This is the first in a two-panel series. In the series, presenters focus on the relationship between large-scale land grabs and modern forms, ideas and manifestations of the State. The papers highlight the ways in which land grabs shape the ability of the State to conduct rule as well as the role that the State plays in facilitating or enabling land appropriation by outside actors.
In this panel, Catherine Corson analyzes the political alliances that shape the expansion of national parkland in Madagascar, Kojo Amanor outlines the new governance roles played by large supermarket chains in Ghana, Takeshi Ito, Noer Fauzi Rachman, and Laksmi A. Savitri describe the way in which state discourses naturalize land dispossession in Indonesia, and Teo Ballvé explores the subtle articulations of state, drug-lord and market in the simultaneous territorial expansion of agribusiness and drug production in rural Colombia.
Chair: Wendy Wolford, Cornell University
- Kojo Amanor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Global land grabs, agribusiness and the commercial smallholder
- Takeshi Ito, Colorado College, USA, Noer Fauzi Rachman, PhD student, Department of Environment Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, and Laksmi A. Savitri, Sajogyo Institute, Bogor, Indonesia, Naturalizing Land Dispossession: A Policy Discourse Analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), Papua, Indonesia (Presentation)
- Teo Ballvé, PhD Student, Geography Dept. University of California at Berkeley, USA, ‘Territory by Dispossession: Decentralization, Statehood, and the Narco Land-Grab in Colombia’