Colombia: compromise or containment?

The design, reformulation, and final signing of Plan Colombia by the then US President, Bill Clinton, on the 13 July 2000 initiated in a new era of the US State´s involvement in supposedly sovereign-territorial issues of Colombian politics. The implementation of Plan Colombia there-on-after brought about a major realignment of political-military scales and terrains of conflict that have renewed discourses concerning the contemporary imperialist interests of key US-based but transnationally-projected social forces, leading to arguments that stress the invigorated geo-political dimension of present-day strategies of capitalist accumulation. With the election of Álvaro Uribe Vélez as Colombian President in May 2002 and his pledge to strengthen the national military campaign aganist the region´s longest-surviving insurgency guerrilla group, Las FARC-EP, as well as other guerrilla factions, combined with a new focus on establishing the State project of “Democratic Security”; the military realm of governance and attempts to ensure property security and expanding capitalist investment have attained precedence in Colombia´s national political domains. This working paper examines the interrelated nature of Plan Colombia -as a binational and indeed regional security strategy- and Uribe´s Democratic Security project as a means of showing the manner in which they have worked to pave the way for the implementation of a new “total market” regime of accumulation, based on large-scale agro-industrial investment which is accelerated through processes of accumulation via dispossession. As such, the political and social reconfigurations involved manifest the multifarious scales of governance that become intertwined in incorporating neoliberalism in specific regions of the world economy. Furthermore, the militarisation-securitisation of such policies also illustrate the explicit contradictions of neoliberalism in a peripheral context, where coercion seems to prevail, something which leads to a profound questioning of the extent to which neoliberalism can be thought of as a hegemonic politico-economic project.

Non-University Higher Education and the Relationship of Its Graduates and the World of Work: Colombia

The non-university sector has been part of the Colombian higher education system for more than 50-years. Despite its long years of existence, it has never occupied such an important role within the education system as the one it is having today. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze the development of the non-university sector in the framework of the country’s social, educational and economic demands. Likewise, its actual situation and certain aspects of the relationship between its graduates and the world of work, i.e., graduates’ employment characteristics, the relationship of higher education studies and their work, as well as their early career success, are examined. In order to generate the required information, a graduate survey was carried out in Atlántico (Colombia). The target population was graduates from higher education institutions registered in Atlántico who were awarded a technical, technological or professional degree in 2008 from any of the following knowledge areas: Fine Arts, Health Science, Economy-Administration-Accountancy and similar, and Engineering-Architecture-Urban planning and similar. Besides, interviews with academic and administrative staff from non-university institutions were carried out, and higher education related documents were analyzed. As a whole, the findings suggest that the non-university sector is expanding and may help to achieve some of the goals, for which it is widely promoted i.e., access expansion for under-represented groups, enhancement of the higher education system, and the provision of programs pertinent to the needs of the market. Nevertheless, some aspects require further consideration, e.g., the sector’s consolidation within the system and its quality. As for the relationship between non-university higher education and the world of work, it was found to be close; particularly in those aspects related to the use of knowledge and skills in the work, and the relationship between graduates’ studies and their work. Additionally, the analysis of the graduates’ in their early career stages exposes the significant role that the socioeconomic stratum plays in their working life, particularly in their wages. This indicates that apart from education, other factors like the graduates’ economic or social capital may have an impact on their future work perspectives

‘Green Consumption’ beyond mainstream economy: A discourse analysis

In contemporary society, green consumption is a popular concept. The life styles of people and consumption behaviors are moderated in accordance to the ‘green ideology’. The process of green consumption can be observed through social behaviors such as preference of bio foods, recycling, reusing, limiting the over consumption and using environmentally friendly transport systems. However, mainstream economic analyses on green consumption argued that consumer behaviors are due to the rational choice of individuality based on utility and self-preferences. The hypothesis of this paper on consumer behavior in green consumption is configured by discourses according to the discourse analysis.

Small and Closed vs. Large and Open: Some Lessons from Comparing Cuban to Colombian Agricultural Development

Comparing the experiences of selected Latin America and the Caribbean countries and their trajectories over the past 15 years offers rich insights into the dynamics and causes for not meeting the 2015 MDGs. They also offer clues for post-MDG strategies. Central to achieving sustainable growth are government policies able to support small and medium-sized farms and peasants, as they are crucial for the achievement of several goals, centrally: to achieve food security; to provide a sound and stable rural environment able to resist external (financial) shocks; to secure healthy food; to secure local food; and to protect vibrant and culturally rich local communities. This paper analyses and compares the most successful government policies to the least successful policies carried out over the last 15 years in selected Latin American and Caribbean countries and based on this analysis, offers strategies for more promising post-MDG politics, able to reduce poverty, reduce inequality, fight back informality, and achieve more decent work in poor countries.

Political Economy of Global Rush for Agricultural Land: a Tract on India’s Overseas Acquisitions

This paper is an attempt to map the global land acquisitions with a focus on Indian MNCs in acquiring overseas land for agricultural purposes. It tries to outline the contemporary political economy of capital accumulation at the global level, especially, in the emerging developing economies like India and China, where the emergence of a new capitalist class has engaged itself into acquisition of land and control of other natural resources in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and South East Asia, for example, water and other minerals to secure itself from the eventual losses of ongoing economic crisis and to earn profit from the volatile agricultural commodity markets. This sway of control of resources by the MNCs has got paramount State support under the helm of neoliberal policies. The paper provides scale of overseas land acquisitions at the current juncture and tries to highlight its causes and the major implications associated with it.

The circular economy and the water-food nexus

The global economy is based on a take-make-consume and dispose model where natural resources are turned into products and the waste disposed of instead of being reused as a resource. In the Asia-Pacific region climate change along with rapid population and economic growth is resulting in increased demand for water and food, potentially leading to economic and political instability. Europe has developed policy and technological innovations that can facilitate the transition towards a circular economy where waste becomes a resource. By using existing instruments Europe can transfer its circular economy knowledge and technology to the Asia-Pacific region to increase security of supply of scarce resources. This can help ensure global security, influence climate change negotiations and create jobs in Europe.