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Exploring the emerging and vibrant field of critical agrarian studies, this comprehensive Handbook offers interdisciplinary insights from both leading scholars and activists to understand agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and processes of change. It highlights the development of the field, which is characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation. The Handbook presents critical analyses of, and examines controversies about, historical and contemporary social structures and processes in agrarian and rural settings from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters explore the origins of critical agrarian studies, the concepts underpinning the diverse theoretical approaches to the field, and the strengths and weaknesses of different methodologies used within the field. Finally, it illuminates debates around the topic and trajectories for future research and development. This will be a vital resource for graduate students, scholars and activists interested in critical agrarian studies. The analytical and empirical insights will also be helpful to students of environmental and development studies as well as agricultural and development economics, human geography and socio-cultural anthropology.

This volume deals with the consequences of climate change and issues of international climate policy relating to Africa from a social science perspective. The contributions by international authors question dominant political approaches and key concepts of the climate debate. They explain how the effects of climate change are linked to existing social, economic and political-institutional structures and action by the State. The authors show how social movements in Africa shape climate policy «from below». The volume serves as an introduction into climate change in Africa. It wants to stimulate a critical debate on dominant strategies and points out that there can be no simple answers to the complex socio-ecological and political challenges linked to climate change in Africa.

This book empirically discusses recent struggles over land and mining, exploring state-society relations conflicts on various scales. In contrast with the existing literature, analyses in this volume deliberately focus on large-scale land use changes both in relation to the expansion of industrial mining and to agro-industry. The authors contend that there are significant parallels between contestations over different variants of resource extractivism, as they reflect the same global trends and processes. Chapters draw on critical theoretical approaches from political ecology, political economy, spatial theory, contentious politics, and the study of democracy. The authors not only provide empirical insights on actual resource struggles from different world regions based on in-depth field research, but also contribute to theory-building by linking concepts from various critical approaches to one another, developing a perspective for analysing struggles over resources related to current global crisis phenomena.

Die kontroversen Debatten zum Thema Biokraftstoffe reißen nicht ab. Einst gefeiert als Allheilmittel gegen Klimawandel, Ölabhängigkeit sowie für die Entwicklung ländlicher Regionen, werden potenziell positive Wirkungen der Biokraftstoffe zunehmend infrage gestellt. Dennoch werden Biokraftstoffeweltweit politisch gefördert. Diese widersprüchliche Entwicklung wirft die Frage auf, welche Rolle sie für eine sozial-ökologische Transformation der Energiesysteme (noch) spielen können. Im vorliegenden Buch werden die Folgen und Entwicklungen der Biokraftstoffförderung und -nutzung in und zwischen verschiedenen Weltregionen (Europa, Asien, Afrika, Südamerika), ihre politische Regulierung und diskursive Legitimierung analysiert. Die Beiträge im Buch belegen, dass Biokraftstoffe nie der alleinige Auslöser von Verdrängung, Entwaldung oder Hunger sind. Unter den gegebenen Umständen der transnationalen Verflechtung und mangelnden Regulierung tragen sie jedoch oftmals stärker zu Problemen bei, als dass sie diese entschärfen.

This book explores the political ecology of agrofuels as an encompassing socio-spatial transformation process consisting of a series of changing contexts, political reconfigurations, and the restructuring of social and labour relations. It includes conceptual chapters as well as case studies from different world regions (North America, Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia) and levels (local, national, transnational).The Political Ecology of Agrofuels advances a conceptualisation of agrofuels that helps to fill existing research gaps. It covers global food regimes and agrarian politics as well as political arenas such as energy, climate, transport and trade. It reflects on the biophysical materiality of agrofuels, new forms of nature appropriation, struggles, discursive framings, the building of hegemony, shifting geopolitical constellations, socio-spatial configurations of power, the construction of territory, the agency of social movements and the different ways in which agrofuels are politicized at different scales.This book asks how patterns of mobility, emissions regulation, food and energy production and consumption, and social relations (e.g. labour, class and gender relations) are shaped and re-shaped by the materiality and representations of agrofuels in both the Global South and North. The book provides tools for thinking about the diversity of the conflicts, struggles and spatial, socio-ecological and politico-economic reconfigurations and perpetuations engendered by current production and consumption patterns in the agrofuel sector.