Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022. xv, 230 pp. (Tables, figures, maps, B&W photos.) US$30.00, paper; free ebook. ISBN 9780295750491.
Mike Dwyer’s Upland Geopolitics is indispensable for understanding the global land rush, or what is more popularly known as global land grabbing, despite the vast body of literature that has been produced on this topic over the past decade. While many scholars have written about how land investments unevenly materialize on the ground with varied impacts, few have deeply investigated the puzzling political dynamics that shape the geographies of land development and dispossession. This is precisely what Dwyer tackles in this book, focusing on the establishment of rubber plantation schemes in northwestern Laos. Put simply, the book investigates the question of: “What makes a land rush into a land grab in some cases but not others?” (6). In addressing this question, he examines the operations of upland geopolitics, a concept that addresses “the complex relations, both within and among states, that target the uplands, their resources, and their inhabitants as objects of development, extraction, improvement, and control” (10). His arguments are supported by an impressively thorough historical analysis, spanning from the Second Indochina War era construction of isolated uplands and the post-1975 socialist management of upland populations to the transition from battlefields to marketplaces in the late 1980s, and the role of land and forest zoning programs since the 1990s. Each period provides clues to the governance of what is otherwise viewed as a chaotic landscape of resource development and spatial organization.
The most powerful aspect of Dwyer’s argument regarding how upland geopolitics shapes the spatial unevenness of a land rush is his examination of the inner workings of the state, particularly its heterogeneity and contradictions. Specifically, he critiques a common misconception in much land grabbing scholarship—that land investments occur due to an absent or weak state, or what he refers to as the “authority gap” narrative. What he effectively demonstrates is that the issue does not stem from a lack of governance but rather from the specific ways in which governance operates. “Because they are negative descriptions—accounts of what is missing rather than what is actually going on—authority-gap narratives have little to say about why foreign land deals have been targeted into certain regions” (6). The book empirically illustrates how this operates due to a variety of socio-political dynamics, such as local government perceptions concerning which types of projects are ideal for different villages based on how such groups align themselves with state visions of development. This demonstrates how decisions about where to develop land investment projects have less to do with the geographical or physical availability and more to do with what Dwyer calls its “social availability,” making it “accessible to certain preferred uses like rubber even if was already being used in other ways” (47). Thus, investigating the political and social structures and relations that guide investments to particular locations is central to understanding the geographies of land dispossession.
Despite the assertion that a “central aim of this book is to help explain the uneven geography of transnational land access by showing how legacies of geopolitical conflict can help facilitate enclosure” (11), the most fundamental contribution of the book is not its explanation of the unevenness of land grabbing. While Dwyer expertly links geopolitical histories of the uplands with their contemporary political-economic transformations, this is simply one component of a much larger analysis of how governance over the lands, resources, and peoples of the uplands is produced unevenly. Such unevenness operates spatially across a diverse geographic area and historically over periods of dynamic political, economic, and social change. This is not intended to be a critique but rather a commendation of a greater achievement that is undersold. The height of the land rush has now passed, globally and in Laos, but the legacies of the upland geopolitics that the book dissects endure. Dwyer’s insights go beyond this period of intense land grabbing and are highly instructive for thinking about the new forms of extraction, enclosure, and governance that are emerging. In recent years, these include the development of new rail and road infrastructure and special economic zones, the expansion of land registration and titling programs, and the ramping up of international programs to reduce deforestation and forest degradation to address climate change, largely by changing uplanders’ agricultural practices. Upland geopolitics are pervasive across these spheres of activity and there is much practical-critical work to be done. Undoubtedly, this book is essential reading for the scholars, students, officials, practitioners, and activists, among others, navigating the complex political ecologies of upland landscapes in Laos and beyond.
Miles Kenney-Lazar
National University of Singapore, Singapore