Knowledge and Control in the Contemporary Land Rush: Making Local Land Legible and Corporate Power Applicable in Rural Sierra Leone

Abstract

Substantial media and academic attention has recently focused on changing patterns of land control in the 'Global South', wherein foreign governments and corporations seek to control land for food, fuel and feed production. Recent scholarship describes such projects as symptomatic of a broader liberalization of global governance. However, few studies investigate how such liberal governance is applied on the ground in host countries. This paper fills this need by examining one such case in Sierra Leone, and describing the various technologies of control deployed to make local land legible to the corporate eye and therefore manageable within the liberal model. As I show, such imported technologies are disrupting and displacing traditional modes of authority and allowing the company concerned to apply power and manage both the land and the local people. At the same time, however, these technologies generate frictions on the ground, creating dangerous tensions between the various actors in the local setting. I would like to thank the Faculty of Management at Radboud University Nijmegen for funding the 6 months of fieldwork on which this paper is based, and the three peer reviewers for extremely helpful comments. 6 6 6 4While this new literature therefore nuances the earlier caricatures, it nonetheless attests to the fact that 'a renewed land rush is indeed happening worldwide, albeit unevenly' (Edelman et al. , 1520. Many recent contributions, therefore, have analysed not stand-alone acquisitions, but the dynamics of the broader global 'land rush'. While earlier reports noted the targeting of weak states for land acquisition, for example, more recent scholarship describes how this very weakness is a product of global economic policy transitions (McMichael 2013; Verma 2014, 66), and scholars have emphasized the progressive weakening of the state in comparison to the strengthening influence of corporations and capital (Franco et al. , 1659 Sassen 2013, 43). Such scholars are arguing, in essence, that the new land deals are nested within changing global 'configurations of power' (Margulis et al. 2013, 1) and 'new transnational political struggles for authority and control' (ibid., 3). While each particular land deal must be seen as engaging with a unique arrangement of actors, products, markets, regulations and laws, each such arrangement is nonetheless patterned by the broader global configurations of power, authority, and control.The nested nature of such land deals highlights, therefore, the need to analyse both global patterns and local particularities. But while recent contributions do a great amount of the former, they do very little of the latter. Scoones et al. have recently noted that '[f]ew assess whether anything is happening on the ground, and most reports offer very few insights into overall impacts, either positive or negative ' (2013, 473). Oya describes most studies so far as 'abundant in anecdotal or unsystematic evidence', and as 'empirically hasty and methodologically prone to cut corners' (2013...

Polycentric governance in telecoupled resource systems

“…Unclear effects on biodiversity, water quality and quantity, and carbon stocks (Fielding et al 2015). Knoblauch et al 2014, Bürgi 2015, Fielding et al 2015, Yengoh et al 2015a,b, Bottazzi et al 2016, Marfurt et al 2016, Millar 2016a,b, SiLNoRF and BfA 2016). Main natural resources: landscape, water, soil, oil palms, vegetation, livestock, sugarcane, energy.…”

“…The analysis draws on publications from various research projects on the case (Knoblauch et al 2014, Bürgi 2015, Fielding et al 2015, Bottazzi et al 2016, Marfurt et al 2016, Mann 2016, Millar 2016a,b, Mann and Bürgi Bonanomi 2017), ABSL's environmental, social, and health impact assessment (Manley et al 2011), and reports by civil society organizations (Anane andAbiwu 2011, SiLNoRF andBfA 2016). A coauthor of this paper has led one of the multiyear research projects.…”

“…Impacts on livelihoods, varying between project-affected people and between indicators (access to natural resources, health, financial income, food security, infrastructure, extent of physical and economic displacement; Knoblauch et al 2014, Fielding et al 2015, Yengoh et al 2015a,b, Marfurt et al 2016, Millar 2016a. Reduced livelihood resilience due to loss of access to natural resources (e.g., oil palms), increased dependence on financial income and functioning local markets, dependence on one large-scale investment project, labor scarcity during growing and harvesting seasons, and reduced adaptability of newly formalized land rights (Fielding et al 2015, Marfurt et al 2016, Millar 2016a Economic downturn of project operations in 2015 (SiLNoRF and BfA 2016). Unclear effects on biodiversity, water quality and quantity, and carbon stocks (Fielding et al 2015).…”

Co‐opting Authority and Privatizing Force in Rural Africa: Ensuring Corporate Power over Land and People

“…Although many reports between about 2008 and 2011 describing negative impacts from land rush projects proved to be somewhat simplistic (Edelman, Oya, and Borras :1519; Millar :208), more nuanced scholarly publications have maintained a generally critical stance. These studies have since described such projects as instances of “water grabbing” (Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco ; Woodhouse and Ganho ), “green grabbing” (Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones ), biofuels expansion (Borras, Franco, and Wang ; Holleman ; Mol ), the commodification or financialization of land (Gunnoe ; Makki ; Verma ), and corporate accumulation (Geisler and Makki ; White et al ).…”

“…Much attention has recently focused on the contemporary global “land rush.” This term refers to the substantial increase in land leases and purchases in the Global South by corporations and states of the Global North, either for speculation or for the purpose of producing food, fuel, and feed (Millar ). The case examined here is an example of the latter, in that a corporation sought to produce ethanol in rural Sierra Leone for export to Europe.…”