Land, markets and neoliberal enclosure: an agrarian political economy perspective

Abstract Market-led agrarian reform is a part of neoliberal agrarian restructuring. It is premised on assumptions that fail to recognise the socially embedded character of land transfers. Agrarian political economy offers an understanding of the processes surrounding land transfers that emphasises social embeddedness. As a consequence of the specific characteristics of neoliberal enclosure market imperatives are now used to deepen capitalist social property relations in the South. Neoliberal enclosure is in turn facilitating the reconfiguration of a ‘bifurcated’ agrarian structure in which emergent export-oriented capitalist farming sits alongside peasant subsistence-oriented farming. This is part of an ongoing process of expanded commodification of both rural products and rural labour, the latter of which is seen in widespread semi-proletarianisation.