Reviving Agrarian Studies in South‐East Asia: Geography on the Ascendancy

Abstract

This paper examines the recent revival of agrarian studies in the social science scholarship of South‐East Asia following a period of decline from the 1980s onward. The hiatus provides an opportunity to examine the changed empirical contexts and theoretical framings of agrarian change in the intervening period. Renewed interest in rural agricultural and social change is also marked by a disciplinary shift, with the centre of gravity moving away from anthropology and political science and towards a geographical focus. This is explained both by institutional factors, as a large international research programme based in (but not limited to) geography has taken the lead on the revival, and also by the substantive shift in agrarian studies away from narrowly local village ethnographies or broad‐based scholarship inspired by Cold War concerns, towards a multi‐scale and contextualised approach in which environment, globalisation, migration, territorial expansion, spatial inequality, and other key geographical themes have framed explorations of agrarian change.

De-/re-agrarianisation: Global perspectives

“…In Africa and elsewhere in the global South, agriculture as the basis of rural livelihoods is increasingly being squeezed and challenged because of land issues and conflicts as well as chaotic markets, which in turn fuel migration to the city in the hopes of earning additional income to feed back to homes in the rural area. This trend is well documented in the literature about the global South (Bryceson and Jamal, 1997;Bryceson et al, 2000;Bryceson, 1996Bryceson, , 2002aBryceson, , 2002bFrancis, 2000;Ellis, 2000;Zoomers, 2001;Rigg, 2005Rigg, , 2006Rigg et al, 2016;Hirsch, 2012). However, a complete disconnect from the rural base does not occur.…”

“…Land grabbing is clearly associated with the corporatisation of agriculture and the ongoing process of agro-industrialisation. As land is increasingly commoditised (Bernstein and Woodhouse, 2001;Peters, 2013;Hirsch, 2012), land changes in meaning and usage. New land markets have developed (Colin and Woodhouse, 2010;Otsuka and Place, 2001) Corporate interest in farmland is fuelled by speculation and the expectation that land prices will rise.…”

“…Triggered by a variety of processes -a return to the land through land reform and resettlement programmes (Van den Berg et al, 2018;Hebinck and Cousins, 2013;Dekker and Kinsey, 2011;Mutopo, 2011;Scoones et al, 2010;Rosset et al, 2006;Thiesenhusen, 1995), but also the gradual shift of the meaning of land because of commoditisation (Hirsch 2012;Borras and Franco, 2013) Repeasantisation and the central role of family farming is the analytical answer to the ideas and images of drudgery as well as 'efficient-but-poor' discourses such as those of Schultz (1964) during the 1950s (Van der Ploeg (2010a. Repeasantisation unfolds as the interconnection of processes of people holding on and/or 'returning' to rural and land-based activities, either through inheriting land from kin or otherwise, or through purchasing private land or accessing land through planned and unplanned (e.g.…”

Bringing the countryside to the city: Practices and imaginations of the rural in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“…I aim to recover the now commonplace assertion made through much empirical evidence covering urban Southeast Asia that rural-to-urban migrants and their practices are considered ‘backward, greedy, undeveloped, uneducated, and uncivilized’ by the urban middle- and upper-classes (Elinoff, 2012: 383). In other words, what Woods calls the ‘performativity of rural life and rural experiences’ (2009b: 440) is often framed in ‘regressive’ ways in urban development schemes in Southeast Asia (see Hirsch, 2012; Rigg and Ritchie, 2002). Under these characterisations government officials and the urban wealthy consider the city to be under their exclusive domain and rural-to-urban migrants to be in need of improvement once they arrive in the city.…”

Legal geography, geography, and the research‐policy nexus

“…Fagan and Dowling, ; Costello, ; Argent and Walmsley, ; Davies, ; Baum and Mitchell, ); natural hazard/disaster responses (from Oliver, to Buxton et al ., ; and most recently the Geographical Research special issue on fire (vol 51 [1]); planning and urban geography (from Logan, to Gleeson, ); population policy (from Smith et al ., to Hugo ; and see also the recent special issue on population in Geographical Research (vol 49 [3]); property (from Heathcote, to Holmes, , and see also Gillespie, 2016a; 2016b); regional and development issues (e.g. Robins and Dovers, ; Hirsch, ); social and economic policy (e.g. Taylor, ; Walmsley and Weinand, ; Stimson, ; Stimson et al ., ; Beer et al ., ; O'Neill and Fagan, ; Beer, ; Wetzstein, ), including social justice and equity (e.g.…”