Agri-investment scholars of the world unite! : The finance-driven land rush as boundary object

Abstract

Abstract: en This response addresses several of the issues raised by the commentaries on my book Farming as Financial Asset – Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes (2020). Reflecting upon the intentions and limitations of the book, it makes a call for treating agri-investments to which scholars contribute from different geographical, theoretical, and methodological angles. In detail, it engages with the question of how farmland investments relate to other ‘asset classes’ in terms of the practical (and political) problem of institutional investibility, the material and human dimensions of institutional landscapes, the ownership question, as well as the challenge to write a book that has a global historical outlook and offers situated accounts at the same time. It also engages with questions of comparativism, methodology, and the political implications of an opening-the-black box approach.

Keywords: Agrarian transformations; Aotearoa New Zealand; Assetization; Financialization; Global finance; Global land rush; Institutional investors; Investment chains; Operations of capital; Tanzania

Title: Agri-investment scholars of the world unite! : The finance-driven land rush as boundary object
Publication type: Article
Language: English
Journal: Dialogues in Human Geography
Year: 2022
volume: 12
issue: 1
Page start: 173
Page end: 176
Status: Not peer reviewed