Land Dispossession

Here is my work on the comparative sociology of dispossession.

Books: 

Levien, Michael. 2018. Dispossession Without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India. New York: Oxford University Press.

• 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

Peer-Reviewed Articles:

Levien, Michael and Smriti Upadhyay. 2021. “Towards a Political Sociology of Dispossession: Explaining Opposition to Capital Projects in India.” Politics & Society 50(2): 279-310.

Levien, Michael. “Coercive Rentier Networks: ‘Land Mafia’ in Neoliberal India.” Sociology of Development 7(2): 150-185.

Agarwal, Samantha and Michael Levien. 2019. “Dalits and Dispossession: A Comparison.” Journal of Contemporary Asia. Published online April 13.

Levien, Michael. 2017. “Gender and Land Grabs: A Comparative Analysis.” UN Women Discussion Paper Series. No. 15, July 2017: 1-27.

• Revised versions reprinted with permission in Journal of Peasant Studies 44(6) and Gender Equality and Sustainable Development (2016), edited by Melissa Leach. London: Earthscan. Pp. 105-132.

Levien, Michael. 2015. “Social Capital as Obstacle to Development: Brokering Land, Norms and Trust in Rural India.” World Development 74: 77-92.

Levien, Michael. 2014. “Da Acumulação Primitiva aos Regimes de Desapropriação.” Revista Sociologia y Anthropologia 4(1): 25-53 (Translated into Portuguese by Markus Hediger).

Levien, Michael. 2013. “The Politics of Dispossession: Theorizing India’s ‘Land Wars.'” Politics & Society 41(3): 351-394.

Levien, Michael. 2013. “Regimes of Dispossession: From Steel Towns to Special Economic Zones.” Development and Change 44(2): 381-407.

Levien, Michael. 2012. “The Land Question: Special Economic Zones and the Political Economy of Dispossession in India.” Journal of Peasant Studies 39 (3-4): 933-969.

Levien, Michael. 2011. “Special Economic Zones and Accumulation by Dispossession in India.” Journal of Agrarian Change 11(4): 454-483.

Levien, Michael. 2007. “India’s Double Movement: Polanyi and the National Alliance of People’s Movements.”   Berkeley Journal of Sociology 51: 119-149.

Edited Volumes 

Andreas, Joel, Sunila Kale, Michael Levien & Qian Forrest Zhang, eds. 2020. “Rural Land Dispossession in China and India.” Journal of Peasant Studies 47(6): 1109-1142.

Book Chapters, Review Essays, and Other Publications

Levien, Michael and Sunita Kale. Forthcoming. “The Moving Contradiction of Land Politics in Contemporary India.” The Cambridge Companion to Indian Politics and Society, edited by Manali Desai and Indrajit Roy.

Levien, Michael. 2022. “Regimes of Dispossession.” In Routledge Handbook on Property, Law and Society, edited by Margaret Davies, Nicole Graham and Lee Godden. Pp. 42-51.

Levien, Michael. 2022. “Dispossession and Democracy: The Land Acquisition Act and the Future of India’s Land Wars.” In Political Imaginaries in India: Rethinking the Twentieth Century, edited by Manu Goswami and Mrinalini Sinha. London: Bloomsbury. Pp. 199-220.

Levien, Michael. 2021. “Fictitious but not Utopian: Land Commodification in Polanyi and Rural India.” In Land Fictions: The Commodification of Land in City and Country, edited by D. Asher Ghertner and Robert W. Lake. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pp. 26-43.

Levien, Michael. 2020. “Rule by Bosses? Criminal Political Economies in South Asia.” Review essay, Journal of Agrarian Change 20(3): 504-511.

Levien, Michael. 2017. “From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession: Theses on India’s Land Question.” In The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession and Capitalist Transition, edited by Anthony P. D’Costa and Achin Chakraborty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 49-75.

• Originally published in Economic and Political Weekly 50(22): 146-157.

Levien, Michael. 2013. “Subalterns Scrutinized.” Review essay on Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital by Vivek Chibber. European Journal of Sociology 54(3): 485-497. 

Levien, Michael. 2011. “Rationalising Dispossession: The Land Acquisition and Resettlement Bills.” Economic and Political Weekly 46(11): 66-71.

Book Reviews

Levien, Michael. 2021. Narrow Fairways: Getting by and Falling Behind in the New India by Patrick Inglis. New York: Oxford University Press. City and Community. Published online September 28.

Levien, Michael. 2021. Beneath the China Boom: Labor, Citizenship and the Making of a Rural Land Market by Julia Chuang. Berkeley: University of California Press. The Journal of Asian Studies 80(2): 450-452.

Levien, Michael. 2020. Fields of Gold: Financing the Global Land Rush by Madeleine Fairbairn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Antipode, Published online December 7, 2020.

Levien, Michael. 2020. Making Cars in the New India: Industry, Precarity and Informality by Tom Barnes. American Journal of Sociology 125(6): 1670-1672.

Levien, Michael. 2019. Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India by Kenneth Nielsen. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 42(1): 208-217.