Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022. xxviii, 233 pp. (Tables, graphs, maps.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 9780295750460.
A pervasive critique of neoliberalism is that it seeks to render complicated systems of interrelation as quantifiable resources, bringing all aspects of life and economy under optimization, and ascribing a natural and moral valence to the intensification of yields. Such a perspective is not new, though; in Lockean justifications for colonialism, too, as well as in the twentieth-century fetishization of development, populations that did not invest labour into the landscape in order to maximize yield were performing an injustice to the land’s potential and holding nations back from their potential. These forces have, since the 1990s, struck Southeast Asia with intensity, as states seek to mobilize “unproductive” land, to render agriculture competitive, and, to use the title of this volume and the name of a Lao land policy: “turn land into capital.” But as many critiques of such systems show (see Mario Blaser and Marisol De La Cadena, “The Uncommons: An Introduction,” Anthropologica 59, no. 2 (2017): 185–193; Tania Li, Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014; James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), seeing land in terms of standing reserve—the utility that it could be used for—involves overriding other, alternate systems of interrelation, and the reconfiguration of land and the capital that land can become so often emerges out of violence and dispossession.
The end of colonialism by no means ended such a way of seeing land as an optimizable resource, nor the complicated, often informal means through which land and its potential is exploited. And, as this volume effectively shows, state and private efforts to alleviate the damages of these transformations, even as Mekong economies enter a global marketplace, are insufficient. Often, the effects of land reform are, intentionally or not, geared towards benefitting those with prior connections or capital, or multinational companies based in neighbouring countries. Given this complexity, details matter: Who, for instance, can claim customary rights, and who cannot? What is the role of patronage networks in securing land titles? And, ultimately, how do powerful actors, including companies in neighbouring states, operate within legal grey areas? Both state and private industries alike seem intent on profitting from the flow of capital and silencing those that might raise objections.
Hirsch et al. explore the capitalization of land, a process borne out via investments in infrastructure on both the larger and smaller scales or in the commodification and financialization of land itself, even in nominally communist countries. Here, capital and power flow upwards, but there are some glimmers of hope—Middleton and Lamb in chapter 4, for instance, describe campaigns by human rights groups to investigate abuses done by Thai companies in Cambodia. Yet even here, efforts were met with only partial success and, as the authors indicate, underline the necessity for engaging in such struggles on multiple fronts.
To bring to light such processes requires both intense focus and a vast array of legal, political, and sociological knowledge. This is perhaps why names repeat amongst the authors of the articles—Diepart, Woods, Hirsch, and Middleton each contribute to at least two of the chapters—and the authors describe the volume as more of a “multiauthored monograph” than a more traditional edited volume. Their justification for this is compelling, and the volume should be read as a series of interconnected, albeit occasionally repetitive focus on a specific issue rather than a collection of independent perspectives on a common theme.
With this in mind, the book is arranged in two larger sections. The first of these details some of the common features in the region: areas devastated by war in the twentieth century, reshaped by land reform laws, and now entering a web of neoliberal economics and politics shaped by a multitude of actors. The second section takes specific examples that highlight these trends, taking case studies from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. This makes for a dense read, but one that is rewarding when given time, as the authors clearly chart the complex web of forces to which everyday residents are subject. Key examples remain memorable: the ways that Myanmar land policies continue a trend towards consolidation of power in ethnic Burman hands, for instance, or the struggle for justice by Cambodian workers for the Thai-based Khon Kaen Sugar Company.
The data presented here is political, legal, and economic in nature. The way that power works on the ground—such as intimidation both legal and extralegal, manipulation, and the control of information—calls for something more ethnographic, and such a study would make for an illuminating companion piece. I recall here Stephen Campbell’s excellent work (Border Capitalism, Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone, Ithaca: ILR Press, 2018) on labour rights for Burmese migrants in Thailand, which clearly outlines the legal paradoxes that both keep labour laws appearing fair on the books, while trapping migrants into systems of exploitation. But even with such a perspective, the data and analysis presented in Turning Land into Capital would be vital for a full understanding of the situation.
A short section at the end drawing larger parallels notwithstanding, the book is geared towards experts in the region and could prove useful for a graduate seminar on development, land, or economy in Southeast Asia. It will be exceptionally rewarding for those of us conducting fieldwork on a smaller scale, where it is easy to lose sight of larger economic and political developments across the region.
Andrew Alan Johnson
Stockholm University, Stockholm