Economic Enterprises and their Critics: Efforts to Mitigate the Negative Impact of Large-Scale Agricultural Investments in Africa

• Applicant: Dr. Tijo Salverda, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 353613876

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

The project shows that investors involved in large-scale land acquisitions in Africa – and in the Global South more generally – tend to be more worried about international critics voicing concerns about the negative impacts of these investments than often acknowledged. It determines, to a large extent, how enterprises balance economic and moral concerns. Although the pressure of critics such as NGOs, rural populations, social movements, journalists, and (activist) scholars by no means puts negative consequences of large-scale investments completely to a halt, the project highlights the importance of better understanding interactions between economic enterprises and their critics. Starting from a large-scale European agricultural investment in Zambia, the project shows that anthropology can offer an important contribution to understanding the interactions, particularly regarding the fact that the outcomes and realities are often ambiguous – with at times fairer and more sustainable outcomes, but also continuous challenges to accomplish structural change. Ethnographic research can provide key insights why this tends to be the case. It appears, for example, difficult to maintain pressure on economic enterprises for extended periods of time, in particular, when at some moment in time, these enterprises have expressed some willingness to listen to the critique, even if this by no means reverses inequalities. The project’s findings provide, in my opinion, relevant contributions to the potential, but also challenges, of shaping a sustainable and just world – and economic system. It shows that critique is not without an impact, even if the outcomes may not exactly be what (the fiercest) critics had in mind. Yet without critique, unscrupulous behaviour certainly goes largely unchallenged. Critique, accordingly, plays an important role in the development of our economic system. Hence, a better understanding of the functioning and dynamics of critique, and the fact that economic enterprises are very much concerned about it, is part of the riddle to accomplish change – for the better! ‘Unexpected’ findings: In hindsight, it is often difficult to really ‘see’ what was unexpected. But a key realisation that emerged from the project is the constraint of a very politically informed (and dogmatic) thinking about capitalism dominant in anthropology. I share much of the critique peers raise about capitalism, the power of economic enterprises, etc. Yet following from my research and the sharing of my findings, it is also evident that this thinking has its blind spots. At various occasions, for example, anthropologists would tell me that everyone knows that economic enterprises are all-powerful, even if my empirical findings easily refuted their simplistic claims. The consequence, accordingly, is that there are empirical and theoretical shortcomings regarding the realities of Polanyi’s double movement. This, as I would define it here, is, on the one hand, a tendency for expanding capitalism practices and enterprises and, on the other, a perpetual – though fluctuating – countermovement that aims to limit the negative consequences. Navigating these various interpretations, I have experienced, requires a lot of (self- )reflection in the process of conducting empirical research as well as in analysing data. It is a constant balancing act of where a more nuanced explanation is justified and where straightforward critique of capitalism would be more appropriate. I certainly do not have an all-encompassing answer to these challenges, yet I believe that empirical research with economic enterprises – and discussions about the advantages, challenges, ambiguities, and limitations of it – should receive much more attention in anthropology, both in debates within the discipline and in our teaching.

Publications

• Aiming to keep capitalist accumulation in check: The role of the global land rush’s fiercest critics. Focaal Blog.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Facing criticism: an analysis of (land-based) corporate responses to the large-scale land acquisition countermovement. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(5), 1003-1020.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Conflicting Interpretations: On Analyzing An Agribusiness’ Concerns About Critique. Journal of Business Anthropology, 8(1), 4-24.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Land Grabbing und seine KritikerInnen: Ein Fallbeispiel in Sambia. In: Karin Fischer, Christian Reiner and Cornelia Staritz (eds.). Globale Warenketten und ungleiche Entwicklung: Arbeit, Kapital, Konsum, Natur. Vienna: Mandelbaum.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Multiscalar moral economy. Focaal, 2021(89), 79-92.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• When Land Becomes a Burden: An Analysis of an Underperforming Zambian Land Deal. African Studies Review, 64(3), 653-674.
  Salverda, Tijo & Nkonde, Chewe
  
• Ethnography in Pandemic Times. Journal of Business Anthropology, 11(1), 102-105.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Soja setzen in Sambia. Societal Impact Forum, University of Vienna.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Time will tell: Temporalities of a European land deal in Zambia and its critics. Geoforum, 137, 126-134.
  Salverda, Tijo
  
• Catching up with time. (Prof. Dr Stefan Ouma’s) Institutional Landscapes blog series.
  Salverda, Tijo