Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia

Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch, Tania Li

University of Hawaii Press, Aug 31, 2011 - Business & Economics - 257 pages

Questions of who can access land and who is excluded from it underlie many recent social and political conflicts in Southeast Asia. Powers of Exclusion examines the key processes through which shifts in land relations are taking place, notably state land allocation and provision of property rights, the dramatic expansion of areas zoned for conservation, booms in the production of export-oriented crops, the conversion of farmland to post-agrarian uses, “intimate” exclusions involving kin and co-villagers, and mobilizations around land framed in terms of identity and belonging. In case studies drawn from seven countries, the authors find that four “powers of exclusion”—regulation, the market, force and legitimation—have combined to shape land relations in new and often surprising ways.

Land debates are often presented as a conflict between market-oriented land use with full private property rights on the one side, and equitable access, production for subsistence, and respect for custom on the other. The authors step back from these debates to point out that any productive use of land requires the exclusion of some potential users, and that most projects for transforming land relations are thus accompanied by painful dilemmas. Rather than counterposing “exclusion” to “inclusion,” the book argues that attention must be paid to who is excluded, how, why, and with what consequences.

Powers of Exclusion is a path-breaking book that draws on insights from multiple disciplines to map out the new contours of struggles for land in Southeast Asia. The volume provides a framework for analyzing the dilemmas of land relations across the Global South and beyond.

Contents

• Land Titling Reform and Allocation: 27
• Environmentalism and Conservation: 60
• Crop Booms and Their Fallout: 87

About the author

Derek Hall is associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. Philip Hirsch is professor of human geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney and director of the Australian Mekong Resource Centre. Tania Murray L i is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in the Culture and Political-Economy of Asia.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia; Challenges of the Agrarian Tra; Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia
• Authors: Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch, Tania Li
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press, 2011
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Sep 19, 2017
• ISBN: 0824836030, 9780824836030
• Length: 257 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Real Estate / General; History / Asia / Southeast Asia; Political Science / World / Asian; Social Science / Agriculture & Food; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; Social Science / Human Geography