Max Spoor
Biographic Data
| ID | 102710 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Max Spoor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Max |
| FAMILY NAME | Spoor |
| SIGNATURE | SPOOR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Instituto de Estudios Sociales |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 641 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Hydro-Authoritarianism
Years of Rural Development in post-Soviet Central Asia
To show that post-Soviet rural development in Central Asia has been confronted with sustained inequalities, three particular factors are analysed in this paper have being viewed as fundamental in influencing national and rural development. Firstly, most countries have based their growth models on economic nationalism (not only creating borders and national institutions, but also choosing inward- looking strategies), while leaning one-sidedly on t…
The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields.
Post-socialist smallholders
nThe majority of the world’s smallholders live in countries that experience(d) socialism, but they largely remain invisible in agrarian studies. This special issue puts the spotlight on postsocialist smallholders, asking whether, and how, they (1) fulfil important functions in society; (2) engage in resistance (against the state or corporate actors); and (3) constitute an alternative to the industrial agri-food system. We find that post-socialist…
Beyond the “special period”
When Cuba’s trade-based food security strategy was threatened by the collapse of the socialist trading block in 1989–1991, the popular response of small and irregular farmers proved vital in providing a minimum food basket during the ensuing crisis. In 2008, a large-scale land reform sought to expand this development towards food sovereignty. We evaluate the reform impacts, finding that after an initial surge in 2009–2010, food production and lan…
Climate change mitigation, land grabbing and conflict
Recent research has highlighted the conflict potential of both land deals and climate change mitigation projects, but generally the two phenomena are studied separately and the focus is limited to discrete cases of displacement or contested claims. We argue that research with a broader “landscape” perspective is needed to better understand the complex social, ecological and institutional interactions taking place in sites of land-based climate ch…
Land tenure (in)security and crop-tree intercropping in rural Xinjiang, China
Quiet Food Sovereignty’ as Food Sovereignty without a Movement? Insights from Post-socialist Russia
What does food sovereignty look like in settings where rural social movements are weak or non-existent, such as in countries with post-socialist, semi-authoritarian regimes? Focusing on Russia, we present a divergent form of food sovereignty. Building on the concept of ‘quiet sustainability’, we present a dispersed, muted, but clearly bottom-up variant we term ‘quiet food sovereignty’. In the latter, the role of the very productive smallholdings …
The politics of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia
This article explores the relationship between federal and regional state elites’ land authority and corporate elites, and how this intersects with the politics of subaltern villagers in the context of ongoing land acquisitions in Ethiopia. In the borderland region of Benishangul-Gumuz, the central state is concerned with the control of territory and people and cannot, it is argued, effectively devolve authority to the regional state. Competition…
Is Russia the Emerging Global ‘Breadbasket’? Re-cultivation, Agroholdings and Grain Production
textabstractIts rise to the top group of global wheat exporters, the abundance of abandoned land, assumed yield gaps and the apparent ‘success’ of agroholdings, have nurtured expectations of Russia becoming a global ‘breadbasket’. It is argued here that becoming a global breadbasket is hindered by substantial costs of re-cultivation abandoned land, management and financial problems of megafarms and agroholdings, lack of infrastructure for exports…
Multidimensional Social Exclusion and the ‘Rural‐Urban Divide’ in E astern E urope and C entral A sia
Rural areas in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are often excluded from the fruits of economic growth. In this paper it is argued that this exclusion goes beyond the mere ‘rural‐urban divide’ caused by unequal income distribution. Social exclusion, measured by three dimensions, exclusion from economic life, exclusion from social services, and exclusion from civic life and social networks, is captured by an innovative mu…
Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean
Land grabbing has gained momentum in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade. The phenomenon has taken different forms and character as compared to processes that occur in other regions of the world, especially Africa. It puts into question some of the assumptions in the emerging literature on land grabbing, suggesting these are too food-centered/too food crisis-centered, too land-centred, too centred on new global food regime play…
Oligarchs, megafarms and land reserves
This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of 'investor' countries, nor in the category of 'target' countries. Russia has large 'land reserves', since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or e…
Agrarian reform and transition
During the past two decades agrarian ('land and farm') reforms have been widespread in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), following earlier ones in Asia (China and Vietnam). However, independent family farms did not become the predominant sector in most of Eastern Europe. A new dual (or bi-modal) agrarian structure emerged, consisting of large farm enterprises (with much less social functions than t…
Land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia
Land grabbing’ in Africa by China, and other populous, high-income Asian countries such as South Korea, has received considerable attention, while land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia has gone largely unnoticed. However, as this article shows, foreign state and private companies are also acquiring vast areas of farmland in this region. The article first discusses the factors that make post-Soviet Eurasia such an attractive region for internationa…
Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development
Part I 1. Follow the Water Murat Arsel and Max Spoor Part II: Transformation Of Water Regimes 2. Water, War And Reconstruction Irrigation Management In The Kunduz Region, Afghanistan Iskandar Abdullayev, Katja Mielke, Peter P. Mollinga, Jan Monsees, Conrad Schetter, Usman Shah, and Bernie Ter Steege 3. Political Ecology Of Marshland Restoration In Iraq Joshua Ellis and Murat Arsel 4. Wells, Water Rights and Sustainability: New Politics And Practi…
Contesting Rural Resources
The most recent land reform in Uzbekistan, in which Large Farm Enterprises (LFEs) were split into medium-sized fermer enterprises, left, alongside the country's overwhelming majority of small dekhan peasants, continued strong state intervention in agrarian production. Three 'forms' (rather than 'modes') of production emerged: (1) state-ordered production of cotton and wheat; (2) commercial production, in particular of rice; and (3) household prod…
Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies
Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict
Restructuring Postponed? Large Russian Farm Enterprises 'Coping with the Market
The continued existence and predominance of large farm enterprises (LFEs) in Russian agriculture during the transition to a market economy is analysed using theories of transaction costs, coordination mechanisms and networks. A comparative analysis is presented of farm restructuring in two, highly contrasting survey regions. That analysis shows that LFEs have undertaken only partial restructuring, which has not lead to radical increases in output…
Policy Regimes and Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean During the Last Three Decades
In a review of the policy regimes and agricultural output performance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the past three decades, the linear sequence of pre-reform, crisis and reform, and post-reform recovery is qualified, focusing on a sample of nine LAC countries. The sector did quite well during the ISI policy regime, criticized for its price discrimination, and does not show the assumed characteristics of the 'lost decade' during …
The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union
(2001). The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 885-901
The Aral Sea Basin Crisis
The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, e…
Mongolia
THE RELATIVELY SHORT TIME SPAN before Mongolia resumed positive economic growth in its transition to a market economy has been attributed to a successful and rapidly implemented privatisation and market liberalisation programme. Since 1990, when the transition to a market economy began in Mongolia, a great number of economic and political reforms have indeed been undertaken. Compared with most of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, which g…
Liberalization of grain markets in Nicaragua From market substitution to state minimalism
Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean
Land grabbing has gained momentum in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade. The phenomenon has taken different forms and character as compared to processes that occur in other regions of the world, especially Africa. It puts into question some of the assumptions in the emerging literature on land grabbing, suggesting these are too food-centered/too food crisis-centered, too land-centred, too centred on new global food regime play…
Land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia
Land grabbing’ in Africa by China, and other populous, high-income Asian countries such as South Korea, has received considerable attention, while land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia has gone largely unnoticed. However, as this article shows, foreign state and private companies are also acquiring vast areas of farmland in this region. The article first discusses the factors that make post-Soviet Eurasia such an attractive region for internationa…
Oligarchs, megafarms and land reserves
This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of 'investor' countries, nor in the category of 'target' countries. Russia has large 'land reserves', since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or e…
Quiet Food Sovereignty’ as Food Sovereignty without a Movement? Insights from Post-socialist Russia
What does food sovereignty look like in settings where rural social movements are weak or non-existent, such as in countries with post-socialist, semi-authoritarian regimes? Focusing on Russia, we present a divergent form of food sovereignty. Building on the concept of ‘quiet sustainability’, we present a dispersed, muted, but clearly bottom-up variant we term ‘quiet food sovereignty’. In the latter, the role of the very productive smallholdings …
Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies
Climate change mitigation, land grabbing and conflict
Recent research has highlighted the conflict potential of both land deals and climate change mitigation projects, but generally the two phenomena are studied separately and the focus is limited to discrete cases of displacement or contested claims. We argue that research with a broader “landscape” perspective is needed to better understand the complex social, ecological and institutional interactions taking place in sites of land-based climate ch…
Contesting Rural Resources
The most recent land reform in Uzbekistan, in which Large Farm Enterprises (LFEs) were split into medium-sized fermer enterprises, left, alongside the country's overwhelming majority of small dekhan peasants, continued strong state intervention in agrarian production. Three 'forms' (rather than 'modes') of production emerged: (1) state-ordered production of cotton and wheat; (2) commercial production, in particular of rice; and (3) household prod…
Restructuring Postponed? Large Russian Farm Enterprises 'Coping with the Market
The continued existence and predominance of large farm enterprises (LFEs) in Russian agriculture during the transition to a market economy is analysed using theories of transaction costs, coordination mechanisms and networks. A comparative analysis is presented of farm restructuring in two, highly contrasting survey regions. That analysis shows that LFEs have undertaken only partial restructuring, which has not lead to radical increases in output…
Agrarian reform and transition
During the past two decades agrarian ('land and farm') reforms have been widespread in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), following earlier ones in Asia (China and Vietnam). However, independent family farms did not become the predominant sector in most of Eastern Europe. A new dual (or bi-modal) agrarian structure emerged, consisting of large farm enterprises (with much less social functions than t…
The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union
(2001). The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 885-901
Is Russia the Emerging Global ‘Breadbasket’? Re-cultivation, Agroholdings and Grain Production
textabstractIts rise to the top group of global wheat exporters, the abundance of abandoned land, assumed yield gaps and the apparent ‘success’ of agroholdings, have nurtured expectations of Russia becoming a global ‘breadbasket’. It is argued here that becoming a global breadbasket is hindered by substantial costs of re-cultivation abandoned land, management and financial problems of megafarms and agroholdings, lack of infrastructure for exports…
Multidimensional Social Exclusion and the ‘Rural‐Urban Divide’ in E astern E urope and C entral A sia
Rural areas in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are often excluded from the fruits of economic growth. In this paper it is argued that this exclusion goes beyond the mere ‘rural‐urban divide’ caused by unequal income distribution. Social exclusion, measured by three dimensions, exclusion from economic life, exclusion from social services, and exclusion from civic life and social networks, is captured by an innovative mu…
Transition to Market Economies in Former Soviet Central Asia
The politics of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia
This article explores the relationship between federal and regional state elites’ land authority and corporate elites, and how this intersects with the politics of subaltern villagers in the context of ongoing land acquisitions in Ethiopia. In the borderland region of Benishangul-Gumuz, the central state is concerned with the control of territory and people and cannot, it is argued, effectively devolve authority to the regional state. Competition…
Land tenure (in)security and crop-tree intercropping in rural Xinjiang, China
Agrarian transition in former Soviet Central Asia
While analysing in detail the agrarian transition that is taking place in two former Soviet Central Asian republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (concentrating on agrarian reform, deregulation and financial institutions), the crude classifications that are normally used as framework, such as 'slow' versus 'fast' reforms or 'gradualism' versus 'shock-therapy' are seen as not very useful. These transitions are highly complex and diverse, and therefor…
Beyond the “special period”
When Cuba’s trade-based food security strategy was threatened by the collapse of the socialist trading block in 1989–1991, the popular response of small and irregular farmers proved vital in providing a minimum food basket during the ensuing crisis. In 2008, a large-scale land reform sought to expand this development towards food sovereignty. We evaluate the reform impacts, finding that after an initial surge in 2009–2010, food production and lan…
Policy Regimes and Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean During the Last Three Decades
In a review of the policy regimes and agricultural output performance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the past three decades, the linear sequence of pre-reform, crisis and reform, and post-reform recovery is qualified, focusing on a sample of nine LAC countries. The sector did quite well during the ISI policy regime, criticized for its price discrimination, and does not show the assumed characteristics of the 'lost decade' during …
Rural employment and agrarian markets in transition
The article deals with state intervention in agrarian produce markets and the rural labour market in post-revolutionary Nicaragua. Basing itself in the debate about the Nicaraguan agrarian class structure, it analyses the development of the internal terms of trade, the rapid integration of the peasantry in the market and its positive response to recent liberalisation measures. The labour market seems to show developments contrary to economic logi…
The Aral Sea Basin Crisis
The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, e…
Issues of state and market
Hydro-Authoritarianism
Post-socialist smallholders
nThe majority of the world’s smallholders live in countries that experience(d) socialism, but they largely remain invisible in agrarian studies. This special issue puts the spotlight on postsocialist smallholders, asking whether, and how, they (1) fulfil important functions in society; (2) engage in resistance (against the state or corporate actors); and (3) constitute an alternative to the industrial agri-food system. We find that post-socialist…
Neo-Liberalism and Institutional Reform in Post-1990 Nicaragua
Finance in a socialist transition
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMax SpoorThe author is presently working at the Department of Development and Agrarian Economics, Free University of Amsterdam. He wishes to express his gratitude for useful remarks on earlier drafts of this paper made by Michael Ellman and Ken Post (during research work undertaken at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague) and by Hans Lienneman. Furthermore, he received inspiring support from Chri…
Finance in a socialist transition
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMax SpoorThe author is presently working at the Department of Development and Agrarian Economics, Free University of Amsterdam. He wishes to express his gratitude for useful remarks on earlier drafts of this paper made by Michael Ellman and Ken Post (during research work undertaken at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague) and by Hans Lienneman. Furthermore, he received inspiring support from Chri…
Reforming state finance in post‐1975 Vietnam
This article analyses the process of transition from a system of state bureaucratic finance to one of socialist economic accounting in the context of the post‐1975 economic reforms in Vietnam. Three theoretical issues underlying this reform movement are discussed. First, the tension between the central level and individual enterprises with respect to economic calculus. Second, the conflict between the need to centralise financial resources in the…
Rural employment and agrarian markets in transition
The article deals with state intervention in agrarian produce markets and the rural labour market in post-revolutionary Nicaragua. Basing itself in the debate about the Nicaraguan agrarian class structure, it analyses the development of the internal terms of trade, the rapid integration of the peasantry in the market and its positive response to recent liberalisation measures. The labour market seems to show developments contrary to economic logi…
Transition to Market Economies in Former Soviet Central Asia
Issues of state and market
Neo-Liberalism and Institutional Reform in Post-1990 Nicaragua
Liberalization of grain markets in Nicaragua From market substitution to state minimalism
Agrarian transition in former Soviet Central Asia
While analysing in detail the agrarian transition that is taking place in two former Soviet Central Asian republics, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (concentrating on agrarian reform, deregulation and financial institutions), the crude classifications that are normally used as framework, such as 'slow' versus 'fast' reforms or 'gradualism' versus 'shock-therapy' are seen as not very useful. These transitions are highly complex and diverse, and therefor…
Mongolia
THE RELATIVELY SHORT TIME SPAN before Mongolia resumed positive economic growth in its transition to a market economy has been attributed to a successful and rapidly implemented privatisation and market liberalisation programme. Since 1990, when the transition to a market economy began in Mongolia, a great number of economic and political reforms have indeed been undertaken. Compared with most of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, which g…
The Aral Sea Basin Crisis
The haunting picture of a disappearing Aral Sea is just part of an overall environmental crisis in the Aral Sea Basin, where millions of people are dependent on agricultural production around the flows of two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Forced cotton cultivation in the former Soviet Union, in the context of inefficient agricultural organization and production, caused water mismanagement, salinization, water and soil contamination, e…
The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union
(2001). The State of Agrarian Reform in the Former Soviet Union. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 885-901
Policy Regimes and Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Latin America and the Caribbean During the Last Three Decades
In a review of the policy regimes and agricultural output performance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the past three decades, the linear sequence of pre-reform, crisis and reform, and post-reform recovery is qualified, focusing on a sample of nine LAC countries. The sector did quite well during the ISI policy regime, criticized for its price discrimination, and does not show the assumed characteristics of the 'lost decade' during …
Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict
Restructuring Postponed? Large Russian Farm Enterprises 'Coping with the Market
The continued existence and predominance of large farm enterprises (LFEs) in Russian agriculture during the transition to a market economy is analysed using theories of transaction costs, coordination mechanisms and networks. A comparative analysis is presented of farm restructuring in two, highly contrasting survey regions. That analysis shows that LFEs have undertaken only partial restructuring, which has not lead to radical increases in output…
Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies
Contesting Rural Resources
The most recent land reform in Uzbekistan, in which Large Farm Enterprises (LFEs) were split into medium-sized fermer enterprises, left, alongside the country's overwhelming majority of small dekhan peasants, continued strong state intervention in agrarian production. Three 'forms' (rather than 'modes') of production emerged: (1) state-ordered production of cotton and wheat; (2) commercial production, in particular of rice; and (3) household prod…
Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development
Part I 1. Follow the Water Murat Arsel and Max Spoor Part II: Transformation Of Water Regimes 2. Water, War And Reconstruction Irrigation Management In The Kunduz Region, Afghanistan Iskandar Abdullayev, Katja Mielke, Peter P. Mollinga, Jan Monsees, Conrad Schetter, Usman Shah, and Bernie Ter Steege 3. Political Ecology Of Marshland Restoration In Iraq Joshua Ellis and Murat Arsel 4. Wells, Water Rights and Sustainability: New Politics And Practi…
Land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia
Land grabbing’ in Africa by China, and other populous, high-income Asian countries such as South Korea, has received considerable attention, while land grabbing in post-Soviet Eurasia has gone largely unnoticed. However, as this article shows, foreign state and private companies are also acquiring vast areas of farmland in this region. The article first discusses the factors that make post-Soviet Eurasia such an attractive region for internationa…
Land grabbing in Latin America and the Caribbean
Land grabbing has gained momentum in Latin America and the Caribbean during the past decade. The phenomenon has taken different forms and character as compared to processes that occur in other regions of the world, especially Africa. It puts into question some of the assumptions in the emerging literature on land grabbing, suggesting these are too food-centered/too food crisis-centered, too land-centred, too centred on new global food regime play…
Oligarchs, megafarms and land reserves
This paper seeks to unravel the political economy of large-scale land acquisitions in post-Soviet Russia. Russia falls neither in the normal category of 'investor' countries, nor in the category of 'target' countries. Russia has large 'land reserves', since in the 1990s much fertile land was abandoned. We analyse how particular Russia is with regards to the common argument in favour of land acquisitions, namely that land is available, unused or e…
Agrarian reform and transition
During the past two decades agrarian ('land and farm') reforms have been widespread in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), following earlier ones in Asia (China and Vietnam). However, independent family farms did not become the predominant sector in most of Eastern Europe. A new dual (or bi-modal) agrarian structure emerged, consisting of large farm enterprises (with much less social functions than t…
Multidimensional Social Exclusion and the ‘Rural‐Urban Divide’ in E astern E urope and C entral A sia
Rural areas in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia are often excluded from the fruits of economic growth. In this paper it is argued that this exclusion goes beyond the mere ‘rural‐urban divide’ caused by unequal income distribution. Social exclusion, measured by three dimensions, exclusion from economic life, exclusion from social services, and exclusion from civic life and social networks, is captured by an innovative mu…
Is Russia the Emerging Global ‘Breadbasket’? Re-cultivation, Agroholdings and Grain Production
textabstractIts rise to the top group of global wheat exporters, the abundance of abandoned land, assumed yield gaps and the apparent ‘success’ of agroholdings, have nurtured expectations of Russia becoming a global ‘breadbasket’. It is argued here that becoming a global breadbasket is hindered by substantial costs of re-cultivation abandoned land, management and financial problems of megafarms and agroholdings, lack of infrastructure for exports…
Quiet Food Sovereignty’ as Food Sovereignty without a Movement? Insights from Post-socialist Russia
What does food sovereignty look like in settings where rural social movements are weak or non-existent, such as in countries with post-socialist, semi-authoritarian regimes? Focusing on Russia, we present a divergent form of food sovereignty. Building on the concept of ‘quiet sustainability’, we present a dispersed, muted, but clearly bottom-up variant we term ‘quiet food sovereignty’. In the latter, the role of the very productive smallholdings …
The politics of large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia
This article explores the relationship between federal and regional state elites’ land authority and corporate elites, and how this intersects with the politics of subaltern villagers in the context of ongoing land acquisitions in Ethiopia. In the borderland region of Benishangul-Gumuz, the central state is concerned with the control of territory and people and cannot, it is argued, effectively devolve authority to the regional state. Competition…
Economics (28 works) · Political science (27 works) · Geography (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Agriculture (17 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (14 works) · Development economics (11 works) · Market economy (11 works) · Economic system (10 works) · Business (9 works)