Social Policy in the Global South:

The Challenge of Socio-economic Justice and Agro-ecological Development

The Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies (SMAIAS) and the Agrarian South Network (ASN)
will convene an Agrarian Studies Summer School in January 2019. The main focus of the Summer
School will be on social policy in the Global South, with particular reference to socio-economic justice
and agro-ecological development. According to the UN Statistics Division, living conditions in the Global
South worsened after the impacts of the 2008 world financial crisis, and despite partial recovery
thereafter, there is urgent need for renewed and reinforced social policies to alleviate poverty and
empower marginalized groups and communities in a sustainable manner.
The 2019 Summer School will focus on the recent experiences of social policies in the Global South and
look ahead towards more integrated and transformative programmes capable of connecting socio-
economic justice with agro-ecological development. Over 50 scholars and activists from Africa, Asia and
Latin America will participate at the Summer School which will cover the following issues:
– Integrated and transformative social policy in the Global South
– Experiences of conditional income transfers
– Experiences of public procurement programmes
– Gender, agro-ecology and social transformation
– Work, agro-ecology and social reproduction
– Land, tenure and agrarian reform
– The rights of indigenous and marginalized communities
– Rural-urban migration and social policy
– Agro-ecological production and sustainability
– Cooperative production and social transformation
– Food and nutritional security
– Civil society, agro-ecology and socio-economic justice
– Land grabbing and financialization of agriculture and natural resources
– Contract farming trends and policy alternatives
– Climate change, agro-ecology and socio-economic justice
– Global environmental change and alternative consumption patterns