Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD)
For this specialization we advise you to register in the Major Agrarian and Environmental Studies (AES), but other Majors also give access to this specialization.
On this page
The ARD Specialization provides students with solid grounding in the study of problems related to agrarian and rural transformation and development. The Specialization focuses on analytical tools that are key to understanding global burning issues such as biofuels, land grabbing and dispossession and food crisis seen from a wider perspective of rural and rural-urban links, and across the Global South-North divides to include emerging international actors such as BRICS. ARD’s focus is on the social and political processes around the dynamics of agrarian change, and emerging popular alternatives such as food sovereignty and agroecology and the (trans)national agrarian and food movements that spearhead these. ARD uses political economy and political sociology analytical tools, classic and recent, to understand the impact of capitalist development on agrarian structures and how (non-)state actors compete to control this process. It offers a balance between theory, policy and practice.
Target group
This ARD Specialization targets professionals, students and activists who have worked on or are interested in rural development issues. They can be recent graduates, or come from international development agencies, national governments, donor organizations, NGOs, social movements, trade unions, and from wider constituencies such as journalists, community-based workers, and agrarian and food movement activists.
Agriculture and Rural Development Courses
Agricultural and Rural Development Policy: Interventions and Institutions
Politics of Agrarian Transformation
Indicative readings
Bernstein, Henry (2010). Class dynamics of agrarian change. Halifax: Fernwood; US: Kumarian Press. Book 1 in the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) Book Series.
Borras, Saturnino Jr., Marc Edelman and Cristobal Kay, guest editors (2008). Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization, Journal of Agrarian Change, special double issue, 8(2 & 3).
McMichael, Philip and Ian Scoones, eds. (2010). Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change. Journal of Peasant Studies special issue, 37(4).
Hall, Ruth, Ben White and Wendy Wolford, eds. (2012). The new enclosures: critical perspectives on corporate land deals. Journal of Peasant Studies, special double issue, 39(3&4), May 2012.
Spoor, M. (2009), The Political Economy of Rural Livelihoods in Transition Economies: Land, peasants and rural poverty in transition, London and New York: Routledge.
Teaching staff
 | |
 |
Saturnino (‘Jun’) M. Borras Jr. Is Associate Professor at ISS, Adjunct Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, Fellow of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and Food First. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies. He coordinates the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) and co-coordinates the global network of researchers around land grabbing, the Land Deal Politics Initiatives (LDPI). Research interests include: land grabbing, biofuels, food politics/movement and food sovereignty, forest policy, (inter)national state-society relations around rural development, and (trans)national agrarian movements. Email: borras@iss.nl.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/borras
| |
 |
Carol Hunsberger is Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow in ISS for two years, beginning May 2012. She will carry out research (in collaboration with Dr. Borras) on the links between biofuels, land use change and the use of technology in land mapping and land use classification. She received her PhD in Geography and Political Economy from Carleton University, Canada, where her research examined the spread of the biofuel crop Jatropha curcas to small-scale farmers in Kenya. Carol began her academic path in environmental sciences and enjoys trying to bridge the gap between natural and social scientists. Recently she was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Land chapter of UNEP’s fifth Global Environment Outlook, to be launched in June 2012. Email: hunsberger@iss.nl
| |
 |
Cristóbal Kay is Emeritus Professor of Rural Development and Development Studies at ISS. He is Professorial Research Associate of the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His research interests are in the fields of rural development and development theory, with particular reference to Latin America. He has published several books, about 40 book chapters and over 85 articles in a variety of professional journals. His books include: Akram Lodhi and Kay (2009, Routledge) Peasants and Globalization, and Borras, Edelman and Kay (2008, Wiley-Blackwell) Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change. Email: kay@iss.nl.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/kay
| |
 |
Max Spoor is Professor of Development Studies (in particular regarding economies in transition), Visiting Professor at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies, and Guest Professor at the Nanjing Agricultural University in China. His research is focused on Asian transition economies such as Vietnam, China, and the countries in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly regarding rural and environmental issues, poverty, and inequality, while he continues to have a research interest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Email: spoor@iss.nl
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/spoor
| |
 |
Wang Chunyu is China Scholarship Council (CSC) Post-Doctoral Fellow in ISS for one year, 2011-2012. She received her PhD from China Agricultural University in Beijing. She is currently a faculty member of the College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD) of China Agricultural University in Beijing. In collaboration with Dr. Borras, she is carrying out research on land policies and land grabbing, and the rise of BRICS (specifically China) and its implications on agrarian transformations in various parts of the world, but specifically Southeast Asia. Email: wang@iss.nl
| |
 |
Ben White (Ph.D Anthropology, Columbia University 1976) is Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies. He has published widely on agrarian change and the anthropology and history of childhood and youth, mainly in Indonesia. He was for many years Chair of the ISS’ PhD Programme and Chair of the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary journal Development & Change. He is currently active in the Land Deals Politics Initiative (www.iss.nl/ldpi). Email: white@iss.nl
| |
 |
Sharmini Bisessar-Selvarajah is originally from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She holds an MBA in Management and Marketing, and a professional certificate in Total Quality Management. Sharmini joined ISS in 1998 and in 1999; she joined OEA and the Department of Rural Development, Environment and Population Studies. Since 2010, she is the staff group administrator for this department. She is also the programme administrator for the following specializations: Social Policy Development (SPD), short courses and refresher courses. Besides this she also manages the Bangladesh Water Development course. In addition, she is the management assistant of Initiative Critical Agrarian Studies.Email: bisessar@iss.nl.
| |
 |
Nalini Kramer-Harnam is the Programme Administrator for AES specializations in Agricultural and Rural Development (ARD) and Environment and Sustainable Development (ESD). She was born in Suriname and has lived in The Netherlands since 1977. She has worked at ISS since 1999, beginning with the Admissions Office. She has always enjoyed working with children, and has diplomas in childcare and secretarial courses. During the past 7 years, she has taken several courses in Ayurveda health system (Ayurvedic Technician, Ayurvedic Food and Nutrition, Ayurvedic Massage Therapist). Her Hobbies include Indian Kuchipudi dance. Email: harnam@iss.nl.
Agriculture and Rural Development Courses
Politics of Agrarian Transformation
The course is designed both for ARD participants and for others whose research interests focus on rural and rural-related development issues. The course aims to strengthen your capacity for critical analysis of the dynamics of social and political processes of change in rural societies, specifically on how agrarian change shapes, and is reshaped by, the distribution of power and character of power relations within and between state and society. You will become familiar with key theoretical literature on the politics (‘who gets what, why and how’) of agrarian transformations, with an emphasis on dynamic structures generating poverty, inequality and distribution of power within the state and in society on the one hand, and how politics in turn transform these agrarian structures on the other hand. This course will complement previous ARD/ESD introductory, theoretical and policy-oriented courses. On completion of the course you will have gained confidence in the critical analysis of the politics of agrarian transformations seen from the inter-connected local, national and international levels, including the identification and use of appropriate conceptual frames for your own research.
Rural economies are both growing and stagnant, becoming relatively less agricultural (‘de-agrarianisation’), less self-contained (‘globalization’), less static (social economic differentiation and geographical mobility). While the central state remains a key actor in development processes, its role has been transformed during the past decades in a process marked by a ‘triple squeeze’ where its powers are being reconfigured: ‘from above’ through globalization, ‘from below’ through decentralization, and ‘from the sides’ through privatization of many of its traditional functions and tasks. Moreover rural politics have been different during the past two decades or so than the previous ones in so many ways, including: absence of rural-based revolutionary movements on the one hand, and the rise of contemporary (trans)national agrarian movements on the other.
These processes affirm old and generate new agrarian questions, and require old and new critical analytical approaches to understand them. But the terms, conditions, mechanisms, character, pace, direction and orientation of agrarian change do not exist in a vacuum: these are politically contested by key actors within and between state and society aimed at controlling and influencing the processes of change. Hence to a large extent, these change processes are political and are embedded within pre-existing distribution of political power and power relations. The key is to understand how these two realms are so inter-linked and how they reshape one another.
