Chris Huggins
| Chris Huggins specializes in the political economy of land and agricultural reform, particularly the East and Central Africa, where he lived from 1998-2007. He is co-author (with Scott Leckie) of Conflict and Housing, Land, and Property Rights: A Handbook on Issues, Frameworks, and Solutions (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is currently a PhD Candidate in Geography (specialization in political Economy) at Carleton University, Ottawa. Email: cdhuggins@gmail.com |
Research on Land-grabbing:
Consolidating land, consolidating power: What future for smallholder farming in Rwanda’s ‘Green Revolution’?
Rwandan farmers areexperiencing simultaneous reforms in the land and agricultural sector. The objectives of these reforms encompass increased production, and also consolidation of land use and marketing options and a profound shift in farming practices towards export-oriented models. The government wants only half the population (from the current 85%) to be engaged in agriculture by 2020, raising questions about the resulting ‘surplus population’. Foreign agricultural investment is one part of this vision of ‘modernisation’, while land accumulation by Rwandan urban elites also drives rural change. Concentration of land holdings by foreign corporations or Rwandan elites should be understood as part of a broader reconfiguration of access to credit and inputs, technologies of coercion and socio-economic control. To this end, fieldwork was conducted in 2011 in two Districts, with a focus on the role of cooperatives in the institutional framework of the agricultural reform and household-level impacts and counter-strategies. Scholarly influences include James Scott, Michel Foucault and Mark Duffield.
