Land grab, cooperazione internazionale e geografia: riflessioni per la ricerca e l’azione

Nowadays many rural territories, not only in the Global South, have been targeted by large scale land acquisitions. The article highlights the importance of geographical research in dealing with the above-mentioned phenomenon. Indeed, geographic critical analysis and its resulting responses can provide a better understanding and thus represent valuable tools to envisage other possible territorial patterns. The ambiguities and controversies of land grab will be examined by stressing on the several contradictions in the relation between international development coopera- tion and land grab, and the geographic and transcalar character of the phenomenon. Finally, the article concludes by considering the challenges of geographical knowledge and of academic positioning in the strain between a geography ‘for the prince’ and an ‘antagonistic’ geography.