| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
133116
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This paper draws from research on small-scale maize production in Mexico's Central Highland region to discuss the geopolitical implications of everyday agricultural practices. An overwhelming majority of maize farmers in this region, as well as in the country more broadly, continue to cultivate locally adapted maize varieties they have bred themselves - criollo maize is the vernacular term - despite decades of concerted government attempts to effect the widespread adoption of commercially bred and licensed hybrid varieties. This state effort to restructure agricultural systems and food security according to nationalist and capitalist priorities is one tactic in a long and violent struggle for control over peasant land and labour in Mexico. By integrating feminist scholarship in geopolitics and in political ecology, I am following the lead of geographers who regard the materialities of everyday life as a foundation for political tensions and conflicts that are constantly unfolding along intersecting lines of difference. Though geopolitics has rarely turned its attention directly to theories of intimate socio-ecological relations, I argue that the field has much analytical and political leverage to gain by engaging with political ecology, and that feminist geographic imaginaries provide a crucial space in which to do so. This approach allows for an analysis of how a dominant geopolitics of land and agriculture is being undermined through the routine production of criollo maize, revealing new potential for creating broad political alliances with social movements that are currently working toward alternative visions of agriculture and food security.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
133117
|
|
|
|
|
| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
The dramatic expansion of large-scale economic land concessions and acquisitions in the Global South has generated considerable concern amongst activists, journalists and academics recently. This has led to the increased prevalence of the term 'global land grabbing', which I argue represents a particular type of meta-narrative. In this article the global land grab meta-narrative is considered in relation to recent land alienation of Indigenous Peoples in the northeastern Cambodia province of Ratanakiri. While land grabbing is certainly a crucial problem, it is insufficient to explain the circumstances in Ratanakiri or in Cambodia more generally as 'global land grabbing'. While foreign capital is associated with land grabbing in Cambodia, there are various other factors that also require consideration. Specifically, the role of Asian money laundering and elite capture requires increased attention. This article contributes to better understanding the particular ways that land dispossession plays out in particular places and contexts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|