Governing Dispossession: Relational Land Grabbing in Laos

Abstract

The government of (post)socialist Laos has conceded more than 1 million hectares of land—5 percent of the national territory—to resource investors, threatening rural community access to customary lands and forests. However, investors have not been able to use all of the land granted to them, and their projects have generated geographically uneven dispossession due to local resistance. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article compares how dispossession materialized in eight villages targeted by a Vietnamese rubber plantation and a Chinese pulpwood plantation in southern Laos. I contribute to a nascent literature on the political contingencies of dispossession by showing how extraeconomic forces of expropriation are governed relationally. Developing a Gramscian relational environmental governance framework, I demonstrate how such contingencies are shaped by social and political relations among and internal to state, capital, and community actors, leading to either the extension and solidification or contraction and fragmentation of dispossession as a hegemonic mode of development. In the case at hand, I focus on four sets of decisive relations: (1) corporate–state relations that mediate the capacity of investors to mobilize state powers of land expropriation; (2) the state's discursive framing of socioenvironmental relations between communities and their rural environments, which affects how amenable village territories are to acquisition; (3) community–government relations built on kinship, ethnic, or historical links that villagers can use to lodge effective grievances with the state; and (4) coherent and democratic internal village relations that build community solidarity against plantation development. Key Words: dispossession, environmental governance, land grabbing, Laos, resistance.

老挝的 (后) 社会主义政府, 将超过一百万公倾的土地——该国领土的百分之五——承让给资源投资者, 并对农村社群取得祖传土地与森林的管道产生威胁。但投资者尚未能够使用其所获得的全部土地, 而他们的计画, 部分因为面临在地反抗而导致地理不均的迫迁。本文根据为期二十週的民族志田野工作, 比较老挝南方由一名越南橡胶种植者和一名中国浆木栽种者瞄准的八座村落如何进行迫迁。我透过展现非经济性的徵收驱力如何以关系性的方式进行治理, 对于晚近有关迫迁的政治偶合之文献作出贡献。我透过建立葛兰西的关系性环境治理架构, 展现此般偶合, 如何由国家、资本与社区行动者之间及内在于其中的社会与政治关系所形塑, 导致既非延伸与巩固, 亦非冲突与破碎的迫迁, 作为发展的霸权模式。我在手边的案例中, 聚焦四大决定性的关系组合: (1) 中介投资者动员国家权力进行土地徵收能力的企业 — 国家关系; (2) 国家对于社区与其农村环境之间的社会环境关系的论述架构, 并影响着顺从的村落之领土如何被取得; (3) 建立于亲属、族裔或历史连结的社区 — 政府关系, 而村民能够以此对国家提出有效的不满; (4) 打造对抗种植发展的社区团结之协调且民主的村落内部关系。

El gobierno del Laos (post)socialista ha entregado más de un millón de hectáreas de tierra––igual al 5 por ciento del territorio nacional–– a inversionistas en recursos, amenazando el acceso de la comunidad rural a terrenos habituales y bosques. Sin embargo, los inversionistas no han sido capaces de usar toda la tierra que se les cedió, y sus proyectos han generado una desposesión geográficamente desigual debido en parte a la resistencia local. Con base en veinte meses de trabajo etnográfico de campo, este artículo compara el modo como la desposesión se materializó en ocho aldeas que estuvieron en la mira de una plantación vietnamita de caucho y una plantación forestal china para pasta de papel en el sur de Laos. Contribuyo a una naciente literatura sobre las contingencias políticas de la desposesión, mostrando cómo las fuerzas extraeconómicas de la expropiación son gobernadas relacionalmente. Desarrollando un marco de gobernanza ambiental relacional gramsciano, demuestro cómo tales contingencias son configuradas por las relaciones sociales y políticas entre el estado, el capital y los actores comunitarios, cosa que lleva bien a la extensión y solidificación, o a la contracción y a la fragmentación de la desposesión como modo hegemónico de desarrollo. En el caso que me ocupa, me concentro en cuatro conjuntos de relaciones decisivas: (1) las relaciones corporación–estado que median la capacidad de los inversionistas de movilizar los poderes del estado sobre expropiación de tierra; (2) el marco discursivo del estado de las relaciones socioambientales entre las comunidades y su entorno rural, que afecta qué tan dispuestos están los territorios aldeanos para su adquisición; (3) las relaciones comunidad–gobierno construidas sobre los vínculos de parentela, étnicos o históricos que pudieren usar los aldeanos para esgrimir reclamaciones efectivas con el estado; y (4) relaciones aldeanas internas coherentes y democráticas que construyan solidaridad comunitaria contra el desarrollo de las plantaciones.

关键词：:

• 关键词:迫迁, 环境治理, 土地掠夺, 老挝, 反抗。

Palabras clave:

• desposesión, gobernanza ambiental, acaparamiento de tierra, Laos, resistencia

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to the villagers, NGO staff, government officials, and company representatives who facilitated and participated in this research project for their time, patience, and generosity. I would also like to thank those who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this article: Jody Emel, James McCarthy, Tony Bebbington, Jim Glassman, Jeff Bury, Ian Baird, Kelly Kay, panelists and audience members at the “Critical Environmental Governance” sessions of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, and three anonymous reviewers of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Any remaining errors or omissions are my own.

Notes

1. Although I understand the state to be a complex, contradictory, and fragmented social relation, I continue refer to it as “the state” throughout the article as shorthand for the ways in which it coheres as a relatively stable social entity.

2. Pseudonyms are used for village names to protect the identity of villages and guard them against potential political repercussions.

3. Sun Paper's project was approved after the Lao government instituted a nationwide moratorium on land concessions over 100 ha in 2007. Although the moratorium has shifted the political environment in Laos, making it more difficult for companies to acquire land, an exception was made in the case of Sun Paper, showing their influence with the central-level government. At the district level, officials never mentioned the moratorium as a reason for Sun Paper's difficulty acquiring land.

4. Without technology and capital, the creation and expansion of paddy rice fields is a major investment of labor time.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miles Kenney-Lazar

MILES KENNEY-LAZAR is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 606–8501. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the politics, governance, and impacts of land grabbing in Laos and Myanmar, particularly the ways in which marginalized rural people contest land expropriation in repressive contexts.