Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, March 29-April 2, 2016 San Francisco

Land, Justice and Agrifood Movements: Trajectories and Tensions

Session organizers: K. Michelle Glowa (California Institute of Integral Studies), Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern (Food Studies, Syracuse University), and Antonio Roman-Alcalá (International Institute of Social Studies)

The politics of land access, tenure and ownership is emerging as a key nexus for human geographers and other scholars, as they critically engage with food movements in the US and Canadian contexts. This scholarship reflects the variety of ways that activists have paid increasing attention the politics of land in rural, urban, and peri-urban food projects (Barraclough 2009; Blomley 2003, 2006; Carlsson & Manning 2010; Eizenberg 2012; Morris 2006; Perry 2012; Ruhf 2013). Food movement actors take an array of positions on the appropriate uses, governance, and ownership of land in order to serve their particular purposes. These range from calls to reclaim the commons to increasing opportunities for private ownership of farmland.

We take this diversity of perspectives as fertile ground to discuss the practices, narratives, and institutions of land access and ownership that are emerging within agrifood movements. Harvey (1996, 2000) suggests we look to the relationship between the articulations of “militant particularisms” of individual communities’ struggles and the expression of global ambitions or broader movement positions and goals. It is the creative tension between the two that offers opportunities for utopian architects to “force mediating institutions and spatial structures to be as open as possible” (2000, 242). Looking to the discussions, debates, and unspoken tensions surrounding land access and ownership emerging in food movements, we ask: What are the trajectories of land politics for agrifood movements today? We seek papers engaged in topics including, but not limited to:

• Land Sovereignty

• Land Justice

• Farmland Preservation

• Community Garden Preservation or Evictions

• Race and Land Access

• Gentrification and Food Movements

• Land Grabs in the US and Canadian Context

• New Institutions of Land Access

• The Commons

• Transnational Links Among Land-Focused Agrifood Movements

Potential participants should send an email including presentation title, 250-word abstract, name, and institutional affiliation (if any) to 

Michelle Glowa ([log in to unmask]),

Antonio Roman-Alcalá ([log in to unmask]),

and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern ([log in to unmask]) 

by 5pm on Monday, October 12, 2015. 

Please include all information in the body of the email and attached in a word document. Include your last name in the tittle of the document. We will confirm participation in this session by Friday, October 23. NOTE: we will ask presenters to submit full draft papers several weeks before the conference.