Towards an agrarian question of circulation: Walmart's expansion in Chile and the agrarian political economy of supply chain capitalism

Abstract

The central role that infrastructures of circulation and connectivity—logistical, financial, and digital—have come to perform in the reproduction of agro‐food systems calls for an expanded conception of agriculture that integrates dialectically the production of economic value and its subsequent realization in the sphere of exchange. Through the case of Walmart's expansion in Chile, and on the basis of a critical theorization of the circulation of capital, this paper proposes an agrarian question of circulation in which the apparently distinct realms of food production, transport, storage, and consumption are brought together into a contradictory and yet unitary whole. The case of Walmart Chile is illustrative of how the reconfiguration of spaces of urban mass consumption and the organizational restructuring of agro‐industrial hinterlands constitute each other in intricate ways. An agrarian question of circulation, the paper concludes, bears important political implications for rethinking the scope and extent of contemporary discussions on agrarian reform being put forward by transnational rural organizations.

Reimagining Food: Readdressing and Respecting Values

“…Supermarketization has also been linked to other structural changes of the food system and the food environment, globalization, urbanization [35], and urban modernization [36]. Additionally, the neoliberal restructuring of food systems with corporate agribusiness and retailers (another positioning on supermarketization) [37] supports physical, logistical, technical, and transport infrastructure, scale and capacity [38] and private agri-food governance structures such as third-party certification [39]. This ability to reduce infrastructural barriers and information asymmetry has led to cost reduction [38] and the ability to compete and thrive in an aggressive, commoditized retail market [40].…”

The Turbulent Circulation of Rent: Towards a Political Economy of Property and Ownership in Supply Chain Capitalism

“…These transfers of value, as several accounts have pointed out, become determined in terms of rent as one of the necessary forms through which the equalisation of the general rate of profit asserts itself (see Iñigo Carrera 2017; Roy 2017; Starosta 2010). After being a relatively sidelined dimension of his mature work for decades, Marx's reading of circulation (and of circuits of capital) has been garnering increasing scholarly interest in recent years (Arthur and Reuten 1998; Harvey 2013), especially within critical studies of logistics (Arboleda 2019(Arboleda , 2020aBanoub and Martin 2020;Cowen 2014;Danyluk 2018). The Marxian analytic of circulation is of particular relevance for this article insofar as it enables the analytical dissection of how property regimes both constrain and make possible the movement of the circuit in each of its three moments, which roughly coincide with the interlocking motive forces of supply chain capitalism: production, commodity circulation, and finance.…”

“…As a result, finance is no longer confined to its intermediary function in the circuit of capital and has assumed a more dominant role in its search for, and source of, rent extraction opportunities. The way in which the savings and mortgage payments of middle class households have been pooled and actively harnessed by pension funds and hedge funds in order to provide liquidity to the deployment and modernisation of infrastructure, for example, has been documented in the literature (Arboleda 2020a;Purcell et al 2020;Tsing 2005: Chapter 2). The extent to which these varieties of pooled assets from households have been channelled towards the development of logistical infrastructure specifically (ports, warehouses, container ships, digital infrastructure), has been hinted at by Bunker and Ciccantell's (2003) world-historical account of primary commodity production, yet warrants further empirical and theoretical exploration within the broader context of the logistics revolution.…”

“…In this article, we intend to bridge the existing analytical gap between the bodies of literature that study these seemingly disparate tendencies. To do this, we develop a dialogue between critical theorisations of the circulation of capital (see Arboleda 2019Arboleda , 2020aArthur and Reuten 1998;Banoub and Martin 2020;Harvey 2013), and recent efforts to rethink rent beyond land and beyond the usual emphasis on relations of distribution (see Birch 2019;Christophers 2019;Greco and Apostolopoulou 2020;Purcell and Mart ınez 2018;Roy 2017;Ward and Aalbers 2016). In suggesting that the circulation of rent is intrinsically "turbulent", this article is also inspired by Chua et al's (2018) invitation to interrogate the seams, disruptions, and crisis tendencies of logistical systems that on the surface seem unified and coherent.…”

Neoliberal Economic, Social, and Spatial Restructuring: Valparaíso and Its Agricultural Hinterland

“…Previously abandoned spaces, such as industrial ruins and out-dated port facilities, have been reincorporated into new chains of value production within capitalism (Aravena, 2020;Costa & Gonçalves, 2019;Mah, 2014). More recently, some interesting research has been conducted on the role of logistical, financial, and informational infrastructures for production, circulation, and consumption in global capitalism (Arboleda, 2020;Martner, 2020).…”