The Dispute Over Land on a World Scale: The Role of States and the Mechanisms of Land Grabbing in the Global South

Authors

Keywords:

land grabbing, South-South, foreign investment, globalization, state

Abstract

In recent years, the phenomenon known as "land grabbing" has been generalized in the countries of the global South, where capital from the developed countries was used to acquire land and massively exploit local natural resources. From the perspective of dependency theory, this implies a further way of transferring value from the dependent countries to the central countries and a deepening of the global accumulation of capital. In spite of this common characteristic, the land grabbing phenomenon has distinctive characteristics in different regions. This essay will analyze the characteristics that this phenomenon has had in the different regions of the world in terms of the following dimensions: (i) the mechanism that investors carry out to acquire land, taking into account the type of land tenure (that is, if it is private, state, or community land); (ii) the role of the state in the grabbing process; and (iii) the origin of the main external investors in each region.

Author Biography

Agostina Costantino, Institute of Economic and Social Research of the South (IIESS), Argentina

Assistant researcher of the CONICET in IIESS (Argentina). BA in economics (UNS, Argentina), master's degree in social sciences (FLACSO, Mexico) and doctor of research in social sciences with mention in political science (FLACSO, Mexico)

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Published

2019-06-30