The International Institute of Social Studies co-organizes a workshop on “Land brokers, farmers and financiers: Investigating the trajectories of land deals”. This workshop aims to take a close-up look at land deals through putting the spotlight on the chain of actors involved in making land acquisitions happen and the web of actors enabling the financing of such deals.

The organizers aim to go beyond seeing the land investments as one-off land deals. They approach the investment as a trajectory of consecutive deal-makings, possible obstructions and re-negotiations between investors and a variety of parties. These can include for instance informal local land brokers, real estate firms, notaries, consultants, local authorities, violent entrepreneurs and other deal makers and fixers.

Background information

Over the past decade, land deals became a hot topic in development research, particularly through what has alternatively been labelled as global ‘land grab’, or global ‘land investment’. Numerous studies have investigated the implications for, and responses by, the local population. A smaller group of researchers have studied the drivers on the investor’s side.

Overall, within the literature there has been tendency to depict land deals somewhat schematically as a confrontation between global, large-scale investors’ on the one hand, and villagers (and NGOs) on the other. While the general drivers/causes of the land rush and the impacts of land deals for local villagers have been studied in detail, the process of how land deals take place on the ground, and the actors involved often remain obscure. Studies on land grabs for instance frequently note that ‘local elites’ play an important role in such role in such deals, but a systematic analysis of these actors, their interests and strategies is still absent to date.

Contribute to the workshop

For more information on key topics and guidelines for submitting an abstract or proposing a contribution, see the invitation. Abstracts are to be sent to both Laurens Bakker () and Oane Visser () no later than November 5, 2017.