Congratulations to Sopheak Chann, Sango Mahanty and Katherine Chamberlin for their article “Squeezed Between Land and Water: Rupture, Frontier-Making, and Resource Conflicts at Cambodia’s Lower Sesan 2 Hydropower Dam”.
Recipients
Sopheak Chann
University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA
Sopheak Chann is an instructor in the Geography Department at the University of Kentucky. He is also an associate researcher of the Mekong Culture Well Project at Michigan State University and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of Michigan. His research interests include the political ecology of frontiers, critical geography, environmental justice, and critical development studies in the Mekong.
Email: sopheak.chann@uky.edu
Sango Mahanty
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Sango Mahanty is a professor of resources, environment and development at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. She studies the drivers and implications of nature-society transformation in the rural landscapes of Cambodia and Vietnam.
Email: sango.mahanty@anu.edu.au
Katherine Chamberlin
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
Katherine Chamberlin is a graduate student at the University of Michigan pursuing an MA in International and Regional Studies and an MS in Environment and Sustainability. Her specializations are Southeast Asian studies and environmental justice, respectively. Her research interests include political ecology and emerging media in the Mekong region.
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About the article
We are delighted to announce the winning article of this year’s Holland Prize from Volume 97 (2024): “Squeezed Between Land and Water” by Sopheak Chann, Sango Mahanty, and Katherine Chamberlin. This article stood out for its conceptual ambition, empirical richness, and compelling writing, offering a vital and timely contribution to our understanding of environmental transformation, ethnic politics, and infrastructure development in Southeast Asia.
Based on three rounds of fieldwork in Cambodia’s Lower Sesan Dam region, the article explores how large-scale hydropower development has generated profound “nature-society ruptures” and intensified resource conflicts across ethnic lines. Rather than framing displacement and land struggles as isolated outcomes of development, the authors trace how the LS2 Dam reactivates longer histories of state violence, ecological dispossession, and interethnic marginalization. Their innovative use of the rupture and frontier-making frameworks allows for a deeply textured analysis of how infrastructure projects catalyze new rounds of migration, conflict, and negotiation over land and water.
Members of Pacific Affairs’ Editorial Board consistently praised the article’s empathetic field engagement, theoretical integration, and cross-disciplinary appeal. One member praised the study’s clear engagement in local conditions, ethnic dynamics, and fieldwork,” while another noted the “nuanced and rich” analysis of inter-ethnic dynamics among the Bunong, Lao, Cham, and Khmer communities. The study does not simply recount displacement and marginalization. It shows how groups navigate legal classifications, customary ties, and survival strategies in highly uneven terrains of recognition and resource access.
The article also makes an important contribution to the literature by foregrounding inter-minority conflict, an aspect often overshadowed by the more familiar binaries of state versus community or developer versus Indigenous group. The analysis illustrates how state-sanctioned frameworks of indigeneity, in this case, the Cambodian land law, can deepen inequalities between groups such as the Bunong and Lao, while newcomers like the Cham face new forms of exclusion and blame in resettled environments.
Another Editorial Board member noted: “This is the most interesting, intricate, and impressive of the articles… The topic aligns with the journal’s move to include issues of environmental degradation and inequality that are otherwise overshadowed by mainstream political analysis.” Others highlighted the “clear and compelling writing,” the paper’s relevance to contemporary development challenges, and its potential to expand the journal’s methodological and conceptual horizons.
“Squeezed Between Land and Water” is a model of interdisciplinary scholarship that bridges political ecology, development studies, and critical geography with great sensitivity and intellectual rigor. It deepens our understanding not only of Cambodian political dynamics but of broader patterns of displacement, infrastructural violence, and resource contestation across the global South.
We congratulate the authors on this richly deserved recognition.