The question of land, its commodification and role in capital accumulation has come to occupy centre stage in political economy since the last decade of the 20th century. Such concerns are however not confined to the agrarian question as in classical political economy but have emerged primarily in the wake of land being integrated into circuits of speculative capital accumulation constituting novel processes of dispossession. This financialization of land and accompanying processes of dispossession, often justified through neoliberal developmentalism, not only has consequences for agrarian actors and ecologies but also poses questions about the role of land in current accumulation dynamic, especially in transitioning economies in the global South. Based on a review of three recently published books on the contemporary land question and politics around it in India, this essay explores how such incorporations and dispossessions are driven by multiple developmental imperatives and asks what such logics mean for conceptualizing the land question in the 21st century.

中文翻译：

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21世纪后殖民时期的土地问题

自20世纪最后十年以来，土地问题，其商品化及其在资本积累中的作用已成为政治经济的中心问题。但是，这种担忧并不仅限于古典政治经济学中的土地问题，而主要是在土地被纳入投机性资本积累回路之后才出现的，这些投机性资本积累构成了新的剥夺过程。土地的金融化和伴随的剥夺过程，通常通过新自由主义发展主义来证明是合理的，不仅对农业行为者和生态产生了影响，而且对土地在当前积累动态中，特别是在全球南方经济转型中的作用提出了质疑。