Postwar agrarian capitalisms. A comparative perspective – PWACCOP

The research of the PWACCOP project was pursued through a comparative qualitative analysis of Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire, with an opening to the Liberian field at the end of the project. In these cases, we used a mix of field research, proceeding by case study, but also policy analysis, based on a process tracing approach, as well as the use of GIS tools (Geographic Information Systems) to document ecological and economic transformations of the studied territories. The case studies focused on two regions in each of the two countries studied: Magdalena department (North) and Orinoco territory (East) in the case of Colombia; Cavally (Centre-West) and Sud-Comoé (South-East) regions in the case of Côte d’Ivoire.

In development aid circles, there is relative agreement that when political and economic contradictions lead to open violence, addressing land and resource inequality is an essential component of the struggle to end the war and build a lasting peace. In fact, even today, land is fundamentally a question of political power in the Global South (and beyond). However, the PWACCOP project has shown that the way peacebuilding experts usually approach the complexity of this link between land and violence is fundamentally flawed. Our argument, developed in a variety of publications, is that there is a profound contradiction between the pervasiveness of violence and the narrow focus of peacebuilding experts. This approach tends to exclude land from the political arena and define it as a ’technical’ issue that will ultimately be dealt with market-led mechanisms. Ultimately, the market is seen as both a stabilising factor and a guarantee for development; not only is economic competition to replace armed struggle, but economic development is supposed to have the capacity to eliminate the causes of conflict, while creating material prosperity.

The PWACCOP project has resulted in the publication of one book in English (Routledge), 9 articles in leading journals (in English and French), 2 book chapters and 21 presentations in French, English and Spanish at institutions in Europe, the USA, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and South Africa.

The PWACCOP project played a critical role in the consolidation of an emerging research agenda, as well as the consolidation of a research team. We are now pursuing a new research that builds on the conclusions of PWACCOP, once again thanks to the financial support of ANR. The FORPEACE project (PRC, starting in January 2023) investigates how post-conflict transitions shape, steer and constrain environmental policies. The project focuses on forest conservation, an area that epitomizes how security dilemmas and economic trade-offs shape environmental policies. Forests are margins of state control, where political power is put to the test. They are also frontiers of capitalism, either protected from exploitation by violence and the territorial control of armed groups, or exposed to the plunder of a war economy. Consequently, conservation should be analysed as a major field in which political and economic domination are fought in the aftermath of war, as well as a valuable perspective on the intrinsic contradictions of post-conflict transition.

Books

Jacobo Grajales. 2021. Agrarian Capitalism, War and Peace in Colombia : Beyond Dispossession. London: Routledge

Peer reviewed articles

Jacobo Grajales et Benjamin Levy. Forthcoming. « Socio-economic order and the legacies of armed governance: the aftermath of paramilitary rule in Colombia », Civil Wars.

Jacobo Grajales and Marie Saiget. 2022. « Repolitiser l’étude de l’aide au développement », Cultures et Conflits, n°126, p. 7-18.

Marie Saiget and Jacobo Grajales. 2022 « Du post-conflit au développement, une question de temps ?Temporalités de l’action publique et sortie de conflit en Côte d’Ivoire », Cultures et Conflits, n°126, 61-81.

Jacobo Grajales. 2021. « Losing Land in Times of Peace: Post-War Agrarian Capitalism in Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire », Journal of Peasant Studies, vol 48, n° 5, p. 1054-1074.

Jacobo Grajales and Marie Saiget. 2020. « En lisière de la plantation. Intermédiation, protestation et adaptation aux «accaparements« de terres en Côte d’Ivoire », Politix, n°132, p. 99-122.

Jacobo Grajales. 2020. « From War to Wealth? Land Policies and the Peace Economy in Côte d’Ivoire ». Review of African Political Economy, vol 47, n°163, p. 78-94.

Jacobo Grajales. 2020. « A Land Full of Opportunities? Agrarian Frontiers, Policy Narratives and the Political Economy of Peace in Colombia ». Third World Quarterly, vol 47, n°7, p. 1141-1160.

Jacobo Grajales. 2019. « Les terres de la paix. Politiques de l’aide, politiques foncières et sortie de conflit en Colombie ». Gouvernement et action publique, vol 8, n°4.

Jacobo Grajales. 2018. « L’agro-business au village. La notion d’accaparement de terres à l’épreuve du cas ivoirien ». Politique Africaine, n° 152, p. 155-177.

Book chapters

Jacobo Grajales and Jean-Pierre Chauveau. 2023. « Land in Violent Conflict Studies ». In Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Jennifer Franco (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics, London, Oxford University Press.

Jacobo Grajales. 2019. « Saisir les transitions par l’économie politique. Un capitalisme agraire d’après-guerre en Colombie ». In Florence Padovani, Benjamin Lysaniuk (eds), Gestions des transitions, Paris, L’Harmattan.

The PWACCOP project aims at understanding the construction and impact of rural land policies in postwar situations. It provides an original approach to these contexts, which are seldom analyzed from the point of view of political economy and land-related issues. It focuses on the growing nexus between peace consolidation policies and renewed forms of land and natural resources exploitation, a relation that is encapsulated in the concept of postwar agrarian capitalism. It relates to the importance given by international aid professionals to economic development, but also to the expanding interest in land by global investors, a phenomenon exemplified, but not limited, to large land acquisitions labeled as “land grabbing”. As such, the PWACCOP project assesses the mechanisms of the convergence between peacebuilding and land policies, its effects on the transformation of agrarian societies and the risks of exclusion, social turmoil and new faces of violence.

These objectives will be addressed through a comparative qualitative analysis of Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire. A first approach will produce a sociological analysis of public policies and their international linkages. It will scrutinize the ideas, institutions, instruments and networks which are at play in the conjunction of land and peacebuilding policies. This analysis deals with hybrid networks in which domestic and international arenas, private and public spheres are intertwined. Through the combination of field research in international agencies’ headquarters and institutions based in the two countries, we will produce an assessment of the international circulation of “global prescriptions” and their transplantation in specific contexts.

A second approach will build on ethnographic research addressing the impact of public policies on social change in six different locations, three per country. We will analyze how exclusion of rural people from access to land can result from the combination of public policies and transformations brought about by a new security context. We will also study the consequences of these dynamics of exclusion on the production of public authority and on the definition of different degrees of belonging to the social body.

The project will be implemented over a period of 48 months by the PI, who is associate professor of political science, with the support of a research team composed of six members, including a post-doctoral fellow to be recruited for 12 months. The work program is based on preliminary research funded by a two years grant provided by the FMSH (Paris). Data will be mainly collected from field research in three international institutions active in both countries, in government, international agencies and NGOs based in Bogotá and Abidjan, and in six rural locations.

As such, the project is built on an original approach that articulates research questions seldom packaged together. The political economy of rural land in postwar settings will be analyzed in relation to the production of peacebuilding policies and the transformations in the global value of land, thus generating relevant conclusions for scholars working on diverse fields, such as peace studies, the political economy and sociology of agrarian change and development studies. It will of course be equally beneficial for contemporary African and Latin American studies. Consequently, we expect to disseminate our findings to the scientific community, but also to development/peacebuilding practitioners and civil societies, in accordance with our belief in the urgency of providing a better understanding of the place of land in the construction of durable peace.

This project’s ambition is to constitute a key step in the constitution of a research team built around a solid and innovative research agenda, linking institutions and researchers in Europe, Latin America and Africa. It is geared towards the pursuit of research objectives that correspond to the perimeter of ERC.