GEOS2121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Land Grabbing, Social Relation, Fictitious Capital
23 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Land and Property
Issues and Concerns
➢ the food and agricultural organisation have demanded that there is a need to reorganise
agricultural production and reorganise life on land in order to double food production and
satisfy the demand of growing and emerging middle class economies particularly in Asia and
Latin America
➢ Far land has emerged as an attractive investment vehicle or international actors like
sovereign well funds and Australian private pension funds, superannuation funds. These are
called land rushes and have been around since mid 2000 and took off since financial crisis in
2008-09. since then the amount of land bought by foreign actors particularly financial actors
has increased. Financial actors argue that this kind of investment is needed to safeguard
against shortfalls in agricultural production in their own countries. Parts of Northern
Australia have become a hugely attractive investment location particularly for middle
Eastern investors, the argument is that it is to feed their insatiable demand for meat and
grain.
• New global regimes of finance have allowed these kind of investments and land grabs to take
place
• It is also the case that land is a particular kind of commodity a weird one, which means that
during this financial crisis period a lot of investors thought this was a very safe solid investment
vehicle.
• Importantly these land grabs really exemplify the major power difference between the global
north and global south where it is often poor countries e.g. Africa that have become the sight of
land grabs whilst developed north countries are the ones who buy the land. This mostly has been
happening in Sub Saharan Africa, and also happens in Australia and Canada. This process can
happen violently by the state or by the villager militaries but it can also happen by financial
mechanisms as well. But through this process workers of the land lose access to resources and
their livelihood is destroyed.
• This idea of land grabbing and reorganisation of life on the land raises some fundamental political
ecological questions.
o Who wins who losses, and why?
o What are the social and political and ecological drivers of these changes and
consequences?
Land
Land can be viewed as investment and producer of commodities and as a livelihood strategy that
generates other kinds of commodities.
• In Sydney the major way land is debated is around access to houses. Houses in Sydney are a
site of social production something that ensures your continual ability to live. But houses are
also sites for profits as well as sites for life and continual human flourishing. Land enables
your life and your livelihood not just a commodity for profit.
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• Land is not just a material thing but it is also a social relation, that means how we
understand land changes overtime, has different meanings for different people work, home,
object of taxation for the state.
• The specific about a land is that it is stuck in place it stays in situ and cannot be transported,
land is also a life giving thing.
Land in Theory
The two Karl's are the two major political theorist of land:
Polanyi - land is a fictitious commodity
• Commodities are things produced for sale explicitly in markets
• Land is not produced by man but it bought and sold in markets. It is, therefore, a strange kind
of fictitious commodity.
• When marketization of fictitious commodities go too far, there is a counter-movement to 're-
embed' the market through social and political institutions and regulations.
Commodities are things that are produced by humans for sale on the market. Fictitious commodity is
land labour and money these are not explicitly produced for sale on the market but come to be
traded as if they were produced for sale on the market. Human for example sell their labour time,
hence labour has become a fictitious commodity because it is exchanged as if it was for sale on the
market. Land is nature and simply exists not explicitly produced for sale on the market and is
therefore this strange/ fictitious kind of commodity.
The implication of this is that fictitious commodities are subject to the double movement of state or
civil society re-regulation so her argues that when land has been taken to its utopian limit i.e.
treated as such a pure commodity to be exchanged on the market it becomes subject to increasing
state of civil society regulation. Utopian exchange of land and double movement reaction to this as
this market is pushed to its limit to try and re-embed this commodity back into society. This is a
process of marketization of land and then a de-marketization and reregulation of land as it is bought
back into social political institutions and regulations.
Example of forestry in Oregon where old growth forests became subject to greater and greater
market forces and as this destroyed the natural environment and land there was a huge civil society
movement to reclaim that land as a social resource. Geographists called this the re-embedding of
land into social relations and double movement of reregulation.
Housing in Australia, where millennials will no longer be able to afford property, there may arise
some mass mobilisation against the property regime and reregulation of houses of
investment/livelihood
Marx through David Harvey - land is fictitious capital
• Capital produced only through human inputs (law of value): Marx talks about capital as value
that begets surplus value and accumulation takes place. Value in motion that creates more
value e.g. investments. He says that capital is only produced through labour/humans and
because land is natural and exists out there it is not produced through labour it is therefore
fictitious capital. Land does not become valuable through human input; therefore it is fictitious
capital. The reasoning is that land is not a real commodity, not produced exclusively for
market exchange. The result is according to this is that the commoditisation of land will always
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