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The purpose of the Mekong Land Research Forum online site is to provide structured access to published and unpublished research on land issues in the Mekong Region. It is based on the premise that debates and decisions around land governance can be enhanced by drawing on the considerable volume of research, documented experience and action-based reflection that is available. The online site seeks to organise the combined work of many researchers, practitioners and policy advocates around key themes relevant to the land security, and hence well-being, of smallholders in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The research material on this site is mounted at three levels:
First, a selection of journal articles, reports and other materials is provided and organised thematically to assist researchers, practitioners and policy advocates to draw on one another’s work and hence build up a collective body of knowledge. This is the most “passive” presentation of the research material; our contribution is to find and select the most relevant material and to organise it into key themes. In some cases the entire article is available. In others, for copyright reasons, only an abstract or summary is available and users will need to access documents through the relevant journal or organisation.
Second, a sub-set of the articles has been annotated, with overall commentary on the significance of the article and the research on which it is based, plus commentary relevant to each of the key themes addressed by the article.
Third, the findings and key messages of the annotated articles are synthesised into summaries of each of fourteen key themes. For each key theme, there is a one-page overall summary. Extended summaries are being developed progressively for each theme as part of the Forum's ongoing activity.
Overall, we intend that this online site will contribute toward evidence-based progressive policy reform in the key area of land governance. We further hope that it will thereby contribute toward to the well-being of the rural poor, ethnic minorities and women in particular, who face disadvantage in making a living as a result of insecure land tenure.
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Resources
Displaying 366 - 370 of 564Landscapes of Political Memories: War Legacies and Land Negotiations in Laos
Wars and their aftermaths frequently transform land use and ownership, reshaping 'post-conflict' landscapes through new boundaries, population movements, land reforms and conditions of access. Within a global context of controversial land concessions and farmland acquisitions, we bring to light the continued salience of historical memories of war in the ways land conflicts are being negotiated in Laos.
Women’s Access to Land: An Asian Perspective
ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: Women’s access to and control over land can potentially lead to gender equality alongside addressing material deprivation. Land is not just a productive asset and a source of material wealth, but equally a source of security, status and recognition. Substantive gender equality is both relational and multi-dimensional, cutting across race, class, caste, age, educational and locational hierarchies and can only be achieved if rights are seen as socially legitimate.
The Forgotten Property Rights: Evidence on Land Use Rights in Vietnam
Studies of land property rights usually focus on tenure security and transfer rights. Rights to determine how to use the land are regularly ignored. However, user rights are often limited. Relying on a unique Vietnamese panel data set at both household and plot levels, we show that crop choice restrictions are widespread and prevent crop diversification. Restrictions do not decrease household income, but restricted households work harder, and there are indications that they are supplied with higher quality inputs.
Articulated neoliberalism: The specificity of patronage, kleptocracy, and violence in Cambodia's neoliberalization
An exclusive focus on external forces risks the production of an overgeneralized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism, which insufficiently accounts for the profusion of local variations that currently comprise the neoliberal project as a series of articulations with existing political economic circumstances. Although the international financial institutions initially promoted neoliberal economics in the global South, powerful elites were happy to oblige.
Fragmented sovereignty: land reform and dispossession in Laos
Land reform, land politics and resettlement in Laos have changed people’s land access and livelihoods. But these reforms have also transformed political subjectivity and landed property into matters for government to a degree hitherto unknown in Laos. The control over people, land and space has consolidated sovereignty in ways that make government an ineluctable part of people’s relation to land. This transforms agrarian relations. Three cases demonstrate how rural small holders’ access to land depends on the ways in which property and political subjects have been produced.