Jostein Jakobsen

Dags för en ny IndienbildBilden av Indien i västerlandet, även i Sverige, är minst sagt motsägelsefull. Å ena sidan vet de flesta att indisk ekonomi blomstrar, att indierna numera är världsmästare på IT- och relaterade tjänster globalt och att Indien har världens största drömfabrik i form av Bollywood.Å andra sidan 'vet' alla att det är landet där kvinnor behandlas värst i hela världen, där huvudstaden New Delhi kallas våldtäkternas huvudstad alla kategorier. Lägg därtill den utbredda fattigdomen, förorenade floder och storstädernas kaos.

Capital’s Food Regime traces India’s integration into the global food regime and reveals the consequences for the country’s different classes of labour. The book is an in-depth study of agrarian transformations in contemporary India through the lens of food regime analysis. While the food regime approach has emphasized global-scale studies, this book breaks new ground in downscaling the approach to account for specific historical-geographical cases. Jakobsen thus develops an innovative Marxist approach to food regime analysis that challenges prevailing scholarly accounts in Agrarian Studies and beyond.

Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi’s India analyses how the twin forces of Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism unfold in India’s bovine economy, revealing their often-devastating material and economic impact on the country’s poor.This book is a rare, in-depth study of India’s bovine economy under Narendra Modi’s authoritarian populism. This is an economy that throws up a central paradox: On the one hand, an entrenched and aggressive Hindu nationalist politics is engaged in violently protecting the cow, disciplining those who do not sufficiently respect and revere it; on the other hand, India houses and continuously promotes one of the world’s largest corporate-controlled beef export economies that depends on the slaughter of millions of bovines every year. The book offers an original analysis of this scenario to show how Modi’s authoritarian populist regime has worked to reconcile the two by simultaneously promoting a virulent Hindu nationalism that seeks to turn India into a Hindu state, while also pushing neoliberal economic policies favouring corporate capital and elite class interests within and beyond the bovine economy.The book brings out the adverse impacts of these political-economic processes on the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor Indians in countryside and city. In addition, it identifies emerging weaknesses in Modi’s authoritarian populism, highlighting the potential for progressive counter-mobilisation. It will be of interest to scholars in the fields of development studies, South Asia studies, critical agrarian studies, as well as scholars with a general interest in political economy, contemporary authoritarian populism, and social movements.

Capital’s Food Regime: Class Struggle, the State and Corporate Agriculture in India analyses how India is being integrated into the global food regime at the current conjuncture, and with what consequences for the country’s classes of labour. The book is an in-depth study of agrarian transformations in contemporary India through the lens of food regime analysis. While the food regime approach has emphasized global-scale studies, this book breaks new ground in downscaling the approach to account for specific historical-geographical cases. The book thus develops an innovative Marxist approach to food regime analysis that challenges prevailing scholarly accounts in agrarian studies and beyond.

Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi’s India analyses how the twin forces of Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism unfold in India’s bovine economy, revealing their often-devastating material and economic impact on the country’s poor.This book is a rare, in-depth study of India’s bovine economy under Narendra Modi’s authoritarian populism. This is an economy that throws up a central paradox: On the one hand, an entrenched and aggressive Hindu nationalist politics is engaged in violently protecting the cow, disciplining those who do not sufficiently respect and revere it; on the other hand, India houses and continuously promotes one of the world’s largest corporate-controlled beef export economies that depends on the slaughter of millions of bovines every year. The book offers an original analysis of this scenario to show how Modi’s authoritarian populist regime has worked to reconcile the two by simultaneously promoting a virulent Hindu nationalism that seeks to turn India into a Hindu state, while also pushing neoliberal economic policies favouring corporate capital and elite class interests within and beyond the bovine economy.The book brings out the adverse impacts of these political-economic processes on the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor Indians in countryside and city. In addition, it identifies emerging weaknesses in Modi’s authoritarian populism, highlighting the potential for progressive counter-mobilisation. It will be of interest to scholars in the fields of development studies, South Asia studies, critical agrarian studies, as well as scholars with a general interest in political economy, contemporary authoritarian populism, and social movements.

Offering a thought provoking theoretical conversation around ecological crisis and natural resource extraction, this book suggests that we are on a trajectory geared towards total extractivism guided by the mythological Worldeater. The authors discuss why and how we have come to live in this catastrophic predicament, rooting the present in an original perspective that animates the forces of global techno-capitalist development. They argue that the Worldeater helps us make sense of the insatiable forces that transform, convert and consume the world. The book combines this unique approach with detailed academic review of critical agrarian studies and political ecology, the militarization of nature and the conventional and ‘green’ extraction nexus. It seeks radical reflection on the role people play in the construction and perpetuation of these crises, and concludes with some suggestions on how to tackle them.