【投稿征集】2026年RGS-IBG-农业化学化与新自由主义体制

现有的研究表明，这些进程在不同地区和尺度上的嵌入具有不均衡性，正在重塑农村生计、生态关系和农业政治，同时也往往加剧了社会、经济与环境的不平等。在新自由主义体制下审视农业化学化，对于分析资本积累新动态（特别是在气候危机背景下）如何重新配置农业至关重要。新自由主义监管体制一方面为企业主导的农产品贸易提供了便利，另一方面积极推动以出口为导向的生产模式以获取外汇。这重构了全球农化价值链，强化了企业垄断以及生产者、国家与市场之间不对称的权力关系。其结果是农业化学化与更广泛的不平衡发展动态相互交织，导致可持续发展目标被纳入新的资本积累循环中，甚至被其削弱或挪用。

• 全球农药综合体： 塑造农药使用的农化生产、市场动态、监管政策与政治经济权力相互交织的全球网络。

• 监管政治：农化监管与禁令的政治学，以及在不均衡的监管格局下治理毒性的挑战。

• 农村转型中的国家-资本配置：探讨国家主导的发展模式与企业扩张如何重塑农村生产系统和经济结构。

• 社会环境影响与抗争：分析农药暴露对健康的影响，以及包括社区动员和粮食主权运动在内的各种社会组织形式。

• 农村转型中的生态动态：考察非人类行动者（如土壤、作物、生态系统）在农业工业化进程中的能动性，以及工业发展与生态动态的共生交互如何共同塑造农村转型 。

本分会计划以线上+线下的混合模式举行。

• 投稿方式：请于 2026年2月25日前将论文题目及摘要（250字以内）发送至邮箱（xiaohui.jiang@uzh.ch）

• 附加信息：投稿时请注明您的联系方式、所属机构以及希望参会形式（线上/线下） 

• 其他：欢迎将此征稿信息转发给感兴趣的人

Call for Abstracts:Agriculture, chemicalization and neoliberal regimes: Perspectives in a rapidly changing field at RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2026, London, 1st-4th September 2026

The global agrarian landscape has been fundamentally restructured in recent decades through processes of agricultural intensification, corporate restructuring and consolidation, and deepening chemical dependence. Within this transformation, pesticides have ascended from mere farm inputs to occupy a central, infrastructural role in modern agri-food systems.They now function not only as technical inputs but also as key infrastructures for capital accumulation, state power, and integration into volatile global markets (Berndt et al., 2025; Mansfield et al., 2023). Existing research has highlighted how these processes are unevenly embedded across regions and scales, reshaping agrarian livelihoods, ecological relations, and agrarian politics, while often reproducing or intensifying social, economic, and environmental inequalities (Werner, Berndt and Mansfield, 2022; Shattuck et al., 2023). Examining agricultural chemicalization within neoliberal regimes is crucial for analyzing how agriculture is reconfigured by new dynamics of capital accumulation, particularly in a context of climate crises. Neoliberal regulatory regimes have facilitated corporate-managed trade in agrifood commodities while actively promoting export-oriented production to generate foreign exchange (McMichael, 2013; Otero et al., 2013). This has restructured global agrochemical value chains, reinforcing corporate concentration and asymmetric power relations between producers, states, and markets. As a result, the chemicalization of agriculture interplays with broader dynamics of uneven development, where sustainability goals are subordinated, enmeshed, and/or appropriated within new circuits of capital accumulation (Werner, Berndt, and Mansfield, 2022; Shattuck et al., 2023).

In this session, we welcome empirical and theoretical papers addressing topics including (but not limited to):

·Global Pesticide Complex: The interconnected global web of agrochemical production, market dynamics, regulation, and political-economic power shaping pesticide use.

·Regulation: The politics of agrichemical regulation, bans, and the challenges of governing toxicity in uneven regulatory landscapes.

·State-Capital Configurations in Rural Transformation:Examininghow state-led development and corporate expansion reshape the rural production systems and economicstructures.

·Socio-environmental impacts and resistance: Analyzing the health and livelihood consequences of pesticide exposure alongside forms of organized contestation, from community mobilization to food sovereignty movements.

·Ecological dynamics in rural transitions:Examining the agency of non-human actors (soils, crops, ecosystems) within agrarian industrialisation processes and how the co-constitutive interplay between industrial development and ecological dynamics jointly shapes rural transitions.

Submission Details:

We are planning this session as a hybrid session for RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2026.

To submit your proposal, please send your paper title and abstract (up to 250 words) by 25th February 2026 to Xiaohui Jiang (xiaohui.jiang@uzh.ch). Please also let us know your contact details, affiliation, and any accessibility requirements. In addition, please feel free to circulate this email to any colleagues who may be interested. Thank you very much for your attention!

Reference List

Berndt, C., Werner, M., Mempel, F., Shattuck, A., & Dunivin, Z. O. (2025). The Generics Revolution and the New Economic Geography of the Global Pesticide Industry. Journal of Agrarian Change, n/a(n/a), e70007. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.70007

Mansfield, B., Werner, M., Berndt, C., Shattuck, A., Galt, R., Williams, B., Argüelles, L., Barri, F. R., Ishii, M., Kunin, J., Lapegna, P., Romero, A., Caicedo, A., Abhigya, Castro-Vargas, M. S., Marquez, E., Ojeda, D., Ramirez, F., & Tittor, A. (2023). A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10492-w

McMichael, P. (2013). Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions. Practical Action Publishing. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1hj553s

Otero, G., Pechlaner, G., & Gürcan, E. C. (2013). The Political Economy of “Food Security” and Trade: Uneven and Combined Dependency. Rural Sociology, 78(3), 263–289. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12011

Shattuck, A., Werner, M., Mempel, F., Dunivin, Z., & Galt, R. (2023). Global pesticide use and trade database (GloPUT): New estimates show pesticide use trends in low-income countries substantially underestimated. Global Environmental Change, 81, 102693. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102693

Werner, M., Berndt, C., & Mansfield, B. (2022). The glyphosate assemblage: Herbicides, uneven development, and chemical geographies of ubiquity.Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 112(1), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1898322