Matias E. Margulis

Land Grabbing and Global Governance: Critical Perspectives

Land grabbing has emerged as a significant issue in contemporary global governance that cuts across the fields of development, investment, food security, among others. Whereas land grabbing per se is not a new phenomenon, having historical precedents in the era of imperialism, the character, scale, pace, orientation, and key drivers of the recent wave of land grabs is a distinct historical phenomenon closely tied to major shifts in power and production in the global political economy. Land grabbing is facilitated by ever greater flows of capital, goods, and ideas across borders, and these flows occur through axes of power that are far more polycentric than the North–South imperialist tradition. In this introduction we argue that land grabbing speaks to many of the core questions of globalization studies. However, we note scholars of globalization have yet to deeply engage with this new field. We situate land grabbing in an era of advanced capitalism, multiple global crises, and the role of new configurations of power and resistance in global governance institutions. The essays in this collection contribute to identifying land grabbing as an important and urgent topic for theoretical and empirical investigations to deepen our understanding of contemporary globalization and governance. El acaparamiento de tierras aparece como un tema importante en la gobernanza global contemporánea, que afecta a los campos del desarrollo, las inversiones y la seguridad alimentaria, entre otros. En tanto que el acaparamiento de tierras en sí no es un fenómeno nuevo, el hecho de tener precedentes históricos en las eras del imperialismo, el carácter, la escala, el ritmo, la orientación y los impulsores claves de la reciente ola del acaparamiento de tierras, es un fenómeno histórico estrechamente relacionado a cambios mayores en el poder y la producción en la economía política global. Se ha facilitado el acaparamiento de tierras por mayores flujos de capital, bienes e ideas a través de las fronteras, y estas corrientes ocurren a través de ejes de poder que son mucho más policéntricos que la tradición imperialista norte-sur. En esta introducción sostenemos que el acaparamiento de tierras trata sobre muchos de los asuntos de los estudios de la globalización. Sin embargo, advertimos que los académicos de la globalización todavía tienen que comprometerse profundamente con este nuevo campo. Situamos el acaparamiento de tierras en una era del capitalismo avanzado, múltiples crisis globales y la función de nuevas configuraciones del poder y la resistencia en las instituciones de gobernanza global. Los artículos en esta colección contribuyen a identificar el acaparamiento de tierras como un tema importante y urgente para las investigaciones teóricas y empíricas para profundizar nuestro conocimiento de la globalización y gobernanza global. 掠夺土地已成为跨越开发、投资、食品安全以及其它领域的当代全球治理中的一个重要问题。 虽然掠夺土地本质上并不是一个新现象，有着帝国主义时代的历史先例，最近的土地掠夺浪潮的特点、规模、速度、方向、主要驱动力是一种特殊的历史现象，并与权力的主要变迁以及全球性政治经济的状况密切相关。资本、商品、理念曾经的大量跨国流动促进了土地掠夺，而且这些流动发生在比南北帝国主义传统更加多中心的权力的轴心。在导论中我们认为，土地掠夺谈论的就是全球化研究中的很多核心问题。然而，我们注意到研究全球化的学者们尚未深入涉及这一新的领域。我们把土地掠夺定位在一个这样的时代——发达资本主义制度、全球多重危机以及全球治理机构中动力、阻力角色的重新分配。本文把土地掠夺界定为理论与实证调查的一个重要而迫切的议题，以此来深化我们对当代全球化与全球治理的理解。 المعاصرة، تتقاطع مع قضايا التنمية والاستثمار والأمن الغذائي وغيرها. وإذا كان الاستيلاء على الأراضي لا يُعد ظاهرةً جديدةً في حد ذاته، فإن طابع الموجة الأخيرة من عمليات الاستيلاء على الأراضي، ونطاقها وتوجهها والفاعلين الرئيسيين فيها، يُمثل ظاهرةً تاريخيةً جديدة مرتبطة بالتحولات الرئيسية في السلطة والإنتاج في الاقتصاد السياسي العالمي. ومما يُسهل عملية الاستيلاء على الأراضي التدفقات غير المسبوقة لرؤوس الأموال والسلع والأفكار عبر الحدود، وهي التدفقات التي تتم من خلال محاور للسلطة متعددة المراكز تتجاوز المحور الإمبريالي التقليدي بين الشمال والجنوب. ونطرح في المقدمة الحالية فكرة مؤداها أن الاستيلاء على الأراضي يتعلق بكثير من القضايا الرئيسية في دراسات العولمة. غير أننا نلاحظ أن الباحثين المتخصصين في العولمة لم ينخرطوا بعمق بعد في هذا المجال الجديد. ونحاول هنا وضع مسألة الاستيلاء على الأراضي في سياق عصر الرأسمالية المتقدمة، والأزمات العالمية المتعددة، ودور التشكيلات الجديدة للسلطة والمقاومة في مؤسسات الحوكمة العالمية. وتسهم المقالات الواردة ضمن هذه المجموعة في تشخيص قضية الاستيلاء على الأراضي كموضوع مهم ومُلح يحتاج إلى المزيد من الجهود النظرية والبحوث التطبيقية من أجل تعميق فهمنا للعولمة والحوكمة المعاصرتين 토지 점유가 다른 무엇보다도 개발, 투자, 식량안보 분야를 아우르는 현대 지구적 거버넌스에서 중요한 쟁점으로 부각되었다. 토지점유 자체가 제국주의 시대에서 전례가 있어서 역사적으로 새로운 현상은 아니지만, 최근 토지점유의 성격, 규모, 속도, 정향과 핵심적인 동인들은 지구적 정치경제학에서 주요한 변화와 연계되어 있는 독특한 역사적 현상이다. 토지 점유는 계속해서 증대되고 있는 국경을 뛰어 넘는 자본, 상품과 아이디어의 흐름에 의해서 촉진되고 있고, 이러한 흐름들은 남과 북의 제국주의 전통보다 더 다극적인 권력의 축을 통해서 이루어지고 있다. 우리는 서론에서 토지 점유가 세계화 연구의 핵심적인 질문과 관련되어 있다는 점을 주장한다. 그렇지만, 우리는 세계화 연구자들이 이러한 분야에 대해서 심도있게 관심을 기울이지 못했다고 주장한다. 우리는 토지 점유를 고도 자본주의 시대, 다중적인 지구적 위기, 지구적 거버넌스 제도의 권력과 저항의 새로운 구성 속에 위치시키고자 한다. 이번 호의 논문들은 토지 점유가 오늘날의 세계화와 거너번스에 대한 심도 있는 이해를 위한 이론적, 경험적 연구에서 중요하고 긴급한 주제라는 점을 확인시키는데 기여한다. Захват земель стал серьезной проблемой современного глобального управления, которая, среди прочих, охватывает области развития, инвестиций и продовольственную безопасность. В то время как захват земель само по себе явление не новое, уже имевшее исторические прецеденты в эпоху империализма, характер, масштабы, темпы, ориентация и ключевые факторы недавней волны захватов являются самостоятельным историческим явлением, тесно связанным с основными изменениями в производственных мощностях и глобальной политической экономике. Захват земель способствует увеличению потоков капитала, товаров и идей через границы и эти потоки проходят через оси власти, которые гораздо более полицентричны, нежели империалистические традиции Север-Юг. В этом введении мы постулируем, что проблема захвата земель связана со многими важными вопросами в исследовании глобализации. Заметим, однако, что ученые, занимающимся вопросами глобализации, необходимо обращать более пристальное внимание на эту новую область. Мы располагаем таким фактом, как захват земель в эпоху развитого капитализма и многократных глобальных кризисов, а также роли новой конфигурации власти в сопротивлении глобальным институтам управления. Этот сборник эссе способствует выявлению феномена захвата земель в качестве важной и актуальной темы для теоретических и эмпирических исследований, помогающих углубить наше понимание современной глобализации и управления.

Governing the Global Land Grab: Multipolarity, Ideas, and Complexity in Transnational Governance

Since 2008, a series of new regulatory initiatives have emerged to address large-scale land grabs. These initiatives are occurring simultaneously at multiple levels of social organization instead of a single, overarching institutional site. A significant portion of this activity is taking place at the transnational level. We suggest that transnational land governance is indicative of emerging shifts in the practice of governance of global affairs. We analyze such shifts by asking two related questions: what does land grabbing tell us about developments in transnational governance, particularly with regard to North–South relations, and what do these developments in transnational governance mean for regulating land grabbing? Desde 2008, ha surgido una serie de nuevas iniciativas regulatorias para tratar acaparamientos de tierra a gran escala. Estas iniciativas están sucediendo simultáneamente a niveles múltiples de la organización social en vez de un lugar institucional predominante. Una porción importante de esta actividad está tomando lugar al nivel transnacional. Sugerimos que la gobernanza de tierras trasnacionales es indicativa de los cambios que están surgiendo en la práctica de gobernanza de los asuntos globales. Analizamos tales cambios haciendo dos preguntas relacionadas: ¿qué nos dice el acaparamiento de tierras sobre los desarrollos en la gobernanza trasnacional, particularmente con las relaciones norte-sur?, y ¿qué significan estos desarrollos en gobernanza trasnacional para regular el acaparamiento de tierras? 自2008年以来，出现了一系列新的调整性的倡议来强调大规模的土地掠夺问题。这些倡议在社会组织的多个层次同时出现，替代了单一的基础的机构。该活动的很大一部分发生在跨国层面。我们提出跨国土地治理代表着全球事务管理实践的新兴转变。我们通过提出两个相关问题来分析这些转变：关于跨国治理的发展、特别是对于南北关系，土地掠夺告诉了我们什么；这些跨国治理的发展对于控制土地掠夺来说又意味着什么？ منذ العام 2008، ظهرت سلسلةٌ من المبادرات التنظيمية لمعالجة عمليات الاستيلاء الكبيرة على الأراضي. وتجري هذه المبادرات في وقت واحد على عدة مستويات من التنظيم الاجتماعي وليس في موقع مؤسسي واحد. ويحدث جزء كبير من هذا النشاط على المستوى العابر للقوميات. وتقترح الورقة الحالية أن هذه الحوكمة عابرة القوميات للسيطرة على الأراضي تدل على على تحولات صاعدة في ممارسة حوكمة الشؤون العالمية. ونقوم بتحليل تلك التحولات عن طريق الإجابة عن السؤالين الآتيين: ماذا نتعلم من عمليات الاستيلاء على الأراضي بشأن التطورات في الحوكمة عابرة القوميات، وخاصة فيما يتعلق بعلاقات الشمال والجنوب؟ وماذا تعني تلك التطورات بالنسبة لتنظيم الاستيلاء على الأراضي؟ 2008년 이후 대규모 토지 점유를 다루기 위한 일련의 새로운 규제 조치들이 등장했다. 이러한 규제 조치들은 하나의 단일한 포괄적인 제도 대신에 동시적이고 다중적인 사회 조직 수준에서 등장했다. 상당 부분의 이러한 활동들은 초국가적 수준에서 발생했다. 우리는 초국적인 토지 거너번스가 지구적 사안을 다루는 거버넌스 행위에서 일어나고 있는 변화의 지표라고 제안한다. 우리는 두 가지 서로 관련된 질문을 제기하여 이러한 변화를 분석한다. 토지 점유가 초국적 거버넌스 특히 선진국-후진국 관계와 관련하여 발전에 대해서 어떤 의미를 지니는가? 그리고 초국 적 거너번스에서의 발전이 토지 점유 규제에 대해서 무엇을 의미하는가? С 2008 года появился ряд новых регулирующих инициатив для решения проблемы крупномасштабных захватов земель. Эти инициативы проходят одновременно на множестве уровней социальной организации вместо одной, всеобъемлющей институциональной площадки. Значительная часть этой деятельности происходит на транснациональном уровне. Мы полагаем, что транснациональное управление земельными ресурсами является показателем сдвигов в практике глобального управления. Мы анализируем такие сдвиги, задавая два взаимосвязанных вопроса: что захват земель говорит о событиях в транснациональном управлении, особенно в отношениях Север-Юг; и что эти изменения в транснациональном управлении означают для регулирования захвата земель?

The Regime Complex for Food Security: Implications for the Global Hunger Challenge

Recurrent food price crises, coupled with the steady deterioration of world food security over the past two decades, have prompted efforts to reform the global governance of food security. This article argues that diverging rules and norms across the elemental regimes of agriculture and food, international trade, and human rights over the appropriate role of states and markets in addressing food insecurity are a major source of transnational political conflict. It analyzes (1) the role of norms in the construction of the international food security regime; (2) the transition from an international food security regime to a regime complex for food security; and (3) rule and norm conflicts within this regime complex. It concludes with a discussion of the impacts of diverging norms on the politics of regime complexity and its policy implications for current efforts to reform the global governance of food security.

Trading Out of the Global Food Crisis? The World Trade Organization and the Geopolitics of Food Security

The geopolitics of the Global Food Crisis and international trade has received limited scholarly attention, a significant omission given the major roles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in structuring world food production and trade flows and as a principal inter-state governing mechanism of the global agro-food system. Analysing recent international policy actions framing the WTO as a ‘fix’ to the Global Food Crisis, this article points to the value of a critical geopolitics of agro-power sensitive to the spatial reconfiguration of production and power in the global agro-food system, problematising geospatial categories such as ‘North’ and ‘South’, and that takes seriously contests for control of geopolitical agents such as the WTO.

The Forgotten History of Food Security in Multilateral Trade Negotiations

Food security emerged as a major source of political deadlock in the WTO Doha Round negotiations. Concerns about food security only intensified at the WTO following the 2008 Global Food Crisis, with the Bali and Nairobi Ministerials revealing polarized views between the US and India on the financing of public food stockholding. These ‘food fights’ at the WTO have attracted significant international media, civil society, and scholarly attention. In this article, I argue that inter-state disagreement on food security is not new or specific to the Doha Round but instead has been a recurrent phenomenon in the multilateral trade system for decades. Employing an historical approach, I show that food security has repeatedly been an item of negotiation in successive GATT negotiating rounds and has been steadily codified in international trade law over time. Today, food security is deeply integrated into the rules of the trade regime, making the WTO an important yet largely unacknowledged institution in global food security governance.

The World Trade Organization and Food Security After the Global Food Crises

This chapter examines the emergent global policy space for food security and its implications for understanding the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a changing global landscape. Despite the collapse of Doha Round negotiations in July 2008, the debate over food security and international trade has intensified at the WTO since 2008. This debate has significant implications for the WTO’s role as an international institution as it takes on new governance duties such as participating in new global food security governance institutions. We can also observe shifts in the content of inter-state deliberations on food security at the WTO and the appearance of non-traditional policy actors in these deliberations. This includes for example the growing prominence of the human right to food in the new global food security policy consensus and the political contests between the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the WTO. These developments illustrate conflicting visions about the role of international trade in addressing world hunger that are emblematic of the political contests driving the global policy space for food security.

The Evolving Global Governance of Food Security

While food security has become a major issue in global governance following the 2007-2008 global food crisis, there is no single international institution responsible for the management of this issue. Instead, responsibility for food security is spread out among a number of international organizations, which causes an overlap of rules and norms. This is a major challenge to achieving global policy coherence on food security and making progress on the eradication of world hunger. This research paper argues that a more effective governance regime for food security requires mechanisms to promote greater internal policy coherence within states and between multiple international institutions.

The Global Governance of Food Security

The global governance of food security provides an important policy field to study the dynamics and consequences of inter-organizational relations. However, a significant challenge for scholars and students alike is that the global governance of food security is a relatively understudied domain of inter-organizational relations. This chapter examines the diverse networks of international organizations that constitute the global governance of food security and the key issues, actors, and dynamics. Seven issue areas are identified in which there are significant clusters of international organizations interacting. Cooperation and rivalry among international organizations in the field of food security is reviewed across issue areas and over time. A review of the existing literature suggests that equal parts of inter-organizational cooperation and rivalry are characteristic of the global governance of food security, however, the causes, dynamic, and scope are shaped by wider developments in the global political economy. Special consideration is given to the transformation of inter-organizational relations following the 2008 Global Food Crisis, which prompted a major reordering of inter-organizational relations and the dynamics in the global governance of food security.

Globalizing the Classroom: Innovative Approach to National and International Learning

This essay examines an innovative approach to teaching across international and cultural boundaries and evaluates the experience in a course on Globalization, Social Justice, and Human Rights, co-taught collaboratively by faculty from different campuses and countries since 2011. This course was created to address unmet needs in the traditional higher educational systems. These include, but are not limited to, lack of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration among students, faculty, and institutions. Although economies, polities, environments, and human societies are experiencing great connections across the globe, educational systems continue to be modeled on nineteenth century assumptions and structures. In this course, faculty teach at their respective universities but use an online platform to allow for cross-campus communication. In addition to the classroom rooted in a physical place, a major component of student work is to interact online with students on other campuses, including undertaking collaborative group work across borders. A shared core syllabus can be modified by institution to satisfy local needs. In this essay, we examine the following: the history and logistics of this course; the facilitators and barriers in its implementation, including the use of technology; the role of language and communication; and the mechanisms necessary for faculty to adopt such a collaborative, global effort to local curricular guidelines. We also address the benefits of the course for students, including exposure to global diversity (culture, worldviews, and pedagogy); developing teamwork skills such as leadership and flexibility; accepting and accommodating diverse educational needs/approaches; and promoting interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. Finally, we assess the challenges for faculty in designing and managing a course across different time zones and academic calendars, facilitating transnational group service learning projects, and the greater time demands required to coordinate and monitor students’ online interactions. Our objective is to help improve and encourage innovative approaches to teaching globalization, social justice, and human rights.

Canada at the G8 and UN Committee on World Food Security: forum-shifting in global food security governance

Following the 2007–2008 Global Food Crisis, the Government of Canada doubled its aid spending on food security and made fighting world food insecurity a key foreign policy objective. The Government of Canada positioned itself for, and claims to enjoy, global leadership in global food security governance. This article examines the Government of Canadas behavior at two leading institutions for global food security governance, the Group of Eight (G8) and the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). I argue that the government has engaged in a forum-shifting strategy between these two institutions that has enhanced its reputation among a small group of peer states at the G8 but diminished its reputation and influence at the CFS. With the CFS emerging as a key institution for agenda-setting, norm-building and rule-making in global food security governance, Canadas marginal influence and peripheral status at this body undermines the governments claims of global leadership.