The workshop is organized in collaboration with Ghent University, Research Group Communities-Comparisons-Connections Harvard University, The Weatherhead Initiative on Global History
“The transformation of the global countryside through the development of export-oriented agriculture and soil and labour exploitation has been one of the key processes in the emergence and consolidation of global capitalism during the past 500 years. This workshop wants to discuss how we can approach this momentous transition theoretically and methodologically through the central concept of the ‘commodity frontier’, a process of shifting incorporation of new supplies of land and labour for the global market. The workshop’s approach is bottom up and non-core perspective, conceptually and methodologically moving away from disaggregate geographical units towards integrating perspectives. The grand ambition to take up the global countryside as the central focus is thereby long overdue, both academically as well as politically.”
PROGRAMME
Friday 4 December
09.15-09.30 Welcome by Leo Lucassen, Research Director IISH
09.30-10.15 Presentation background and objective of the workshop by the workshop organisers (Sven Beckert Dept. of History, Harvard University, Ulbe Bosma, IISH, Eric Vanhaute, Dept. History Ghent University)
10.15-13.00 Capitalism, technology and frontiers
Marcel van der Linden (IISH), “Capitalism, commodification and labour. Historical explorations”
Rudy Rabbinge, (Sustainable Development & Food Security, Wageningen University) “Green revolutions, utopian perspectives and dystopian policies”
Jason W. Moore (The Fernand Braudel Center and Department of Sociology) and Alvin A. Camba Department of Sociology (The Johns Hopkins University), “From the Rise of the West to the Rise of the East: Commodity Frontiers in the Making and Unmaking of the Capitalist World-Ecology”
Joan Martinez Alier (Ecological Economics and Integrated Assessment Unit,
(ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)), “Commodity Frontiers in Political Ecology : extractive industries and ecological distribution conflicts”
13.00-14.00 Lunch (and for those who want a tour in the IISH archives)
14.00-15.45 Frontiers and social conflict
Kristina Dietz (Latein Amerika Institut, Freie Universität Berlin), “Contested frontiers: struggles over land in Latin America”
Hanne Cottyn, (Research group Communities Connections Comparisons, Ghent University, Belgium), “A frontier perspective towards the commodification of land. Incorporation and resistance in the Andes”
Marta Conde (Ecological Economics and Integrated Assessment Unit, (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)), “Activism Mobilising Science”
15.45-16.00 Tea
16.00-17.45 Moving frontiers and the global perspective
Robrecht Declecq (Independent Scholar), “Fur Farming as the New Frontier. Business, Science and the Professionalisation of Global Animal Farming 1880-1940”
Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff (Asian Development Research Institute, Ranchi), “Shifting Tobacco Frontier in British India: Theoretical and Methodological Implications”
Christian Lotz (Herder Institute Marburg), “Debating and transforming the timber frontier. Economic and ecological issues of the extension of the timber trade in the Baltic and North Sea regions, 1850–1914.”
18.30 Dinner
Saturday, 5 December
09.00-11.00 The mineral commodity frontiers
Bettina Engels (Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin) “Not all that glitters is gold: conflicts over the expansion of industrial gold mining in Burkina Faso”.
Rossana Barragan (IISH) “Silver, tin and lithium: five centuries of mining frontiers and their impact on society and environment in Bolivia”
Karin Hofmeester (IISH), “Diamond Mining Commodity Frontiers 1700-2000: Exploitation and After Life”
Boris Verbrugge (Radboud University Nijmegen), “Mineral production regimes and regulatory realities on the Compostela Valley mining frontier (Mindanao)”
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-13.00 Knowledge and Frontier making
Jean Stubbs (Institute of the Americas, University of London), “Towards a circuits of knowledge approach to the Hispanic Caribbean tobacco frontier”
Ratna Saptari (Anthropology Leiden University), “Reshaping Land and Labour Regimes on Tobacco Frontiers: Cases from North America and Asia”
Sabrina Joseph (College of Sustainability Sciences and Humanities, Zayed University), “Farming the Desert: Agricultural Development in an Oil Economy, the case of the United Arab Emirates 1930s-1990s”
Zehra Taşdemir Yaşin (Sociology, SUNY Binghamton), “The Making of Mosul Oil Frontier: Producing a Social-Ecology of Oil”
13.15-14.15 Lunch
14.15-15.15 Global markets, volatility and commodity frontier
Derek Byerlee (Stanford University, Georgetown University & Global Food Security), “Agrarian Structures to Provision Global Vegetable Oil and Oilseed Markets: A Long Run Perspective from the Tropical Frontier”
Ben White (International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague), “Revelatory crises on the commodity frontier: boom and bustin Indonesian export regimes”
15.15-15.30 Tea
15.30-16.15 Visualising & Mapping commodity frontiers
Jonathan Curry-Machado (Commodities of Empire), “Visualising commodity frontiers: advantages, problems and solutions in the application of comparative historical GIS methods”
And other interventions from workshop participants.
16.15-17.00 Final session and conclusions