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“Being, Being with, Becoming and Doing With”: The transformative potential of feminist political economy in our analysis of 'land grab' outcomes

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There has been growing concern across Africa by activists and policymakers alike around the question of land rushes (especially after the 2007-2008 land rush) often framed as “land grabs” (see Oya 2013b, Dieng 2017), and their implications for local communities. This “global land rush” emerged in the turbulent context of socioeconomic and political transformations. While the drivers, scale and actors in this renewed interest in land (and labour) are still contested, a body of knowledge interested in its differentiated impact and outcomes, as well as political reactions to these deals, is still growing (Hall et al 2015). It is important for us to consider however that land deals “do not occur in a socio-economic or political vacuum” (Oya 2013b: 1550). They are interventions connecting capital with labour
with previous and ongoing dynamics of place-making resulting in uneven, unfinished
processes of social change. Not only do land deals re-shape the places in which they
occur, they are also an expression of capitalist expansion across the globe.
My interest in the topic of land grabbing has been partly inspired by interest in land
issues, and partly the experience of my mother who lost her land in Senegal due to a
large-scale state-led infrastructure development project in 1996 and recovered it
only 21 years later, in 2017. This article draws on extensive fieldwork in Northern Senegal,
experiencing the emergence of commercial horticultural farming and horticultural
markets. To shed light on the socio-cultural outcomes of ‘land grabs’, the research
involves mixed research methods (survey, focus group discussions, life stories and
semi-structured interviews). Feminist, postcolonial and decolonial
scholars have contributed to acknowledging that mainstream models with their limited
interpretation of ‘the economic’ are grounded in gendered cultural values and
norms, though the recognition of this has been late and partial (Barker et al 2003,
Pollard et al 2011, Zein-Elabdin 2016).

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: African Women\'s Development Fund., 2020-07

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Language

English

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Subject(s)

Feminist
Political economy
Land grab
Northern Senegal

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Article

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