'Development and Agrarian Transformations' Call for papers

Call for papers and panels

Over the past two decades, agrarian economies and food systems have been undergoing a profound restructuring in the wake of large-scale agribusiness and farmland investments, marked also by increasing financialisation and resurgent authoritarian populism. These have reinforced old and created new forms and sites of capital accumulation by local and foreign elites, advancing and transforming forms of extractivism (new extractivism and agroextractivism). This restructuring has contributed to the unsettling of global geopolitics, most notably with the emergence of the BRICS countries and the so-called Middle Income Countries (MICs). The BRICS Initiative for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS) emerged in 2013 to examine these transformations – read more about BICAS in our founding document.

Critical theoretical and empirical questions about the origins, character and significance of complex changes underway need to be investigated more systematically, which is the main goal of the 6th BICAS International Conference on ‘Development and agrarian transformations: BRICS, competition and cooperation in the Global South’ to be held from 12 to 14 of November 2018 at the University of Brasilia, Brazil.

This conference will explore social, political, economic, ecological, and other transformations associated with agrarian dynamics involving the BRICS and MICs. Our approaches are based on critical and engaged scholarship, in alliance with social movements and popular leaders’ struggles and point of views. Interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome, including those drawing from political economy, development sociology, human geography, political ecology, and other social and human sciences that reflect critically about themes like:

• Regional influences and development: BRICS trade and investments across the Global South;
• South-South Cooperation: policy transfer and state influences among BRICS and MICs;
• New state-market relations emerging from BRICS and MICs;
• Environmental crisis and agro-ecology in Latin America and the Global South;
• Resurgent authoritarianism and populism in contemporary political and agrarian transitions;
• Agrarian transformations and socio-territorial movements: land, environment and food sovereignty.

Instructions for submission

Academic papers:

• Full contact details: names, emails, mailing addresses, mobile phones, institutional affiliations
• Title and abstract with 300-500 words
• Short bio with no more than 100 words for each co-author
• Include all this information in a single Word file, with the last name of the first author and ‘BICAS 2018’ as the name of the file (e.g. Silva et al BICAS 2018.docx)

Parallel session / panel proposals:

• Full contact details: names, emails, mailing addresses, mobile phones, institutional affiliations
• Title and short description of the session / panel with 500-750 words
• Short bio with no more than 100 words for each key organizer
• Include all this information in a single Word file, with the last name of the first organizer and ‘BICAS 2018’ as the name of the file (e.g. Silva et al BICAS 2018.docx)

Dates/deadlines

• Abstracts and panel proposals must be submitted by 14 May 2018
• Evaluation/selection of abstracts and panel proposals by 30 June 2018
• Full paper drafts must be submitted by 30 September 2018

Please submit abstracts and panel proposals to the BICAS Secretariat at bricsagrarianstudies@gmail.com with 'abstract submission' as the subject line.

You can download the full call for papers (available in both English and Portuguese) below.