Publications

Books: 

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

Articles:

Levien, Michael and Smriti Upadhyay. In press. “Towards a Political Sociology of Dispossession: Explaining Opposition to Capital Projects in India.” Politics & Society.

Levien, Michael. In press. “Coercive Rentier Networks: ‘Land Mafia’ in Neoliberal India.” Sociology of Development.

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

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

Levien, Michael, Michael Watts, and Yan Hairong. 2018. “Agrarian Marxism.” Journal of Peasant Studies 45(5-6): 853-883.

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

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

Levien, Michael. 2015. “From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession: Theses on India’s Land Question.” Economic and Political Weekly 50(22): 146-157.

Madeleine Fairbairn, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones, and K. Sivaramakrishnan. 2014. “Introduction: New Directions in Agrarian Political Economy.” Journal of Peasant Studies 41(5): 653-666.

Levien, Michael. 2014. “From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession.” Revista Sociologia y Anthropologia 4(1): 25-53 (Portuguese, translation 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 and Marcel Paret. 2012. “A Second Double Movement? Polanyi and Shifting Global Opinions Towards Neoliberalism.” International Sociology 27(6): 724-744.

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

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

Book Chapters, Review Essays, and Other Publications

 Levien, Michael. Forthcoming. “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.

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.

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

Levien, Michael. 2020. Featured review of The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India by David Engerman. American Historical Review 125(1): 189-192.

Levien, Michael. 2018. “Reconstructing Polanyi?” Review essay on Reconstructing Polanyi: Excavation and Critique by Gareth Dale. Development and Change 49(4): 1115-1126.

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. 

Book Reviews

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. 2020. Is this Azaadi? Everyday Lives of Dalit Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Village by Anand Chakravarti. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 61(2-3): 217-229.

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.

Levien, Michael. 2013. The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry by Utsa Patnaik and Sam Moyo. Journal of Peasant Studies 40(1): 307-311.