What is it about?
This paper considers how nature and race are produced in relation to one another, and what role such co-production plays in contemporary land grabbing in the Gambella province of Ethiopia.
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Why is it important?
So far, land grabbing literature has not seriously considered the role of racialization. This paper introduces a theoretical framework which highlights how land grabbing emerges through racialized forms of knowledge production. It also empirically maps how such knowledge production, in so much as it denies the agency of indigenous peoples and non-human natures, both enables and undermines large-scale agricultural investments.
Perspectives
This article emerged out of my fieldwork in Gambella. While I was there, it became apparent that many of the frameworks used for studying land grabbing were insufficient to capture how the racialization of indigenous peoples and the externalization of nature proceeded in relation to one another. Furthermore, it became clear to me that the literature needed to begin to address the question of failed land grabs.
Mr Bikrum S Gill
University of Victoria
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Can the river speak? Epistemological confrontation in the rise and fall of the land grab in Gambella, Ethiopia, Environment and Planning A Economy and Space, October 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0308518x15610243.
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