Under the guise of 'development', a globalizing capitalism has continued to cause poverty through dispossession and the exploitation of labour across the Global South. This process has been met with varied forms of rural resistance by local movements of displaced farm workers, small and landless (women) peasants, and indigenous peoples in South and East Asia, the Pacific and Africa, who are resisting the forced appropriation of their land, the exploitation of labour and the destruction of their ecosystems and ways of life. In this provocative new collection, engaged scholars and activists combine grounded case studies with both Marxist and anti-colonial analyses, suggesting that the developmental project is a continuation of the colonial project. The authors then demonstrate the ways in which these local struggles have attempted to resist colonization and dispossession in the rural belt, thereby contributing essential movement-relevant knowledge on these experiences in the Global South. A vital addition to the fields of critical development studies, political-sociology, agrarian studies and the anthropology of resistance, this book addresses academics and analysts who have either minimized or overlooked local resistances to colonial capital, especially in the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions.

Under the guise of 'development', a globalizing capitalism has continued to cause poverty through dispossession and the exploitation of labour across the Global South. This process has been met with varied forms of rural resistance by local movements of displaced farm workers, small and landless (women) peasants, and indigenous peoples in South and East Asia, the Pacific and Africa, who are resisting the forced appropriation of their land, the exploitation of labour and the destruction of their ecosystems and ways of life. In this provocative new collection, engaged scholars and activists combine grounded case studies with both Marxist and anti-colonial analyses, suggesting that the developmental project is a continuation of the colonial project. The authors then demonstrate the ways in which these local struggles have attempted to resist colonization and dispossession in the rural belt, thereby contributing essential movement-relevant knowledge on these experiences in the Global South. A vital addition to the fields of critical development studies, political-sociology, agrarian studies and the anthropology of resistance, this book addresses academics and analysts who have either minimized or overlooked local resistances to colonial capital, especially in the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions.

Offers a new reading of the history of the colonization of North America and the dispossession of its indigenous peoples.

Development studies is in a state of flux. A new generation of scholars has come to reject what was once regarded as accepted wisdom, and increasingly regard development and globalization as part of a continuum with colonialism, premised on the same reductionist assumption that progress and growth are objective facts that can be fostered, measured, assessed and controlled. Drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives and approaches, this book explores the ways in which social movements in the Global South are rejecting Western-centric notions of development and modernization, as well as creating their own alternatives. By assessing development theories from the perspective of subaltern groups and movements, the contributors posit a new notion of development ‘from below’, one in which these movements provide new ways of imagining social transformation, and a way out of the ‘developmental dead end’ that has so far characterized post-development approaches. Beyond Colonialism, Development and Globalization therefore represents a radical break with the prevailing narrative of modernization, and points to a bold new direction for development studies.

This volume takes a fresh look at the land question in India. Instead of re-engaging in the rich transition debate in which the transformation of agriculture is seen as a necessary historical step to usher in dynamic capitalist (or socialist) development, this collection critically examines the centrality of land in contemporary development discourse in India. Consequently, the focus is on the role of the state in pushing a process of dispossession of peasants through direct expropriation for developmental purposes such as acquisition of land by (local) states for infrastructure development and to support accumulation strategies of private business through industrialization. Land in India is sought for non-agricultural purposes such as purchasing land to reduce risk and real estate development. Land is also central to tribal communities (adivasis), whose livelihoods depend on it and on a moral economy that is independent of any price-driven markets. Adivasis tend to hold on to such property, not as individual owners for profit, but for collective security and to protect a way of life. Thus land, notwithstanding its role in the accumulation process, has been, and continues to be, a turbulent arena in which classes, castes, and communities are in conflict with each other, with the state, and with capital, jockeying to determine the terms and conditions of land transactions or their prevention, through both market and non-market mechanisms. The volume goes beyond the traditional political economy of the agrarian transition question, and deals with, inter alia, distributional conflicts arising from acquisition of land by the state for capital accumulation on the one hand and its commodification on the other. It provides new analytical insights into the land acquisition processes, their legal-institutional and ethical implications, and the multifaceted regional diversity of acquisition experiences in India.

Drawing on Indigenous peoples' struggles against settler colonialism, Theft Is Property! reconstructs the concept of dispossession as a means of explaining how shifting configurations of law, property, race, and rights have functioned as modes of governance, both historically and in the present. Through close analysis of arguments by Indigenous scholars and activists from the nineteenth century to the present, Robert Nichols argues that dispossession has come to name a unique recursive process whereby systematic theft is the mechanism by which property relations are generated. In so doing, Nichols also brings long-standing debates in anarchist, Black radical, feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial thought into direct conversation with the frequently overlooked intellectual contributions of Indigenous peoples.

The growth and spread of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at local and international levels has attracted considerable interest and attention from policy-makers, development practitioners, academics and activists around the world. But how has this phenomenon impacted on struggles for social and environmental justice? How has it challenged - or reinforced - the forces of capitalism and colonialism? And what political, economic, social and cultural interests does this serve? NGOization - the professionalization and institutionalization of social action - has long been a hotly contested issue in grassroots social movements and communities of resistance. This book pulls together for the first time unique perspectives of social struggles and critically engaged scholars from a wide range of geographical and political contexts to offer insights into the tensions and challenges of the NGO model, while considering the feasibility of alternatives.