Michael Levien

The land question: special economic zones and the political economy of dispossession in India

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become the epicenters of ‘land wars’ across India, with farmers resisting the states forcible transfer of their land to capitalists. Based on 18 months of research focused on an SEZ in Rajasthan, this paper illuminates the role of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (ABD) in Indian capitalism today and its consequences for rural India. It argues that the existing theories of land grabs do not adequately explain why dispossession becomes necessary to accumulation at particular times and places, and seeks to reconstruct Harveys theory of ABD to adequately account for it. It then shows the specific kind of rentier- and IT-driven accumulation that dispossession is making possible in SEZs and the non–labor-absorbing, real-estate–driven agrarian transformation this generates in the surrounding countryside. Land speculation amplifies class and caste inequalities in novel ways, marginalizes women and creates an involutionary dynamic of agrarian change that is ultimately impoverishing for the rural poor. Given the minimal benefits for rural India in this model of development, farmer resistance to land dispossession is likely to continue and pose the most serious obstacle to capitalist growth in India. The agrarian questions of labor and capital are, consequently, now rejoined in ‘the land question.’

The Politics of Dispossession Theorizing India’s “Land Wars”

While struggles over land dispossession have recently proliferated across the developing world and become particularly significant in India, this paper argues that existing theories of political agency do not capture the specificity of the politics of dispossession. Based on two years of ethnographic research on anti-dispossession movements across rural India, the paper argues that the dispossession of land creates a specific kind of politics, distinct not just from labor politics, but also from various other forms of peasant politics that have been theorized in the social sciences. It illustrates how the process of land dispossession itself shapes the targets, strategy and tactics, organization, social composition, goals, and ideologies of anti-dispossession struggles. It concludes with reflections on why land conflicts are less easily institutionalized than labor conflicts and may therefore constitute a significantly disruptive force in the emerging centers of global capitalism for the foreseeable future.

Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy

For four decades, The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) has served as a principal arena for the formation and dissemination of cutting-edge research and theory. It is globally renowned as a key site for documenting and analyzing variegated trajectories of agrarian change across space and time. Over the years, authors have taken new angles as they reinvigorated classic questions and debates about agrarian transition, resource access and rural livelihoods. This introductory essay highlights the four classic themes represented in Volume 1 of the JPS anniversary collection: land and resource dispossession, the financialization of food and agriculture, vulnerability and marginalization, and the blurring of the rural-urban relations through hybrid livelihoods. Contributors show both how new iterations of long-evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production.

A second double movement? Polanyi and shifting global opinions on neoliberalism:

Karl Polanyi’s theory of the ‘double movement’ has gained great currency in recent years to explain the global growth of contemporary social movements resisting neoliberalism. However, there has been no statistical research demonstrating whether these protest movements represent a more general trend of growing discontent with ‘disembedding’ markets from public control. This article uses questions from the World Values Survey to construct an ‘embeddedness’ index measuring public opinion on the desired relationship between states and markets. Focusing on public opinion in 20 countries during the 1990s, the analysis poses three questions: First, is there evidence of increasing global support for ‘re-embedding’ markets? Second, how does such opinion vary across regions of the world? Finally, what is the class and gender composition of this latent countermovement? The results provide substantial evidence of an emerging countermovement in public opinion over the 1990s with complex class, gender, and geopolitical variation.

Gender and land dispossession: a comparative analysis

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the gendered implications of land dispossession. It does so through a comparative analysis of five cases of rural land dispossession driven by different economic purposes in diverse agrarian contexts: the English enclosures; colonial and post-colonial rice irrigation projects in The Gambia; large dams in India; oil palm cultivation in Indonesia; and special economic zones in India. The paper first identifies some of the very common gendered effects of dispossession. In each case, it shows that land dispossession reproduced women’s lack of independent land rights or reversed them where they existed, intensified household reproductive work and occurred without meaningful consultation with – much less decision-making by – rural women. The paper secondly demonstrates ways in which the gendered consequences of land dispossession vary across forms of dispossession and agrarian milieux. The most important dimension of this variation is the effect of land loss on the gender division of labour, which is often deleterious but varies qualitatively across the cases examined. The paper also illustrates important variation within dispossessed populations as gender intersects with class, caste and other inequalities. The paper concludes that land dispossession consistently contributes to gender inequality, albeit in socially and historically specific ways. So while defensive struggles against land dispossession will not in themselves transform patriarchal social relations, they may be a pre-condition for more offensive struggles for gender equality.

Introducing: the Agrarian Classics review series

We are excited to introduce the new ‘Agrarian Classics’ review series, installments of which will appear occasionally in the pages of the JPS reviews section. In this series, leading scholars will revisit older works in critical agrarian studies to examine their legacy and contemporary relevance. What constitutes a ‘classic’? We do not seek to define a canon and, if anything, hope that this series will provide opportunities to destabilize existing biases within the organized memory of the field. We consider as ‘classic’ any volume that remains compelling decades after it was first published. This embraces both works that are well known and continue to enliven a great deal of research, teaching and praxis, and those that are little known or underappreciated for whatever reason. The core objective for reviewers is to bring these enduring works into dialoguewith contemporary theoretical debates, political struggles, transformations in global capitalism and trajectories of agrarian change. Thismight include suggestions of how these works could inspire new lines of research or be incorporated into current course syllabi. ‘Agrarian Classics’ reviews will be afforded slightly more space than standard book reviews, typically around 3000 words. However, there is some flexibility to accommodate exceptional essays that grow in scope and ambition. We are fortunate to have Michael Watts inaugurate the series with just such an exceptional example. In this sweeping essay, Watts situates Anton Blok’s The Mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960 (1974) – arguably an underappreciated classic –within a broader canvas of agrarian political economy, Gramscian political analysis and mafia studies. Watts’ essay extracts from Blok’s formidable book’s theoretical and methodological insights into a range of contemporary questions concerning peasantries, state formation, capitalist development and ‘violent entrepreneurs’. In the second installment of this series, which will run in the next regular issue, Julie Guthman delivers a thought-provoking review of MiriamWells’ Strawberry fields: politics, class, and work in California agriculture (1996). Drawing insights from her own research on the California strawberry industry, Guthman skillfully re-examines the empirical findings of the book in light of the farm consolidation, reduced labor supply, and increased environmental regulation that have reshaped the industry over the past two decades. She highlights Wells’ lasting theoretical contributions, particularly her insights into how commodity characteristics shape industry structure and labor relations, and suggests that scholars today might expand on this approach by theorizing the production of strawberries and other agricultural commodities as complex socio-natural assemblages. We hope that these are the first of many ‘Agrarian Classics’ reviews to stimulate conversation, debate and research.