Does Commons Grabbing Lead to Resilience Grabbing? The Anti-Politics Machine of Neo-Liberal Development and Local Responses

• Other Authors: Haller, Tobias (Editor), Käser, Fabian (Editor), Ngutu, Mariah (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Basel, Switzerland MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2021
• Subjects: Humanities; Social interaction; Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography; pastoral resilience; co-management concept; decentralization; holistic management; water-shed management plan; commercialization of herding; Common Pool Resources (CPRs); qualitative; agro-industrial food system; actors; formal and informal rules and regulations; export horticulture; common pool resources; land; water; Laikipia County; land grabbing; resilience; commons; land concessions; communal land titling; Southeast Asia; forest land governance; Mau Forest; Ogiek; institutions; Community Land Act and customary law; large-scale land acquisitions; green energy; corporate social responsibility; food systems; agroecosystems and agroecosystem service; resilience and commons grabbing; gender; sustainable energy; development policy; common-pool resources; common property; land tenure transformations; resilience, social anthropology; conservationism; identity; commons grabbing; protected areas; institution shopping; institutional change; Ecuador; large scale land acquisitions; social anthropology; n/a
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

This Special Issue contributes to the debate on land grabbing as commons grabbing with a special focus on how the development of state institutions (formal laws and regulations for agrarian development and compensations) and voluntary corporate social responsibility (CRS) initiatives have enabled the grabbing process. It also looks at how these institutions and CSR programs are used as development strategies of states and companies to legitimate their investments. This Special Issue includes case studies from Kenya, Morocco, Tanzania, Cambodia, Bolivia and Ecuador analysing how these strategies are embedded into neo-liberal ideologies of economic development. We propose looking at James Ferguson's notion of the Anti-Politics Machine (1990) that served to uncover the hidden political basis of state-driven development strategies. We think it is of interest to test the approach for analysing development discourses and CSR-policies in agrarian investments. We argue based on a New Institutional Political Ecology (NIPE) approach that these legitimize the institutional change from common to state and private property of land and land related common pool resources which is the basis of commons grabbing that also grabbed the capacity for resilience of local people.