Irna Hofman
Irna Hofman is a Ph.D. researcher and research assistant at the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC) at Leiden University Institute for Area Studies. She holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University and is rural sociologist by training. Her work and interests are focused on agrarian and social change, rural sociology and transition economies, and her past research activities focused on agrarian reform in Uzbekistan. Her research in Tajikistan focuses on the politics of China’s agricultural land investments with particular regard to the dynamics at the local level. Email: i.hofman@hum.leidenuniv.nl |
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Research on Land-grabbing:
China’s ‘land grabs’ in Tajikistan: understanding rural politics and everyday resistance
The past five years have seen a rush for agricultural land worldwide. While there has been a lot of attention for foreign land investments in the ‘developing South’, the occurrences in Central Asia hitherto have not garnered much notice from global civil society and academia. Strikingly, the region is an ethnic and cultural hodgepodge, where land is a core aspect of people’s identity. By taking a political economy and political sociology approach, this research focuses on the politics of ‘land grabbing’ by zooming on two Chinese agricultural land investments in Tajikistan. Given the proximity of the politically volatile, yet mineral rich Central Asian region, there may be various motives underlying the Chinese investments. Rural Tajikistan bears an exceptional context to study rural politics and peasant resistance. In a setting of extreme poverty and land scarcity, land use rights are governed by a neopatrimonal regime that generates great uncertainties and furthers disparities in access to land. How the Chinese land investments intermingle in this context is a focal point of this study. The research will provide essential insights into whether and how Chinese agricultural land investments re-craft land-based institutions in Tajikistan, and how rural households cope with and respond to this agrarian change.
