Marcus Taylor
Biographic Data
| ID | 3696661 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marcus Taylor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marcus |
| FAMILY NAME | Taylor |
| SIGNATURE | TAYLOR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0944-601X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 811 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Playing with time: The temporalities of agrarian intensification under climatic instability
Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation
Provides strong normative grounding for the idea and practice of transformative adaptation. • Contends that transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who implement interventions. • Presents four vectors of transformative adaptation as a reflexive form of organisational learning. • Highlights the importance of power, knowledge, coalitions and tradeoffs within programming. • Provides a clear guide to existing literature on trans…
Labour and Land in Indonesia: An Introduction
This article provides a reflective overview of Indonesian agrarian history, contemporary agrarian dynamics and the growing field of Indonesian agrarian studies. By charting the evolution of the field and highlighting landmark studies, it traces the work and influence of both foreign researchers and the lesser known tradition of agrarian political economy by Indonesian scholars. In doing so, it highlights compelling themes within the political eco…
What is the Value of Value for Agrarian Studies
Reflecting a longstanding intellectual heritage in Marxist political economy, contributions to agrarian studies have variously referred to the production, distribution and extraction of value. Despite this central role within the heritage of agrarian studies, the concept of value is often used inconsistently between authors and sometimes deployed without clear elucidation of the underlying theoretical tenets. As such, value often tends to be used…
How is Climate Change Changing Agrarian Studies
A range of compelling recent literature highlights how climate change is rewriting the intertwined social and environmental processes that comprise agrarian landscapes. Mainstream reaction has been to double down on technical intensification strategies supplemented by a resolute faith in scientific advancement to reduce vulnerabilities. For critical agrarian studies, however, climate change raises new conceptual and methodological challenges. Has…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
Situating Political Agronomy: The Knowledge Politics of Hybrid Rice in India and Uganda
The emergence of 'political agronomy' - a research agenda that interrogates the knowledge politics through which agronomic debates are constructed, shaped and contested - has added a new and important tool for the analysis of agricultural research and policy making in development contexts. This article seeks to advance the scope of political agronomy by providing an enhanced framework to link the analysis of agronomic knowledge production to the …
Between deficit rains and surplus populations: The political ecology of a climate-resilient village in South India
Hybrid Realities: Making a new Green Revolution for rice in south India
Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help raise aggregate yields to address food security and improve rural incomes. Indian farmers, however, have proved hesitant to embrace this technology. To explain the disjuncture, this paper analyses the case of a publicly developed and promoted hybrid variety in southern Karnataka. It highlights how, within the context of growing social polarisation and an increasi…
Beyond Technical Fixes: Climate Solutions and the Great Derangement
Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established…
Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the 'African Age
Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank's Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilienc…
The political ecology of rice intensification in south India: Putting SRI in its places
The system of rice intensification (SRI) has been promoted across Asia as a means to improve rice yields while decreasing water use and external inputs. It is argued to be a generalisable means by which to revalidate smallholder livelihoods and improve food security across the region. Current debates about SRI, however, remain predominantly technical in scope, focusing on field-level outcomes. To more adequately understand the potential of SRI fo…
Model farmers, extension networks and the politics of agricultural knowledge transfer
Climate-smart agriculture: What Is It Good For
Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric's newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank's framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA pr…
Labour, state and society in rural India: A class relational approach
With Labour, state and society in rural India, Jonathan Pattenden has produced an instant classic in agrarian studies. Its classic status is merited in two ways. First, in building outwards from th
Capitalism in the web of life
Jason Moore's eagerly awaited text offers a powerful reworking of established paradigms in both Marxist and ecological thought. Moore's ambition is nothing less than to provide a fundamentally new
Why We Need Political Ecology to Understand Climate Change: A Response to T. Jayaraman
The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation: Livelihoods, agrarian change and the conflicts of development
This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something ‘out there’ that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to re…
Cumulative Inequality and Racial Disparities in Health: Private Insurance Coverage and Black/White Differences in Functional Limitations
Results suggest private insurance is important for reducing functional limitations, but market insurance is an important mediator of the persistently larger level of limitations observed among African Americans
Climate change, relational vulnerability and human security: Rethinking sustainable adaptation in agrarian environments
With reference to agrarian environments in southern India, this article argues that insights from political ecology provide an important way to move forward on debates on human security and climate change adaptation. While current human security perspectives helpfully situate the pursuit of climate change adaption within questions of social justice, they have been less forthcoming in providing suitable analytical tools to conceptualize the relati…
Liquid Debts: Credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India
This paper uses an approach grounded in political ecology and political economy to explain the social and ecological foundations of groundwater overexploitation and agrarian distress within semi-arid Andhra Pradesh It emphasises how relations of credit/debt have become intertwined with the tenuous social and ecological foundations of smallholder production to create a new dynamic of vulnerability across the agrarian environment. It thereby links …
Renewing International Labour Studies
The Antinomies of 'Financial Inclusion: Debt, Distress and the Workings of Indian Microfinance
The concept of 'financial inclusion' has become a central trope that legitimates a wide range of contemporary development practices. By constructing a new object of development - the 'financially excluded' - it facilitates the expansion of an increasingly corporatized microfinance technocracy. The present paper problematizes the underlying binaries of inclusion/exclusion and formal/informal finance upon which this narrative is based. Through an e…
Race you to the Bottom … and Back Again? The Uneven Development of Labour Codes of Conduct
This article emphasises how labour codes of conduct mediate a series of complex and evolving power relations that span the politics of consumption through to the politics of production. It argues that codes of conduct not only reflect an uneven division of labour – in which firms are stratified in size, productivity and labour conditions – but actively shape it. Using examples drawn from light-manufacturing industries in China, it illustrates how…
Cohort Differences and Chronic Disease Profiles of Differential Disability Trajectories
Later life disability is measured nonparametrically to distinguish patterns among long-term trajectories. Findings suggest that more recent cohorts are more likely to forego or delay disability over a decade rather than experience prolonged periods of mild to severe disablement. Serious health events such as stroke, along with diabetes, characterize trajectories of high impairment, warranting future research
Beyond Technical Fixes: Climate Solutions and the Great Derangement
Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
Climate-smart agriculture: What Is It Good For
Leading international organisations presently argue that a transition to 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA) is an obligatory task to ensure food supply for an anticipated nine billion people by 2050. Despite the rubric's newfound importance, the conceptual underpinnings of CSA are often left unclear. Focusing on the World Bank's framework, this paper critically interrogates the principles and concepts that underpin CSA. It argues that while CSA pr…
Capitalism in the web of life
Jason Moore's eagerly awaited text offers a powerful reworking of established paradigms in both Marxist and ecological thought. Moore's ambition is nothing less than to provide a fundamentally new
Trajectories of Impairment, Social Support, and Depressive Symptoms in Later Life
Disability, social support, and depressive symptoms are strongly interrelated processes in later life. Our results are consistent with previous research in showing that perceived, rather than received, support mediates the relationship between disability and depressive symptoms, but our results extend previous research in showing that this mediation occurs across time
Freedom from Poverty is Not for Free': Rural Development and the Microfinance Crisis in Andhra Pradesh, India
Within neoliberal development discourse, the poor are represented as entrepreneurial subjects for whom integration into formalized financial systems can facilitate their escape from poverty. This paper examines how the 2010 microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh reveals significant fault lines that underlie this narrative. It argues that the crisis of microfinance in Andhra Pradesh needs to be placed within the context of severe agrarian dislocati…
Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the 'African Age
Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank's Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilienc…
The Antinomies of 'Financial Inclusion: Debt, Distress and the Workings of Indian Microfinance
The concept of 'financial inclusion' has become a central trope that legitimates a wide range of contemporary development practices. By constructing a new object of development - the 'financially excluded' - it facilitates the expansion of an increasingly corporatized microfinance technocracy. The present paper problematizes the underlying binaries of inclusion/exclusion and formal/informal finance upon which this narrative is based. Through an e…
Between deficit rains and surplus populations: The political ecology of a climate-resilient village in South India
Liquid Debts: Credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India
This paper uses an approach grounded in political ecology and political economy to explain the social and ecological foundations of groundwater overexploitation and agrarian distress within semi-arid Andhra Pradesh It emphasises how relations of credit/debt have become intertwined with the tenuous social and ecological foundations of smallholder production to create a new dynamic of vulnerability across the agrarian environment. It thereby links …
Model farmers, extension networks and the politics of agricultural knowledge transfer
Capturing Transitions and Trajectories: The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Later Life Disability
Later life disability is measured here using both onset and trajectory. Findings are consistent with health research suggesting that education and income work through shared and independent mechanisms to affect disability over time. These findings also highlight the importance of modeling timing when studying health trajectories
Rethinking the Global Production of Uneven Development
This paper argues that reconceptualising the relationship between production and uneven development is an important step towards overcoming what the editors of this volume term ‘anachronistic approaches’ in contemporary development theory. Notwithstanding the centrality of production within global capitalism, its status within critical development studies is at a low ebb. This is partly a consequence of the mainstream ascendancy of neoclassical e…
Success for Whom? An Historical-Materialist Critique of Neoliberalism in Chile
Hybrid Realities: Making a new Green Revolution for rice in south India
Indian policy makers and agronomists often argue that hybrid rice varieties can help raise aggregate yields to address food security and improve rural incomes. Indian farmers, however, have proved hesitant to embrace this technology. To explain the disjuncture, this paper analyses the case of a publicly developed and promoted hybrid variety in southern Karnataka. It highlights how, within the context of growing social polarisation and an increasi…
Displacing Insecurity in a Divided World: Global security, international development and the endless accumulation of capital
The current triple crisis of food, oil and credit has accentuated social instability across global capitalism, with the most severe effects displaced onto the urban and rural poor who, in the face of escalating prices for staple goods, face deepening immiseration. Mounting social unrest has led the international institutions of global governance to assess the crisis in terms of its security implications. This strategy has two related dimensions. …
The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973—2001: Questioning a Neoliberal Model
This article subjects the much-heralded Chilean `model' of social policy reform to a critical analysis. It places the Chilean reforms within the political—economic conjuncture from which they emerged and relates the trends towards privatization and decentralization to the larger neoliberal movement towards societal restructuring. Through an examination of pension, education and health reforms, the article argues that the Chilean reformulation of …
Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation
Provides strong normative grounding for the idea and practice of transformative adaptation. • Contends that transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who implement interventions. • Presents four vectors of transformative adaptation as a reflexive form of organisational learning. • Highlights the importance of power, knowledge, coalitions and tradeoffs within programming. • Provides a clear guide to existing literature on trans…
The political ecology of rice intensification in south India: Putting SRI in its places
The system of rice intensification (SRI) has been promoted across Asia as a means to improve rice yields while decreasing water use and external inputs. It is argued to be a generalisable means by which to revalidate smallholder livelihoods and improve food security across the region. Current debates about SRI, however, remain predominantly technical in scope, focusing on field-level outcomes. To more adequately understand the potential of SRI fo…
Who Works for Globalisation? The challenges and possibilities for international labour studies
This introductory article to the special issue surveys the field of international labour studies and examines the key areas of growth over the past decade. It locates three core areas of the new literature: 1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour mov…
Opening the World Bank: International Organisations and the Contradictions of Global Capitalism
Labor Reform and the Contradictions of "Growth with Equity" in Postdictatorship Chile
As the climax of considerable political mobilization, the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1989 seemingly ushered in a new era for Chilean society. From within the moderate wing of the antidictatorship movement emerged a triumphant political coalition called the Concertacion, which was led by the resurgent Christian Democrat and Socialist parties. The convincing election victory of this coalition in March 1990 was portrayed as symbolizing a n…
Labour, state and society in rural India: A class relational approach
With Labour, state and society in rural India, Jonathan Pattenden has produced an instant classic in agrarian studies. Its classic status is merited in two ways. First, in building outwards from th
Cohort Differences and Chronic Disease Profiles of Differential Disability Trajectories
Later life disability is measured nonparametrically to distinguish patterns among long-term trajectories. Findings suggest that more recent cohorts are more likely to forego or delay disability over a decade rather than experience prolonged periods of mild to severe disablement. Serious health events such as stroke, along with diabetes, characterize trajectories of high impairment, warranting future research
Conscripts of Competitiveness: Culture, institutions and capital in contemporary development
Through the lens of the new institutional economics development is represented as a process of cultural and institutional transformation in which informal social institutions that hinder the operation of market forces are dismantled and replaced with formalised, liberal institutional frameworks to facilitate rational economic activity. The World Bank has deployed these arguments to legitimise reforms aimed at reshaping the values and conduct of p…
Success for Whom? An Historical-Materialist Critique of Neoliberalism in Chile
The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973—2001: Questioning a Neoliberal Model
This article subjects the much-heralded Chilean `model' of social policy reform to a critical analysis. It places the Chilean reforms within the political—economic conjuncture from which they emerged and relates the trends towards privatization and decentralization to the larger neoliberal movement towards societal restructuring. Through an examination of pension, education and health reforms, the article argues that the Chilean reformulation of …
The Reformulation of Social Policy in Chile, 1973-2001: Questioning a Neoliberal Model
Trajectories of Impairment, Social Support, and Depressive Symptoms in Later Life
Disability, social support, and depressive symptoms are strongly interrelated processes in later life. Our results are consistent with previous research in showing that perceived, rather than received, support mediates the relationship between disability and depressive symptoms, but our results extend previous research in showing that this mediation occurs across time
Labor Reform and the Contradictions of "Growth with Equity" in Postdictatorship Chile
As the climax of considerable political mobilization, the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1989 seemingly ushered in a new era for Chilean society. From within the moderate wing of the antidictatorship movement emerged a triumphant political coalition called the Concertacion, which was led by the resurgent Christian Democrat and Socialist parties. The convincing election victory of this coalition in March 1990 was portrayed as symbolizing a n…
Opening the World Bank: International Organisations and the Contradictions of Global Capitalism
From Pinochet to the 'Third Way': Neoliberalism and Social Transformation in Chile
From Pinochet to the 'Third Way: Neoliberalism and Social Transformation in Chile
From national development to 'growth with equity: Nation-building in Chile, 1950 - 2000
Nation-building projects involve a wider array of social processes than is often emphasised in the mainstream literature. To perpetuate the nation-state requires a firm material basis and is therefore predicated on the relationships and institutions through which goods are produced, distributed and consumed. This article analyses the material underpinnings of nation-building during three periods of Chilean history. First, it examines the 'nationa…
Rethinking the Global Production of Uneven Development
This paper argues that reconceptualising the relationship between production and uneven development is an important step towards overcoming what the editors of this volume term ‘anachronistic approaches’ in contemporary development theory. Notwithstanding the centrality of production within global capitalism, its status within critical development studies is at a low ebb. This is partly a consequence of the mainstream ascendancy of neoclassical e…
Making the ‘workshop of the world’: China and the transformation of the international division of labour
Global Economy Contested: Power and Conflict Across the International Division of Labor
Part 1: Reworking the International Division of Labour 1. Power, Conflict and the Production of the Global Economy Marcus Taylor 2. Globalisation and the Uneven Subsumption of Labour under Capital in Russia Simon Clarke 3. Making the 'Workshop of the World': China and the International Division of Labour Etienne Cantin and Marcus Taylor Part 2: Commodity Chains, Labour Standards and Corporate Social Responsibility 4. Restructuring and Conflict in…
Who Works for Globalisation? The challenges and possibilities for international labour studies
This introductory article to the special issue surveys the field of international labour studies and examines the key areas of growth over the past decade. It locates three core areas of the new literature: 1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour mov…
Displacing Insecurity in a Divided World: Global security, international development and the endless accumulation of capital
The current triple crisis of food, oil and credit has accentuated social instability across global capitalism, with the most severe effects displaced onto the urban and rural poor who, in the face of escalating prices for staple goods, face deepening immiseration. Mounting social unrest has led the international institutions of global governance to assess the crisis in terms of its security implications. This strategy has two related dimensions. …
Frontiers of Commodity Chain Research – Edited by Jennifer Bair
Capturing Transitions and Trajectories: The Role of Socioeconomic Status in Later Life Disability
Later life disability is measured here using both onset and trajectory. Findings are consistent with health research suggesting that education and income work through shared and independent mechanisms to affect disability over time. These findings also highlight the importance of modeling timing when studying health trajectories
Evolutions of the competition state in Latin America: Power, contestation and neo-liberal populism
This contribution argues that competition state theory unduly marginalises the political dimensions of state reform. Institutional reform is not simply political in the sense that policies are contested, but because reform reshapes the very nature, process and possibilities of politics itself. I argue that the competition state project has sought to enforce new technologies of power and discipline across socio-economic life by enforcing new ways …
Conscripts of Competitiveness: Culture, institutions and capital in contemporary development
Through the lens of the new institutional economics development is represented as a process of cultural and institutional transformation in which informal social institutions that hinder the operation of market forces are dismantled and replaced with formalised, liberal institutional frameworks to facilitate rational economic activity. The World Bank has deployed these arguments to legitimise reforms aimed at reshaping the values and conduct of p…
Race you to the Bottom … and Back Again? The Uneven Development of Labour Codes of Conduct
This article emphasises how labour codes of conduct mediate a series of complex and evolving power relations that span the politics of consumption through to the politics of production. It argues that codes of conduct not only reflect an uneven division of labour – in which firms are stratified in size, productivity and labour conditions – but actively shape it. Using examples drawn from light-manufacturing industries in China, it illustrates how…
Cohort Differences and Chronic Disease Profiles of Differential Disability Trajectories
Later life disability is measured nonparametrically to distinguish patterns among long-term trajectories. Findings suggest that more recent cohorts are more likely to forego or delay disability over a decade rather than experience prolonged periods of mild to severe disablement. Serious health events such as stroke, along with diabetes, characterize trajectories of high impairment, warranting future research
Freedom from Poverty is Not for Free': Rural Development and the Microfinance Crisis in Andhra Pradesh, India
Within neoliberal development discourse, the poor are represented as entrepreneurial subjects for whom integration into formalized financial systems can facilitate their escape from poverty. This paper examines how the 2010 microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh reveals significant fault lines that underlie this narrative. It argues that the crisis of microfinance in Andhra Pradesh needs to be placed within the context of severe agrarian dislocati…
The Antinomies of 'Financial Inclusion: Debt, Distress and the Workings of Indian Microfinance
The concept of 'financial inclusion' has become a central trope that legitimates a wide range of contemporary development practices. By constructing a new object of development - the 'financially excluded' - it facilitates the expansion of an increasingly corporatized microfinance technocracy. The present paper problematizes the underlying binaries of inclusion/exclusion and formal/informal finance upon which this narrative is based. Through an e…
Climate change, relational vulnerability and human security: Rethinking sustainable adaptation in agrarian environments
With reference to agrarian environments in southern India, this article argues that insights from political ecology provide an important way to move forward on debates on human security and climate change adaptation. While current human security perspectives helpfully situate the pursuit of climate change adaption within questions of social justice, they have been less forthcoming in providing suitable analytical tools to conceptualize the relati…
Liquid Debts: Credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India
This paper uses an approach grounded in political ecology and political economy to explain the social and ecological foundations of groundwater overexploitation and agrarian distress within semi-arid Andhra Pradesh It emphasises how relations of credit/debt have become intertwined with the tenuous social and ecological foundations of smallholder production to create a new dynamic of vulnerability across the agrarian environment. It thereby links …
Renewing International Labour Studies
Political science (30 works) · Economics (27 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Politics (18 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (15 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Law (12 works) · Agriculture (11 works) · Geography (11 works) · Agrarian society (10 works)