, this paper argues that any effective rural-agrarian politics must include anti-racism and anti-casteism as its core agenda, alongside demands for food sovereignty and agro-ecology. This paper further elaborates why it is useful and important to embed food sovereignty studies and politics by centring race and caste. By analysing the food sovereignty struggle of Dalits or 'so-called ex-untouchables of India' in the farmers’ protests in India; this also tries to unravel the post-colonial development of Indian agriculture and how it could challenge capitalist structures as well as social inequalities perpetuated in rural-agrarian settings and advocates for systemic change rooted in equity, self-sufficiency, and ecological sustainability. Lastly, it discusses the methodologies that can be used to advance this understanding of racial capitalism and challenge it.
Paper short abstract:
Taking Politics of Knowledge as a theoretical framework, this paper examines how colonialism and capitalist agriculture reshaped agrarian practices, leading to the marginalization of millets in India. It explores the enduring impact of these historical processes on indigenous food systems in India.
Paper long abstract:
Millets have been an integral part of India’s indigenous food systems for centuries. Known for their high nutritional value and resilience in diverse agro-climatic conditions, these small grains once formed the backbone of India’s agricultural and dietary landscape. However, colonialism and capitalist agricultural practices led to their marginalization in favour of high-yielding crops like wheat and rice, causing a drastic shift in food habits and the agrarian landscape.
This paper uses the Politics of Knowledge as a theoretical framework to examine the intersection of colonialism, capitalist agriculture, and agrarian transformation in India. It explores how colonial policies and capitalist farming models disrupted indigenous farming practices and knowledge systems. The study focuses on both colonial and post-independence periods, highlighting how post-colonial agricultural policies continued to mirror colonial practices. It demonstrates the continuity of colonial agricultural legacies, showing how these policies contributed to the decline of millets and other traditional crops. The author argues that these processes were not driven only by material forces but also by Knowledge politics, which favoured monocultures and cash crops, undermining ecological sustainability and crop diversity.
The paper also tries to understand how colonial and capitalist agricultural practices unfold in the contemporary food scenario in India, contributing to food insecurity, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of indigenous knowledge systems. By revisiting these historical transformations, the author advocates for the revalorization of millets and the restoration of indigenous food practices as crucial steps toward achieving food sovereignty and sustainable agricultural systems in post-colonial India.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the gendered and racial dynamics of extractive capitalism in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on conflicts between oil, agriculture, and fisheries. It finds colonial-era power structures (re)produce peripheralised 'edge populations' who are excluded from the terms of development.
Paper long abstract:
This article studies the gendered and racialised dynamics of extractive capitalism through an examination of ongoing contestations between the oil, agrarian and fisheries sectors in the energy-rich Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago. Expansion of commodity frontiers – first sugar, then oil and gas – have dramatically reconfigured agrarian, coastal and marine environments, and produced a range of negative social and ecological effects. These processes of extractive capitalism, have, from their inception depended upon the activities and actors of those at the margins of the economy – so called ‘edge populations’ – who are central to understanding such processes of capital accumulation and the nature of post-colonial capitalist development. Deploying a ‘racial capitalism’ framework, this paper unpicks how power dynamics emanating from a distinct form of extractive capitalism simultaneously generates conflictual processes of dispossession and (re)produces countervailing resistance, which are both gendered and racialised. Using the case study of the Caribbean, a key site of colonial extraction built upon gendered and racialised divisions of labour, this article traces the reproduction of ‘edge’ populations through contemporary capitalist relations whilst also demonstrating the agency of these communities to negotiate and resist the profound environmental impacts of extractive capitalism and the expansion of commodity frontiers
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how pre-colonial and colonial histories of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender underpin social transformation in Sudan. It shows how these shape agrarian change by defining the meanings of work and structuring access to labour in rural regimes today.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how pre-colonial and colonial histories of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender have shaped rural labour regimes in North Kordofan, Sudan, through what is termed 'categorical violence'. Drawing on socio-political and historical analysis, it explores how entrenched classifications determine access to labour, under what conditions work is performed, and how various forms of labour are valued. These classifications, rooted in pre-capitalist, colonial, and post-colonial systems, have reinforced hierarchies of power and exclusion that continue to structure agrarian and labour relations today.
The paper highlights the layered social meanings assigned to work, particularly the often-overlooked contributions of social reproductive labour, which sustain families and communities while reproducing systems of inequality. By examining how kinship, ethnicity, and social affiliations mediate access to work, it demonstrates how the family functions as a critical institution that shapes labour roles and opportunities.
This analysis reveals that labour opportunities are not only economic but deeply embedded in historical processes of racialisation, gendering, and social stratification. In this way, the paper links past and present systems of exploitation, showing how they persist through mechanisms of labour classification, valuation, and access.
Ultimately, the paper situates rural Sudan’s labour regimes within broader discussions of agrarian change, offering insights into how race and colonialism underpin structural inequalities. It provides a nuanced perspective on how these legacies continue to shape rural labour markets and agrarian transformation in contemporary conflict-affected contexts.
Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to understand the global corporate food regime and capitalist accumulation in agriculture, particularly in the global South and locates Kudumbashree’s collective farming in Kerala, India as an example of an agroecological alternative framework, based on cooperation and solidarity.
Paper long abstract:
The neoliberal growth models have pushed small and marginal farmers into impoverishment across the global South as nation-states open up their markets for global capital to expand and accumulate. With the establishment of global corporate food regimes, the contradiction between the peasantry and the global agro-capitalist system has deepened further. While the states are forced to withdraw themselves and relinquish from the economic domain, global capital has further expanded into the global South through indirect and direct expropriation of land and surplus.
The commercialization of agriculture and global food regimes across the world are challenged by popular movements across the global South such as La via Campesina and MST, based on cooperativism and solidarity economy. Such frameworks call for an agroecological approach based on ecological principles, biodiversity, and the use of local resources, in contrast with the industrial agricultural paradigm, which is primarily dependent on monocultures, chemical inputs, and fossil fuels. This approach brings back the focus to peasant-led developmental models, which had been pushed into obsolescence in the development paradigm and present mainstream visions of addressing global hunger and ecological crisis.
This paper tries to locate the collective farming initiative of the Kudumbashree women’s network in Kerala, India as an example of peasant-led development, enriched by grassroots democracy and popular mobilization. This paper argues how such forms of solidarity economies could potentially emerge as grassroots responses to the economic and social crises capitalist expansion causes, while acting as counter-hegemonic transformative alternatives, in opposition to capitalist power structures.
Paper short abstract:
I argue that the Indus Basin agriculture sector is currently dominated by mainstream corporations and their technocratic solutions, influenced by the path dependency that started with colonial canal enclosure projects and continued during the green revolution.
Paper long abstract:
The process of land enclosure in the Indus Basin began during the colonial period and served as the food source for united India, and later for Pakistan and India. Post-colonial states continued the colonial legacy by establishing new canal colonies and considering large dam and canal infrastructures as “new temples of modernization”. These efforts transformed the once semi-arid and pastoral landscape of the Indus Basin into one of the most highly irrigated regions on Earth. Millions of acres of "waste land" were cultivated and allocated to farming communities, leading to a transformation of class and caste relationships while ensuring food production for the respective countries. Currently, these canal schemes are facing stagflation and there is a need to rethink agricultural production towards more sustainable practices. My research question tries to contribute to a crucial debate on the sustainable transition in the Indus Basin and how sustainable transition in agricultural practices helps to ensure food security and address inequalities caused by historic land allocations. I argue that the agriculture sector is currently dominated by mainstream corporations and their technocratic solutions, influenced by the path dependency that started with canal enclosure projects and continued during the green revolution. Historically, farmers' movements have focused on issues such as land rights and improving working conditions while paying less attention to the overall sustainability of the current agricultural production model. The future farmers' movement must prioritize the practical implementation of agroecology principles and actively reject the influence of large agricultural corporations.