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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Karen E. Rignall, "An Elusive Common: Land, Politics, and Agrarian Rurality in a Moroccan Oasis" (Cornell UP, 2021)
Description: Karen E. Rignall's book An Elusive Common: Land, Politics, and Agrarian Rurality in a Moroccan Oasis (Cornell UP, 2021) details the fraught dynamics of rural life in the arid periphery of southeastern Morocco. Karen Rignall considers whether agrarian livelihoods can survive in the context of globalized capitalism and proposes a new way of thinking about agrarian practice, politics, and land in North Africa and the Middle East. Her book questions many of the assumptions underlying movements for land and food sovereignty, theories of the commons, and environmental governance.Global market forces, government disinvestment, political marginalization, and climate change are...