Philip Hirsch (EDT), Kevin Woods (EDT), Natalia Scurrah (EDT), Michael B. Dwyer (EDT), K. Sivaramakrishnan (EDT) Turning Land into Capital

Annotation

Under the guise of development, land is being commodified and concentrated at the expense of the rural poorIn Southeast Asia reversals of earlier agrarian reforms have rolled back land-to-the-tiller policies created in the wake of Cold Warera revolutions. This trend, marked by increased land concentration and the promotion of export-oriented agribusiness at the expense of smallholder farmers, exposes the convergence of capitalist relations and state agendas that expand territorial control within and across national borders. Turning Land into Capital examines the contradictions produced by superimposing twenty-first-century neoliberal projects onto diverse landscapes etched by decades of war and state socialism.Chapters in the book explore geopolitics, legacies of colonialism, ideologies of development, and strategies to achieve land justice in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The resulting picture reveals the place-specific interactions of state and market ideologies, regional geopolitics, and local elites in concentrating control over land.