Book

Governing Global Land Deals: The Role of the State in the Rush for Land

Published on 1 April 2013

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Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in large–scale land deals, often from public lands to the hands of foreign or domestic investors. Popularly referred to as a ‘global land grab’, new land acquisitions are drawing upon, restructuring and challenging the nature of both governance and government. While ‘the state’ is often invoked as a key player in contemporary land deals, states do not necessarily operate coherently or with one voice.

This collection of essays brings clarity and understanding to the entity of ‘the state’, analyzing government and governance as processes, people and relationships. Focusing on relations of territory, sovereignty, authority and subjects, the essays in this collection explore the highly variable form and content of large–scale land deals in different settings around the world, illuminating both the micro–processes of transaction and expropriation, as well as the broader structural forces at play in global land deals.

The authors do not assume a priori that there is a necessary character to land deals, rather they frame the deals themselves quite broadly, as embedded in complex multi–scalar webs of relationships shaped by power, property and production.

Cite this publication

Wolford, Wendy, et al. "Governing global land deals: the role of the state in the rush for land." Development and Change 44.2 (2013): 189-210.

Editors

Ian Scoones

Professorial Fellow

Publication details

published by
Wiley-Blackwell
editors
Wolford, W., Borras Jr.,S. M., Hall, R., Scoones, I. and White, B.
isbn
978 1 11868 826 7
language
English

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