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The video abstract of 'The ties that bind? Agroecology and the agrarian question in the 21st century, can be viewed here:
Peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and papers
Peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and papers
Click on the following links to view selected articles by Haroon Akram-Lodhi:
Is rainfall gendered in South Sudan?
What is the value of value for agrarian studies?
Gender and water (in)security in agricultural production in East Africa
The diversity of classical agrarian Marxism
The rise of young women farmers in Canada
The cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Zimbabwe
Youth aspirations, trajectories and farming futures
Impervious odds and complicated legacies: young people's pathways into farming in Ontario, Canada
Rising to the challenge: Socio-economic development opportunities in Lesotho
"Passion alone is not sufficient": what do we know about young farmers in Canada
Food regimes and agrarian questions
An introduction to the Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies
I will follow? Authoritarian populism past and present
The ties that bind? Agroecology and the agrarian question in the twenty-first century
Contemporary pathogens and the capitalist world food system
Costing options for measuring gender equality in climate action
Food regime (translated from the German)
The promise? Using and misusing authoritarian populism
The gender gap in agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Causes, costs and solutions
The agrarian question in the web of life
Peasant agriculture (translated from the German)
Requiem for the sustainable rural livelihoods approach?
The agrarian question under globalization
Factors driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity: Uganda
Factors driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity: Malawi
Factors driving the gender gap in agricultural productivity: Tanzania
Forever young? The crisis of generational renewal on Canada's farms
Fair trade in theory and practice
The cost of the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Ethiopia
Equally productive? Assessing the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Rwanda
Economic efficiency and gender equity: a heuristic rationale
"Old wine in new bottles": enclosure, neoliberal capitalism and postcolonial politics
Gender issues paper: Agriculture, food and nutrition security sector in Uganda
Back to the future? Marx, modes of production and the agrarian question
Accelerating towards food sovereignty
Land grabs, the agrarian question and the corporate food regime
Ghosts in the machine: A post Keynesian analysis of gender relations, households and macroeconomics
The antinomies of food financialization
Engendering the investment climate
The quantitative impact of gender equality on economic growth
Land, labour and agrarian transition in Vietnam
Surveying the agrarian question (part 2)
Surveying the agrarian question (part 1)
The macroeconomics of human insecurity: Why gender matters
State, civil society and Sardar Sarovar
(Re)imagining agrarian relations? The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development
Land reform, rural social relations and the peasantry
A gender analysis of the impact of indirect taxes on small and medium enterprises in Vietnam
Land, markets and neoliberal enclosure: an agrarian political economy perspective
Transition, savings and growth in Vietnam
The unitary model of the peasant household: An obituary?
Penalizing patients and rewarding providers: User charges and health care utilization in Vietnam
Trouble in paradise? Savings and growth in Fiji, 1971 - 2001
Are 'landlords taking back the land'? An essay on the agrarian transition in Vietnam
If they get sick, they are in trouble: Health care restructuring, user charges and equity in Vietnam
'All decisions are top-down': Engendering public expenditure in Vietnam
'Like an act of God': Land, water and social power in northern Pakistan
A bitter pill? Peasants and sugarcane markets in northern Pakistan
'We earn only for you': Peasants and 'real' markets in northern Pakistan
Fiji and the Sugar Protocol: A case for trade-based development cooperation
The agrarian question, past and present
In 'the house of the spirits': toward a Post Keynesian theory of the household?
The public finances of the United Kingdom
Structural adjustment and the agrarian question in Fiji
The developmental impact of the India-Pakistan arms race
You are not excused from cooking
M.H. Khan, A.V. Chayanov and the family farms of the North-West Frontier Province
Tax-free manufacturing in Fiji
Peasants and hegemony in the work of James C Scott
The political economy of trade liberalization in India
Class and chauvinism in Sri Lanka
Books
Books
Haroon Akram-Lodhi's most recent book, co-edited with Kristina Dietz, Bettina Engels and Ben M. McKay, is the Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies.
The Handbook offers interdisciplinary insights from both leading scholars and activists to understand agrarian life, livelihoods, formations and processes of change. An ambitious undertaking, its 72 contributions highlight the development of the field of critical agrarian studies, which is characterized by theoretical and methodological pluralism and innovation. Furthermore, the Handbook presents critical analyses of, and examines controversies about, historical and contemporary social structures and processes in agrarian and rural settings from a wide range of perspectives. A 2nd edition of the Handbook will be published in 2026.
Further details about the Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies, including how to order it, can be found by clicking here.
Haroon Akram-Lodhi's last book was Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question.
Hungry for Change explains how the creation, structure and operation of the world food system is marginalizing family farmers, small-scale peasant farmers and landless workers as it entrenches us all in a global subsistence crisis. Written to be accessible, and incorporating accounts from farmers themselves, Hungry for Change explains how building upon food sovereignty can solve the current crisis.
Further details about Hungry for Change, including how to order it, can be found by clicking here.
Read a review of Hungry for Change by the Halifax Media Coop here.
In September 2013, as part of the Yale University symposium on "Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue", Eric Holt-Gimenez gave a public review of 5 books in 5 minutes, one of which was Hungry for Change. Watch Eric Holt-Gimenez's review by clicking below:
Hungry for Change has been described by Raj Patel as a 'must-read for anyone who cares about understanding food and the planet today' and by Jim Stanford as an 'inspiring...introduction to what will surely be one of the defining social struggles of our time: the struggle over food'. Cristóbal Kay simply says: 'Read it!'
Haroon Akram-Lodhi has also co-edited, with Cristóbal Kay, Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question. The book critically examined the historical importance and contemporary relevance of the so-called 'agrarian question', which explores the characteristics shaping the emergence--or otherwise--of capitalism in agriculture in developing countries. It features an extremely distinguished set of contributors, including Terence J Byres, Henry Bernstein, Michael Watts, Philip McMichael, Ellen Meiskins Wood, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Ray Kiely, Farshad Araghi, Saturnino M Borras, Jr, Bridget O'Laughlin and Miguel Teubal.
The Journal of Peasant Studies described this book as 'a must for anyone looking for a theoretically sophisticated, historically informed and comparative perspective on agrarian changes under neoliberal globalization'. The Journal of Agrarian Change described the book as 'an indispensable addition to our understanding of capitalist globalization, peasants and agrarian transformation over the past four centuries'. The Canadian Journal of Development Studies described the book as 'a landmark'.
Further details about this book, including how it can be ordered, can be obtained by clicking here.
In 2007 Haroon Akram-Lodhi co-edited, along with Saturnino M Borras, Jr and Cristóbal Kay:
Using 10 country case studies as its foundation, the book makes the case for comprehensive state-led land and agrarian reform as a first step towards poverty elimination in contempoary developing and transition countries. The Journal of Agrarian Change commented that the book was 'well researched, thorough and smart.'
Further details about this book, including how it can be ordered, can be obtained by clicking here.
Previously, Haroon Akram-Lodhi co-edited, along with Robert Chernomas and Ardeshir Sepehri:
which explores how, over the course of the last two decades, governments have implemented a fundamental shift in mainstream economic policy and ushered in a period of globalization. These changes, which are commonly known as 'neo-conservative', have been resisted by a range of social forces, from workers to farmers, in the universities and on the streets, who have sought to promote a range of democratic alternatives to neo-conservative policies,alternatives that appear increasingly relevant as the world experiences economic recession. Written to recognize the life and work of the late John Loxley of the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba, Development and Change wrote that the book 'is a fitting tribute to (John Loxley's) legacy in economic thought and policy making'.
Further details about this book, including ordering information, can be obtained by clicking here.
Before that, Haroon Akram-Lodhi had co-edited, along with Jim Freedman:
which, using a massive land reclamation project as its basis, explored the dynamics of two decades of rural change in northern Pakistan. The book was described by the Lahore Daily Times as 'a poignant and informed demonstration of how development investments in Pakistan have failed to address the endemic problem of disparities of power and privilege, and by this neglect have contributed to Pakistan’s present poverty crisis.'
Further details about this book, including ordering information, can be obtained by clicking here.
Haroon Akram-Lodhi's first book was:
which sought to offer a forward-looking assessment of the social, political and economic circumstances facing the troubled Pacific island state, and which seems, in retrospect, quite prescient of more recent developments. The Journal of Economic Literature was unambigious: 'this is a useful book'.
Confronting Fiji Futures is now available to be freely downloaded, and can be obtained by clicking here.
Research presentations
Research presentations
On 29 May 2025 Haroon Akram-Lodhi took part in a webinar on "Power and resistance in the world food system", alongside Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson and Alison Blay-Palmer, hosted by the UNESCO Chair in Food, Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies in the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfred Laurier University in Kitchener, Canada. Click on the link below to watch the webinar:
On 12 September 2024 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on gender and agricultural crop productivity gaps in Malawi to the annual conference of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Annandale, New York, USA. To watch the full seminar click on the link below and go to 24:46:
On 1 June 2022 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the world food system to the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Vienna Research Seminar. Click on the link below to listen to the full seminar and watch the slide deck:
ie.talks Recording_A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi_01.06.2022.mp4On 13 May 2022 Haroon Akram-Lodhi delivered a keynote address on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University entitled "From peasant studies to critical agrarian studies. Click on the link below to watch the keynote in full:
On 9 February 2022 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on agroecology through the lens of critical agrarian studies to the Development Research Seminar at the University of East Anglia's School of Development Studies. To watch the seminar in full, click here:
On 3 February 2022 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on agroecology and the agrarian question to the Agrarian Change Seminar, organized by the Journal of Agrarian Change and the Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. Click on the link below to watch the seminar in full:
On 19 January 2022 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on COVID-19 through a critical agrarian studies lens to the Interrogating Development Seminar Series, organized by the Department of International Development at King's College, University of London. Click on the link below to watch the seminar in full:
On 25 February 2021 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on The gender gap in agricultural productivity in eastern and southern Africa to the Agrarian Change Seminar Series, organized by the Journal of Agrarian Change. To view the seminar in full, click on the link below:
On 13 May 2020 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave a seminar on Contemporary pathogens and the world food system to the Economics of COVID-19 Webinar Series organized by the Department of Economics at SOAS University of London, London, UK. To view the seminar in full, click on the link below:
On 2 December 2016 Haroon Akram-Lodhi gave the Concluding Remarks to the International Symposium on Conflicts over Land and Global Change, organized by the Global Change - Local Conflicts Research Group of the Freie Universitat of Berlin. Click here to listen to the remarks.
Haroon Akram-Lodhi was the Esau Distinguished Visiting Professor in Menno Simons College at the University of Winnipeg in November 2013. While in Winnipeg, he gave a public lecture entitled "Feeding the world: is hunger inevitable". Click on the link below to watch the lecture in full:
Recent invited talks
Recent invited talks
'Gender and water (in)security for agricultural production in East Africa', presented to the annual conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics, Amherst, MA, USA, July 2025.
‘Power and resistance in the global food system’, presented to the Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems, Waterloo, Canada, May 2025.
‘What is the future of the agrarian question?’, presented to the Center for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, March 2025.
‘The agrarian question in the 21st century,’ presented to the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies Fellows Seminar, Stellenbosch, South Africa, January 2025.
‘Governance and institutional changes to promote sustainable and equitable rural transformation,’ presented to the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on the Future of Small-Scale Production, Rural Employment and Rural Transformation, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy, October 2024.
‘Trends affecting the future of small-scale family farming, rural employment and rural transformation,’ presented to the Global Family Farming Forum, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy, October 2024.
'Cum catenae pro caesura accipiuntur: Gender gaps in agricultural productivity and social reproduction in Malawi,' presented to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Gender Workshop on A Path to Inclusive Development: Unpacking Gender Inequalities in Economic Theory and Policies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, United States, September 2024.
'Female labour market participation in agri-food systems' presented to the Expert Meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on Accelerating Feminist Pathways in Agri-Food Systems, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy July 2024.
'Gender, productivity and interstices of petty commodity production and social reproduction in Malawi', presented to the Economics and Society Seminar Series, The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, December 2023.
'“Women stay behind and grow the food”: agricultural productivity and the interstices of petty commodity production and social reproduction in Tanzania', presented to the Critical Agrarian Studies in the 21st Century Conference, October 2023.
'Confronting our common future', Keynote Address to the Investment Industry Association of Canada, Toronto, Canada, September 2023.
'Production, social reproduction and radical transformation', presented to the Radical Transformation in the Global Countryside Symposium, Free University Berlin, June 2023.
'“What's love got to do with it:” gender and the productivity paradox in Scotland (and elsewhere)', presented to the 8th Annual Ailsa McKay Lecture, WiSER Center for Social Justice, Glasgow Caledonian University, May 2023.
'Sustainable agriculture: addressing the gender gap in agricultural productivity in Africa', presented to the Center for Women's Studies, University of Galway, March 2023.
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