Land Grabbing and Food Security in a Neoliberal Era

From Indonesia to Brazil, the rise of emergent middle classes, the growing pressure on the global food supply, and the return to mass agrarian production exist in tension with rapidly growing processes of urbanization. Cities have not only become home to the recently urbanized-formerly rural communities-but have come, in turn, to reflect changing patterns in the rural-urban continuum: the countryside is increasingly given over to industrialization while many urban areas are "ruralized." "Land" - as spaces of belonging, sites for resource conflicts, and as struggles for development projects - is the central problem addressed by this panel. It reflects the changing fates of former agrarians, minorities, and marginalized communities more generally.

How should we understand land reform, land grabbing and their relationship to food security? What happens to rural and urban communities in the aftermath of such projects? Who benefits and who loses from their implementation? Panelists will consider the heightened risks and multiple states of insecurity stemming from the forces of globalization and environmental change. In doing so, they will discuss the deepening vulnerability and steady decline in the livelihoods of people, and the complex reconstitution of systemic and lived racialization within these processes.