Not About Land,Not Quite a Grab: Dispersed Dispossession in Rural Russia

In most literature in geography and agrarian studies, rural dispossession is neatly related to land rights or access, a trend that increased with debates about the recent wave of farmland investments worldwide. Drawing on long‐term fieldwork in rural Russia, this paper critiques that focus and the assumed nexus between rural dispossession and farmland, as is prevents an understanding of more dispersed stakes, modes and temporalities of dispossession. I introduce the concept of dispersed dispossession which advances our understanding of social and relational objects of dispossession beyond natural resources (such as sustaining institutions and infrastructures), and the tangled, complex, often slow and silent modes and temporalities of dispossession beyond spectacular events. I show how the concept sheds new light on current agrarian change in Russia, and how it contributes to debates on (rural) dispossession and “land grabs” more generally.     

The Economics of Rural Households in Russia: Impact of Village Location

An American specialist on Russia's agrarian sector and two collaborators explore the effects of distance to nearby urban markets on the agricultural output and income of Russian rural households. Unlike previous studies that have largely tested such effects on the basis of household distance from relatively large oblast administrative centers, the authors adopt a micro-level scale of analysis, focusing on distance from smaller rayon centers. Comparison of two sample populations (near vs. remote from rayon center) from a larger survey population of 900 households in nine representative regions of Russia reveals marked differences in household incomes, commodity output, and real holdings of land that are statistically verified by a linear regression model. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, P32, Q15, Q18. 4 tables, 46 references.     

Rule of Law Expedited: Land Title Reform and Justice in Burma (Myanmar)

Abstract

The development of rule of law is touted as one of the most important considerations in Burma (Myanmar) today, yet its meaning is highly contested after fifty years of military rule. This paper will examine how the rule of law in Burma’s transitional political environment has been influenced by the legacies of military rule and the government’s development policies since 2011. A series of laws introduced by the Thein Sein government under the rubric of rule of law and good governance had a significant impact upon small hold farmers across the country. While some laws specifically related to farmers and their land, others encouraged private investment in the land used by farmers. The combined effect of these laws was to formalise the pattern of land grabbing that had developed under the previous government and to encourage land speculation. Moreover, they show how an expedited procedural rule of law incited conflict and further injustice. Any progress towards substantive justice and a more democratic rule of law must keep pace with improvements in the country’s limited administrative and judicial capacities. Whether, and how far, Burma can develop and move beyond a thin or procedural rule of law will be tested as the country experiences life under the NLD government.     

Land reform in the 1950s in Italy and the United States: the thinking of Mario Einaudi

The article discusses the thinking of Mario Einaudi in relation to the ambitious measures with which the Italian government sought to move towards land reform in the immediate post–war period. Einaudi, an intellectual and academic, was by birth Italian but moved to the United States during the Fascist period. Like his father Luigi, the noted economist, he was convinced of the need to stimulate the free market in land in order to increase productivity and modernise cultivation methods; in his writings he repeatedly sought to develop a plan of action that would facilitate collaboration between Rome and Washington in this field, identifying the Tennessee Valley Authority approach as especially suited to the Italian case. However, while his ideas achieved a good public airing, they had a limited impact: on the political front, Cold War priorities pushed Italian and US Marshall Plan experts more towards the redistribution of landownership than towards stimulating the productivity of agricultural businesses, in the attempt to rapidly build a consensus behind the government; and on the cultural front, at the end of the 1950s the issue of backwardness in the rural South started to be interpreted in terms of cultural and social anthropology, an approach which did not directly relate to the development of political programmes.     

Spatial Shifts in the Population of Moscow Region

An American geographer and senior Russian demographer/migration specialist examine spatial shifts in the distribution of population within Moscow city and Moscow Oblast in response to major social and economic changes occurring in the aftermath of the USSR's disintegration. This second installment (for the first, see Ioffe and Zayonchkovskaya, 2010) in a three-part study devoted to exploring the consequences and spatial manifestations of Russia's shrinking population is focused on the one relatively small part of that country that is expected to experience population growth over the next one and one-half decades (albeit strictly due to in-migration rather than natural increase). Particular attention is devoted to the effects of emerging real estate and land markets during the post-Soviet period, on the restructuring of the regional settlement system focused on the Russian capital, as well as the insights to be derived (based on a case study) from investigating processes of spatial population shifts at multiple scales.