The IIPPE Agrarian Change Working Group (ACWG) aims to bring together researchers interested in agrarian political economy. It is sponsored by the Journal of Agrarian Change, JAC . The Working Group promotes investigation of the social relations and dynamics of production, property and power in agrarian formations and their processes of change, both historical and contemporary. It encourages work within a broad interdisciplinary framework, informed by theory, and serves as a forum for serious comparative analysis and scholarly debate. As with the Journal, contributions are welcomed from political economists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, heterodox economists, geographers, lawyers, and others committed to the rigorous study and analysis of agrarian structure and change, past and present, across different parts of the world.
In so doing, the ACWG will utilise the aims of IIPPE as its core guiding principles. The Group is particularly interested in bringing together a diverse range of researchers from different disciplines:
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Lecturer in the Theory, Policy and Practice of Development in the Development Studies Department of SOAS and convenor of the Agrarian Change and Development Research Cluster. He is interested in the Latin American left, social movements, peasant agriculture, and the history of land struggles over property rights in Latin America. His fields of expertise include theories of development, political economy of development, and historical sociology of state and class formation. His current research is on the impact of the internationalisation of the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry on African peasants. Email: lv6@soas.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Development Economics in the Economics Department of SOAS and Editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change. She is interested in land reform, agricultural employment and rural poverty – with a particular interest in work that integrates gender concerns with wider political economy interests. Her work has focused on Southern Africa. Email: dj3@soas.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Development Studies Department, SOAS, and Editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change. He is interested in rural labour and class formation, the informal economy, and social and political struggles of the labouring poor. His work has focussed on India. Email: jl2@soas.ac.uk
Professor of Development Studies and Rural Development at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague and Adjunct Professor in International Development Studies at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is also Editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change His research is on Latin American development theories and policies, comparative agrarian systems, rural povery, agrarian change and land reform. His country expertise is on Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba.
Senior Lecturer in Political Economy of Development, Development Studies Dept. at SOAS, and Editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change. He is interested in rural employment and rural poverty, gender, and rural accumulation, with a particular interest in rural entrepreneurs and agrarian class formation. His work has focused on both West and Southern Africa, particularly Senegal and Mozambique. Email: co2@soas.ac.uk
Professor of Development Studies, department of development studies, SOAS, and co-founder as well as former editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change.
Terence J. Byres
Professor emeritus of Political Economy, SOAS, and co-founder as well as former editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change.
Research Officer in the Department of of Development Studies, SOAS. He is interested in the links between the trade in agricultural commodities and poverty reduction, labour markets and international commodity markets. His work has focused in the political economy of rural development in Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. bm11@soas.ac.uk
The Journal of Agrarian Change produces four issues each year, with contributions dedicated to the study of agrarian political economy. Aside from the production of the Journal, the editors have also engaged in initiatives that we hope will lead to new and exciting future publications. In May 2008, we held a workshop and conference entitled ‘Agrarian questions: lineages and prospects’, which brought together a range of scholars representing the gamut of approaches and research in the field of the political economy of agrarian change. The workshop was also a unique occasion to have an open discussion about the Journal’s present and future and to celebrate the outstanding work of Henry Bernstein and Terry Byres, as ‘founding fathers’ of JAC. For more information on the journal, please visit the homepage and also have a look at this sample issue.
Term 2 2012-13 (NEW)
Journal of Agrarian Change and Department of Development Studies, SOAS
Room 4418 (fourth floor, main building), SOAS
17 January, 5.15 pm
Breaking Dependency and Monopolies: Post-1994 Rwanda's Liberalized Coffee Sector
24 January, 5.15 pm
The Changing Geography of Grain Cultivation in China and Its Environmental Impact
7 February, 5.15 pm
The physical materiality of the Indian Rice Economy
21 February, 5.15 pm
Agrarian systems and food provisioning strategies in rural South Africa
14 March, 5.15 pm
The Tribal Question: Adivasis and the Maoist Movement in India
Term 1 2012-13
Journal of Agrarian Change and Department of Development Studies, SOAS
Room 4418 (fourth floor, main building), SOAS
11 October, 5.15 pm
Documentary Film: 'Best Before: the London Food Revolution is a short documentary about the food system in the UK and the growing food movement in London'. Followed by discussion
18 October, 5.15 pm
Film: ‘Seeds of Freedom’. Followed by discussion
25 October, 5.15 pm
Migration and rural differentiation in two selected villages in Bangladesh
9 -11 November
Agrarian Change panel at Historical Materialism Conference:
Crises of labour in South Africa: what is the contribution of the agrarian question?
(SOAS, room and time to be announced):
• Land, Labour And The Production Of Affliction In Rural Southern Africa – *Bridget O’Laughlin (ISS, the Hague)
• Smallholder irrigation, agrarian reform and ‘accumulation from below’ in post-apartheid South Africa – *Ben Cousins (PLAAS, Western Cape)
• Commercial agriculture in South Africa since 1994: ‘natural, simply capitalism’ – *Henry Bernstein (SOAS)
29 November, 5.15 pm
The agrarian question and 150 years of class conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico
6 December, 5.15 pm
Monthly income... What is that? Comparing notes on implementing household surveys in rural Mozambique
Term 2 2011-12
Journal of Agrarian Change and Department of Development Studies, SOAS
Room 4418 (fourth floor, main building), SOAS
19 January 5.15pm
The new debate on primitive accumulation in India
26 January, 5.15pm
The tuna ‘commodity frontier’: Business strategies and environment in the industrial tuna fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean
2 February, 5.15pm
Burley tobacco and smallholder food security in Malawi 1990 - 2005
23 February, 5.15pm
Facing fluidity and segmentation: Circulation and labour relations in rural Andhra Pradesh, India
8 March, 5.15pm
Export agriculture, class relations and capitalist development in North East Brazil’. A book launch of Ben Selwyn’s ‘Workers, State and Development in North East Brazil: Powers of Labour, Chains of Value’ (Manchester University Press, 2012).
Term 1 2011-12
Journal of Agrarian Change and Department of Development Studies, SOAS
Room 4418 (fourth floor, main building), SOAS
13 October, 5.15pm
Land, Labour and Dispossession: Some Results from a Resurvey of a Vidarbha Village, India
27 October, 5.15pm / POSTPONED
The tuna ‘commodity frontier’: Business strategies and environment in the industrial tuna fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean
17 November, 5.15pm
Stingy patrons and fickle clients: the decline of patronage in the Pakistani Punjab
24 November, 5.15pm
Not Ready for Analysis? A Critical Review of NRA Estimations for Cotton and other Export Cash Crops in Africa
1 December, 5.15pm
Agrarian Transformation in an Indian Maoist Guerrilla Zone
Term 2 2010-11
27 January, 5.15 pm
The Confédération Paysanne (France) as 'peasant' movement: re-appropriating 'peasantness' for the advancement of organisational interests
10 February, 5.15 pm
Differentiated effects on poverty of a climatic shock: evidence from a longitudinal survey in rural Sindh, Pakistan
24 February, 5.15 pm
Salads, Sweat and Status: Migrant workers in UK horticulture
10 March, 5.15 pm
Does it matter who grew the oats? Reflections on materiality and the agricultural labour process
24 March, 5.15 pm
Industrial tuna fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean: Accumulation strategies, concentration and control
Term 1 2010-11
14 October, 5.15 pm
Agrarian Change, Gender Transformations and Poverty in Tanzania
25 October, 5.30 pm Venue: The upper meeting room (103) London lnternational Developmen Centre, 36 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
The World Food Crisis: The Unnatural Coupling: Food and Global Finance
28 October, 5.15 pm
The political economy of class compromise: capital-labour relations and development in Brazilian export Agriculture
4 November, 5.15 pm
BOOK LAUNCH and seminar: Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change: Writing A Little Book on a Big Idea
25 November, 5.15 pm
Not working for export markets: work, agency and livelihoods in the Tiruppur textile region, India
9 December, 5.15 pm
The Confédération Paysanne (France) as 'peasant' movement: re-appropriating 'peasantness' for the advancement of organisational interest
Term 1 2009-2010
15 October, 5.15 pm
The agricultural workers movement, Naxalism and martyrdom in Bihar: the case of Manju devi
22 October, 5.15 pm
Issues in farmer-buyer relationships and trade practices in Uganda - recent empirical findings
background papers:
5 November, 5.15 pm
Labour migration from rural to urban China
26 November, 5.15 pm
Ecology and Accumulation Crisis: Food, Factories, and Fuel in the Making and Unmaking of Neoliberalism, 1973-2015
27-29 November, Historical Materialism conference (exact date, time and place tba)
panel on Agrarian Change in Contemporary Capitalism: Technical Dynamics and Environmental Trajectories
Speakers:
Chair:
3 December, 5.15 pm
Term 1 2008-2009
In 2008 the Journal started the Agrarian Change seminar series, which we hope to organise every academic year at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, with regular talks by scholars and activists in the field of agrarian studies. The past programme in the academic year 2008-09 was
16 October, 5pm
Land and Water Reform in South Africa
30 October, 5pm
Land, Community and Governance in West Africa
13 November, 5pm
V.I.Lenin and A.V.Chayanov: Looking Back, Looking Forward
27 November, 5pm
Agrarian change and development studies: exploring urban-rural linkages in development strategies
The talk was followed by a book launch and reception: Transnational Agrarian Movements: Confronting Globalization, edited by Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Marc Endelman and Cristobal Kay. Introduction and discussion by Henry Bernstein (SOAS) and Cristobal Kay (ISS).
11 December, 5pm
Migrant Workers in the ILO's 'Global Alliance Against Forced Labour' Report: A Critique
Term 2 2008-2009
22 January, 5 pm
From ‘Rural Labour’ to ‘Classes of Labour’: Class Fragmentation and Caste at the bottom of the Indian Labour Hierarchy
5 February, 5 pm
Commodity Prices and Producers in Tanzania's Post-liberalisation Coffee and Cotton Sectors
19 February, 5pm
Some Aspects of Rural Household Incomes in India: A Study based on Primary Data from Selected Indian Villages
26 February, 5pm
Class Equations and Accumulation in Rural North Karnataka
5 March, 5pm
The Privatisation Process of Mineral Resources in the Indian State of Orissa: A Political Economy Analysis
19 March, 5pm
Can Marxism Account for the Chiefs? Some Problems of ‘Tribal Authority’ and ‘Communal Landed Property’ in Rural African Political Economy
On November 7th, the Journal of Agrarian Change organised a panel on The World Food ‘Crisis’ at the 2008 Historical Materialism Conference
Speakers:
Chair:
To apply to join IIPPE Agrarian Change Working Group, email iippe@soas.ac.uk