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The term agro-extractivism has become synonymous with large-scale, corporate-controlled, monoculture plantation agriculture. The aim of this concept note is to clarify the extractivist dynamics in the current context of the capitalist development process. The paper surveys the development of agro-extractivism as a conceptual framework and as a feature of the contemporary political economy of agrarian change in Latin America. It briefly reflects on the potential contributions of land-based struggles to post-extractivist alternatives based on food sovereignty politics. The paper concludes by assessing the broader implications of agro-extractivism for our understanding of the agrarian question in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the deleterious effects of petroleum extractive activities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, with a special focus on HIV infection. It argues against the hegemonizing claims of the "resource curse" thesis and deploys the framework of "accumulation by dispossession" to explain the crisis of development associated with the country's petroleum economy. The paper couches the challenges of economic survival in the petroleum resource-rich region on a predatory alliance between the extractive transnational corporations (TNCs) and the domestic compradors. It highlights the implications of extractive activities in the region for HIV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning the prevailing discourse of multiple benefits surrounding tourism development, this paper examines the Itanos Gaia investment on Cavo Sidero peninsula, north-eastern Crete as a hegemonic project of dispossession. Drawing on David Harvey's theorisation of accumulation by dispossession and Gramsci's original work on hegemony, we describe and analyse the specificities and antinomies of the Itanos Gaia project, first to chart the modalities of dispossession in four interrelated strands operative in this case: nature, land, financial speculation and the institutionalisation of dispossession, and second, to analyse the interplay between hegemony and the imposition of dispossession, including its internalisation in the realm of (local) civil society as 'common sense', underpinned by the local and broader dynamics of a particular power bloc. Empirically, this inquiry is informed by a survey conducted among local residents to identify local perceptions/views about the investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1980, seed business law (patent law vis-à-vis agrobiotechnology, PVP law and seed laws) has been mainstreamed in the global South. Observers maintain that seed business law can lead to dispossession of farmers. I analyse legislation, statistics and case studies (Senegal, Burkina Faso), and argue that in African LDCs, dispossession primarily takes place through capturing seed markets via institutions for direct control over seed distribution. Domestic elites and (global) seed businesses preferably control germplasm via marketing boards, seed subsidies and other former colonial rural institutions. Seed business law, therefore, remains largely disused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]