Losing Land in Times of Peace: Post-War Agrarian Capitalism in Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire
Publisher: Journal of Peasant Studies
Author(s): Jacobo Grajales
Date: 2020
Topics: Conflict Causes, Land, Peace and Security Operations
Countries: Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire
Recent scholarly interest in the implementation of land policies in post-conflict settings has been focused on ‘best practices'. Yet defining land tensions as a risk for stability conceals the contribution of peace-making to the transformations of capitalism. This contribution links the analysis of post-conflict conjunctures to the renewal of developmentalist policies. I argue that peace-making policies contribute to differentiate the economy from the political sphere, and to define land as an economic problem, not a political matter. This produces what I call post-war agrarian capitalism. This proposition is put into application through a comparative analysis of Colombia and Côte d’Ivoire.