One of the alarming features of the intersection of the world economic crisis with the global food and energy crises has been the tidal wave of large-scale land acquisitions it has unleashed. By enclosing the village commons and extinguishing the customary rights of smallholders, these land grabs are accelerating trends toward large-scale industrial farming and tenure rearrangements favoring international agribusiness. This article situates these developments in the social space of Ethiopia and a specific historical context of transformations in state and property relations. By critically analyzing the designation of the commons as empty or underutilized spaces awaiting redemptive development, it highlights the ways in which the legitimizing claims of terra nullius efface the complex ecologies and distinctive spatial dynamics of social reproduction in the zones designated for enclosures.
This article spells out the significance for Development Theory of the idea of Buneven and combined development.^It argues that the impasse that afflicted materialist theories of international capitalist development in the 1980s was rooted in two fundamental problems: a misreading of Marx's categories as directly historical; and the lack of an orienting method for deploying those categories to interpret a world of multiple and interacting societies. After reviewing the impact of these problems on the evolution of the main postwar approaches to development, the article undertakes the task of reconstruction in three steps. First, it sets out Marx's understanding of capitalist modernity, showing how this calls for but does not explicitly provide a historical conceptualization of capitalist development. Second, it shows how Trotsky's idea of Buneven and combined development^offers such a conceptualization, and how it thereby historicizes the phenomenon of development itself. Finally, it considers the limits of Trotsky's own formulation of the idea, and suggests how a version released from these limits could better explain the complex spatio-temporality of capitalist development and constructively engage the most consequential challenges posed by ascendant cultural approaches in the field.
This article attempts to situate the transition to statehood in Eritrea in the context of its time, culture, and political history. It argues that the transition is profoundly shaped by the international conjuncture within which it unfolds, as well as by the social and political experiences of the nationalist movements. The economic, social, and political aspects of the transition are highlighted with a view to illuminating their overall trajectory and complex dynamics. The establishment of national sovereignty, it is argued, does not entail some unproblematic process of national integration, but only creates a nationally defined public space through which the multi‐faceted issues of post‐independence Eritrea will be contested. State formation is therefore understood as a continuation of the nation‐making process which cannot be reified as a finished project. The article concludes by examining the contradictory but pregnant possibilities for establishing a democratic political and social order.
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