Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
| I am currently a PhD student at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. During 2001-2002, I worked as a researcher in agrarian and labour issues at Praxis in India. From 2003 to 2011, as the Head of the Land and Territory Research Area in the Institute of Rural and Agrarian Studies of Guatemala, I have been the (co-)author of a series of monographs on Guatemala’s and other Latin American countries´ changing-but-contested agrarian structures, a visiting professor in bachelors and post-graduate degrees in Guatemala and Spain, and a collaborator with several rural social movements. During 2011, I also worked as a consultant for the World Bank’s Evaluation Team of its Land Administration Projects in Guatemala. Email:altitumir@yahoo.es |
Research on Land-grabbing:
Disputed Meanings and Practices of Territorial Appropriation in Guatemala´s Reinforced Export-Oriented Plantation Model
My project revolves around my three years of field research about the political economy, ecology and sociology of the territorial re-structuring processes associated with the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations under the new flexible regime of agrarian capitalism in Guatemala, in the context of the converging global financial, energy, food and environmental crises. I intend to problematize my research outcomes within a broader literature review as well as to further analyse the collected empirical evidence and the different stakeholder’s discourses and institutional frameworks embedded within the following dynamics: How the political economy, ecology and sociology of the flexible regime of agrarian capitalism relates to the capacities to gain, control and maintain access to the land and the natural goods of indigenous-peasant families and communities throughout territories with expanding oil palm and sugarcane plantations. The elements fostering the (possible) diverse expressions of (social) agency and collective action of different groups of the former indigenous-peasant population at different levels, ranging from the household to the (inter)national arenas.
