My research examines how global economic processes interact with agriculture and natural resources, particularly in developing countries. Shifting dynamics of international trade and investment transform landscapes, alter livelihoods, and generate political reactions. My dissertation engages with an important economic process that is frequently overlooked by environmental sociologists: the growing power and prominence of finance. I explore increasing investment in farmland by financial actors since 2008. I also examine the political response to this influx of foreign capital into domestic land markets through a case study of Brazil. Theoretically my work reinvigorates foundational work in the political economy of agriculture—such as the “agrarian question” of what happens to rural people and places under advanced capitalism—by fusing it with contemporary approaches to markets as sites of cultural production and performative practice.

Peer-reviewed articles

Fairbairn, Madeleine. Forthcoming. “‘Like gold with yield’: Evolving intersections between farmland and finance.” The Journal of Peasant Studies.

ABSTRACT: Since 2007, capital markets have acquired a newfound interest in agricultural land as a portfolio investment. This phenomenon is examined through the theoretical lens of financialization. In some ways the trend resembles a sort of financialization in reverse—many new investments involve agricultural production in addition to land ownership. Farmland also fits well into current financial discourses, which emphasize getting the right kind of exposure to long-term agricultural trends and “value investing” in genuinely productive companies. However, capital markets’ current affinity for farmland also represents significant continuity with the financialization era, particularly in the treatment of land as a financial asset. Capital gains are central to current farmland investments, both as a source of inflation hedging growth and of potentially large speculative profits. New types of farmland investment management organizations (“FIMOs”) are emerging, including from among large farmland operators that formerly valued land primarily as a productive asset.  Finally, the first tentative steps toward the securitization of farmland demonstrate the potential for a much more complete financialization of farmland in the future.

Fairbairn, Madeleine. 2013. “Indirect dispossession: Domestic power imbalances and foreign access to land in Mozambique.” Development and Change. 44(2): 335-356. Link.

 ABSTRACT: This paper challenges the dominant media narrative about the “global land grab” as a top-down phenomenon driven by global markets or foreign states, highlighting instead the crucial mediating role played by the host state and domestic elites through a case study of Mozambique. I first introduce the domestic institutional framework, particularly the national Land Law and the institutions that determine the economic value of land. I then argue for an analysis of large-scale land acquisitions that brings into focus the effects of domestic power imbalances on determining the outcomes of foreign demand for land. I examine the ways in which domestic inequality may shape foreign land acquisitions through a typology of the sources of power that give domestic elites a privileged role in relation to foreign investors. The five sources of domestic power considered are: traditional authority, bureaucratic influence, historical accumulation, locally-based business knowledge and networks, and control over the development agenda. Finally, I conclude that the emphasis placed on the actions of the foreigner by both opponents (via framings of land acquisitions as neocolonialism or imperialism) and proponents (via solutions rooted in corporate codes of conduct) may obscure the ways in which pre-existing domestic inequality conditions the outcomes of these deals.

Fairbairn, Madeleine. 2012. “Framing transformation: The counter-hegemonic potential of food sovereignty in the U.S. context.” Agriculture and Human Values. 29(2): 217-230. Link.

ABSTRACT: Originally created by the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina, the concept of “food sovereignty” is being used with increasing frequency by agrifood activists and others in the Global North. This paper uses the social movements literature on framing as an analytical lens to explore the effects of this diffusion on the transformative potential of food sovereignty. U.S. agrifood initiatives have recently been the subject of criticism for their lack of transformative potential, whether because they offer market-based solutions rather than demanding political ones or because they fail to adequately address existing social injustice. This paper examines how food sovereignty measures up to this critique, both as originally framed by Vía Campesina and as reframed for the U.S. context. Analysis of the framing of food sovereignty on the web sites of U.S.-based organizations reveals a tendency to stress ethical consumption and to reify local control of food systems, potentially undermining the concept’s original focus on social injustice and political solutions.

See CV for full list of publications.