Suchergebnisse

In India today, the term "land mafia" is widely applied to those engaged in land-related corruption. What is unclear is the sociological phenomenon to which the term "mafia" refers, and what it indicates about capitalism in contemporary India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the state of Rajasthan, combined with analysis of court decisions and newspaper articles, I argue that land mafia discourse identifies informal land-grabbing practices that have become extremely widespread across India. These practices are undertaken not necessarily by criminal organizations but by diffuse coercive rentier networks that cross the public–private divide. These networks have been strengthened by the liberalization of India's economy, and particularly its real estate market, and their entrenchment poses a major obstacle to "good governance" reforms. India's land mafias thus expose important weaknesses in the dominant approaches to corruption and suggest the need to take seriously the synergies between capitalism, coercion, and corruption.

Resumo Este trabalho defende uma teoria da relação entre desapropriação de terras e capitalismo, que chamo de "regimes de desapropriação". Essa teoria fornece um meio de entender as formas sociais e históricas específicas assumidas pela desapropriação, suas mudanças ao longo do tempo e como essas mudanças afetam o "desenvolvimento" econômico e a política. "Regimes de desapropriação" preenche uma lacuna na sociologia do desenvolvimento e reconstrói a teoria de Marx da "acumulação primitiva" e a teoria da "acumulação por desapropriação", de Harvey, com a finalidade de providenciar um quadro teórico mais adequado para compreender as desapropriações de terra no passado e no presente.

ABSTRACTThis article compares land dispossession for industrial development under state‐developmentalism and neoliberalism in India. Drawing on interviews, ethnography and archives of industrial development agencies, it compares earlier steel towns and state‐run industrial estates with today's Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and argues that they embody different regimes of dispossession. While steel towns and industrial estates reflected a regime of land for production with pretensions of inclusive social transformation, SEZs represent a neoliberal regime of land for the market in which 'land broker states' have emerged to indiscriminately transfer land from peasants to capitalist firms for real estate. The present regime has been unable to achieve the ideological legitimacy of its predecessor, leading to more widespread and successful 'land wars'. The article argues more broadly that variations in dispossession across space and time can be understood as specific constellations of state roles, economic logics tied to class interests and ideological articulations of the 'public good'.

While struggles over land dispossession have recently proliferated across the developing world and become particularly significant in India, this paper argues that existing theories of political agency do not capture the specificity of the politics of dispossession. Based on two years of ethnographic research on anti-dispossession movements across rural India, the paper argues that the dispossession of land creates a specific kind of politics, distinct not just from labor politics, but also from various other forms of peasant politics that have been theorized in the social sciences. It illustrates how the process of land dispossession itself shapes the targets, strategy and tactics, organization, social composition, goals, and ideologies of anti-dispossession struggles. It concludes with reflections on why land conflicts are less easily institutionalized than labor conflicts and may therefore constitute a significantly disruptive force in the emerging centers of global capitalism for the foreseeable future.

The aim of the present work is to advance a theoretical framework for the comparative study of dispossession by explaining how the political economy of land dispossession has transformed from state-led developmentalism to neoliberalism in India. The dissertation compares the archetypical forms of dispossession in each period and argues that they constitute different regimes of dispossession. A regime of dispossession is an institutionalized way of expropriating landed assets from their current owners or users. Each regime of dispossession is distinguished by: 1) a set of purposes for which a state is willing to dispossess land and 2) a way of producing compliance to that dispossession. Under different regimes, dispossession facilitates different kinds of accumulation with variable developmental consequences. These consequences crucially effect the long-term political stability of a regime of dispossession.Between independence in 1947 and economic liberalization in the early 1990s, India operated under a developmentalist regime of dispossession. Under this regime, the Indian state dispossessed land for state-led industrial and infrastructural projects, ensuring compliance through coercion and powerful ideological appeals to national development. This dispossession facilitated productive agrarian and industrial accumulation that disproportionately benefited the industrial bourgeoisie, big farmers, and the public sector elite, but also delivered some benefits to other classes. This development was, however, based on the impoverishment of tens of millions of people that it dispossessed. For many decades, this regime was able to convince a wide public that such dispossession constituted a necessary sacrifice for "the nation." Social movements in the 1970s and 1980s challenged this view, but they could not substantially impede dispossession before the developmentalist regime gave way to economic liberalization. Economic liberalization in the early 1990s generated a transition to a new neoliberal regime of dispossession in which state governments restructured themselves as land brokers for private capital. No longer just dispossessing land for state-led industrial and infrastructural projects, states turned to dispossessing peasants for private real estate. Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are the archetype of this regime. Based on 19 months of ethnographic research on one of the first large SEZs in North India, this dissertation illustrates the character and consequences of this neoliberal regime of dispossession. First, it argues that dispossessing land for SEZs lacks legitimacy, fuelling "land wars"; however, states may be able to generate material compliance among some farmers by absorbing them into real estate markets. Second, it argues that dispossessing land for SEZs facilitates real estate and knowledge-intensive accumulation that benefits a narrow set of class interests, while disaccumulating agrarian assets and marginalizing rural labor. Third, it argues that the major economic effect of this accumulation is real estate speculation, which generates unequal and involutionary agrarian change that leaves the majority of the dispossessed impoverished. The result is "dispossession without development." The dissertation concludes that India's neoliberal regime of dispossession will remain politically tenuous. It ends by outlining a comparative research program on the sociology of dispossession.By integrating land dispossession into theories of capitalist development, the theory of regimes of dispossession fills an absence in development sociology and reconstructs Marxist theories of "primitive accumulation," enhancing our understanding of states, economic development, agrarian change, and rural politics.

Land dispossession is a major source of protest in many countries. This article asks, How common are cases of mobilization against land dispossession relative to cases of nonmobilization? Why do we see protests against land dispossession for some projects and not others? These questions are taken up in the context of India, a major global hotspot for land dispossession protest. Using a database of all major capital projects in the country, the article looks at the effects of project characteristics and context on incidence of delays or cancellations due to land acquisition problems. The findings demonstrate that a project's sector and subnational location affect the emergence of opposition to land dispossession. Further, differences in political competitiveness and agrarian social structure are significant factors driving subnational variation. By identifying important factors shaping opposition to land dispossession, the article aims to stimulate comparative research that can advance a political sociology of dispossession.

The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession of rural land in China and India. Each offers new insights about the extent and patterns of dispossession, the complex dynamics driving it, the consequences for farmers, as well as the factors shaping resistance or compliance. Although each article treats developments within one country, the collection helps uncover features common to rural land dispossession in China and India, and illuminates differences that shape the processes of dispossession in each country. Comparison of the two countries helps us to not only understand the future implications of this enormously important issue for economic growth, social inequality and politics in both countries, but also contributes insights useful for understanding this issue elsewhere in the world.

The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession of rural land in China and India. Each offers new insights about the extent and patterns of dispossession, the complex dynamics driving it, the consequences for farmers, as well as the factors shaping resistance or compliance. Although each article treats developments within one country, the collection helps uncover features common to rural land dispossession in China and India, and illuminates differences that shape the processes of dispossession in each country. Comparison of the two countries helps us to not only understand the future implications of this enormously important issue for economic growth, social inequality and politics in both countries, but also contributes insights useful for understanding this issue elsewhere in the world.