The Arab-Iranian region, long marked by violence and inequality, occupies a pivotal yet understudied position in global processes of accumulation, development, and agrarian transformation. This conference seeks to critically re-examine the agrarian question in its multifaceted dimensions—political, economic, ecological, and gendered—as a lens to understand the region’s historical and contemporary crises.

From colonial-era monocrop systems and anti-colonial peasant revolts to post-colonial state planning, Green Revolutions, and neoliberal de-development, agrarian structures have shaped—and been shaped by—war, imperialism, and uneven global capitalism. Yet scholarly discourse often divorces these dynamics from their material roots, reducing conflict to “sectarianism” or treating war economies as isolated phenomena. This conference aims to recenter the agrarian question as an analytic framework for interrogating:

• The role of peasantries in anti-colonial and post-colonial state formation.
• The intersection of war, militarization, and agrarian devastation.
• Gendered and ecological contradictions in rural transformations.
• Neoliberalism’s erosion of food sovereignty and rural livelihoods.
• Intellectual histories of development planning and agrarian thought.

We invite contributions that bridge theory and empirics, connecting the Arab-Iranian region to broader tricontinental dialogues on agrarian struggle, imperialist extraction, and alternatives to capitalist underdevelopment.