Episode 185: Agricultural Modernization in the MENA Region

The agrarian and food crisis in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have re-emerged vigorously to the attention of global development agencies and governments in coincidence with the Russia-Ukraine war. The food crisis has  been interpreted through a number of tropes, including Malthusian, environmentally determinist, security and development economics approaches. Within the dominant mainstream discourse, the MENA region is often depicted as a homogenous geographical area characterized by dryness, infertile lands and poor water resources. How did imperialism, colonialism and the Cold War influence the MENA food systems? What were the effects of agrarian modernizations, trade liberalization and neoliberalism on the agricultural systems in the region? These are some questions that this presentation tries to answer using a geographical and historical-comparative analysis, through a food regimes lens. Understanding contemporary social relations dynamics cannot be limited to the recent period. Agriculture and food in the MENA region are anchored in the history of power relations ruled by flows of capital and the shaping of ecological transformations during the longue durée of capitalism and its corresponding modes of control and regulation.

Giuliano Martiniello is Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at the Faculy of Law, Political and Social Sciences, Université Internationale de Rabat and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut. Prior to joining UIR, he was Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut (2015-2020), Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University (2011-2015), and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal (2012-2013). He got his PhD in Politics at the School of Politics and International Studies of the University of Leeds (2011). He is broadly interested in the political economy, political sociology and political ecology of agrarian and environmental change. His research interests include land regimes, food and farming systems, large-scale land enclosures and contract farming, conservation and deforestation, rural social conflicts and agrarian movements in Africa and the Middle East. He has published articles in a number of top-ranking international journals such as World Development, Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Geoforum, Land Use Policy, Food Secuirty, Globalizations, Agrarian South: a Journal of Political Economy; Third World Quarterly, Review of African Political Economy, among others. He is Contributing Editor of the Review of African Political Economy and Associate Editor of Agrarian South: A Journal of Political Economy. He is co-editor of the book Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, London, Zed Books (2018). 

This episode is part of the CAORC and Carnegie Corporation of New York program "The Maghrib From the Peripheries: Property, Natural Resources and Social Actors in the Maghrib". It was recorded via zoom on the 19th of October, 2023 by the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS).

Edited by Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).