Agrarian Change Seminar Series

2011-2012

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

  • Subir Sinha (SOAS)

26 January, 5.15pm

The tuna ‘commodity frontier’: Business strategies and environment in the industrial tuna fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean

  • Liam Campling (Queen Mary, University of London)

2 February, 5.15pm

Burley tobacco and smallholder food security in Malawi 1990 – 2005

  • Martin Prowse (University of Antwerp)

23 February, 5.15pm

Facing fluidity and segmentation: Circulation and labour relations in rural Andhra Pradesh, India

  • David Picherit (Heidelberg and SOAS)

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).

  • Ben Selwyn (Sussex)

Term 1 2011-12

13 October, 5.15pm

Land, Labour and Dispossession: Some Results from a Resurvey of a Vidarbha Village, India

  • R Ramakumar (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai)

27 October, 5.15pm / POSTPONED

The tuna ‘commodity frontier’: Business strategies and environment in the industrial tuna fisheries of the Western Indian Ocean

  • Liam Campling (Queen Mary, University of London)

17 November, 5.15pm

Stingy patrons and fickle clients: the decline of patronage in the Pakistani Punjab

  • Nicolas Martin (LSE)

24 November, 5.15pm

Not Ready for Analysis? A Critical Review of NRA Estimations for Cotton and other Export Cash Crops in Africa

  • Colin Poulton (SOAS)

1 December, 5.15pm

Agrarian Transformation in an Indian Maoist Guerrilla Zone

  • Alpa Shah (Goldsmiths, University of London)

2010-2011

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

  • Edouard Morena (Kings’ College London)

10 February, 5.15 pm

Differentiated effects on poverty of a climatic shock: evidence from a longitudinal survey in rural Sindh, Pakistan

  • James Copestake (University of Bath)

24 February, 5.15 pm

Salads, Sweat and Status: Migrant workers in UK horticulture

  • Donna Simpson (City University London)

10 March, 5.15 pm

Does it matter who grew the oats? Reflections on materiality and the agricultural labour process

  • Peter Mollinga (SOAS)

24 March, 5.15 pm

Industrial tuna fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean: Accumulation strategies, concentration and control

  • Liam Campling (Queen Mary, University of London)

Term 1 2010-11

14 October, 5.15 pm

Agrarian Change, Gender Transformations and Poverty in Tanzania

  • Lucia Da Corta (ODI)

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

  • Jayati Ghosh (Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India)

28 October, 5.15 pm

The political economy of class compromise: capital-labour relations and development in Brazilian export Agriculture

  • Ben Selwyn (University of Sussex)

4 November, 5.15 pm

BOOK LAUNCH and seminar: Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change: Writing A Little Book on a Big Idea

  • Henry Bernstein (SOAS)

25 November, 5.15 pm

Not working for export markets: work, agency and livelihoods in the Tiruppur textile region, India

  • Grace Carswell (University of Sussex)

9 December, 5.15 pm

The Confédération Paysanne (France) as ‘peasant’ movement: re-appropriating ‘peasantness’ for the advancement of organisational interest

  • Edouard Morena (Kings’ College London)

2009-2010

Term 1 2009-2010

15 October, 5.15 pm

The agricultural workers movement, Naxalism and martyrdom in Bihar: the case of Manju devi

  • Nicolas Jaoul, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

22 October, 5.15 pm

Issues in farmer-buyer relationships and trade practices in Uganda – recent empirical findings

  • Jörg Wiegratz, University of Sheffield

background papers:

5 November, 5.15 pm

Labour migration from rural to urban China

  • Jan Breman, University of Amsterdam

26 November, 5.15 pm

Ecology and Accumulation Crisis: Food, Factories, and Fuel in the Making and Unmaking of Neoliberalism, 1973-2015

  • Jason Moore, University of North Carolina and Lund

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:

  • Les Levidow, Open University
  • Peter Mollinga, Universtiy of Bonn
  • Jason Moore, University of North Carolina and Univerity of Lund
  • Phil Woodhouse, University of Manchester

Chair:

  • Henry Bernstein, Development Studies, SOAS

3 December, 5.15 pm

More poverty, more class, and more gender? Rural labour markets in Tanzania 20 years after Sender and Smith

  • Bernd Mueller, Economics, SOAS

2008-2009

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

  • Dr Philip Woodhouse, School of Environment and Development, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester

30 October, 5pm

Land, Community and Governance in West Africa

  • Kojo Amanor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, Currently Visiting Fellow at Centre of African Studies, Cambridge University (Smuts Commonwealth Fellowship)

13 November, 5pm

V.I.Lenin and A.V.Chayanov: Looking Back, Looking Forward

  • Professor Henry Bernstein, Development Studies, SOAS

27 November, 5pm

Agrarian change and development studies: exploring urban-rural linkages in development strategies

  • Professor Cristobal Kay, Institute of Social Studies, the Netherlands

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

  • Dr Ben Rogaly, Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex

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

  • Dr Jens Lerche, Development Studies, SOAS

5 February, 5 pm

Commodity Prices and Producers in Tanzania’s Post-liberalisation Coffee and Cotton Sectors

  • Hannah Bargawi, Economics Department and CDPR, SOAS

19 February, 5pm

Some Aspects of Rural Household Incomes in India: A Study based on Primary Data from Selected Indian Villages

  • Dr Vikas Rawal, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

26 February, 5pm

Class Equations and Accumulation in Rural North Karnataka

  • Dr Jonathan Pattenden, School of International Development, University of East Anglia

5 March, 5pm

The Privatisation Process of Mineral Resources in the Indian State of Orissa: A Political Economy Analysis

  • Dr Matilde Adduci, Department of Political Studies, University of Turin

19 March, 5pm

Can Marxism Account for the Chiefs? Some Problems of ‘Tribal Authority’ and ‘Communal Landed Property’ in Rural African Political Economy

  • Gavin Capps, DESTIN, LSE

The World Food ‘Crisis’, panel on 2008 Historical Materialism Conference

On November 7th, the Journal of Agrarian Change organised a panel on The World Food ‘Crisis’ at the 2008 Historical Materialism Conference

Speakers:

  • Professor Tim Lang, City University London
  • Professor Philip McMichael, Political Institute for Global Development, Cornell University,
  • Professor Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

Chair:

  • Professor Henry Bernstein, Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies