The contributions to this collection use the tools of agrarian political economy to explore the rapid growth and complex dynamics of large-scale land deals in recent years, with a special focus on the implications of big land deals for property and labour regimes, labour processes and structures of accumulation. The first part of this introductory essay examines the implications of this agrarian political economy perspective. First we explore the continuities and contrasts between historical and contemporary land grabs, before examining the core underlying debate around large-versus small-scale farming futures. Next, we unpack the diverse contexts and causes of land grabbing today, highlighting six overlapping mechanisms. The following section turns to assessing the crisis narratives that frame the justifications for land deals, and the flaws in the argument around there being excess, empty or idle land available. Next the paper turns to an examination of the impacts of land deals, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion at play, before looking at patterns of resistance and constructions of alternatives. The final section introduces the papers in the collection.

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Political reactions 'from below' to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of groundbreaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives 'from below' in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and critical agrarian studies. Future research on reactions 'from below' to land grabbing must include greater attention to gender and generational differences in both impacts and political agency.

Youth unemployment and underemployment are serious problems in most countries, and often more severe in rural than in urban areas. Small-scale agriculture is the developing world's single biggest source of employment, and with the necessary support it can offer a sustainable and productive alternative to the expansion of large-scale, capital-intensive, labour-displacing corporate farming. This, however, assumes a generation of young rural men and women who want to be small farmers, while mounting evidence suggests that young people are uninterested in farming or in rural futures. The emerging field of youth studies can help us understand young people's turn away from farming, pointing to: the deskilling of rural youth, and the downgrading of farming and rural life; the chronic neglect of small-scale agriculture and rural infrastructure; and the problems that young rural people increasingly have, even if they want to become farmers, in getting access to land while still young.

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Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in large-scale land deals, often from public lands to the hands of foreign or domestic investors. Popularly referred to as a 'global land grab', new land acquisitions are drawing upon, restructuring and challenging the nature of both governance and government. In the Introduction to this special issue, we argue for an analysis of land deals that draws upon the insights of political ecology, cultural politics and agrarian studies to illuminate the microprocesses of transaction and expropriation as well as the broader structural forces at play. We argue that 'the state' is often invoked as a key player in land grabbing but states never operate with one voice; rather we need to unbundle the state, to see government and governance as processes, people and relationships. To develop this approach, we focus on territory, sovereignty, authority and subjects not as static objects but as relationships produced in and through place, property, power and production. Understanding the dynamic nature of these relationships is critical to understanding the highly variable form and content of large-scale land deals in different settings around the world. The papers in this special issue help to develop this perspective and this Introduction highlights important areas of convergence among them.

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