International Political Ecologies of Land in Southeast Europe: Policymaking, everyday experiences, and alternative political imaginaries

IPELSEE studies the transformations of land use and land ownership in South East Europe (SEE) in processes of post-socialist transformation, different stages and paths of EU integration, and the restructuring of global capital flows.

To do so, it approaches land as differently assembled human-soil relations: as a policy object, an everyday experience, and a site of alternative political imaginaries.

It has two aims: (1) to develop an international political-ecology framework capable of studying human–soil relations across multiple scales, and (2) to use that framework to better understand transformations in rural and agricultural land use in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.

While political science and international relations have focused on issues of power, sovereignty, and territory, they have habitually ignored the human-soil relations that make the land they talk about and the rural areas where those relations are grounded.

IPELSEE is based in three case studies: a disputed large-scale investment in agricultural land in Serbia, and two projects that reimagine land use in line with alternative political, ecological, social, and economic ideas: a cooperative producing autochthonous grains in BiH, and an EU funded project for conservation and restoration of dry grasslands in Croatia.

It uses well-trodden methods (interviews, participatory observation, document analysis) and innovative methodologies (participatory mapping) to investigate human-soil relations and their transformations.

Beyond academic contributions to international political ecology within IR, interpretive methods in IR and PolSci, and SEE area studies, communication activities will focus on researched countries to counter the stigmatisation of rural areas and shed light on practices of land use and land ownership that are not only used traditionally but can also contribute to more sustainable and just land use in the future.