Academic interests
- Political ecology
- Critical agrarian studies
- Marxism
- The global agro-food system
- Social movements
- Critical development studies
- India
Courses taught
Background
- Coordinator, SUM Research School, 2017 - 2021
- PhD in South Asian Studies, University of Oslo, 2020
- MA in History, University of Oslo, 2014
- BA in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 2010
Awards
- The Network for Asian Studies, award for best MA thesis 2014/2015
Tags:
India,
Food,
Poverty,
Asia,
Governance,
Political ecology,
Development,
Globalisation,
Natural Resource Management
Publications
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Harnesk, David & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2023).
Public contestations against the disturbance, degradation, and destruction of sámi pastoral landscapes in northern Sweden.
Journal of Rural Studies.
ISSN 0743-0167.
104.
doi:
10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103162.
Full text in Research Archive
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A new wave of encroachments is unfolding in Northern Sweden on the lands of Indigenous Sámi reindeer pastoralists. Even if the State and corporations may accept that landscape transformations represent threats to reindeer pastoralists' cultural and livelihood practices, attempts to redress these grievances often involve money to cover costs associated with feeding practices or mechanized transport. This paper considers these landscape transformations as driven by industrial capitalist expansion and underlying colonial relations, examining their broader implications on human-animal relations in pastoral landscapes. We apply an ecologically informed radical geography approach and conduct a content analysis of claims-making instances around the new wave of encroachments and their associated compensation schemes, complemented with basic GIS data. Relying on three cases of public contestations, we argue that encroachments represent threats that disturb, degrade, and destroy pastoral landscapes, and that while counter-hegemonic struggles try to diminish the reach of capital into these landscapes to maintain human-animal relations based on natural pastures, hegemonic actors seek to alter such relations to deepen capital's reach. Although reindeer pastoralists have many allies, we argue that broader coalitions are likely necessary to push for reforms of planning regimes that can enable multi-functionality and sustainability of landscapes in rural areas.
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Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2023).
Will development kill us? Globalized livestock production in the "Pandemic Era",
Handbook of International Development and the Environment.
Edward Elgar Publishing.
ISSN 9781800883772.
p. 185–198.
doi:
10.4337/9781800883789.00020.
Show summary
The outbreak of flu pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s originating in Asia, in which novel bird flu viruses infected and killed humans, prompted the idea that a geographical area from which pandemics emerge, exists. This area, located in Asia has been imagined as the “epicenter” of pandemics. Some researchers suggested then that the agrarian landscapes of southern China formed an ecosystem in which viruses of human and animal origin can interact and evolve into new varieties with pandemic potential. Modernizing agricultural production and animal husbandry was proposed as a means to minimize pandemic risks. However, as new disease outbreaks have multiplied across the world during the last years it has become evident that industrial meat production is more likely implicated in the increase of disease transmission between animals and humans. Industrial meat production is characterized by concentration and integration, the reliance on standardized feed and fodder, the expansion of industrial agriculture into forested areas to produce the ingredients for making feed and fodder as well as by the increased use of drugs in animal production. This chapter examines the interlinked processes associated with industrial meat production and the increase in the occurrence of disease transmission between animals and humans. In doing so we will suggest that, pandemics and epidemics are not only public health issues but also require rethinking interspecies relationships in agriculture and beyond.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2023).
The international development of food and agriculture: global food regimes, environmental change and new configurations of power,
Handbook of International Development and the Environment.
Edward Elgar Publishing.
ISSN 9781800883772.
p. 170–185.
doi:
10.4337/9781800883789.00019.
Show summary
At a current moment of politicized global debates surrounding food and agriculture, in which the manifold socio-ecological consequences of unsustainable development are increasingly evident, food regime analysis offers an ambitious approach to our understanding of the structuring of food relations in global capitalism. With a particular emphasis on the so-called ‘third’ food regime ostensibly arising in the period of unprecedented globalization in agri-food systems since the late 1980s, scholarly debate has paid sustained attention to corporate power and influence, as well as to the uneven ramifications of the global food regime for social justice and environmental transformations. Lately, evolving scholarship has increasingly acknowledged new configurations of power, with shifts towards the ‘South’ and the ‘East’ shaping an increasingly ‘multipolar’ or ‘polycentric’ food regime in the 21st century. This chapter traces current debates in food regime literature to take stock of these emergent dynamics. After having presented key characteristics of the food regime approach, the chapter outlines the vocal debate surrounding the ‘third’ food regime and, thereafter, proceeds to explore recent scholarship pertaining to new configurations of power including the ‘rise’ of China in the realm of agro-food.
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Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2023).
Globalisert kjøttproduksjon: Å forstå forholdet mellom helse og miljø som romlige fenomener.
In Cruickshank, Jørn & Aasetre, Jørund (Ed.),
Innføring i samfunnsgeografi.
Fagbokforlaget.
ISSN 9788245021615.
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Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2022).
The ‘brother layer problem’: Routine killing, biotechnology and the pursuit of ‘ethical sustainability’ in industrial poultry.
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
ISSN 2514-8486.
doi:
10.1177/25148486221131195.
Full text in Research Archive
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The global poultry industry culls approximately seven billion day-old male layer chicks annually. Superfluous to both egg and meat, male ‘brother’ layers constitute a momentous problem, simultaneously economical and ethical, to the poultry industry. In this article, we scrutinize present and proposed alternatives to routine killing involving multiple biotechnological innovations, including novel methods for fetus sexing, genome editing technologies and re-sexing. We utilize a political ecological perspective that views attempts to solve the ‘brother layer problem’ as discursive and techno-scientific ‘fixes’ to problems of the capitalist poultry industry's own making and to rising demands for ethics and environmental-friendly animal agriculture. This context opens new avenues for profit-making by and for an expanding matrix of actors we view as an evolving ‘economy of repair’ that is built in part by public resources. Further, these fixes constitute an ostensible ‘ethical sustainability’ meant to signal both animal welfare and environmental improvements, which seem to work towards stabilizing agro-industry, thereby foreclosing alternatives to agro-industrial intensification.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2022).
Bovine meat, authoritarian populism, and state contradictions in Modi's India.
Journal of Agrarian Change.
ISSN 1471-0358.
doi:
10.1111/joac.12495.
Full text in Research Archive
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While authoritarian populism and its relationship to the rural world have gained analytical prominence recently, few have attempted a systematic exploration of how various authoritarian populisms emerge from, and are embedded within, dynamics of capital accumulation, state, and class struggle. Drawing on Poulantzas' approach to “state contradictions,” we focus on the ways by which bovine meat figures in Narendra Modi's authoritarian populist project in contemporary India. On the one hand, violent authoritarianism in the country uses beef eating as a powerful tool for subjugating subaltern groups to Hindutva rule. On the other hand, the country houses a rapidly expanding beef meat agro-industry, accounting for as much as 20% of global exports and based on corporate concentration around dominant class interests. We argue that this points to state contradictions in Modi's India witnessing strained accumulation patterns. These contradictions, we emphasize, have distinct ramifications for India's classes of labour in the countryside, as certain groups experience what we describe as a process of “double victimization.”
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2022).
Beyond subject-making: Conflicting humanisms, class analysis, and the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology
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Progress in Human Geography.
ISSN 0309-1325.
doi:
10.1177/03091325211056442.
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This article examines conflicting conceptualizations of the human subject in political ecology and geography: Foucauldian views of “subject-making” and Gramscian views of “the person”. While Foucauldian work holds that the more complete exertion of power, the more coherent subject-making, Gramscian historical–geographical perspectives counter that, the more complete exertion of power, the more incoherent persons and their class-based collectivities. Outlining incongruities between these approaches, I argue that the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology—with its emphasis on incoherence and fracture–allows geographers new nuance in understanding the human subject, although not without challenges to the actual writing of such scholarship.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2021).
Bovine Contradictions: The Politics Of (De)Meatification And Hindutva Hegemony In Neoliberal India.
In Hansen, Arve & Syse, Karen Lykke (Ed.),
Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
ISSN 978-1-5381-4265-3.
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Hansen, Arve; Jakobsen, Jostein & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn
(2021).
New Geographies of Global Meatification: The BRICS in the Industrial Meat Complex.
In Hansen, Arve & Syse, Karen Lykke (Ed.),
Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
ISSN 978-1-5381-4265-3.
p. 35–58.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
New food regime geographies: Scale, state, labor.
World Development.
ISSN 0305-750X.
145,
p. 1–7.
doi:
10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105523.
Full text in Research Archive
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Food regime analysis is a prominent approach to the role of food and agriculture in global capitalism. Yet recent advancement within the approach has not received as much attention as it deserves outside of specialized circles of agrarian research. Food regime scholarship has over the last few years taken several steps to move away from its previous prevalent emphasis on macro-scale phenomena to make it more applicable to empirical research on agricultural development. This article reviews recent scholarship in food regime analysis to bring out central aspects of such advancement. In particular, this review discusses three key aspects of recent food regime scholarship: First, I find an increased problematizing of spatiality and scale with calls for downscaling the food regime approach. Second, I find a rising centrality of theorizing and analyzing the state. Third, despite these advancements, an important gap remains in sustained attention to questions of labor. I call for further scrutiny of labor in order to bring food regime analysis forwards.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Westengen, Ola
(2021).
The imperial maize assemblage: maize dialectics in Malawi and India.
Journal of Peasant Studies.
ISSN 0306-6150.
p. 1–25.
doi:
10.1080/03066150.2021.1890042.
Full text in Research Archive
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The ‘grain hypothesis', postulated by James Scott, suggests that cereals are ‘political crops’ intrinsic to state formation. Drawing the classical agrarian political economy of maize into dialogue with recent more-than-human political ecology, we explore the grain hypothesis with empirical material from present day Malawi and India. The evolution and ecology of the maize plant, we argue, has made it a strong agent of history, one that has enabled resilience, but also facilitated state and capital entanglement in the global agro-food system. This imperial maize assemblage is set on expansion, but it will continue to meet resistance in coevolved peasant-maize alliances.
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Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
Meatification and everyday geographies of consumption in Vietnam and China.
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography.
ISSN 0435-3684.
doi:
10.1080/04353684.2019.1709217.
Full text in Research Archive
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The rapidly escalating production and consumption of meat across the world has drawn much attention in recent years. While mainstream accounts tend to see the phenomenon as driven by ‘natural’ processes of consumption pattern change through economic development, critical geographies have turned to exploring the uneven capitalist processes underpinning what Tony Weis calls ‘meatification’. In Weis’ view, meatification unfolds through what he calls ‘the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex’, which is presently becoming a dominant form of agricultural production worldwide. Simultaneously, but less thoroughly investigated in the emerging scholarship, meatification unfolds in and through everyday geographies of consumption that we conceptualize as variegated ‘meatscapes’. By bringing together critical geographers’ interest in the political economy of meat with practice theory and consumption research, this contribution furthers the geographical dialogue around the spatial transformations brought about by meatification. Looking at Vietnam and China as examples of rapidly meatifying countries, we explore the intersection of macro-scale spatial transformations through trade and commodity flows and, at the micro-scale, transformations in food practices. We thus argue for an approach to meatification that is multi-scalar and conducive to further regionally specific research of meatification in Asia and beyond.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2019).
Compounding aspirations: grounding hegemonic processes in India's rural transformations.
Revue canadienne d'études du développement.
ISSN 0225-5189.
doi:
10.1080/02255189.2019.1666706.
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This article introduces compounding aspirations as a key concept for interrogating complex and contradictory rural transformations in India. We argue that compounding aspirations are central to the conjunctural grounding of hegemonic processes of neoliberalisation in lived experience. Taking such aspirations as constitutive elements to hegemonic processes, we question prevailing perspectives on rural transformations in India as we speak to emerging interest in critical agrarian studies to transcend dichotomous views of consent and coercion. We illustrate this argument with select empirical cases from India, focusing in particular on adverse incorporation in corporate agriculture in rural Karnataka.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2019).
The maize frontier in rural South India: Exploring the everyday dynamics of the contemporary food regime.
Journal of Agrarian Change.
ISSN 1471-0358.
20(1),
p. 1–26.
doi:
10.1111/joac.12337.
Full text in Research Archive
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This contribution explores how new regions and crops are integrated in the contemporary food regime through a fieldwork‐based approach to maize cultivation in rural Karnataka, South India. As an intrinsic part of the industrial grain–oilseed–livestock complex, maize is an important component of the contemporary food regime. I argue that the expansion of maize at the village level follows commodity frontier dynamics, located at the conjuncture of processes “from above” pushing the industrial grain–oilseed–complex forward and processes “from below” that integrate maize in everyday livelihoods. Focusing on how villagers make use of maize in ways that cross, but simultaneously are differentiated along, lines of class and caste, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the everyday dynamics of contemporary food regime.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Hansen, Arve
(2019).
Geographies of meatification: an emerging Asian meat complex.
Globalizations.
ISSN 1474-7731.
17(1),
p. 93–109.
doi:
10.1080/14747731.2019.1614723.
Full text in Research Archive
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The ‘meatification’ of human diets has been subject to increasing scholarly attention in recent years, along with its many impacts. While the rapidly expanding meatification in many Asian countries has been noted, the geographies of these processes have been left largely unexplored. This paper maps the changing geographies of meat with special focus on Southeast Asia. We use Tony Weis’ concept of ‘the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex’ to analyse how forms of systemic meatification are taking place in Asia. We map and analyse regional trends in meat production and consumption, as well as trade patterns in meat products and dominant feed crops. We argue that the regional meat complex emerges through increasingly regional development processes and capital, as well as through new South-South connections. The geographies of meatification in Southeast Asia thus constitute an empirical manifestation of the emerging multipolarity of the global food regime.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2018).
Towards a Gramscian food regime analysis of India's agrarian crisis: Counter-movements, petrofarming and Cheap Nature.
Geoforum.
ISSN 0016-7185.
90,
p. 1–10.
doi:
10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.01.015.
Full text in Research Archive
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This article develops an initial framework for a Gramscian and political ecological food regime analysis of India’s ongoing agrarian crisis. Criticizing readings of Polanyi in food regime analysis in light of Gramscian perspectives, I seek to contest food regime analysis’s approach to counter-movements. I suggest, further, that close attention to the Indian case of ‘actually existing crises’ helps us avoid some of the capital-centric limitations in food regime literature. Working towards an incipient understanding of the absence of a sustained smallholder counter-movement at the current conjuncture in India, I argue for locating our investigation at the intersection of crises of accumulation and of legitimation. I analyze India’s decentralized form of petrofarming as a socioecological cycle of accumulation that is presently facing a condition of exhaustion of Cheap Nature. Drawing on Gramscian perespectives, I argue that an analytics that foregrounds the dynamics of class forces in the integral state can help us rethinking the possibilities for resistance to the contemporary food regime more broadly.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2017).
Inside and Outside the State: Imagining the Indian State among Subalternists and Naxalites.
In Basu, Pradip (Eds.),
Naxalite Politics: Post-structuralist, Postcolonial and Subaltern Perspectives.
Setu Prakashani.
ISSN 978-93-80677-23-1.
p. 283–298.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2016).
Disappearing Landlords and the Unmaking
of Revolution: Maoist Mobilization,
the State and Agrarian Change in Northern Telangana.
In Nilsen, Alf Gunvald & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (Ed.),
Social Movements and the State in India: Deepening Democracy?.
Palgrave Macmillan.
ISSN 978-1-137-59132-6.
p. 239–267.
doi:
10.1057/978-1-137-59133-3_11.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2024).
Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi's India.
Routledge.
ISBN 9781032709345.
112 p.
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Dunlap, Alexander & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political Ecology, Critical Agrarian Studies and The Capitalist Worldeater.
Palgrave Pivot.
ISBN 978-3-030-26851-0.
171 p.
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Rødvik, Trym Daniel & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2024).
Tenk globalt!
Klassekampen.
ISSN 0805-3839.
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Rødvik, Trym Daniel & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2023).
En kapitalisme på tomgang og statsbudsjettets fallitt.
Gnist- Marxistisk tidsskrift.
ISSN 2535-3195.
p. 56–61.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2022).
Russlands utenriksminister i New Delhi utfordrer Indias balansegang.
Transit magasin.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2022).
Tid for motvekst?
[Business/trade/industry journal].
Fri Tanke: Medlemsblad for Human-Etisk Forbund.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel
(2021).
Avskogingspandemien.
Klassekampen.
ISSN 0805-3839.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
Gramsci i vår tid.
Salongen – nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie.
ISSN 2703-7053.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
Kapitalisme, pandemier og industrielt landbruk.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
Narendra Modi.
In Bolstad, Erik (Eds.),
Store norske leksikon (snl.no 2021).
Store norske leksikon.
ISSN 0000000000000.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
Norsk motvekst.
Klassekampen.
ISSN 0805-3839.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2021).
Review of Alpa Shah (2018) Nightmarch: among India’s revolutionary guerrillas.
Contemporary South Asia.
ISSN 0958-4935.
doi:
10.1080/09584935.2021.1884371.
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Singh Pannu, Bikramdeep; Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2021).
Et opprør på rullende hjul.
Klassekampen.
ISSN 0805-3839.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
Jawaharlal Nehru.
In Bolstad, Erik (Eds.),
Store norske leksikon (snl.no 2020).
Store norske leksikon AS.
ISSN 0000000000000.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
Review of Andrew Flachs (2019) Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India.
Journal of Agrarian Change.
ISSN 1471-0358.
doi:
10.1111/joac.12386.
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Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
Høy pris for billig kjøtt.
Klassekampen.
ISSN 0805-3839.
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Dunlap, Alexander & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
Unraveling the Lies of His-story with James Scott and Peter Gelderloos.
Capitalism Nature Socialism.
ISSN 1045-5752.
doi:
10.1080/10455752.2020.1735029.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2019).
Er Foucaults biopolitikk død?
Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2019).
Farmers, Subalterns, and Activists: Social Politics of Sustainable Agriculture in India, by Trent Brown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018. Pp. xii+202. £75. ISBN 978‐1‐108‐42510‐0.
Journal of Agrarian Change.
ISSN 1471-0358.
doi:
10.1111/joac.12342.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2018).
Food regimes as mundane: a view from southern India’s maize frontier.
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Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2018).
Geographies of Meatification: An Emerging Asian Meat Complex?
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Jakobsen, Jostein; Nielsen, Kenneth Bo; Nilsen, Alf Gunvald & Vaidya, Anand
(2018).
Världens största demokrati i praktiken.
In Lindberg, Staffan & Eklund, Lars (Ed.),
Miraklet Indien och dess baksida.
Palmkrons förlag.
ISSN 978-91-88785-00-8.
p. 91–121.
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Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel
(2017).
Kvalitetssikring, ikke begrensning av debatt.
Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.).
ISSN 0804-3116.
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Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel
(2017).
Flau formidling om kolonialisme og sensur.
Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.).
ISSN 0804-3116.
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Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Jakobsen, Jostein; Hansen, Arve & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel
(2017).
Redelighet, ikke sensur.
Morgenbladet.
ISSN 0805-3847.
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Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo
(2016).
En mors død.
Fokus India.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2016).
Valuta.
Fokus India.
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Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein
(2016).
Skatt.
FokusIndia.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2015).
Fra maoister til økobønder: Noen tanker om regionalkunnskap og (forsinket) erkjennelse.
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Jakobsen, Jostein
(2020).
India in the Contemporary Food Regime: The State, Struggles and Uneven Integration.
07 Gruppen.
Show summary
This article-based thesis brings India into ongoing debates surrounding food regime analysis.
Examining India’s integration in the contemporary food regime across scales from the
regional, through the national to the local, the thesis aims at critically advancing the approach
of food regime analysis and, simultaneously, our understanding of agrarian change in India.
A key finding in this thesis is that India’s integration in the contemporary food regime is
characterised by uneven tendencies. Partial, gradual and incomplete integration is evidenced
throughout the thesis, leading to the central argument that corporate food regime dynamics are
emerging in India today amidst struggle and contentions where the agency of the state is
crucial and where patterns of accumulation are interwoven with nature. Drawing on analytics
in the tradition of Antonio Gramsci, the thesis takes steps towards a conjunctural food regime
analysis that is attentive to historical-geographical specificities, while seeking to avoid pitfalls
of ‘global’ orientation and ‘capital-logic’.
The first three articles are ‘desk studies’ focusing on regional and national scales. The first,
co-authored, article locates India in the Asian region in relation to the formation of the
increasingly polycentric contemporary food regime, looking specifically at the role of an
emerging ‘meat complex’. The second article zooms in on the national scale and interrogates
the role of the state and neoliberalisation in the contemporary food regime in view of
contestations over recent right-to-food legislation in India. The third article explores popular
mobilisation against food regime crises through an inquiry into rural India’s ongoing agrarian
crisis. The fourth and final article is based on fieldwork and descends to the local village scale
to explore how crops and regions are integrated in the contemporary food regime by tracing
booming maize cultivation in rural Karnataka.
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Published
Aug. 6, 2015 2:25 PM
- Last modified
Apr. 6, 2022 1:20 PM