Jostein Jakobsen

• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Barbesgaard, Mads (2026). Structural One Health? A critical geography perspective on emerging infectious diseases and livestock. In Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Rutt, Rebecca Leigh (Ed.), One Health, Ecology, and the Politics of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Routledge. ISSN 9781003558217. p. 87–105. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter critically examines the structural forces shaping the emergence and spread of Emerging Infectious Diseases (EIDs), with a particular focus on avian influenza and the poultry supply chain. Moving beyond conventional epicenter thinking, which attributes disease emergence to specific geographic locations, we argue that EIDs should be understood within broader ecological, economic, social, and political networks. Drawing on perspectives from critical geography, political economy, and ecological epidemiology, we explore how global circuits of capital – especially as they manifest in industrial livestock production – facilitate the conditions for disease outbreaks. By disaggregating the poultry supply chain, we highlight the differentiated vulnerabilities of key actors, including biotech firms, hatcheries, growers, processors, and retailers. While biosecurity measures are framed as a shared responsibility, power imbalances within supply chains determine who bears the greatest risks and economic burdens when outbreaks occur. We argue that the One Health framework, despite its emphasis on intersectoral collaboration, often fails to address these underlying structural drivers of disease emergence. We propose that supply chains themselves must become a central focus of pandemic preparedness and response. By shifting attention to the political economy of food systems, this chapter contributes to debates on how to reorganize global agriculture to mitigate future pandemics at their root causes.

• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Rutt, Rebecca Leigh (2026). Introduction. In Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Rutt, Rebecca Leigh (Ed.), One Health, Ecology, and the Politics of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Routledge. ISSN 9781003558217. p. 1–18. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This introductory chapter situates industrial livestock production at the heart of converging crises – climate change, biodiversity loss, emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – and argues that, absent structural change, the current “Pandemic Era” will intensify. It synthesizes evidence that agro-industrial expansion, habitat disruption, and vertically integrated meat supply chains heighten zoonotic spillover risks and accelerate AMR, whose burdens fall disproportionately on low- and middle-income countries. While One Health has gained traction as an integrative framework, the chapter contends it remains narrowly operationalized – privileging surveillance and outbreak response over prevention and overlooking political-economic drivers such as corporate consolidation, trade liberalization, and the financialization of food systems. The chapter traces the global transformation of meat production – from the “Tyson model” of vertically integrated poultry to a consolidated grain-oilseed-livestock complex dominated by a handful of transnational corporations – and the attendant reconfiguration of landscapes, labor, and migration. Also, it maps the roles of global finance and commodity speculation in underwriting industrial expansion and externalizing ecological and health costs. The chapter reassesses One Health’s promise and limits, engaging critiques from different fields, and calling for a version that embeds environmental governance, social justice, and accountability. This chapter introduces the different contributions that together advance a One Health approach capable of tackling root causes and enabling more sustainable, equitable food futures.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2026). Marx og kapitalismens kriser. Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon. ISSN 0800-7136. 2026(1-2), p. 39–75. doi: 10.18261/agora.44.1-2.3. Full text in Research Archive
• Barbesgaard, Mads; Jakobsen, Jostein & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2026). Caught in the coop: local labour control regimes in poultry supply chains under avian influenza. Journal of Economic Geography. ISSN 1468-2702. doi: 10.1093/jeg/lbag011. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) pose an escalating threat to global poultry supply chains, with their management highlighting reconfigurations in economic geography through the increasing centrality of actors and processes beyond the farm-level. Taking HPAI outbreaks in Denmark as our empirical focus, we argue that outbreaks and their management reveal poultry growers’ lack of control over the labour process. Growers organize labour regimes in struggles with requirements imposed from other capitals and the state. Combining labour regime analysis with an emphasis on classes of capital, allows us to examine how this organizing is done in constitutively different ways.

• Farahani, Ilia; Barbesgaard, Mads & Jakobsen, Jostein (2026). Political Economy in Geographic Research: Institutionalist versus Marxist Approaches. In Das, Raju J.; Latham, Robert & Fasenfest, David (Ed.), The Power of Marxist Thought: Volume 1. Brill | Nijhoff. ISSN 9789004746015. p. 85–108. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Since the rise of radical geography in the early 1970s, political economy has been crucial in examining the spatial dynamics of capital in economic geography. Marxist and non-Marxist (particularly institutionalist) economic geographers use political economy to challenge non-political economy approaches that ignore the relationship between microeconomic processes and their spatial manifestations and structural (economic and institutional) power dynamics in capitalism. Since the 1980s, however, Marxist political economy has been increasingly sidelined in favor of the institutionalist approach, which contends that the Marxist focus on systemic features of capitalism in shaping spatial relations is overly structural. Instead, the institutionalist approach emphasizes the “particular,” and highlights the importance of examining geographical difference through variegated modes of exchange and analyzing underlying rationalities of inherently heterogenous real economies. This shift poses analytical challenges, particularly during the current phase of de-globalization, highlighting the need to revisit the "general" laws of capitalist production. Given rising inter-regional competition in the emerging tri-polar world economy, a solid grasp of long-term economic forces is crucial. We contend that a modified Marxist approach remains relevant precisely for its ability to explain capitalism’s general and systemic features. In 1985, David Harvey suggested integrating two viewpoints from Marx’s Capital, volumes one and two, for a fuller understanding of the spatiality of capitalism. We argue that incorporating a third viewpoint on competition from Capital, volume three, along with more systematic empirical engagements with Anwar Shaikh’s theory of real competition, is essential for a comprehensive analysis of the spatiality and temporality of capitalism.

• Jakobsen, Jostein; Barbesgaard, Mads & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2025). How to turn over an egg: Rethinking the temporality of global value chains amidst emerging infectious diseases. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. ISSN 0308-518X. 58(1). doi: 10.1177/0308518x251377076. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The temporality of global value chains is an important area of concern for economic geographers. This paper argues for the analytical value of closely examining the category of ‘turnover time’ as articulated in Marx’s work and subsequent historical-geographical materialism. We argue that turnover times of capitals in competition – hence struggles over time – can be conceptualised as a driving force behind what the GVC literature refers to as ‘chain governance’. This also helps explain the specific challenges faced by capitals depending on their position within the supply chain. To develop this argument, we draw on empirical material from the poultry supply chain in Norway and Denmark, particularly in the context of rising threats from highly pathogenic avian influenza. We argue that focusing on turnover time provides a novel angle not only on the supply chain’s intricacies but on our understanding of how industry actors respond to avian flu as an imminent challenge. In unravelling the egg production supply chain, turnover times emerge as distinct and multiple, depending on the role and materiality of the chicks, layer hens and eggs which we conceptualise respectively as fluid, fixed and commodity capital. Consequently, these variations in turnover times directly affect actors’ agency to manage avian flu outbreaks and strategise in the context of ever-rising pathogenic threats. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the temporality in the supply chain under the pressures of emerging infectious diseases and contribute to the broader literature on Marxist economic geography and critical GVC analysis.

• Jakobsen, Jostein; Barbesgaard, Mads & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2025). Turnover time in the pandemic era: industrial poultry, avian influenza and capitalist strategies. Journal of Peasant Studies. ISSN 0306-6150. p. 1–24. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2025.2536487. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Focusing on mounting challenges to agro-industrial capitals posed by emerging infectious diseases, this paper revisits longstanding debates in critical agrarian studies scrutinizing the role of turnover time. Analyzing Norway and Denmark's poultry industries' recent confrontations with avian influenza, and by paying close attention to the questions of temporality and disaggregating the agency of capital, we elucidate the implicated classes of poultry capital along the broiler supply chain and their strategies in responding to differentiated challenges from avian influenza. In so doing, we argue for the relevance of conceptual tools derived from the under-acknowledged second volume of Marx's Capital.

• Jakobsen, Jostein; Barbesgaard, Mads & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2025). Beyond Contracts: Supply Chains and Dynamics of Incorporation Among Classes of Capital in the Aftermath of Global Outbreaks of Avian Flu. Journal of Agrarian Change. ISSN 1471-0358. 25(4). doi: 10.1111/joac.70025. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This study investigates how agricultural producers are incorporated into commodity circuits under contemporary capitalism, in the context of growing pressures from emerging infectious diseases. Focusing on poultry production systems in Denmark and Norway currently under threat from highly pathogenic avian influenza, we argue that understanding these dynamics requires an expanded conception of agriculture that accounts for the contractual arrangements binding poultry growers to both upstream and downstream actors in a supply chain defined by spatially dispersed operations with growers positioned midstream. Specifically, we explore how risk diffuses along supply chains, how forms of knowledge and resources originating upstream and downstream of the farm-level organise production processes, and the managerial efforts aimed at reconciling contradictory interests. We contend that these dynamics have significant implications for how outbreaks of infectious diseases ramify across variously situated actors in natural resource industries under contemporary capitalism.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2025). Food Regimes. Oxford Bibliographies Online. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780197764381-0020. Full text in Research Archive
• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein; Barbesgaard, Mads; Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada (2025). Dangerous Liaisons: Unveiling the Co-Constitution of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Industrial Meat Production. Antipode. ISSN 0066-4812. 57(4), p. 1320–1341. doi: 10.1111/anti.70021. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have intensified over the last decade, spotlighting the concept of “epicentre” as a means of locating disease origins. Although epicentre thinking can facilitate rapid interventions, it often overlooks the political-economic and ecological forces driving outbreaks. Drawing on critical geography, political ecology, and global supply chain analyses, we reconceptualise the epicentre as “a set of relations rather than a place”, emphasising how capitalist production, ecological disruption, and pathogen circulation intersect. From this relational standpoint, epicentres emerge as intersections of multiple capitals, rather than isolated points. Using HPAI in global poultry production as an illustration, we argue that biosecurity measures shaped by epicentre thinking often bolster industrial expansion while deflecting systemic critique. We conclude with a five-point research agenda for a relational geographical approach to disease outbreaks, highlighting turnover times, cost and risk distribution, producer incorporation, labour regimes, and governance mechanisms.

• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). Will development kill us? Globalized livestock production in the "Pandemic Era", Handbook of International Development and the Environment. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781800883772. p. 185–198. doi: 10.4337/9781800883789.00020. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The outbreak of flu pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s originating in Asia, in which novel bird flu viruses infected and killed humans, prompted the idea that a geographical area from which pandemics emerge, exists. This area, located in Asia has been imagined as the “epicenter” of pandemics. Some researchers suggested then that the agrarian landscapes of southern China formed an ecosystem in which viruses of human and animal origin can interact and evolve into new varieties with pandemic potential. Modernizing agricultural production and animal husbandry was proposed as a means to minimize pandemic risks. However, as new disease outbreaks have multiplied across the world during the last years it has become evident that industrial meat production is more likely implicated in the increase of disease transmission between animals and humans. Industrial meat production is characterized by concentration and integration, the reliance on standardized feed and fodder, the expansion of industrial agriculture into forested areas to produce the ingredients for making feed and fodder as well as by the increased use of drugs in animal production. This chapter examines the interlinked processes associated with industrial meat production and the increase in the occurrence of disease transmission between animals and humans. In doing so we will suggest that, pandemics and epidemics are not only public health issues but also require rethinking interspecies relationships in agriculture and beyond.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). The international development of food and agriculture: global food regimes, environmental change and new configurations of power, Handbook of International Development and the Environment. Edward Elgar Publishing. ISSN 9781800883772. p. 170–185. doi: 10.4337/9781800883789.00019. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  At a current moment of politicized global debates surrounding food and agriculture, in which the manifold socio-ecological consequences of unsustainable development are increasingly evident, food regime analysis offers an ambitious approach to our understanding of the structuring of food relations in global capitalism. With a particular emphasis on the so-called ‘third’ food regime ostensibly arising in the period of unprecedented globalization in agri-food systems since the late 1980s, scholarly debate has paid sustained attention to corporate power and influence, as well as to the uneven ramifications of the global food regime for social justice and environmental transformations. Lately, evolving scholarship has increasingly acknowledged new configurations of power, with shifts towards the ‘South’ and the ‘East’ shaping an increasingly ‘multipolar’ or ‘polycentric’ food regime in the 21st century. This chapter traces current debates in food regime literature to take stock of these emergent dynamics. After having presented key characteristics of the food regime approach, the chapter outlines the vocal debate surrounding the ‘third’ food regime and, thereafter, proceeds to explore recent scholarship pertaining to new configurations of power including the ‘rise’ of China in the realm of agro-food.

• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). Globalisert kjøttproduksjon: Å forstå forholdet mellom helse og miljø som romlige fenomener. In Cruickshank, Jørn & Aasetre, Jørund (Ed.), Innføring i samfunnsgeografi. Fagbokforlaget. ISSN 9788245021615. Full text in Research Archive
• Harnesk, David & Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). Public contestations against the disturbance, degradation, and destruction of sámi pastoral landscapes in northern Sweden. Journal of Rural Studies. ISSN 0743-0167. 104. doi: 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2023.103162. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  A new wave of encroachments is unfolding in Northern Sweden on the lands of Indigenous Sámi reindeer pastoralists. Even if the State and corporations may accept that landscape transformations represent threats to reindeer pastoralists' cultural and livelihood practices, attempts to redress these grievances often involve money to cover costs associated with feeding practices or mechanized transport. This paper considers these landscape transformations as driven by industrial capitalist expansion and underlying colonial relations, examining their broader implications on human-animal relations in pastoral landscapes. We apply an ecologically informed radical geography approach and conduct a content analysis of claims-making instances around the new wave of encroachments and their associated compensation schemes, complemented with basic GIS data. Relying on three cases of public contestations, we argue that encroachments represent threats that disturb, degrade, and destroy pastoral landscapes, and that while counter-hegemonic struggles try to diminish the reach of capital into these landscapes to maintain human-animal relations based on natural pastures, hegemonic actors seek to alter such relations to deepen capital's reach. Although reindeer pastoralists have many allies, we argue that broader coalitions are likely necessary to push for reforms of planning regimes that can enable multi-functionality and sustainability of landscapes in rural areas.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2022). Beyond subject-making: Conflicting humanisms, class analysis, and the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology. Progress in Human Geography. ISSN 0309-1325. doi: 10.1177/03091325211056442. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article examines conflicting conceptualizations of the human subject in political ecology and geography: Foucauldian views of “subject-making” and Gramscian views of “the person”. While Foucauldian work holds that the more complete exertion of power, the more coherent subject-making, Gramscian historical–geographical perspectives counter that, the more complete exertion of power, the more incoherent persons and their class-based collectivities. Outlining incongruities between these approaches, I argue that the “dark side” of Gramscian political ecology—with its emphasis on incoherence and fracture–allows geographers new nuance in understanding the human subject, although not without challenges to the actual writing of such scholarship.

• Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Jakobsen, Jostein (2022). The ‘brother layer problem’: Routine killing, biotechnology and the pursuit of ‘ethical sustainability’ in industrial poultry. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. ISSN 2514-8486. doi: 10.1177/25148486221131195. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The global poultry industry culls approximately seven billion day-old male layer chicks annually. Superfluous to both egg and meat, male ‘brother’ layers constitute a momentous problem, simultaneously economical and ethical, to the poultry industry. In this article, we scrutinize present and proposed alternatives to routine killing involving multiple biotechnological innovations, including novel methods for fetus sexing, genome editing technologies and re-sexing. We utilize a political ecological perspective that views attempts to solve the ‘brother layer problem’ as discursive and techno-scientific ‘fixes’ to problems of the capitalist poultry industry's own making and to rising demands for ethics and environmental-friendly animal agriculture. This context opens new avenues for profit-making by and for an expanding matrix of actors we view as an evolving ‘economy of repair’ that is built in part by public resources. Further, these fixes constitute an ostensible ‘ethical sustainability’ meant to signal both animal welfare and environmental improvements, which seem to work towards stabilizing agro-industry, thereby foreclosing alternatives to agro-industrial intensification.

• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2022). Bovine meat, authoritarian populism, and state contradictions in Modi's India. Journal of Agrarian Change. ISSN 1471-0358. doi: 10.1111/joac.12495. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  While authoritarian populism and its relationship to the rural world have gained analytical prominence recently, few have attempted a systematic exploration of how various authoritarian populisms emerge from, and are embedded within, dynamics of capital accumulation, state, and class struggle. Drawing on Poulantzas' approach to “state contradictions,” we focus on the ways by which bovine meat figures in Narendra Modi's authoritarian populist project in contemporary India. On the one hand, violent authoritarianism in the country uses beef eating as a powerful tool for subjugating subaltern groups to Hindutva rule. On the other hand, the country houses a rapidly expanding beef meat agro-industry, accounting for as much as 20% of global exports and based on corporate concentration around dominant class interests. We argue that this points to state contradictions in Modi's India witnessing strained accumulation patterns. These contradictions, we emphasize, have distinct ramifications for India's classes of labour in the countryside, as certain groups experience what we describe as a process of “double victimization.”

• Fischer, Klara; Jakobsen, Jostein & Westengen, Ola (2022). The political ecology of crops: From seed to state and capital. Geoforum. ISSN 0016-7185. 130, p. 92–95. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.12.011. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Bovine Contradictions: The Politics Of (De)Meatification And Hindutva Hegemony In Neoliberal India. In Hansen, Arve & Syse, Karen Lykke (Ed.), Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISSN 9781538142653. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). New food regime geographies: Scale, state, labor. World Development. ISSN 0305-750X. 145, p. 1–7. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105523. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Food regime analysis is a prominent approach to the role of food and agriculture in global capitalism. Yet recent advancement within the approach has not received as much attention as it deserves outside of specialized circles of agrarian research. Food regime scholarship has over the last few years taken several steps to move away from its previous prevalent emphasis on macro-scale phenomena to make it more applicable to empirical research on agricultural development. This article reviews recent scholarship in food regime analysis to bring out central aspects of such advancement. In particular, this review discusses three key aspects of recent food regime scholarship: First, I find an increased problematizing of spatiality and scale with calls for downscaling the food regime approach. Second, I find a rising centrality of theorizing and analyzing the state. Third, despite these advancements, an important gap remains in sustained attention to questions of labor. I call for further scrutiny of labor in order to bring food regime analysis forwards.

• Jakobsen, Jostein & Westengen, Ola (2021). The imperial maize assemblage: maize dialectics in Malawi and India. Journal of Peasant Studies. ISSN 0306-6150. p. 1–25. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2021.1890042. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The ‘grain hypothesis', postulated by James Scott, suggests that cereals are ‘political crops’ intrinsic to state formation. Drawing the classical agrarian political economy of maize into dialogue with recent more-than-human political ecology, we explore the grain hypothesis with empirical material from present day Malawi and India. The evolution and ecology of the maize plant, we argue, has made it a strong agent of history, one that has enabled resilience, but also facilitated state and capital entanglement in the global agro-food system. This imperial maize assemblage is set on expansion, but it will continue to meet resistance in coevolved peasant-maize alliances.

• Hansen, Arve; Jakobsen, Jostein & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2021). New Geographies of Global Meatification: The BRICS in the Industrial Meat Complex. In Hansen, Arve & Syse, Karen Lykke (Ed.), Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISSN 9781538142653. p. 35–58. Full text in Research Archive
• Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Meatification and everyday geographies of consumption in Vietnam and China. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography. ISSN 0435-3684. doi: 10.1080/04353684.2019.1709217. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The rapidly escalating production and consumption of meat across the world has drawn much attention in recent years. While mainstream accounts tend to see the phenomenon as driven by ‘natural’ processes of consumption pattern change through economic development, critical geographies have turned to exploring the uneven capitalist processes underpinning what Tony Weis calls ‘meatification’. In Weis’ view, meatification unfolds through what he calls ‘the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex’, which is presently becoming a dominant form of agricultural production worldwide. Simultaneously, but less thoroughly investigated in the emerging scholarship, meatification unfolds in and through everyday geographies of consumption that we conceptualize as variegated ‘meatscapes’. By bringing together critical geographers’ interest in the political economy of meat with practice theory and consumption research, this contribution furthers the geographical dialogue around the spatial transformations brought about by meatification. Looking at Vietnam and China as examples of rapidly meatifying countries, we explore the intersection of macro-scale spatial transformations through trade and commodity flows and, at the micro-scale, transformations in food practices. We thus argue for an approach to meatification that is multi-scalar and conducive to further regionally specific research of meatification in Asia and beyond.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2019). The maize frontier in rural South India: Exploring the everyday dynamics of the contemporary food regime. Journal of Agrarian Change. ISSN 1471-0358. 20(1), p. 1–26. doi: 10.1111/joac.12337. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This contribution explores how new regions and crops are integrated in the contemporary food regime through a fieldwork‐based approach to maize cultivation in rural Karnataka, South India. As an intrinsic part of the industrial grain–oilseed–livestock complex, maize is an important component of the contemporary food regime. I argue that the expansion of maize at the village level follows commodity frontier dynamics, located at the conjuncture of processes “from above” pushing the industrial grain–oilseed–complex forward and processes “from below” that integrate maize in everyday livelihoods. Focusing on how villagers make use of maize in ways that cross, but simultaneously are differentiated along, lines of class and caste, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the everyday dynamics of contemporary food regime.

• Jakobsen, Jostein; Nielsen, Kenneth Bo; Nilsen, Alf Gunvald & Vaidya, Anand (2019). Mapping the World’s Largest Democracy (1947–2017). Forum for Development Studies. ISSN 0803-9410. 46(1), p. 83–108. doi: 10.1080/08039410.2018.1465461. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  After seven decades as an independent democratic nation, India’s social landscape remains marred by persistent contradictions and inequalities. As the country moves from celebrating 70 years of independence towards its seventeenth general election in 2019, this article sets out to survey what democracy has done to India over the past 70 years. How was Indian democracy established and how has it evolved? Why do people vote, and who do they vote for? How does Indian democracy function beyond elections, and to what extent has democracy delivered in terms of social development and the economic and political integration of marginalized groups? These are the key questions that we address in this article. Drawing on Heller’s distinction between the formal, effective, and substantive dimensions of democracy, we adopt an understanding of the dynamics of Indian democracy that extends well beyond formal institutions and elections. While we acknowledge that Indian democracy in the formal sense is plural, vibrant, and resilient, we also argue that the transition from a vibrant formal democracy to one that is both effective and substantive is impeded by contradictions and inequalities that are both historical and contemporary in nature. We also reflect on the current potential of popular mobilizations from below for forging mutually reinforcing connections between the formal, effective, and substantive dimensions of democracy, in a context in which an increasingly authoritarian Hindu nationalism continues to gain ground.

• Jakobsen, Jostein & Hansen, Arve (2019). Geographies of meatification: an emerging Asian meat complex. Globalizations. ISSN 1474-7731. 17(1), p. 93–109. doi: 10.1080/14747731.2019.1614723. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The ‘meatification’ of human diets has been subject to increasing scholarly attention in recent years, along with its many impacts. While the rapidly expanding meatification in many Asian countries has been noted, the geographies of these processes have been left largely unexplored. This paper maps the changing geographies of meat with special focus on Southeast Asia. We use Tony Weis’ concept of ‘the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex’ to analyse how forms of systemic meatification are taking place in Asia. We map and analyse regional trends in meat production and consumption, as well as trade patterns in meat products and dominant feed crops. We argue that the regional meat complex emerges through increasingly regional development processes and capital, as well as through new South-South connections. The geographies of meatification in Southeast Asia thus constitute an empirical manifestation of the emerging multipolarity of the global food regime.

• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2019). Compounding aspirations: grounding hegemonic processes in India's rural transformations. Revue canadienne d'études du développement. ISSN 0225-5189. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2019.1666706. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article introduces compounding aspirations as a key concept for interrogating complex and contradictory rural transformations in India. We argue that compounding aspirations are central to the conjunctural grounding of hegemonic processes of neoliberalisation in lived experience. Taking such aspirations as constitutive elements to hegemonic processes, we question prevailing perspectives on rural transformations in India as we speak to emerging interest in critical agrarian studies to transcend dichotomous views of consent and coercion. We illustrate this argument with select empirical cases from India, focusing in particular on adverse incorporation in corporate agriculture in rural Karnataka.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2018). Towards a Gramscian food regime analysis of India's agrarian crisis: Counter-movements, petrofarming and Cheap Nature. Geoforum. ISSN 0016-7185. 90, p. 1–10. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.01.015. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article develops an initial framework for a Gramscian and political ecological food regime analysis of India’s ongoing agrarian crisis. Criticizing readings of Polanyi in food regime analysis in light of Gramscian perspectives, I seek to contest food regime analysis’s approach to counter-movements. I suggest, further, that close attention to the Indian case of ‘actually existing crises’ helps us avoid some of the capital-centric limitations in food regime literature. Working towards an incipient understanding of the absence of a sustained smallholder counter-movement at the current conjuncture in India, I argue for locating our investigation at the intersection of crises of accumulation and of legitimation. I analyze India’s decentralized form of petrofarming as a socioecological cycle of accumulation that is presently facing a condition of exhaustion of Cheap Nature. Drawing on Gramscian perespectives, I argue that an analytics that foregrounds the dynamics of class forces in the integral state can help us rethinking the possibilities for resistance to the contemporary food regime more broadly.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2018). Neoliberalising the food regime 'amongst its others': the right to food and the state in India. Journal of Peasant Studies. ISSN 0306-6150. p. 1–21. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2018.1449745. Full text in Research Archive

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• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Rutt, Rebecca Leigh (2026). One Health, Ecology, and the Politics of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Routledge. ISBN 9781003558217. 256 p. doi: 10.4324/9781003558217. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This book explores the critical intersection of contemporary livestock production and some of today’s most urgent challenges: the spread of emerging infectious diseases, the sustainability of food systems, and the contested promises of One Health. It provides insights that cut across disciplines and geographies, from both the social and the natural sciences, reflecting the interdisciplinary aspirations of One Health. Yet, in foregrounding especially cutting edge contributions from ecology and the social sciences, this book addresses the persistent knowledge gap from these fields, which have frequently been neglected in favor of the veterinary sciences. By including contributions from across these fields, the book broadens and critically deepen the conversation around One Health. The book is intended for a wide interdisciplinary audience of scholars, students, and practitioners concerned with livestock production, public health, and the future of food systems.

• Jakobsen, Jostein (2025). Capital's Food Regime: Class Struggle, the State and Corporate Agriculture in India. Brill | Nijhoff. ISBN 9789004714427. 210 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2024). Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi's India. Routledge. ISBN 9781032709345. 112 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Dunlap, Alexander & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political Ecology, Critical Agrarian Studies and The Capitalist Worldeater. Palgrave Pivot. ISBN 9783030268510. 171 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Jakobsen, Jostein & Rødvik, Trym Daniel (2026). Kapital i bevegelse. Gnist- Marxistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 2535-3195. 2026(3), p. 56–61. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Rødvik, Trym Daniel (2026). En verden i bevegelse. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  https://klassekampen.no/artikkel/2026-07-21/en-verden-i-bevegelse

• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2025). Indisk klassekamp ovenfra. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Modi-regjeringens nye arbeidsreformer møter kraftig motstand og kritikk.

• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2025). Når frihandel møter virkeligheten i Modis India. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Rødvik, Trym Daniel (2025). Marx på bygda | Klassekampen. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  I Klassekampen fredag 12. september beskrives den nye forskningen til økonomene Julia Cagé og Thomas Piketty. Her tas det opp et sentralt problem, nem...

• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel; Jakobsen, Jostein & Barbesgaard, Mads (2025). Dynamics of incorporation among classes of capital in the aftermath of global outbreaks of avian flu. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Rødvik, Trym Daniel (2025). Kapitalismens mystifiseringer. Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2025). Crisis in the coop: turnover time and capitalist strategies in broiler production. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2024). Rahul Gandhi marsjerer igjen. Full text in Research Archive
• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada (2024). Hvorfor vi bør være bekymret for fugleinfluensa. Aftenposten. Full text in Research Archive
• Rødvik, Trym Daniel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2024). Tenk globalt! Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2024). Turnover time in the pandemic era: Industrial poultry, avian influenza and supply-chain capitalism. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2024). Energi, "vekst" og veien videre. Gnist- Marxistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 2535-3195. p. 40–45. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2024). Authoritarian Populism And Bovine Political Economy. Progress in Political Economy. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). Slutt på halal i Nord-India. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Samuelsen, Guro Warhuus (2023). Håndteringen av Modi-kritisk dokumentar forteller hvor svakt ytringsfriheten står i India. Full text in Research Archive
• Rødvik, Trym Daniel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2023). En kapitalisme på tomgang og statsbudsjettets fallitt. Gnist- Marxistisk tidsskrift. ISSN 2535-3195. p. 56–61. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo; Jakobsen, Jostein & Samuelsen, Guro Warhuus (2023). Første skritt mot en folkebevegelse? Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2022). Tid for motvekst? [Journal]. Fri Tanke: Medlemsblad for Human-Etisk Forbund. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2022). Indisk proteksjonisme og den globale matkrisen. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2022). Personlig triumf for Narendra Modi i delstatsvalg. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2022). Russlands utenriksminister i New Delhi utfordrer Indias balansegang. Full text in Research Archive
• Hansen, Arve; Helland, Gudrun Cecilie Eikemo; Jakobsen, Jostein; Mohamed, Lobna; Roalkvam, Sidsel & Sandåker, Anne-Line [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2022). Skal vi spare oss til fant? Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2022). Kan Kongresspartiets nye president utfordre Narendra Modi? Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2022). Indias ukrainske dilemma. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Norsk motvekst. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Nyliberalismen har mutert. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Narendra Modi, krisenes mann. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Pegasus-skandalen rammer India. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). India: landet uten opposisjon? Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Uro i Nagaland. Væpnet konflikt har preget regionen i flere tiår. Full text in Research Archive
• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Prisen for å produsere billig mat. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Akademisk frihet under press i India. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). India: COP, kull og den vanskelige grønne omstillingen. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Diplomati og nasjonalisme i en vaksinetid. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2021). Avskogingspandemien. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Review of Alpa Shah (2018) Nightmarch: among India’s revolutionary guerrillas. Contemporary South Asia. ISSN 0958-4935. doi: 10.1080/09584935.2021.1884371. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). India brenner: Åkrene i nord står i flammer – igjen. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Dype riper i Modis teflon. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Utviklingen av det globale matsystemet - hva nå? LatinAmerika tidsskrift. 26(3), p. 4–7. Full text in Research Archive
• Pannu, Bikramdeep Singh; Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Et opprør på rullende hjul. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Kapitalisme, pandemier og industrielt landbruk. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Gramsci i vår tid. Salongen – nettidsskrift for filosofi og idéhistorie. ISSN 2703-7053. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Dystre skygger over pave-møtet. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Narendra Modi. In Bolstad, Erik (Eds.), Store norske leksikon (snl.no 2021). Store norske leksikon. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Jakobsen, Jostein (2021). Volden i Uttar Pradesh viser regjeringspartiets harde linje mot bondeopprøret. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Den indiske bondeseieren. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2021). Narendra Modi's authoritarian neoliberalism. Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). The Global Police State and the Rural World. Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent. Full text in Research Archive
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo; Jakobsen, Jostein & Nilsen, Alf Gunvald (2020). Liberalising Indian Agriculture. Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent. Full text in Research Archive
• Dunlap, Alexander & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Unraveling the Lies of His-story with James Scott and Peter Gelderloos. Capitalism Nature Socialism. ISSN 1045-5752. doi: 10.1080/10455752.2020.1735029. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Jawaharlal Nehru. In Bolstad, Erik (Eds.), Store norske leksikon (snl.no 2020). Store norske leksikon AS. Full text in Research Archive
• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Forholdet mellom kjøttproduksjon og pandemier er sammensatt. Bondebladet. ISSN 0332-8414. Full text in Research Archive
• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Producing Food, Producing Zoonosis: The Political Ecology of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Tvergastein. ISSN 1893-5605. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Review of Andrew Flachs (2019) Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India. Journal of Agrarian Change. ISSN 1471-0358. doi: 10.1111/joac.12386. Full text in Research Archive
• Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). COVID-19 and the Asian meat complex. East Asia Forum. Full text in Research Archive
• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel & Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). Høy pris for billig kjøtt. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2019). Farmers, Subalterns, and Activists: Social Politics of Sustainable Agriculture in India, by Trent Brown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018. Pp. xii+202. £75. ISBN 978‐1‐108‐42510‐0. Journal of Agrarian Change. ISSN 1471-0358. doi: 10.1111/joac.12342. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2019). Er Foucaults biopolitikk død? Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent. Full text in Research Archive
• Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein (2019). Geographies of Asian Meatification. Terra Nullius: Repossessing the Existent. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2018). Akademisk arbeid er ingen gave. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2018). Food regimes as mundane: a view from southern India’s maize frontier. Full text in Research Archive
• Hansen, Arve & Jakobsen, Jostein (2018). Geographies of Meatification: An Emerging Asian Meat Complex? Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein; Nielsen, Kenneth Bo; Nilsen, Alf Gunvald & Vaidya, Anand (2018). Världens största demokrati i praktiken. In Lindberg, Staffan & Eklund, Lars (Ed.), Miraklet Indien och dess baksida. Palmkrons förlag. ISSN 9789188785008. p. 91–121. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2017). Bondeselvmord og klimaendringer. Fokus India. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2017). Arundhati Roy og mobben. Fokus India. Full text in Research Archive
• Jakobsen, Jostein (2020). India in the Contemporary Food Regime: The State, Struggles and Uneven Integration. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article-based thesis brings India into ongoing debates surrounding food regime analysis. Examining India’s integration in the contemporary food regime across scales from the regional, through the national to the local, the thesis aims at critically advancing the approach of food regime analysis and, simultaneously, our understanding of agrarian change in India. A key finding in this thesis is that India’s integration in the contemporary food regime is characterised by uneven tendencies. Partial, gradual and incomplete integration is evidenced throughout the thesis, leading to the central argument that corporate food regime dynamics are emerging in India today amidst struggle and contentions where the agency of the state is crucial and where patterns of accumulation are interwoven with nature. Drawing on analytics in the tradition of Antonio Gramsci, the thesis takes steps towards a conjunctural food regime analysis that is attentive to historical-geographical specificities, while seeking to avoid pitfalls of ‘global’ orientation and ‘capital-logic’. The first three articles are ‘desk studies’ focusing on regional and national scales. The first, co-authored, article locates India in the Asian region in relation to the formation of the increasingly polycentric contemporary food regime, looking specifically at the role of an emerging ‘meat complex’. The second article zooms in on the national scale and interrogates the role of the state and neoliberalisation in the contemporary food regime in view of contestations over recent right-to-food legislation in India. The third article explores popular mobilisation against food regime crises through an inquiry into rural India’s ongoing agrarian crisis. The fourth and final article is based on fieldwork and descends to the local village scale to explore how crops and regions are integrated in the contemporary food regime by tracing booming maize cultivation in rural Karnataka.

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