Financialization of capitalism, labour, agribusiness and (neo)extractivism: from globalized value chains to digitalization
Introduction
This stream will explore the role of financial capital in the production, circulation, trade and consumption of commodities across the agribusiness sector and the contemporary capital-labour tensions inherent in its territorial expansion. By turning attention to the complex conjunction between labour, land and ‘natural’ resources in the expansion and extraction of value, the stream considers that processes of accumulation, circulation and further value extraction involve not just the cultivation of monocultures, but also mineral extraction for key chemical inputs, genetic modification of plants, and new technological and financial mechanisms to overcome market and production volatility.
The territorial advances that underpin the above dynamics differentially engage and disrupt working lives on the frontiers of agribusiness. On one hand the labour engaged in prospecting, clearing or ‘value grabbing’ from land is often irregular, invisible and particularly exploitative (Andreucci et al). The labour processes, therefore, by which dispossession occurs and new land is brought into circulation remain imbued with violence. Secondly, resultant conflicts in agribusiness expansion encourage a broader consideration of labour-capital tensions beyond the wage relation to consider the disenfranchisement and resistance of rural subjects whose working lives depend on collectively occupied territories coveted by speculators and agribusiness. By bringing these reflections together with new understandings of financialisation, global (labour) value chains and global extractivism, our objective is to foster a broad debate on agribusiness as a form of (neo)extractivism. There is an ambition to collectively investigate how financial capital mediates globalised value chains, with particular interest in empirical knowledge regarding land as a financial asset class, labour and ecological relations in spaces of expansion, production, circulation and value extraction. We are also interested in contributions that dialogue with new forms, mediations and the technological apparatus regarding the role of the financial sector in global extractivism. These include new land and resource captures, deals and trades; digitalization of commodity production; appropriation of past and current traditional knowledge (current and past); the intensive and extensive use of pesticides and herbicides.
We thus seek to gather researchers to investigate and co-relate classic, contemporary and state of the art research that places labour at the centre of theoretical and empirical contributions. How do workers confront the contemporary strategies of capitalist accumulation via financialised agribusiness activities and (neo)extractivism?
Call for abstracts
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public policies aimed at rescuing capital accumulation injected never seen before liquidity into financial markets, which, combined with the promise of a recovery in the world economy, led stock exchanges and derivative commodities futures markets to reach unprecedented price levels. In 2021, with the gradual reopening of the economy, it became clear that the partial stoppage of capitalist production, as well as the disarticulation of value chains were obstacles to an awaited economic recovery. At the same time, global financial capital has made explicit its fundamental role in relation to the production, exchange and consumption of merchandise for today's capitalism. High commodity futures prices in the international derivatives markets were transmitted to set the present prices of these commodities, including the prices of energy, food and minerals. These in turn set a general prices rise for merchandise across the, generating worldwide inflation (Jennifer Clap), given the centrality of agribusiness, energy and mineral (neo)extractivism to the costs of capitalist enterprises. The impacts of this are being experienced by the working classes, in most diverse and uneven manifestations.
In recent decades, several researchers have investigated the recent importance of financial capital for capitalist production in general. Among the most prominent theories are those of finance dominance of capitalism (Chesnais), of monopoly capital (Sweezy & Baran), of financialisation due to the overaccumulation of capital (Harvey) or due to the crisis of accumulation related to the fall in the rate of profit (Kliman, Roberts), to mention some already classic hypotheses.
This debate has brought focus to the specific characteristics of world financial capital for the production of commodities by agribusiness and (neo)extractivist exploitation. These include: the consequences labour and labour processes with the increase in exploitation and precarity; the relationship between financial capital, land/green grabs and the expansion and extraction of value; nature commodification; land as a new financial asset class; new social-ecological conflicts as a character of contemporary labour-capital relations.
The pronounced arrival of financial capital to sites of agricultural, livestock and extractive production is not restricted to different forms by which surplus value produced by workers is extracted for the benefit of the shareholders of large global corporations. Financial capital is present in the entire value chain of production and expansion of global commodities, and in the further and future extraction of value as rent. Financial capital aimed at agribusiness and (neo)extractivism is defining the world of work in new ways, not just in its mediations of globalised value chains and the labour therein, but as a critical stimulus for land captures that expropriate, displace and disrupt the labour-land-nature relations of rural, riverine and forest communities.
In expanding our consideration of labour-capital tensions to include working lives within financialised value chains of agribusiness, and those impacted by the territorial expansion of this cultivation/extractivism, what are the opportunities and challenges facing the diverse forms of worker organisation in relation to the most current characteristics and consequences of financialised commodity chains?
We, therefore, invite scholars and researchers from across the globe to submit theoretical and empirical contributions to our special stream, based on the issues addressed here, which may include:
- Financialisation of global agriculture and livestock production
- Financialisation and (neo)extractivism as global phenomena
- Recent impacts on labour, the labour process and its forms of exploitation
- Globalised value chains and its mediation by financial capital
- Financialisation and Commodification of nature
- Negative impacts on nature by capital accumulation linked to primary commodities
- Land grabbing and land as a new financial asset class
- Digitalization of capitalist economy
- Social and Environmental Impacts of Pesticides, Herbicides and their monetarisation
- collective forms of labour resistance to land grabs, value grabs and agribusiness
Organisers
The organisers of this Special Stream will co-ordinate and participate in the panels, appropriate, presenting their research as appropriate, and will connect and summarise the unfolding discussions.
Cássio Boechat (Federal University of Espírito Santo/Brazil), Land as a financial asset in Bolsonaro government in Brazil; secondary markets for farmland through Agro Law and FIAGRO (Investment Funds in Farmland and Agrobusinesses) and consequences
Peter Clausing (Pesticide Action Network/Germany), Externalization of costs: the environmental and health impacts of pesticide use
Brian Garvey (University of Strathclyde/Scotland), Conflict and globalised trades; resource and value grabbing between Europe and Latin Amercia
Maria Luisa Mendonça (City University of New York/USA), Agribusiness, its financialization process and the role of pension funds targeting land as a financial asset
Marco Antonio Mitidiero Junior (Federal University of Paraíba/Brazil), Land property, food commodification and violence in Brazil and Latin America
Fábio Pitta (University of São Paulo/ University of the State of São Paulo), Commodities futures markets, the current stagflation process of global economy and precarization of labour
Marcela Vecchione (Federal University of Pará/Brazil), Locking values for the future: Green Bonds and (Co)Modification of Nature(s) through Global Value Chains in Amazonian Frontiers