Peter Vandergeest - Böcker

Southeast Asia has been portrayed as a key site in the global land grab. Featuring leading scholars in the field, this collection critically examines the nature and extent of land grabbing in Southeast Asia, and seeks to locate this phenomena in broader agrarian and environmental transitions (AET). The individual contributions suggest that there is little evidence of a global land grab in Southeast Asia, but that over the last ten years the surge of plantations and processes of land grabbing has been a key feature in the region. The collection considers how broader AET processes may be brought more clearly into focus by decentring land grabbing, including consideration of its absence as well presence. The diversity of cases in this collection coalesces around the productive tension in land grab studies between global capitalist processes on the one hand, and context-specificity and contingent motivations fuelling the expansion of large-scale plantations for oil palm, rubber, cassava and other cash crops, on the other hand. The contributors further broaden the entry points to consider cross-sectoral AET processes such as enclosures for mining, conservation and hydropower and explore the contingencies that help to maintain smallholder production.The chapters originally published as a special issue in The Journal of Peasant Studies.

As multilateral agencies, social movements, and state authoritiesworldwide struggle to cope with the effects of large-scale developmentprojects, such as dam building, mining, oil extraction, forestplantations, and nature conservation, the problem of displacementremains unresolved. The crisis of "development refugees" --those forced to relocate not by wars or political conflicts but ratherbecause of development policies, programs, and projects – isbecoming increasingly prevalent across the globe.While existing studies on development-induced displacement havefocused on issues such as resettlement and compensation for thosedisplaced, this volume seeks to address displacement as a broad andmultilayered phenomenon. A series of illustrative case studies drawnfrom around the globe provide causal accounts of why and howdisplacement occurs, what its effects on communities, ecosystems, andeconomies look like, and the normative or ethical positions held by keyactors involved. Contributors offer economic, political, and culturalanalyses, as well as extensive ethnographic field research, to presenta picture of displacement that illustrates the depth and the breadth ofthe issue.