China Studies Research Centre, La Trobe University
2:30-4:00 Monday 25 March 2019
Room 318, Education 2 (ED2), La Trobe University
This seminar will present the preliminary findings of an Australian Research Council funded project exploring the household-level impacts of agricultural scaling-up as evidenced by the rearrangement of land, labour and capital in one of three case study counties – Zigui county in Hubei province. The official discourse is that agricultural cooperatives and large agribusinesses will lead ‘scattered’ rural households into higher-value markets. Other studies, however, have linked the rearrangement of land, labour and capital brought about by scaling-up to accelerating inequality. There is a further question about the relationship between resettlement and scaling-up, which to date has not been addressed, though it is well established that resettlement tends to have adverse economic and social effects. This presentation will explore these processes and effects at the household level.
About the Speaker
Brooke Wilmsen is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University. She is predominantly interested in issues of involuntary resettlement and agrarian change in China. She is currently working on an ARC Discovery Project that analyses the remaking of rural China as it is envisaged and executed in China’s hierarchical political system. Recent publications can be found in Progress in Human Geography, Development and Change and World Development.