Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
Biographic Data
| ID | 3845823 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alberto Alonso-Fradejas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alberto |
| FAMILY NAME | Alonso-Fradejas |
| SIGNATURE | ALONSO-FRADEJAS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Institute of Social Studies |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 270 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The third standpoint: The politics of accommodating to green agrarian extractivism
Extractivism is rife with multiple, dynamic politics. Beyond supporters and challengers, many—arguably most—act to accommodate to the extractivist order as best they can. Grounded in Guatemala’s green agrarian extractivism in the oil palm complex, I theorize this third standpoint and examine who accommodates, why, and how. Using a ‘multi-dynamic politics framework’, I map actors, agendas, frames, and repertoires. I distinguish accommodators by le…
La Agenda Política Del “Agroextractivismo Verde” en América Latina
Cuál es la agenda política que anima, justifica y legitima el extractivismo de recursos en el marco de las transformaciones hacia la creciente sustentabilidad y la acción climática? Esta es una cuestión de creciente relevancia a nivel mundial y multisectorial a la que buscamos ofrecer respuestas desde el campo latinoamericano. Para ello comenzamos con un debate sobre la economía y la ecología política del extractivismo agrario contemporáneo. Desp…
The Rise of Authoritarian Corporate Populism
Authoritarian populism in the early twenty-first century is rooted in a global conjuncture of convergent social and ecological crises, but the ways in which the crises shape authoritarian populist politics and vice versa vary across socio-ecological formations worldwide. An analysis of the politics behind the rise of the flex sugarcane and oil palm complexes in Guatemala since the mid-2000s shows that an authoritarian corporate populist agenda is…
Extractivismo agrario en América Latina
Este libro consta de diez capítulos, incluyendo esta introducción. Los nueve capítulos restantes presentan estudios de caso de varios países de América Latina, en los que se analizan las características extractivistas de diversos sistemas complejos agrícolas y forestales. Cada capítulo aporta al menos una perspectiva única sobre el concepto de extractivismo agrario, contribuyendo a su utilidad analítica y política.
Introducing: The Artivism review series
The resource property question in climate stewardship and sustainability transitions
Natural resources are increasingly lauded as antidotes to the current social and ecological crises. In this context, a global land and natural resource rush for business, development and climate and environmental stewardship purposes has been at work since the mid-2000s. This paper discusses whether, how, and the extent to which the resource rush behind mainstream climate stewardship and sustainability transitions shapes the contemporary resource…
Leaving no one unscathed’ in sustainability transitions: The life purging agro-extractivism of corporate renewables
Amid the growing interest on renewables to fight back the current ecological and social crises, crops like oil palm and trees like eucalyptus, with ever-growing and flexibly interchangeable uses as carbon sinks and sources of renewable energy and biomaterials, are praised as climate stewards and vehicles of transition to sustainable development. Hence, flex crops and commodities complexes consolidate within former strongholds and set off to new t…
The Modern Periphery-Making Machine in the Early Twenty-First Century
Cultural, discursive, and technological differences notwithstanding, the peripheralization effects of plantation agriculture-based development pathways seem to be as vibrant today as during the height of the modern era's imperialism. This, at least, is what Bosma suggests, and I fully agree with him. The plantation, that modern labour-expelling periphery-making machine, is alive and kicking hard amid convergent socioecological crises nowadays. An…
The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America
The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues an…
Converging social justice issues and movements: Implications for political actions and research
We argue that the multiple contemporary converging crises have significantly altered the context for and object of political contestations around agrarian, climate, environmental and food justice issues. These shifts affect alliances, collaboration and conflict among and between state and social forces, as well as within and between movements and societies. The actual implications and mechanisms by which these changes are happening are empirical …
China and Latin America: Towards a New Consensus of Resource Control
The rise of China has provoked changes in global geopolitics, deeply influencing the global economy and trade relations. Of particular importance for agrarian change is China’s increased demand for (agro)commodities which has led to new partnerships abroad in order to secure natural resource access. This paper analyses the increasing economic and political relations between China and Latin America and raises questions concerning new trajectories …
The discursive flexibility of 'flex crops: Comparing Oil Palm and Jatropha
Flex crops' such as corn, oil palm and soy are understood to have multiple, \ninterchangeable uses; they have material flexibility. We propose that discursive \nflexibility - the ability to strategically switch between discourses to promote an \nobjective - equally shapes the political economy of flex crops, and thereby patterns \nof agrarian and environmental change. Comparing oil palm and Jatropha curcas, we \nfind that actors who cast oil palm…
Inquiring into the political economy of oil palm as a global flex crop
Oil palm production and consumption, and the trade of its multiple commodities, have expanded exponentially in recent decades. This paper argues that this expansion will continue due to, and along with, the rise of 'flexing' among its increasing multiple uses, especially for more industrial and energy purposes. Oil palm has been extensively analysed in the context of land grabs and agrarian change, land conversion and deforestation. However, its …
Contextualising food sovereignty: The politics of convergence among movements in the USA
As food sovereignty spreads to new realms that dramatically diverge from the agrarian context in which it was originally conceived, this raises new challenges, as well as opportunities, for already complex transnational agrarian movements. In the face of such challenges calls for convergence have increasingly been put forward as a strategy for building political power. Looking at the US case, we argue that historically rooted resistance efforts f…
Food sovereignty: Convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges
This article introduces this special collection on food sovereignty. It frames the collection in relation to a broader political and intellectual initiative that aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in ‘engaged academic research’ and following the tradition of ‘critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, we have identified four key themes – all focusing on the contradiction…
Anything but a story foretold: Multiple politics of resistance to the agrarian extractivist project in Guatemala
Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of \nagrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as a financialized and flexible \ntype of agrarian extractivism. Meanwhile, Maya-Q ́eqchi ́ residents of the northern \nlowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agroecosystem \nthat the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their \nsubsistence in multipl…
Enclosed: Conservation, cattle, and commerce among the Q'eqchi’ Maya lowlanders
Elaborating on two decades of research, Liza Grandia’s Enclosed provides a timely and invaluable contribution to our understanding of the contemporary global land grab. At this historic juncture, when the new wave of land deals has been accompanied by a swelling wave of studies on the phenomenon, Grandia’s multifaceted and ‘historically and geographically situated’ analysis (Hart 2002, 818) is a welcome addition to a literature characterized by v…
Land control-grabbing in Guatemala: The political economy of contemporary agrarian change
Domestic and international capital controlling Guatemala's sugarcane and oil palm industries are deploying a dual investment strategy in the context of global financial, energy, food and environmental crises. They allocate current booming revenues to high-cost, long-term investments and they open and adapt new territories for cultivation. Under a new "extractivist governmentality", corporate land grabs aim to control land and natural resources as…
Anything but a story foretold: Multiple politics of resistance to the agrarian extractivist project in Guatemala
Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of \nagrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as a financialized and flexible \ntype of agrarian extractivism. Meanwhile, Maya-Q ́eqchi ́ residents of the northern \nlowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agroecosystem \nthat the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their \nsubsistence in multipl…
Land control-grabbing in Guatemala: The political economy of contemporary agrarian change
Domestic and international capital controlling Guatemala's sugarcane and oil palm industries are deploying a dual investment strategy in the context of global financial, energy, food and environmental crises. They allocate current booming revenues to high-cost, long-term investments and they open and adapt new territories for cultivation. Under a new "extractivist governmentality", corporate land grabs aim to control land and natural resources as…
Food sovereignty: Convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges
This article introduces this special collection on food sovereignty. It frames the collection in relation to a broader political and intellectual initiative that aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in ‘engaged academic research’ and following the tradition of ‘critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, we have identified four key themes – all focusing on the contradiction…
Inquiring into the political economy of oil palm as a global flex crop
Oil palm production and consumption, and the trade of its multiple commodities, have expanded exponentially in recent decades. This paper argues that this expansion will continue due to, and along with, the rise of 'flexing' among its increasing multiple uses, especially for more industrial and energy purposes. Oil palm has been extensively analysed in the context of land grabs and agrarian change, land conversion and deforestation. However, its …
Leaving no one unscathed’ in sustainability transitions: The life purging agro-extractivism of corporate renewables
Amid the growing interest on renewables to fight back the current ecological and social crises, crops like oil palm and trees like eucalyptus, with ever-growing and flexibly interchangeable uses as carbon sinks and sources of renewable energy and biomaterials, are praised as climate stewards and vehicles of transition to sustainable development. Hence, flex crops and commodities complexes consolidate within former strongholds and set off to new t…
Contextualising food sovereignty: The politics of convergence among movements in the USA
As food sovereignty spreads to new realms that dramatically diverge from the agrarian context in which it was originally conceived, this raises new challenges, as well as opportunities, for already complex transnational agrarian movements. In the face of such challenges calls for convergence have increasingly been put forward as a strategy for building political power. Looking at the US case, we argue that historically rooted resistance efforts f…
The discursive flexibility of 'flex crops: Comparing Oil Palm and Jatropha
Flex crops' such as corn, oil palm and soy are understood to have multiple, \ninterchangeable uses; they have material flexibility. We propose that discursive \nflexibility - the ability to strategically switch between discourses to promote an \nobjective - equally shapes the political economy of flex crops, and thereby patterns \nof agrarian and environmental change. Comparing oil palm and Jatropha curcas, we \nfind that actors who cast oil palm…
Converging social justice issues and movements: Implications for political actions and research
We argue that the multiple contemporary converging crises have significantly altered the context for and object of political contestations around agrarian, climate, environmental and food justice issues. These shifts affect alliances, collaboration and conflict among and between state and social forces, as well as within and between movements and societies. The actual implications and mechanisms by which these changes are happening are empirical …
The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America
The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues an…
China and Latin America: Towards a New Consensus of Resource Control
The rise of China has provoked changes in global geopolitics, deeply influencing the global economy and trade relations. Of particular importance for agrarian change is China’s increased demand for (agro)commodities which has led to new partnerships abroad in order to secure natural resource access. This paper analyses the increasing economic and political relations between China and Latin America and raises questions concerning new trajectories …
The Rise of Authoritarian Corporate Populism
Authoritarian populism in the early twenty-first century is rooted in a global conjuncture of convergent social and ecological crises, but the ways in which the crises shape authoritarian populist politics and vice versa vary across socio-ecological formations worldwide. An analysis of the politics behind the rise of the flex sugarcane and oil palm complexes in Guatemala since the mid-2000s shows that an authoritarian corporate populist agenda is…
The resource property question in climate stewardship and sustainability transitions
Natural resources are increasingly lauded as antidotes to the current social and ecological crises. In this context, a global land and natural resource rush for business, development and climate and environmental stewardship purposes has been at work since the mid-2000s. This paper discusses whether, how, and the extent to which the resource rush behind mainstream climate stewardship and sustainability transitions shapes the contemporary resource…
La Agenda Política Del “Agroextractivismo Verde” en América Latina
Cuál es la agenda política que anima, justifica y legitima el extractivismo de recursos en el marco de las transformaciones hacia la creciente sustentabilidad y la acción climática? Esta es una cuestión de creciente relevancia a nivel mundial y multisectorial a la que buscamos ofrecer respuestas desde el campo latinoamericano. Para ello comenzamos con un debate sobre la economía y la ecología política del extractivismo agrario contemporáneo. Desp…
Land control-grabbing in Guatemala: The political economy of contemporary agrarian change
Domestic and international capital controlling Guatemala's sugarcane and oil palm industries are deploying a dual investment strategy in the context of global financial, energy, food and environmental crises. They allocate current booming revenues to high-cost, long-term investments and they open and adapt new territories for cultivation. Under a new "extractivist governmentality", corporate land grabs aim to control land and natural resources as…
Enclosed: Conservation, cattle, and commerce among the Q'eqchi’ Maya lowlanders
Elaborating on two decades of research, Liza Grandia’s Enclosed provides a timely and invaluable contribution to our understanding of the contemporary global land grab. At this historic juncture, when the new wave of land deals has been accompanied by a swelling wave of studies on the phenomenon, Grandia’s multifaceted and ‘historically and geographically situated’ analysis (Hart 2002, 818) is a welcome addition to a literature characterized by v…
Contextualising food sovereignty: The politics of convergence among movements in the USA
As food sovereignty spreads to new realms that dramatically diverge from the agrarian context in which it was originally conceived, this raises new challenges, as well as opportunities, for already complex transnational agrarian movements. In the face of such challenges calls for convergence have increasingly been put forward as a strategy for building political power. Looking at the US case, we argue that historically rooted resistance efforts f…
Food sovereignty: Convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges
This article introduces this special collection on food sovereignty. It frames the collection in relation to a broader political and intellectual initiative that aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in ‘engaged academic research’ and following the tradition of ‘critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, we have identified four key themes – all focusing on the contradiction…
Anything but a story foretold: Multiple politics of resistance to the agrarian extractivist project in Guatemala
Sugarcane and oil palm agribusinesses are in the vanguard of an emergent project of \nagrarian capitalism in Guatemala, which is defined here as a financialized and flexible \ntype of agrarian extractivism. Meanwhile, Maya-Q ́eqchi ́ residents of the northern \nlowlands believe that the changes in the labor regime, land relations and the agroecosystem \nthat the expansion of these agribusinesses has brought threaten their \nsubsistence in multipl…
China and Latin America: Towards a New Consensus of Resource Control
The rise of China has provoked changes in global geopolitics, deeply influencing the global economy and trade relations. Of particular importance for agrarian change is China’s increased demand for (agro)commodities which has led to new partnerships abroad in order to secure natural resource access. This paper analyses the increasing economic and political relations between China and Latin America and raises questions concerning new trajectories …
The discursive flexibility of 'flex crops: Comparing Oil Palm and Jatropha
Flex crops' such as corn, oil palm and soy are understood to have multiple, \ninterchangeable uses; they have material flexibility. We propose that discursive \nflexibility - the ability to strategically switch between discourses to promote an \nobjective - equally shapes the political economy of flex crops, and thereby patterns \nof agrarian and environmental change. Comparing oil palm and Jatropha curcas, we \nfind that actors who cast oil palm…
Inquiring into the political economy of oil palm as a global flex crop
Oil palm production and consumption, and the trade of its multiple commodities, have expanded exponentially in recent decades. This paper argues that this expansion will continue due to, and along with, the rise of 'flexing' among its increasing multiple uses, especially for more industrial and energy purposes. Oil palm has been extensively analysed in the context of land grabs and agrarian change, land conversion and deforestation. However, its …
The ‘tenure guidelines’ as a tool for democratising land and resource control in Latin America
The current configuration of global land politics – who gets what land, how, how much, why and with what implications in urban and rural spaces in the Global South and North – brings disparate social groups, governments and social movements with different sectoral and class interests into the issue of natural resource politics. Governance instruments must be able to capture the ‘political moment’ marked by the increasing intersection of issues an…
Converging social justice issues and movements: Implications for political actions and research
We argue that the multiple contemporary converging crises have significantly altered the context for and object of political contestations around agrarian, climate, environmental and food justice issues. These shifts affect alliances, collaboration and conflict among and between state and social forces, as well as within and between movements and societies. The actual implications and mechanisms by which these changes are happening are empirical …
Leaving no one unscathed’ in sustainability transitions: The life purging agro-extractivism of corporate renewables
Amid the growing interest on renewables to fight back the current ecological and social crises, crops like oil palm and trees like eucalyptus, with ever-growing and flexibly interchangeable uses as carbon sinks and sources of renewable energy and biomaterials, are praised as climate stewards and vehicles of transition to sustainable development. Hence, flex crops and commodities complexes consolidate within former strongholds and set off to new t…
The Modern Periphery-Making Machine in the Early Twenty-First Century
Cultural, discursive, and technological differences notwithstanding, the peripheralization effects of plantation agriculture-based development pathways seem to be as vibrant today as during the height of the modern era's imperialism. This, at least, is what Bosma suggests, and I fully agree with him. The plantation, that modern labour-expelling periphery-making machine, is alive and kicking hard amid convergent socioecological crises nowadays. An…
The resource property question in climate stewardship and sustainability transitions
Natural resources are increasingly lauded as antidotes to the current social and ecological crises. In this context, a global land and natural resource rush for business, development and climate and environmental stewardship purposes has been at work since the mid-2000s. This paper discusses whether, how, and the extent to which the resource rush behind mainstream climate stewardship and sustainability transitions shapes the contemporary resource…
Extractivismo agrario en América Latina
Este libro consta de diez capítulos, incluyendo esta introducción. Los nueve capítulos restantes presentan estudios de caso de varios países de América Latina, en los que se analizan las características extractivistas de diversos sistemas complejos agrícolas y forestales. Cada capítulo aporta al menos una perspectiva única sobre el concepto de extractivismo agrario, contribuyendo a su utilidad analítica y política.
Introducing: The Artivism review series
La Agenda Política Del “Agroextractivismo Verde” en América Latina
Cuál es la agenda política que anima, justifica y legitima el extractivismo de recursos en el marco de las transformaciones hacia la creciente sustentabilidad y la acción climática? Esta es una cuestión de creciente relevancia a nivel mundial y multisectorial a la que buscamos ofrecer respuestas desde el campo latinoamericano. Para ello comenzamos con un debate sobre la economía y la ecología política del extractivismo agrario contemporáneo. Desp…
The Rise of Authoritarian Corporate Populism
Authoritarian populism in the early twenty-first century is rooted in a global conjuncture of convergent social and ecological crises, but the ways in which the crises shape authoritarian populist politics and vice versa vary across socio-ecological formations worldwide. An analysis of the politics behind the rise of the flex sugarcane and oil palm complexes in Guatemala since the mid-2000s shows that an authoritarian corporate populist agenda is…
The third standpoint: The politics of accommodating to green agrarian extractivism
Extractivism is rife with multiple, dynamic politics. Beyond supporters and challengers, many—arguably most—act to accommodate to the extractivist order as best they can. Grounded in Guatemala’s green agrarian extractivism in the oil palm complex, I theorize this third standpoint and examine who accommodates, why, and how. Using a ‘multi-dynamic politics framework’, I map actors, agendas, frames, and repertoires. I distinguish accommodators by le…
Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Economics (11 works) · Agriculture (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Agrarian society (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (8 works)