Lorenza Arango Vásquez wins prestigious prize for her article on land grabs in Colombia

Published in 2024 in the Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS), 'Indigenous peoples, commons and the challenge of sustaining life amid capitalist land grabs' is described by the JPS an excellent example of empirically and theoretically rich research that brings together long-standing debates and emerging concerns around Indigenous rights, land dispossession and climate adaptation. 

Drawing on intensive field research with two Indigenous communities in Colombia, Vásquez critically examines assumptions that Indigenous environmental stewardship is key to addressing the climate crisis and that land tenure is central to ensuring this. She argues that recognition of Indigenous land rights, disembedded from broader political economy, is inadequate to building sustainable futures. 

Ultimately, Vasquez's paper powerfully emphasizes the need to situate Indigenous struggles for land and life within processes of capitalist development and pushes ongoing conversations about climate change in Critical Agrarian Studies to grapple with the realities of Indigenous livelihoods today.

Read the full article - 'Indigenous peoples, commons and the challenge of sustaining life amid capitalist land grabs'

What is the Krishna Bharadwaj and Eric Wolf Prize?

The Krishna Bharadwaj and Eric Wolf Prize is awarded biennially for an outstanding paper published in the Journal of Peasant Studies by a ‘young scholar’, defined as someone who either is a graduate student or has held a PhD degree for no more than four years when the paper is submitted to the journal. 

The Prize, which comes with an award of £1000, commemorates two long-standing and distinguished members of the JPS Editorial Advisory Board: the political economist Krishna Bharadwaj (1935–1992) and Eric Wolf (1923–1999). 

The Prize Committee consists of three members of the JPS community.