Since the mid-2000s, India has been beset by widespread farmer protests against "land grabs." Dispossession Without Development demonstrates that beneath these conflicts lay a profound transformation in the political economy of land dispossession. While the postcolonial Indian state dispossessed land mostly for public-sector industry and infrastructure, the adoption of neoliberal economic policies in the early 1990s prompted state governments to become land brokers for private real estate capital. This new regime of dispossession culminated with private Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the mid-2000s. Using the case of a village in Rajasthan that was dispossessed for one of North India's largest SEZs, the book ethnographically illustrates how the zone's real estate-driven and knowledge-intensive growth intersected with pre-existing agrarian inequalities to generate a peculiar and exclusionary trajectory of social change. Taking us into the lives of diverse villagers, the book meticulously documents the destruction of their agricultural livelihoods, the marginalization of their labor, and their exclusion from the zone's "world-class" infrastructure. Most poignantly, it shows farmers' unequal capacities to profit from dramatic land speculation and the consequences of this for village social relations and politics. Illuminating the exclusionary trajectory of capitalism that underlay land conflicts in contemporary India, Dispossession Without Development also advances a novel theory of land dispossession. This book will resonate in both India and many other places where "land grabs" have fueled conflict in recent years.

About the Author
Michael Levien is assistant professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. He has been researching and writing about rural land dispossession in India for the past fifteen years. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reviews
Levin's Dispossession without Development exhibits the best of U.S. Sociology: rich empirical data, causal argumentation, and generalizable claims. * Dana Kornberg, University of Michigan, Social Forces *
This scholarly masterpiece contributes to the existing body of literature on land dispossession and capitalism in general and critical sociology of land dispossession. * Animesh Roy, Giri Institute of Development Studies, American Journal of Sociology *


Awards
Winner of Winner of Global Development Studies Book Award, International Studies Association Winner of Sociology of Development Section Outstanding Book Award, American Sociological Association Winner of Global and Transnational Sociology Section Best Book Award, American Sociological Association Winner of Political Economy of World System (PEWS) Section Distinguished Book Award, American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, Asia and Asian-America Section Book Award, American Sociological Association.



Book Information
ISBN 9780190859169
Author Michael Levien
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 499g
Dimensions(mm) 231mm * 157mm * 23mm