Emerging perspectives
on Tanzania
In this space, guest contributions are published. A particular focus will be put on emerging perspectives in a fast-changing field, where sometimes assumptions and statements made in the past hold no longer true in the present; where just another crisis or government regulation has crashed the dreams of investors; where suddenly AG tech and not farmland is heralded as the most promising new “asset class”, or where methodological advances now suddenly allow us to account in more granular ways about trends and investment footprints in the ‘AG space’. It is also a chance for scholars to revisit their own (past) research in light of recent advances in debates and research findings. We will offer fellow researchers exposure on the platform, as well as graphic design services in case you would like to contribute figures or photos.
The contributions can also be found in the “Emerging perspectives” section in “Follow the Money“, as well as in “Frictions” and in “Aotearoa New Zealand“. Submissions are ordered chronologically.
September 25, 2024: Canceled Land Deals, International Arbitration, and the Limits of the Global Investment Regime – The Case of Tanzania
One of several “inspection checkpoint” signs erected on project site boundaries. Photo by author, June 2016 Drawing on years of ethnographic research that culminated in a recent monograph, Youjin B. Chung chronicles the trajectory of a large-scale agricultural investment in Tanzania, putting a particular focus on shifting state-capital relations and the role of international arbitration when capital and the state fall out with each other.
Couched in between are communities, which often suffer from the direct and slow violence emanating from large-scale agricultural investments. The often pro-capital workings of international arbitration endanger the sovereignty of states that such investments have targeted. Read more…