505
Financialization of the Agri-Food System and Its Consequences
Financialization of the Agri-Food System and Its Consequences
Abstract Submissions Closed
Wednesday, 24 February 2021: 16:00-17:30
Location:
RC40 Sociology of Agriculture and Food (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Financialization, the increased influence of financial actors and logics on social and economic life, is one of the key drivers transforming agriculture, forestry and food systems, and rural economies around the world. Actions of financial actors, and their financial logics, are transforming agri-food systems in profound ways. A recent book[1] revealed that financialized economic activities are not only being deployed by financial institutions, but also by national and private investment funds (SWFs) and state-backed organizations, for commercial purposes, for development, and for aid, among a host of other purposes. Financialization is a powerful dynamic and recent developments suggest that the rollout of financialization in the agri-food system is both contradictory and uneven across different spaces and markets. Financialization of the agri-food system raises many ethical and moral questions. When nation states help to facilitate financialization it is important that they weigh up impacts upon small and medium scale farms and food businesses and those who occupy lands (either legally or illegally). The poor and least powerful can readily become more marginalized as financialization proceeds. This session welcomes papers engaging in empirical research of finacialisation or a financialized agri-food system and papers engaging in conceptual and theoretical discussions on developments of finacialisation or finance capitalism in agri-food systems and its global, national and/or local consequences.
[1] Bjørkhaug, H., A. Magnan & G. Lawrence (2018) The Financialization of Agri-Food Systems Contested Transformations. Routledge.
Session Organizers: