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Library Turning land into capital, turning people into labor

Turning land into capital, turning people into labor

Turning land into capital, turning people into labor
Primitive accumulation and the arrival of large-scale economic land concessions in Laos

Resource information

Date of publication
December 2010
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 5(1): 10-26

ABSTRACT: In recent years the government of Laos has provided many foreign investors with large-scale economic land concessions to develop plantations. These concessions have resulted in significant alterations of landscapes and ecological processes, greatly reduced local access to resources through enclosing common areas, and have ultimately led to massive changes in the livelihoods of large numbers of mainly indigenous peoples living near these concessions. Many have lost their agricultural and forest lands, or conditions of production, making it difficult to maintain their former semi-subsistence livelihoods, and thus compelling many to take up employment on the same plantations that displaced them, despite frequently having to work for low wages and under poor conditions. Using two case studies involving large economic land concessions in southern Laos, I argue that applying the theoretical concept of primitive accumulation is useful for better understanding the political processes and motivations of government officials, including justifications for the rural dispossession that is occurring in a nominally ‘socialist’ country.

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