Call for communications and panels
INSTRUCTIONS TO SUBMIT COMMUNICATIONS AND PANELS
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Organization of the Congress sessions
The Congress is organized into panels distributed by subject into three conferences, compiled in the corresponding program. Each panel will have a coordinator.
Panel proposal
The Congress organizers propose a list of panels, each one with its own coordinator. Additional panels may also be suggested. The congress scientific committee will select the panels from the proposals received, according to the selection criteria specified below.
Each panel will have 2½ hours.
Individual paper proposal
All individual papers have to be allocated to one of the panels.
Paper proposals can be made together with the panels or independently.
Independent paper proposals will be approved by the scientific committee, which will assign them to the most appropriate panel, or create new panels to group together papers. In this case, the scientific committee will get in touch with the panellists and will request that they communicate with the panel’s coordinator before a particular deadline.
The organization recommends that each paper should last for a maximum of 20 minutes, reserving at least a half hour for debate.
Dates for the presentation of panel proposals and individual papers
Panel presentation deadline: 29 January 2010
Individual paper presentation (Abstract): 19 March 2010
Individual paper presentation deadline: 24 September 2010
PANEL SELECTION CRITERIA
. Its relevance to the theme of the Congress
. A clear, succinct presentation of the theme or debate.
. Its conceptual and theoretical suitability.
. Whether the submission requirements are met.
. Its appeal to academics with similar specialities, and capacity to attract the Congress audience.
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR PANEL PROPOSALS
. The panels must be proposed by their coordinator, specifying the corresponding narrator, unless the coordinator assumes this role, which will also have to be specified.
. The panel proposal can include the number of speakers or remain open, pending an answer from the individual paper request. The maximum number of speakers is five and the minimum is three; when a panel does not have the minimum number of speakers, the scientific commission will propose the reallocation of speakers or, if necessary, combine the panels. If a panel goes over the maximum number of speakers, the scientific committee will consider the possibility of reassigning some the papers, allocating special sessions to the panel or proposing new panels. When speakers are specified, the order of interventions will have to be indicated.
. The dissertations and presentations can be written in English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, or French.
The panel and dissertations must be proposed in the form indicated on this website. Applications that are incomplete or late will not be accepted (unless the scientific committee accepts the application). All addresses must be current and complete.
. Final acceptance will depend on full payment of the Congress registration fees.
. Possible changes to the panels and papers must be communicated to the Congress secretariat within the time periods indicated.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE PANEL COORDINATOR
. To obtain approval of the people proposed as participants.
. To organize the operation of the panels
. To select the paper proposals presented to him or her and to collaborate with the scientific committee with reassigning papers and restructuring the panels.
. Once the panels are approved, to notify all participants and ensure that their participation will be effective (which implies their enrolment in the Congress).
. To make sure that all participants are enrolled in the Congress.
. To communicate all changes in their session to the Congress secretariat in advance (10 november 2010)
PANELS PROPOSED TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
A meeting will be held for the paper presentations of the following panels:
- Economic development, land holding and poverty
Coordinators: Nuria Duperier, Gonzalo Ramírez de Haro
The panel concerning economic development, land holding and poverty will aim to:
- Analyse the extent to which agricultural reform processes have contributed to the reduction of rural poverty (and exclusion).
- Identify the factors explaining the different results obtained by agricultural reform initiatives. Special attention can be paid to the type of complementary measures (training, credit access…) which accompany these
- To analyse the “land reform” initiatives adopted recently (which in some countries attempt to halt and reverse the advances in land redistribution that had been made in the past) which in practice lead to an increase in the concentration of land ownership.
- Study the way in which the processes of deruralization taking place in African and Latin American societies are affecting the ownership and distribution of land.
2. Land reform and social movements
Coordinator: Víctor Bretón
The relationship between agricultural reform and the development of collective action organization platforms for rural populations is a remarkable subject that does not always receive the attention it deserves from researchers and analysts. The analysis will have to be examined by the panel from two perspectives:
- Firstly, a historical view, analysing the importance that the demands for sharing in agricultural were in accordance with the rural movements of the decades corresponding to classical “developmentalism” (the ‘60s and ‘70s).
- Secondly, with a current or contemporary nature in the sense of deepening the ascertainable relationships between, on one hand, the development of new organisational models (many of these revolve around ethnic identity and do not explicitly involve a class-consciousness type of discourse) and, on the other hand, the persistence of problems deriving from the unresolved problems of land concentration and other resources in the age of neoliberalism.
3. Reviewing the tragedy of the commons: the viability of community management
Coordinators: Albert Roca, Marina Padrão Temudo
In 1968, Garret Hardin wrote the famous article “The tragedy of the commons” which, regardless of his later efforts to avoid simplistic interpretations of that work, became a sacred text in neo-Malthusian conservation efforts and in neo-liberal interventions on land tenure. The main assumption underlying them maintains that common property resource management could be sustainable at low population densities but open access by growing populations and unrestricted demands over a finite resource by competitive individuals will lead to over-exploitation and land degradation. Therefore, only privatisation could assure sustainable use and investment for increasing productivity.
The sequence of events in many groups and societies has contradicted or qualified Hardin’s approach. Communal resource management has often proved to be much more resilient than expected — not in an atavistic sense, but in a utilitarian sense that they are ,meeting daily needs of local people — and extremely diverse. This resilience and diversity may lighten the general view of land reform and of local or native knowledge of resource management, with the understanding that this knowledge and land tenure are connected with local social structures and power relationships. The panel proposes a comparative and diachronic approach to the issue.
4. Land reform and food sovereignty: the new booms and their impact on the agriculture of the South.
Coordinator: Andreu Viola
Last year, several studies documented a re-emergence of the world hunger phenomenon. The land problem has historically and structurally been related with hunger, and land reform and food sovereignty are two inseparable goals.
During the past decade, some new variables have appeared, generating considerable controversy. Some examples we have proposed to analyse on this panel are as follows:
- The sale or rent of huge areas of agricultural land to foreign investors by several African and Latin American governments.
- The genetically engineered soya bean crop boom. Its sales mean a frantic increase in deforestation, land degradation, and pollution from agrochemical products. The social conflicts caused by an increasing concentration in the ownership of agricultural land and the massive invasion of native territories and country properties by agribusiness interests should also be highlighted.
- The rapid increase in the worldwide production of agrofuels, presenting new threats to food sovereignty and rural populations.
These situations mark out an interesting area for reflection and discussion, centring us on an impact analysis of these commercial booms concerning land ownership and management, agricultural relationships and the feeding of the local population, as well as increasing foreign interests and capital involved in the agriculture of the South, separated from the territory and foreign to its needs.
5. International law and indigenous territories
Coordinator: Monica Martínez
In 1989, the ILO approved the Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, and more recently, in 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The approval of these two legal mechanisms in an international context has marked a turning point in the agenda of indigenous groups and populations, autonomous communities, an agenda focusing on recognizing access to their lands, territories and natural resources. On the American and African continents, despite differences in the concepts “indigenous” and “autonomous”, a legal process is taking place with very diverse results, for which regulatory precedents are being created concerning the rights of indigenous peoples and demands to return territories to various groups.
On this panel we are interested in these processes and their effects on the local management of natural resources, as well as the alternative legal procedures.
6. Market-led vs non-market oriented agrarian (land) reforms
Coordinator: Carlos Oya and Saturnino “Jun” Borras
The diversity of policies and actions that are encompassed under the “land reform” banner is very extensive and, in different cultural and historical contexts, different responses and adaptations arise. A key factor is the role that the market plays (in this case especially the land market in the distribution of assets, in the form of ‘willing seller-willing buyer’ redistribution arrangements) in each one of the policies mentioned. Openly productivist approaches can be distinguished in general in which land reform is basically seen as an improvement mechanism in the efficiency of land use, and in other cases, the fundamental goal of reform is rather social and political, focused on equity, for which the market as a resource assignment is problematic if not contradictory. Transnational agribusiness can also adopt alternative mechanisms for land access, which do not interfere with established land property rights, as is the case with contract farming, for example. The panel will approach these and other related debates, giving special attention to the evidence accumulated concerning land reform processes (fundamentally concerning land redistribution) that have followed a market approach (willing seller-willing buyer’).
7. Rural and farm women of the south
Coordinators: Juana Moreno and Asli Ocal
For the last few decades the process of international trade liberalization, the privatization of agricultural production and the promotion of monocultures for export have been dismantling family agricultural production, increasing the dependence and vulnerability of farmers who are impoverished and very often destined to abandon agriculture.
These macrostructural processes are not gender-neutral. According to the FAO, the strength of patriarchal structures results in women making up 70% of the people considered as being in absolute poverty in the rural world.
The aim of this panel is to discover the new problems of rural women, interrelating the different spheres that affect their realities from a gender perspective. Considering this general objective, the following specific questions are presented:
- How do transformations in forms of agricultural production affect rural women? What strategies are there at individual and collective levels to show rural women in this context?
- To what extent is it a context that offers new opportunities, or is it a dynamic that, by contrast, reinforces inequality between the sexes.
- How is collective action concerning the situation of rural women organized?