Land grabs

Abstract

The contemporary ‘land grab’ terminology and debate was initiated by the civil society organization GRAIN in response to foreign land acquisitions in Latin America in 2008. The debate on land grabs discusses land conflicts as a result of large-scale (trans)national commercial land transactions, land speculation, and/or control grabbing. This chapter focuses primarily on the scholarly debate in critical agrarian studies over ‘land grabs’ and ‘land grabbing’. In addition to providing key definitions and explanations of the ‘land grabs’ and ‘land grabbing’ theme, it discusses central viewpoints and controversies, and outlines unresolved challenges, as well as implications from the viewpoint of critical agrarian studies.