Chinese Land-Based Interventions in Senegal

Bibliographic Data

ID4953383
AuthorsLila Buckley (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume44
Issue2
Pages429-450
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDevelopment and Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0012-155X • E-ISSN: 1467-7660
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/dech.12016
OpenAlexW2117233765
LanguageEN
Citations received17
References cited26

As Chinese land-based interventions multiply across the African continent, this article focuses on a single Chinese-Senegalese government-run agriculture demonstration centre to provide insight into the daily realities of Chinese-African interactions on African land. Ethnographic methodologies are employed to examine practices and discourses on agricultural governance among Chinese and Senegalese informants. Building on theories of agriculture as performance, I show how distinct repertoires for land management are negotiated and reshaped by different subjects in a kind of improvised dance, where individuals' improvisations lead to unanticipated project outcomes. What emerges is a picture of a Chinese agricultural management regime for African land that is simultaneously fraught with conflict, while also replete with collaboration benefiting some smallholder farmers. This actor-oriented approach provides a critical empirical lens as well as a research framework for engaging more constructively with Chinese in large-scale land acquisitions. I argue that 'land grabbing' must be seen not as a straightforward, linear process of state or corporate takeover of global land, but as a dynamic performance of negotiation among diverse state actors, corporate players and citizens - one that will reshape global development in unanticipated ways

Agriculture · Business · Corporate governance · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Land grabbing · Land management · Management · Negotiation · Political science · Psychological intervention · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · International Development and Aid · Mining and Resource Management

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