Conducive Magazine‘s new issue is on the topic of land and farming. We look at the power of possessing land and the power of entities with not enough land to posses it.
Why You Should Care About Land Grabs
The recent phenomenon of aggressive land takeovers, also known as land grabs, has resulted in the taking of enormous portions of land throughout Africa. In 2009 alone, nearly 60 million hectares of land was purchased or leased throughout the continent for the production and export of food, cut flowers, and agrofuel crops.
Liberalizing the Economy May Crush the Culture of One Small Island
Jeju is a volcanic island located half way between the Korean mainland and the western tip of Japan. It is an island set apart from the rest of Korea in many ways. When you ask a Korean about Jeju, most will say: Jeju people are different. There are many reasons for this, but two main reasons are particularly evident: It’s a volcanic island where many of the crops grown on the mainland do not fare well in the poor soil and lack of surface water. Secondly, its isolated location has formed a people fiercely independent and proud.
New Book Argues that Environmental Degradation is Slow Violence
Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press 2011) explores the slow, steady, and often ignored violence of socio-environmental degradation around the globe, and the writer-activists trying to bring it to light.
When students took to the streets in Rome last November to demonstrate against proposed budget cuts to the university system, they introduced something new to the vocabulary of protest. To defend themselves from police truncheons they carried improvised shields made of polystyrene, painted, on the front, with the names of classic works of literature and philosophy: Moby Dick, The Republic, Don Quixote, A Thousand Plateaus…. The practice caught on.
