This seminar series will seek to discuss the struggles on and over the land in relation to the working people in the global south. The speakers will address who are the working people? What relationships exist between the urban and rural forms of labour and what does an assumed separation of the urban and rural divide create – the genesis of the rural/urban divide and the effect on the struggles of the working people. In discussing the relationship to the land how do we come to understand varying forms of work?  The speakers, in thinking through the agrarian question, will provide analysis and insight into how we can understand gender relations, property relations and the state. Perhaps most critical to this approach is redefining how we understand forms of work in relation to the land under the assumption that land remains a critical space in the global south.

Monday 19^th October: Dr Kate Meagher (LSE) and Martin Cobian (Lehman College, CUNY) “Working in Chains:  Global Value Chains and Rural Informal Workers (Africa and Latin America)” & “How informal is rural "informality" ? Some notes on the Formal Subsumption of Labor, The Agrarian Question and the Transition to Capitalism”

Talks are open to all and will run each week. To receive the Zoom link, please email centre@clutterafrican.cam.ac.uk 

Remaining Term Programme:

• Monday 26^th October: Prof Henry Bernstein (Professor Emeritus, SOAS) Africa’s agrarian questions then and now
• Monday 2^nd November: Dr Ahmed Ibrahim (Carleton College) and Prof Catherine Besteman (Colby College) Land-scapes of Conflict in Southern Somalia
• Monday 9^th November: Dr Nada Moumtaz (University of Toronto) Gucci and the Waqf: Inalienability in Beirut's postwar reconstruction
• Monday 16^th November: Prof Sit Tsui (Southwest University, China) China’s Strategy of Rural Revitalization amid the New Cold War
• Monday 23^rd November: Prof Utsa Patnaik (Prof Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) and Prof Issa Shivji (Prof Emeritus, University of Dar es Salaam) The Agrarian Question(s) - India and Africa
• Monday 30^th December: Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata, University of Ghana TBC