From land grab to agrarian transition? Hybrid trajectories of accumulation and environmental change on the Cambodia–Vietnam border

Beban, Alice; Gorman, Timothy

doi:10.1080/03066150.2016.1241770

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Thus, extensive land titling benefiting external capital has eroded rural livelihood strategies, as formerly communal land that provided an important source of natural wealth for poorer rural villagers, through fishing, foraging and cultivation, has now been privatised (Gironde and Peeters, 2015). Cambodia has also never undergone a Green Revolution-style programme of state-sponsored agrarian intensification, thus support for developing agrarian productivity or funding agrarian infrastructure from the government has been scant (Beban and Gorman, 2017). Instead, the shift to a neoliberal regime of development has seen the commodification of land and agricultural inputs render agrarian production increasingly expensive (Beban, 2014;Parsons, 2017).…”

Section: Field Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cambodia is repeatedly cited as one of the most climate insecure countries globally (see UNDP Cambodia, 2014). The result of repeated environmental shocks and stresses over recent decades has contributed to a process of rural-urban migration, as smallholder farmers, who constitute the mainstay of the country's agriculture (Beban and Gorman, 2017;Ovesen et al, 2012), are forced to find nonfarm work to sustain their livelihoods under changing conditions (Bylander, 2015a(Bylander, , 2015bParsons, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate change adaptation and precarity across the rural–urban divide in Cambodia: Towards a ‘climate precarity’ approach

Natarajan

Brickell

Parsons

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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An emerging body of work has critiqued the concept of climate adaptation, highlighting the structural constraints impeding marginalised communities across the Global South from being able to adapt. This article builds on such work through analysis of debt-bonded brick workers in Cambodia, formerly small farmers. It argues that the detrimental impacts of climate change experienced by farmers-turned-workers across the rural – urban divide is due to their precarity. In doing so, this article draws on a conceptualisation of precarity which recognises it as emerging from the specific political economy of Cambodia, and as something that is neither new, nor confined to conditions of labour alone. As such, in looking to precarity as a means of conceptualising the relations of power which shape impacts of climate change, we advance a ‘climate precarity’ lens as a means of understanding how adaptation to climate change is an issue of power, rooted in a specific geographical context, and mobile over the rural–urban divide.

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Section: Field Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change adaptation and precarity across the rural–urban divide in Cambodia: Towards a ‘climate precarity’ approach

Natarajan

Brickell

Parsons

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…The commercialisation of rice agriculture is now a national trend in Cambodia as farmers have become increasingly dependent on commodity markets (Beban & Gorman, ; Diepart & Sem, ; Mahanty & Milne, ). National government policy has contributed to this shift, as the government has actively promoted an export‐driven agricultural policy (RGC, ).…”

Section: Turning Land Into a Financial Assetmentioning

confidence: 99%

From rice fields to financial assets: Valuing land for microfinance in Cambodia

Green

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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Funding information Fulbright IIE Student Program; Center for Khmer StudiesThis paper explores how rural land in Cambodia has been incorporated into global networks of finance capital through the technical and political processes of turning land into a financial asset. Since the 1990s, the Cambodian government and international development institutions have issued land titles to people to formalise land ownership and increase people's access to formal credit. At the same time, Cambodia's commercial microfinance industry has rapidly grown to become one of the largest markets in the world per capita. The industry has expanded in part because microfinance institutions use land title for collateral on household loans as a method to manage the financial risk of their foreign investors and shareholders. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted with ACLEDA Bank, Cambodia's largest provider of microfinance loans, to examine how the rural land market and microfinance sector are assembled together. I argue that microfinance markets in Cambodia depend on credit officers establishing a capitalist regime of land value. To do so, credit officers engage in daily bricolage, using technologies of representation and data inscription, to create new grids of land evaluation that allow people to treat their land as a financial asset. I also argue that collateral is a kind of technology of control that reworks and respatialises household social reproduction for the benefit of financial accumulation. This paper thus contributes to our theoretical understanding of how land, labour, and finance capital are assembled together, and the political economic ramifications of such an assemblage.

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“…This regime is characteristically both authoritarian and neoliberal in character, with the latter having strengthened the former (Springer ). The country thus bypassed any form of state‐sponsored agrarian development scheme in this period, unlike much of the rest of Asia (Beban and Gorman ). Since the 1990s, the government has repeatedly indicated that it is on a path to supporting agricultural modernisation among small‐scale farmers and increasing rice exports in particular (RGC ).…”

Section: “Peasant Persistence” In Cambodia: a Question Of Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rithy and Pisey highlight the fact that despite their own difficulties in reproducing themselves as smallholder farmers, there does exist a class of rural capitalists that exemplify rural accumulation. Notably, none of the means of rural accumulation that they list are agricultural commodity production, speaking to the relative dearth of commercial farming in the country (Beban and Gorman ; Ovesen et al ). Nonetheless, the notion of the rich villager offers a material manifestation of what Rithy and Pisey look towards in seeking to return to their villages.…”

Section: The Rural As a Place Of Social Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Debt‐Bonded Brick Kiln Workers and Their Intent to Return: Towards a Labour Geography of Smallholder Farming Persistence in Cambodia

2019

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Despite the increasing preponderance of non-farm work in Cambodia, labour migrants across a range of working conditions remain linked to their rural homesteads through durable financial and social arrangements. This article explores this phenomenon through the case of debt-bonded brick kiln workers in Phnom Penh, formerly smallholder farmers in villages. Drawing on the field of labour geography, the article first examines the process by which labourers became debt-bonded, thus situating them within the country's broader agrarian transition and recasting peasants as rural labour. It then explores workers' perceptions of rural life, suggesting that the unfreedom of kiln work, contrasted with the fixedness and potential for mobility in rural life, makes workers aspire to return to their land. The article ultimately highlights how the persistence of smallholder farmers can be understood as an issue of poor work under neoliberalism in Cambodia, and draws light on the agency of labour in understanding this.

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From land grab to agrarian transition? Hybrid trajectories of accumulation and environmental change on the Cambodia–Vietnam border

Cited by 25 publications

References 30 publications

Climate change adaptation and precarity across the rural–urban divide in Cambodia: Towards a ‘climate precarity’ approach

Climate change adaptation and precarity across the rural–urban divide in Cambodia: Towards a ‘climate precarity’ approach

From rice fields to financial assets: Valuing land for microfinance in Cambodia

Debt‐Bonded Brick Kiln Workers and Their Intent to Return: Towards a Labour Geography of Smallholder Farming Persistence in Cambodia

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