Deadline: 31-May-23

The Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) is offering 25 grants of US$3,000 each to researchers based in/from the Global South who have undertaken original empirical research on land grabs.

This call invites applications for small grants to support research and writing around old and new themes related to land grabbing, aiming to understand the contemporary dynamics of land and resource ‘grabbing’.

More than a decade ago, the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI) was launched as a loose network of scholars and activists concerned about the rise of land, water and green grabs across the world and the consequences for rural livelihoods and agrarian relations. A massive wave of investment in land, resulting in expropriation and displacement had emerged following the financial, food and energy crises of 2008-09. They wanted to understand what was going on and how best to respond.

The global debate around land deals has diminished in the last several years, but important research and political questions remain.

• What happened to the hundreds of land grabs documented by researchers, non-governmental organizations, activist groups, news media, and aid agencies?
• What new configurations of land, labour and capital have emerged since?
• How has the rise of authoritarian, state-led populism and politics re-shaped the tensions between ‘foreignization’ and extraction?

Themes

• The proposed themes for this initiative are outlined.
  • What happened to failed large-scale land grabs
  • Multiple, invisible domestic land grabs.
  • The implications for labour.
  • The role of science.
  • Processes of financialisation.
  • Green energy and climate change.
  • Green grabbing, neoliberal conservation and market-based instruments.
  • Growth as extra-territorial development.
  • Land grabs and environmental change.
  • The national political context of land grabbing.
  • Violence, from the everyday to the spectacular.
  • Resistance and mobilisation
  • Policy and political change
  • Methodology
  • Towards theorisation

Funding Information

• Twenty-five grants of $3000 each are available.

Eligibility Criteria

• Researchers based in the ‘Global South’ who have undertaken original empirical research and wish to write this up.

For more information, visit International Institute of Social Studies.