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Library The politics of evidence: methodologies for understanding the global land rush

The politics of evidence: methodologies for understanding the global land rush

The politics of evidence: methodologies for understanding the global land rush
Aggregated from the Journal of Peasant Studies

Resource information

Date of publication
June 2013
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
10.1080/03066150.2013.801341
Pages
469-483

The most recent ‘land rush’ precipitated by the convergent ‘crises’ of fuel, feed and food in 2007–2008 has heightened the debate on the consequences of land investments, with widespread media coverage, policy commentary and civil society engagement. This ‘land rush’ has been accompanied by a ‘literature rush’, with a fast-growing body of reports, articles, tables and books with varied purposes, metrics and methods. Land grabbing, as it is popularly called, is now a hot political topic around the world, discussed amongst the highest circles. This is why getting the facts right is very important and having effective methodologies for doing so is crucial. Several global initiatives have been created to aggregate information on land deals, and to describe their scale, character and distribution. All have contributed to building a bigger (if not always better) picture of the phenomenon, but all have struggled with methodology. This:JPS:Forum identifies a profound uncertainty about what it is that is being counted, questions the methods used to collate and aggregate ‘land grabs’, and calls for a second phase of land grab research which abandons the aim of deriving total numbers of hectares in favour of more specific, grounded and transparent methods.

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Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s)

Ian Scoones, Ruth Hall, Saturnino M. Borras Jr, Ben White & Wendy Wolford