Between drought and monsoon: the embodied hardship of seasonal work in Maharashtra’s sugar cane plantations

by Irene Leonardelli At the end of a too-long, extremely dry summer, rural women from the drought-prone district of Beed, Maharashtra, finally return home, after six months of seasonal employment in sugar cane plantations. Encountering them allows me to reflect on experiences of drought and monsoon and on the embodied implications of environmental and agrarian …

About Permaculture Songs and the Food (In)security Narrative

by Elena Louisa The promotion of food (in)security over decades has achieved to govern the way we think about alternatives to industrialised agriculture. Global famine is not a problem of food scarcity but a legacy of unequal power structures which are weaved into past and present agri-food systems. Agriculture based on permaculture can embrace localized …

We need to talk about robots

By Paul Robbins. A political ecology of robots is due, one that is rigorously empirical, dedicated to justice and animal welfare, but unromantic in every regard.

Sustainable integration? Nexus thinking and the foreclosure of progressive eco-politics

by Joe Williams The water-energy-food nexus has become a powerful framework for sustainable development that seeks to integrate the management of resource sectors for increased efficiency. However, its current mobilisation is fundamentally de-politicising, overlooking the contradictions and injustices of resource governance The water, energy and food sectors are, of course, deeply connected. Agriculture accounts for …

Confronting authoritarian populism: challenges for agrarian studies

by Ian Scoones Four points for scholarly research in rural contexts, in order to better understand the political reconfigurations and the socio-cultural dynamics linked to new forms of authoritarian populism Last week I was in Russia at the fascinating fifth BRICS Initiative in Critical Agrarian Studies conference. Throughout the event we heard about the emergence of particular styles of authoritarian populist …

Tania Murray Li: The agricultural story is not over

Tania Murray Li talks about how and why political ecology should still focus on rural spaces and transformations. Tania Murray Li, Professor of Anthropology, Canada Research Chair in the Political-Economy and Culture of Asia, and Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Toronto, reflects on why and how political ecology should place more attention on …

The Banality of the Anthropocene

By Heather Anne Swanson* There are plenty of troubling things about the Anthropocene, but one of its most troubling dimensions is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble. In response, we need to trouble the Anthropocene's banality, argues Heather Ann Swanson. I want to propose an Anthropocene territorialization and a subject-making project in …

Xingu, the clamor coming from the forest in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival

By Barbara Arisi & Felipe Milanez * Much to the chagrin of ranchers and agribusiness, one of Rio de Janeiro’s popular samba schools, Imperatriz Leopoldinense, is making visible the terrible consequences of agribusiness and hydropower dams on the Xingu Indigenous Park in this year’s Carnival. It’s the biggest party on earth. The greatest multitude of …

El trabajo (barato) migrante en la agricultura neoliberal

Por Yoan Molinero Gerbeau * y Gennaro Avallone ** Los trabajadores migrantes son cada vez más esenciales para el mantenimiento de la agricultura global, un pilar fundamental del sistema capitalista. Desde el último cuarto del siglo pasado hasta la actualidad, el uso de mano de obra migrante para trabajar la agricultura del centro global –o …

Agroecología: ¿institucionalizando la alternativa?

By Inés Morales Bernardos, Jon Sanz Landaluze y Marian Simón Rojo* La irrupción de las candidaturas populares, alimentadas por gentes de los movimientos sociales, ha abierto en el movimiento agroecológico nuevas perspectivas de interacción con las instituciones. No veremos una revuelta del pan en nuestras calles. Ser parte, incluso como convidado modesto, del “club de …