The Agrarian South Network, CARES and other partners convened the Agrarian South Study Group 2021 on the theme “Social Formations, Past and Present”, bringing together political activists, postgraduate students, researchers and academic faculty members from across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Held from March to November 2021, the Study Group provided an intellectual and collaborative space for participants to engage critically with the historical and contemporary processes through which societies are formed and transformed. The programme brought together diverse experiences and perspectives from the Global South, fostering dialogue across regions, disciplines and generations.
Particular attention was given to regional and gender balance in the selection of participants, reflecting the Study Group’s commitment to building an inclusive intellectual community rooted in the experiences and realities of the Global South.
The 2021 cohort comprised 42 participants from countries and regions including India, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Argentina, Haiti, Jamaica, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The participants included emerging scholars, researchers, postgraduate students and political activists working across a wide range of questions concerning society, economy, politics, history and social transformation.
The Study Group reflects the broader intellectual orientation of the Agrarian South Network, which seeks to create spaces for critical scholarship and dialogue grounded in the histories and contemporary realities of the Global South. By bringing activists and scholars into sustained conversation, the programme encouraged engagement with questions that connect social formations, political economy, agrarian transformation, labour, power and social change.
The Agrarian South Study Group 2021 thus represented an important collective endeavour in building a transnational community of scholarship and practice—one that connects the study of social formations, past and present, with the continuing search for pathways towards social transformation in the Global South.
