Landing capital and assembling ‘investable land’ in the extractive and agricultural sectors

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 82; pp. 212 - 224
• Main Authors: Le Billon, Philippe, Sommerville, Melanie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-06-2017; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Accumulation; Agribusiness; Agricultural land; Agricultural management; Agriculture; Agronomy; Assemblage; Capital formation; Circuits; Coalescing; Commodities; Comparative studies; Extractive industries; Infrastructure; Integration; Investment; Investments; Land; Mining industry; Narration; Reforming; Agriculture; Assemblage; Investments; Extractive industries; Land
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.08.011

Over the last decade, shifting strategies of capital accumulation have deepened the integration of land and associated primary commodities into circuits of investment. More than merely an economic revaluation of land, such integration involves an iterative rearrangement of the social and natural processes determining land’s material and symbolic qualities. Highlighting these shifts through a comparative study of investment processes for large-scale agricultural and extractive projects, we posit investment processes as assemblages proceeding in the context of different ontologies, valuations, and uses of land, which coalesce and compete with one other in complex ways, producing new spaces and subjectivities. Such assembling, we suggest, notably involves a discursive component involving the narration of the need for investment, an institutional component reforming regulatory arrangements, and an operational component enrolling labour, infrastructure, and ancillary resources associated with agricultural and extractive production. After examining each of these components in turn, we conclude with a discussion of tensions and contradictions inherent in ‘opening’ lands for investment and the business of harnessing agricultural and extractive resources.