Papers by S. Ali Malik
The Third World Approaches to International Law Review (TWAILR), 2024
International law is largely assumed to be the product of sovereign states who freely create, joi... more International law is largely assumed to be the product of sovereign states who freely create, join, and adhere to international treaties and other international legal instruments. Recent TWAIL scholarship, however, suggests that it is international law that creates, modifies, and legitimates states. In this paper, I advance this provocation through a case study of the neoliberalization of the Indian state and, specifically, that of Indian agrobiodiversity. I argue that the neoliberal transformation of the Indian state was a result of dialogic and multiscalar processes in which the neoliberal Indian state was constructed as a legitimate actor by international institutions and through the disciplinary power of international law. It further shows how evolving modes of capital accumulation are mutually constitutive of changes in international law, which ultimately rely on novel but nonunique technologies of government. Interrogating the ensemble of technologies, discourses, and institutions within this recent history illuminates the overlapping complexities structured by the productive power of international law.
The Journal of Peasant Studies , 2023
It is difficult to imagine anything more urgent for critical agrarian scholars and movements than... more It is difficult to imagine anything more urgent for critical agrarian scholars and movements than the questions Borras et al. (2022) raise about how to develop an emancipatory mode of confronting climate change in agrarian and rural settings. Unfortunately, we find in India that institutionalized approaches to such challenges in the form of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA)/Climate-Smart Villages (CSV) point in the opposite direction and which, as such, are obstacles to the emancipatory approach Borras et al. call on us to imagine. This essay subjects such obstacles to critical scrutiny, arguing that CSA/CSV programs take the form of neoliberal technologies of government which intensify the disenfranchisement and dispossession of Indian farmers. By doing so, these technologies of government reduce farmers’ ability and, perhaps, willingness towards the development of ‘a sufficiently anti-capitalist, trans-environmental and agrarian approach to confront climate change’ (17–18). I suggest that any serious effort to construct the emancipatory project Borras et al. call for will be forced to confront how governmental technologies serve to produce specific forms of agrarian subjectivity antithetical to emancipatory change.
The full reprinted edited can be openly accessed here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003467960/climate-change-critical-agrarian-studies-ian-scoones-saturnino-borras-jr-amita-baviskar-marc-edelman-nancy-lee-peluso-wendy-wolford
Routledge Handbook of Law and Society, 1st ed., 2021
How do you typically start your day? While 'wellness experts' advise that we meditate, exercise, ... more How do you typically start your day? While 'wellness experts' advise that we meditate, exercise, and eat a healthy breakfast, many of us begin our day by reaching for our phones, seamlessly entering our technologically mediated digital cultural worlds. Spotify notifies you that your favorite DJ has just released new tracks and mixes. You receive an email from HBO commanding that you "cease and desist" downloading the series finale of Game of Thrones. Putting that off, you scroll through your Instagram feed and find stories about the controversial practice of donning Native American-style headdresses at music festivals and accusations of design plagiarism against fast-fashion retailer Zara. To finish your presentation for class, you copy and paste some photographs from Google Images to illustrate it and save your file to a flash drive. The morning is moving on, so you get dressed and bolt through the door into the world that just minutes ago you were curating with the swipe of your finger. Already issues about the ownership of intangibles have shaped your day. Disputes and concerns about property in intangibles (e.g. data, software, cultural products, and plant and human genetic resources) say a lot, both about how we live within digitally meditated worlds and how we engage with the cultures of others. Humans everywhere express their collective and individual identities through cultural forms; they hold strong opinions about what kinds of things should be private properties and which should remain social-held goods. Individuals, corporations create, use, and distribute various forms of intangible property, such as the goods protected by copyright, trademarks, patents, publicity rights, design rights and database protections. The legal systems that govern the use of
Geographical Indications at the Crossroads of Trade, Development, and Culture
Geographical indications (GIs) 1 are widely perceived to provide prospects for new forms of rural... more Geographical indications (GIs) 1 are widely perceived to provide prospects for new forms of rural development, community autonomy, preservation of cultural traditions, and even the conservation of biological diversity when * Rosemary J. Coombe is the Tier One Canada Research Chair in Law, Communication and Culture at York University. She gratefully acknowledges the research and editorial assistance of Laura Fox and
UC Irvine law review, 2018
Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role i... more Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role in fostering development in the Global South. Recent work has drawn welcome attention to issues of governance and sparked new debates about the role of the state in GI regulation. We argue that this new emphasis needs to be coupled with a greater focus upon local social relations of power and interlinked issues of social justice. Rather than see GI regimes as apolitical technical administrative frameworks, we argue that they govern emerging public goods that should be forged to redress extant forms of social inequality and foster the inclusion of marginalized actors in commodity value chains. In many areas of the world, this will entail close attention to the historical specificities of colonial labor relations and their neocolonial legacies, which have entrenched conditions of racialized and gendered dispossession, particularly in plantation economies. Using examples from South Africa an...
UC Irvine Law Review, 2018
Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role i... more Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role in fostering development in the Global South. Recent work has drawn welcome attention to issues of governance and sparked new debates about the role of the state in GI regulation. We argue that this new emphasis needs to be coupled with a greater focus upon local social relations of power and interlinked issues of social justice. Rather than see GI regimes as apolitical technical administrative frameworks, we argue that they govern emerging public goods that should be forged to redress extant forms of social inequality and foster the inclusion of marginalized actors in commodity value chains. In many areas of the world, this will entail close attention to the historical specificities of colonial labor relations and their neocolonial legacies, which have entrenched conditions of racialized and gendered dispossession, particularly in plantation economies. Using examples from South Africa and South Asia, we illustrate how GIs conventionally reify territories in a fashion that obscures and/or naturalizes exploitative conditions of labor and unequal access to land based resources, which are legacies of historical disenfranchisement. Like other forms of neoliberal governmentality that support private governance for public ends, however, GIs might be shaped to support new forms of social justice. We show how issues of labor and place-based livelihoods increasingly influence new policy directions within Fair Trade agendas while concerns with “decolonizing” agricultural governance now animate certification initiatives emerging from new social movements. Both initiatives provide models for shaping the governance and regulation of GIs in projects of rural territorial development that encompass principles of rights-based development to further social movements for rural social justice.
UC Irvine Law Review, 2018
Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role i... more Critical scholarship on geographical indications (GIs) has increasingly focused upon their role in fostering development in the Global South. Recent work has drawn welcome attention to issues of governance and sparked new debates about the role of the state in GI regulation. We argue that this new emphasis needs to be coupled with a greater focus upon local social relations of power and interlinked issues of social justice. Rather than see GI regimes as apolitical technical administrative frameworks, we argue that they govern emerging public goods that should be forged to redress extant forms of social inequality and foster the inclusion of marginalized actors in commodity value chains. In many areas of the world, this will entail close attention to the historical specificities of colonial labor relations and their neocolonial legacies, which have entrenched conditions of racialized and gendered dispossession, particularly in plantation economies. Using examples from South Africa and South Asia, we illustrate how GIs conventionally reify territories in a fashion that obscures and/or naturalizes exploitative conditions of labor and unequal access to land based resources, which are legacies of historical disenfranchisement. Like other forms of neoliberal governmentality that support private governance for public ends, however, GIs might be shaped to support new forms of social justice. We show how issues of labor and place-based livelihoods increasingly influence new policy directions within Fair Trade agendas while concerns with " decolonizing " agricultural governance now animate certification initiatives emerging from new social movements. Both initiatives provide models for shaping the governance and regulation of GIs in projects of rural territorial development that encompass principles of rights-based development to further social movements for rural social justice.
Since the advent of Robert Putnam's seminal piece "Bowling Alone," the notion of social capital a... more Since the advent of Robert Putnam's seminal piece "Bowling Alone," the notion of social capital as a strategy and indicator for development has gained significant traction. The notion is being used as a determinant for public health, meaning strong, positive relations within one's communal networks are good for aggregate public health. In this paper, I will build on the critique of social capital as applied to public health, as set forth by Muntaner, Lynch, and Smith. This critique finds currency in its suggestion of social capital as a shift away from a materialist explanation of structural inequality which foregrounds race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and their potential intersectionalities. In essence, as the authors explain, this shift towards a social capital focus in public health can potentially lead to "community blaming," which embodies a form of cultural determinism. Muntaner, Lynch, and Smith's critique is formidable and my intention is to augment it with a historical layer. I will draw a historical comparison between the underlying logics and cultural implications of employing social capital as a determinant of public health with its colonial counterpart. My purpose is not necessarily to indict social capital, when used as a determinant of public health, as explicitly a neocolonial practice. Rather, I argue that there are similar, if not uncomfortable, logics at play that drive both the contemporary and colonial examples.
Conference Presentations by S. Ali Malik
“Hidden Geographies of Labour: Behind the Social Imaginary of Geographical Indications." Centre for Asian Legal Studies, National University, Singapore, March 26-7, 2015 [Invited Lecture].
Book Reviews by S. Ali Malik
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2023
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Papers by S. Ali Malik
The full reprinted edited can be openly accessed here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003467960/climate-change-critical-agrarian-studies-ian-scoones-saturnino-borras-jr-amita-baviskar-marc-edelman-nancy-lee-peluso-wendy-wolford
Conference Presentations by S. Ali Malik
Book Reviews by S. Ali Malik
The full reprinted edited can be openly accessed here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003467960/climate-change-critical-agrarian-studies-ian-scoones-saturnino-borras-jr-amita-baviskar-marc-edelman-nancy-lee-peluso-wendy-wolford