Here is a call for papers by environmental anthropologists on land investment: Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, 21-25 April, 2015, Chicago Rendering Land Investable: Multiple Ontologies and Materialities in the Global Land Rush Session organizers: Jenny E. Goldstein (Department of Geography, UCLA) and Julian S. Yates (Department of Geography, University of British Columbia) Discussant: Tania Li (Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto) Sponsored by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group, Economic Geography Specialty Group, and Development Geography Specialty Group In exploring the ‘global land rush’ Tania Li (2014) asks: what is land, and what renders it investable? In this session, we invite participants to grapple with these questions by exploring diverse ontologies and materialities of land that underpin land acquisition and investment, broadly conceived. First, we seek to explore processes through which land becomes valued, valuable, and investable in light of recent large-scale land transactions for agricultural production and capital accumulation (McMichael, 2014; Scoones et al, 2013). How do various discourses, technologies, and ecologies shift land value(s) and enable processes of land valuation? How does land resist such valuation and investment? Second, in exploring multiple ontologies of land we seek contributions that challenge the capitalist-centric framing of rendering land investable. How can a dialogue on the multiple ontologies of land help to challenge the violence of the contemporary global land rush? How does it help us understand how ‘local’ socio-political action takes shape in the face of the effects of ‘global’ capital accumulation strategies? How can we account for non-capitalist values in understanding the relation between multiple ontologies of land and processes of accumulation by ‘rendering investable’? We also aim to uncover and deconstruct a politics of knowledge and materiality within the global land rush, which means asking questions about how social practices and forms of knowledge production reproduce and transform multiple ontologies of land. We do not wish, however, to constrain our understanding of ‘land’ to the earth’s surface or to land-based practices such as agriculture. We aim to raise debates that may also engage issues of subterranean and ‘supra-terranean’ politics. How, for example, do various and competing knowledges on sub-surface materials affect a politics of land? How do new and emerging techniques for measuring and experiencing elements such as wind, water tables, pollution, and micro-climates affect land valuation? Nor should land necessarily be static: with increasing intensity and frequency of landslides, fires, and floods, we also invite perspectives that embrace the dynamic temporal and spatial materiality of ‘land’. We are particularly looking for presenters who address, but are not limited to, one or more of the following: Empirical case studies on historic, contemporary, or future changes in land values and/or valuation (which may address rural and/or urban regions, and/or their linkages) How particular types of scientific, indigenous, technical, and cultural knowledges contribute to or challenge the process of ‘rendering investable’ (thereby appreciating or depreciating land value) Knowledge performances and scientific techniques surrounding land transactions and valuations Spaces of non-knowledge, unlearning, confusion, and ontological uncertainty of land Critical analyses of the technologies deployed in land change ontology Biophysical materials and ecologies mobilized, revealed, or depleted through land transactions, acquisitions, and management Notions of how land can be unmade or remade, unvalued or revalued (as a resource) Non-capitalist valuations of land that may challenge, undermine, or transform processes of accumulation by ‘rendering investable’ We invite potential participants to send an email including presentation title, 250 word abstract, name, and institution to Jenny Goldstein ([email protected]) and/or Julian S. Yates ([email protected]) by Wednesday, October 15, 2014. We will confirm participation in this session by Wednesday, October 22. Because we will be following the presentations with discussion, we will ask presenters to submit papers several weeks before the conference. References Li, T. M. (2014) What Is Land? Assembling a Resource for Global Investment.Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers doi: 39(4): 589-602 McMichael, P. (2014) Rethinking Land Grab Ontology. Rural Sociology 79(1) 34-55 Scoones, I, Hall, R, Borras, S. M., White, B, Wolford, W. (2013) The Politics of Evidence: Methodologies for Understanding the Global Land Rush. Journal of Peasant Studies 40(3) 469–483.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 09:14:48 +0000
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