Agrarian Change Working Group
NEW: First Online Conference. This is in addition to the annual in-person conference. See Below
The IIPPE Agrarian Change Working Group (ACWG) aims to bring together researchers interested in agrarian political economy. The Working Group is articulated to the group of editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change which promotes the 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.
The main annual event of the working group is the Agrarian Change sessions at the annual in-person IIPPE conference where normally 30+ agrarian change-related papers are presented and discussed.
The working group also maintains an email based members’ discussion forum and this year (2025) it is also organising an additional online Agrarian Change conference, see below.
The ACWG aims:
- to provide a forum for conversation and joint work to the mutual benefit of all;
- to develop a range of activities to advance the perspectives of political economy across this field of enquiry; and
- to extend the work of the ACWG within the wider research community, including in relation to progressive development policy and social movements.
Coordinators
Jens is Professor Emeritus at SOAS University of London. His research focuses on the political economy of agrarian transformation; racial capitalism, class and caste relations in agrarian transition; the political economy of labour relations, unfree labour and rural labour migration; and struggles, movements and labour organisations; and the role of the ILO. He was editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change 2008-2023. His present research is on racial capitalism and inequality and poverty of Dalits and Adivasis in India. Email: jl2@soas.ac.uk
Leandro Vergara-Camus
Professor in Development Studies at l’Université de l’Ontario français in Canada. 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 and historical sociology of state and class formation. His current research is on the impact of the internationalisation of the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry.
Other Members
Jonathan Pattenden, Helena Pérez-Niño and Shreya Sinha
We encourage presenters of past and present IIPPE Agrarian Working Group sessions to join as members: Email: Jens Lerche jl2@soas.ac.uk
Activities and initiatives:
Agrarian Change Webinars, current series
The Journal of Agrarian Change and SOAS Department of Development Studies have been organizing the Agrarian Change Seminar Series since 2008. Since 2020 the sessions are hybrid or fully online. These webinars are open to the public across the world. Registration links for each webinar are available a week before each event via Zoom and Youtube.
Selected past sessions 2022 Agroecology and the agrarian question in the twenty-first century: The ties that bind? – Haroon Akram-Lodhi (Trent University) 2021 Peasant movements and agrarian change in 21st century Pakistan – Noaman G Ali (Lahore University of Management Sciences) 2020 Corporations and development: Lessons from Indonesia’s plantation zone – Tania Li (University of Toronto) All recordings are available
Click here to see older seminar series.
Agrarian Questions, companion website
Agrarian Questions is the companion website of the Journal of Agrarian Change. It provides a space for discussion and debate among researchers, activists, and students of the political economy of agrarian change. Check the website for: current and past contributions to the Journal; announcements about events organised by the working group; our blog and series of short videos on agrarian change. We are always looking for new contributions!
Sign up here to the mailing list; or subscribe to the calendar of events
Agrarian Questions, YouTube channel
A compilation of interviews, seminars, workshops on a wide-ranging array of themes in agrarian political economy.
The Journal of Agrarian Change
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.
FIRST ONLINE CONFERENCE - IIPPE Agrarian Change Working Group. A new initiative, in addition to our annual in-person conference.
11-12 June , 2025. Deadline for registration and submission of proposals for the new online conference: 17 March 2025 – NOW EXTENDED TO 20 MARCH 2025
The Agrarian Change Working Group, functioning within the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE), invites paper-abstracts for its first online conference.
Please note that this event is different from the annual in-person Agrarian Working Group sessions that take place at the IIPPE in-person conference, this year at September 17-20, 2025, at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Türkiye.
The new online conference (11-12 June 2025) is an additional initiative that seeks to create a platform for scholars and students, especially from the Global South, who are willing but unable to attend the annual in-person IIPPE conference.
A sense of urgency animates the study of agrarian social formations in this conjuncture of post-pandemic restructuring, the global climate emergency, continued extractivism, and the very real threat from extreme right-wing populism.
A multi-layered crisis of production, reproduction, environment, politics and ideology is unfolding as neoliberal capitalism continues to fail to deliver on its promises. For some years already, international organizations, politicians and state officials of different allegiances have recognized the mounting social inequalities. Some call for new forms of market regulations with a return to a degree of state intervention, while right-wing populisms engage in sustained efforts to accelerate capital accumulation at all costs through the mobilization of pseudo-nationalist and racist discourses, in many cases allying themselves with agribusiness interests. Agrarian Political Economy faces the challenge of providing critical analysis of the dynamics and contradictions of this conjuncture.
In rural settings across the globe, while there are talks of closed cycle production, circular economy, the return to shorter commodity chains, and even de-globalisation, this crisis far from leading to the emergence or consolidation of alternatives to neoliberalism has not challenged the power of agribusiness, the dominance of their global commodity chains, or the financialisation of agriculture. We are also witnessing grabs of different kinds (land, water, forests), not only linked to agriculture, but also to extractive industries and the so-called green economy. These accumulation strategies have a direct but also contradictory impact on agrarian class relations. Capitalist agrarian classes consolidate themselves while petty commodity producers, peasants and rural labourers reproduce themselves under ever more precarious conditions, which requires more than ever to have one foot in the non-agrarian economy. Both out migration from agriculture and the continued increase in migrant agricultural labour are part and parcel of these processes. This is in turn changing social reproduction, not only by further increasing the feminization of labour but also increasing the pressures on women’s unpaid labour within households and across generations. However, some sectors of the subaltern agrarian classes have managed to insert themselves in agribusiness-led commodity chains through different economic and political strategies, benefiting from the high prices of food. With Covid and the immediate and global impacts of the ongoing wars and invasions, it is clear that many existing inequalities have been exacerbated, with significant differences depending on gender, ethnic or racial identities, while global agribusiness as a whole appears to be consolidating further. But in contrast to what had happened during the previous crisis of neoliberalism in the 1990s, land struggles and demands for land reforms seem to have faded away from the international agenda – though agrarian struggles are still winnable, as the successful struggle against government-led agribusiness takeover and undermining of agrarian livelihoods in India has shown.
This raises important questions about the processes of integration into global capitalism, peasant resistance, social conflicts in the countryside, territorial reconfigurations, semi-proletarianisation, and surplus populations. Are the global and local movements promoting sustainable farming practices and food sovereignty and/or indigenous autonomy leading to more sustainable ways of protecting and managing natural resources? Are these alternatives capable of mounting a challenge to neoliberalism, agribusiness, extractivism, and right-wing populism? Will urban and rural poor be priced out of access to sufficient food, again? Politically, the recurrent crises and instability have led to calls for, and promises of, greater role for the state in regulating economic life – but to what effect?
The agrarian change working group invites submission of proposals for individual papers. Submissions are open to all aspects of agrarian change and but we especially encourage contributions on the following themes:
• Wars, invasions and local and global agrarian change: restructuring and crisis for
whom?
• Agrarian change and the socio-ecological crisis
• Agrarian change and extractivism
• Authoritarian neo-populism and left agrarian populism
• Agrarian autonomy: movements and perspectives
• Labour migration and agrarian change
• Social reproduction and agrarian change
• Agrarian change and class, race, ethnicity, or caste
• Agrarian struggles and the green economy
• New and old discussions on alternatives to globalised agriculture
Abstracts of individual papers (1500 characters) must be submitted via this Google Form
Please submit your proposal by March 17, 2025.
The conference is free of any registration fees.
For questions and additional information contact Agrarian Change Working Group Conference email: agrarianchangewgconference@gmail.com
Organising committee:
Jens Lerche (Working Group co-coordinator), Sarah Graf, Ranjini Basu, Navpreet Kaur, Saurabh Rastogi, Amod Shah, Elena Alvarez