[CfP] Conference 2017 – Agrarian Change WG

7th Annual Conference in Political Economy ‘The Political Economy of Inequalities and Instabilities in the 21st Century’

International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) Critical Political Economy Research Network (CPERN) Berlin Institute for International Political Economy (IPE)

September 13-15, 2017, Berlin School of Economics and Law

Call for papers and activist proposals:

agrarian change working group

The political ideology of contemporary capitalism is increasingly under pressure. Recurrent crises and instability have led to calls for, and promises of, greater role for the state in regulating economic life. We think this is opportune moment to take stock of the complex and interrelated ways in which the states connect to agrarian systems. Through laws, policies, and the exercise of power, states influence the distribution of land and other productive resources, help determine what is produced and how production is organised, regulate the technical parameters of production, and impact the distribution and marketing of goods, as well as the conditions of labour. Because of this, the state is also a strategic space where national and transnational actors deploy their strategies to secure access to natural resources, markets, and financial support. What role can/will the state play in the agrarian systems of the 21st century and how can activists influence the direction it will take?

The agrarian change working group invites you to submit proposals for individual papers, thematic panels or streams of panels. While papers, panels and streams may focus on theoretical and empirical contributions, both historical and contemporary, for any part of the world, we are especially interested in empirically-grounded interventions in contemporary struggles and debates. In this spirit we welcome contributions on the following themes.

• The role of the state in processes of globalisation of agriculture and food, agrarian and agricultural policies of developing countries
• Power and inequality in agrarian systems, social differentiation, accumulation from below and above, class formation
• Labour and social mobilisation, class struggles in the countryside
• Rural social movements and transnational agrarian movements, alternative networks and politics (food sovereignty)
• The contested production of food, control over food, food production systems
• Hunger and the distributions of food
• Private-led quality standards, certification, social and sustainability standards,
• Vertical integration within commodity chains and implications for the creation and appropriation of value, emerging forms of organising production and pricing,
• Capital upstream and downstream from agriculture, market integration, the financialisation of agriculture.
• Labour and migration, remittances and agriculture, social protection and employment schemes, informality and rural livelihoods.
• Experiences with land reform, land restitution and redistribution, unpacking community and customary structures
• Conflicts over land, land grabs and large-scale land acquisition, the development of flex-crops and agrofuels.
• Inequalities and gender, generational, caste and race politics in agrarian formations
• The political economy of illicit crops, their production and distribution

We encourage the submission of panel proposals (consisting of up to four presentations) as an opportunity to showcase the work of study groups in greater depth than is possible in single presentations. We particularly encourage the submission of papers and panels that engage in comparatives studies, either cross-national within a region, cross-regional, or different national cases through a global commodity chain or a policy. Abstracts of individual papers (max. 500 words) or panel proposals (max. 500 words plus abstracts of the individual papers) can be submitted via the IIPPE Webpage: http://iippe.org.

The deadline for submission is APRIL 1st, 2017

For other questions and additional information contact: Florian Schaefer (fs12@soas.ac.uk) Helena Perez-Niño (hpereznino@plaas.org.za) or Leandro Vergara-Camus (lv6@soas.ac.uk)