Pluralizing capitalocene, rethinking the transition process. Agricultural investments in Africa and the new agrarian question

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE
Author/s Maura Benegiamo
Publishing Year 2019 Issue 2019/120 Language Italian
Pages 15 P. 62-76 File size 199 KB
DOI 10.3280/SUR2019-120005
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This paper aims to integrate the socio-ecological critique of capitalist valorization with some indications developed in the post-colonial debate and the neo-materialist perspectives. It builds on an analysis of the land grab phenomena and its connections with recent agricultural development policies, involving green and bio-economy promotion in Sub-Saharan Africa. It firstly expands on the relationships between the neoliberal ecological regime and the racialized pattern of colonial appropriation that inform current agrarian governance processes. Then, re-calling the results of a case study on a land-deal conflict in the north of Senegal, it discusses the interest of a political ecology approach focused on a post-colonial reading of world-ecology, able to include in the narrative of capitalocene the alternative and subaltern socio-ecological stories that inhabit it. This, it will be argued, offers a useful perspective to re-imagine socio-ecological transition as a plural and more-than-human process.

Keywords: Anthropocene, agrarian question, new-materialism, land grabbing, pastoralism, Senegal

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Maura Benegiamo, Pluralizzare il capitalocene, pensare la transizione. Investimenti agricoli in Africa e nuova questione agraria in "SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE" 120/2019, pp 62-76, DOI: 10.3280/SUR2019-120005