Reclamation, Displacement and Resiliency in Phnom Penh

Material subjects: Wetland enclosure and the making of a speculative peasantry in peri-urban Vientiane

“…Given that wetlands have been a primary target for land grabbing in recent urbanization processes across Asia, the dynamics we observed in BTL contain generalizable insights (Collins, 2017; Ranganathan and Doshi, 2018; Shatkin, 2019). Through a synthetic and dialectical approach that integrates relational Marxism with new materiality, the study illustrates the critical importance of interactions among nature, state, capital, and community in mediating the enclosure of peri-urban wetlands in Asia.…”

“…Materiality in UPE is useful for analyzing the enclosure of urban wetlands, including associated processes of dispossession and displacement, and the uneven creation of new real estate markets (Beckwith and Marschke, 2019; Collins, 2017; Dwyer, 2015; Ranganathan, 2015; Ranganathan and Doshi, 2018; Shatkin, 2019). Changing flows and accumulations of material forces are a critical element of displacement and dispossession more generally, restricting people's ability to reside on and make a livelihood from their customary lands (Sneddon, 2007; Perreault, 2013).…”

“…Changing flows and accumulations of material forces are a critical element of displacement and dispossession more generally, restricting people's ability to reside on and make a livelihood from their customary lands (Sneddon, 2007; Perreault, 2013). In Phnom Phen, Collins (2017) showed that land reclamation operated as a technology that had the power of quieting the social uproar of the dispossessed, as it rendered the form of land familiar to peasants non-existent. Tracing the ebbs and flows of wetland development in Bangalore, Ranganathan (2015) highlighted how developers strategically leveraged ecology to push land expropriation forward.…”