Jennifer C. Franco - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics brings together key theoretical perspectives on the politics of land, as well as strategic thematic studies on land and social life, namely, food politics, climate change, labor regimes, nation-states and citizenship, and geopolitics. The contributors to this volume address the basic but complex questions of who gets to have access to land, why, how, what kind of land and how much, where and for how long, for what purposes, and with what implications as to who wins and who loses? These questions are grounded in social relations that are in turn rooted in class and other social group formations that are enacted within the inseparable spheres of state and society. Fundamental to this collection is its treatment of land in the context of production and social reproduction, where social reproduction is interpreted in a broad sense to include socio-ecological, socio-cultural, and socio-political reproduction. The definition of land used in this Handbook encompasses soil, farmland, grazing land, home lots, landscapes, socio-agroecological zones, territory, and homeland. Individually and together, the chapters show that making sense of the dynamics of global social life requires a fundamental understanding of the politics of land, and a grasp of land politics requires a comprehension of broader social life. For instance, land politics plays a key role in causing climate change, and at the same time it is centrally located in the competing solutions to the climate crisis. Understanding climate change politics necessarily requires a deep grasp of land politics. All contributing authors are critical of capitalism, and of theories that justify and celebrate it. While most contributions focus on dynamics of social change in and in relation to the rural world, these are cast in the context of rural-urban, agriculture-industry, national-global continuums. The Handbook is organically embedded in several disciplines and fields of study: political economy, political ecology, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, legal studies, development studies, anthropology, environmental studies, and social movements. It is a critical resource for scholars and students who seek to understand the complex interactions between these various disciplines and land politics.

This book compiles, discusses, and explains the key concepts in land politics in an easy-to-navigate A–Z format.This book takes a broad view on land, across the rural and urban corridor, and advocates for a holistic view of the politics of land, as an aggregation of land and global social life, that is, the politics of food, climate, labour, citizenship, and geopolitics. The authors have curated a wide-ranging list of 67 key terms most commonly used in the field, with each entry mapping out an important concept or idea and illustrating how it relates more broadly across this growing discipline. Across the entries, the book showcases that land has been and remains central to productive and social reproductive activities of humanity for the incessant renewal of life and society. A key assumption in this book is that the politics of land is made up of building blocks in the form of key concepts. These key concepts evolve, both in the sense that they are politically contested and in the changing broader context within which they are embedded. The key concepts in this book are therefore not discussed in a random way but rather framed from Critical Agrarian Studies perspectives and scholar-activist tradition, which means taking the side of the exploited and oppressed.With further reading recommendations included alongside the entries, this innovative and accessible volume will be of great interest to students, scholars, policy practitioners, and political activists.

This book compiles, discusses, and explains the key concepts in land politics in an easy-to-navigate A–Z format.This book takes a broad view on land, across the rural and urban corridor, and advocates for a holistic view of the politics of land, as an aggregation of land and global social life, that is, the politics of food, climate, labour, citizenship, and geopolitics. The authors have curated a wide-ranging list of 67 key terms most commonly used in the field, with each entry mapping out an important concept or idea and illustrating how it relates more broadly across this growing discipline. Across the entries, the book showcases that land has been and remains central to productive and social reproductive activities of humanity for the incessant renewal of life and society. A key assumption in this book is that the politics of land is made up of building blocks in the form of key concepts. These key concepts evolve, both in the sense that they are politically contested and in the changing broader context within which they are embedded. The key concepts in this book are therefore not discussed in a random way but rather framed from Critical Agrarian Studies perspectives and scholar-activist tradition, which means taking the side of the exploited and oppressed.With further reading recommendations included alongside the entries, this innovative and accessible volume will be of great interest to students, scholars, policy practitioners, and political activists.