Global Land Grab

Mayke Kaag is a social anthropologist and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. Within the African Studies Centre she is the convenor of a collaborative research group on Africa in the World: Rethinking Africa’s Global Connections.Annelies Zoomers is professor of international development studies (IDS) at Utrecht University and chair of LANDac. She has published extensively on sustainable livelihoods, land policies and the impact of privatization, tourism and international migration.

• Introduction: the global land grab hype - and why it is important to move beyond - Mayke Kaag and Annelies ZoomersPart I: Africa1. Modernizing the periphery: citizenship and Ethiopia's new agricultural investment policies - George Schoneveld and Maru Shete2. Large-scale land acquisitions in Tanzania: a critical analysis of practices and dynamics - Jumanne Abdallah, Linda Engström, Kjell Havnevik and Lennart Salomonsson3. Kenya and the 'global land grab: a view from below - Jacqueline M. Klopp and Odenda LumumbaPart II: Latin America4. The rapid expansion of genetically modified soy production into the Chaco region of Argentina - Lucia Goldfarb and Annelies Zoomers5. Transnational land investment in Costa Rica: tracing residential tourism and its implications for development - Femke van Noorloos6. Water grabbing in the Andean region: illustrative cases from Peru and Ecuador - Rutgerd Boelens, Antonio Gaybor and Jan HendriksPart III: Asia7. Land governance and oil palm development: examples from Riau Province, Indonesia - Ari Susanti and Suseno Budidarsono8. Vietnam in the debate on land grabbing: conversion of agricultural land for urban expansion and hydropower development - Pham Huu Ty, Nguyen Quang Phuc and Guus van Westen9. 'Land grabbing' in Cambodia: land rights in a post-conflict setting - Michelle McLinden Nuijen, Men Prachvuthy and Guus van Westen10. Beyond the Gulf State investment hype: the case of Indonesia and the Philippines - Gerben Nooteboom and Laurens Bakker11. Tracing the dragon's footsteps: a deconstruction of the discourse on China's foreign land investments - Peter Ho and Irna HofmanConclusion: beyond the global land grab hype - ways forward in research and action - Annelies Zoomers and Mayke Kaag

The Global Land Grab represents an important break from the earlier wave of land grabs studies in at least three interlinked ways: it looks beyond the "here and now land deals" by historicizing analysis to facilitate better understanding of longer term implications of the phenomenon; it contains grounded local-national studies; and it offers a comparative perspective across regions of the world.