Although there is no universally accepted definition of the term "land grabbing", ordinary people whose livelihoods are adversely affected by land grabbing know exactly what it is. It involves the physical capture and control of land and homes, including the usurpation of the power to decide how and when these will be used and for what purposes – with little or no prior consultation or compensation to the displaced communities. This thought-provoking book defines land grabbing, and examines aspects of the land grabs phenomenon in seven Asian countries, researched and written by country-specific legal scholars. The book provides unique perspectives on how and why land grabbing is practised in China, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia, and explores the surprising role that law plays in facilitating and legitimizing land grabs in each country. In contrast to most of the literature which law focuses on foreign investors’ rights under international law, here the focus is on domestic laws and legal infrastructures. Finding that Asian States need to move beyond existing regimes that govern land to a regime that encourages more equitable land rights allocation and protection of stakeholders’ rights, the book urges further research in the nexus between the use of law to facilitate development. Land Grabs in Asia is the first book to explore land grabbing in multiple jurisdictions in Asia. As such, it will appeal to students and scholars of law and development, law and society, and international relations, as well as being essential reading for development policy-makers and government ministers.

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.

Large-scale land acquisitions, or 'land grabbing', has become a key research topic among scholars interested in agrarian change, development, and the environment. The term 'land acquisitions' refers to a highly contested process in terms of governance and impacts on livelihoods and human rights. Focusing on South-East Asia, this book presents a series of thematic papers and detailed case studies to put this phenomenon into specific historical and institutional contexts.

Since the 2008 world food crisis a surge of land grabbing swept Africa, Asia and Latin America and even some regions of Europe and North America. Investors have uprooted rural communities for massive agricultural, biofuels, mining, industrial and urbanisation projects. ‘Water grabbing’ and ‘green grabbing’ have further exacerbated social tensions. Early analyses of land grabbing focused on foreign actors, the biofuels boom and Africa, and pointed to catastrophic consequences for the rural poor. Subsequently scholars carried out local case studies in diverse world regions. The contributors to this volume advance the discussion to a new stage, critically scrutinizing alarmist claims of the first wave of research, probing the historical antecedents of today’s land grabbing, examining large-scale land acquisitions in light of international human rights and investment law, and considering anew longstanding questions in agrarian political economy about forms of dispossession and accumulation and grassroots resistance. Readers of this collection will learn about the impacts of land and water grabbing; the relevance of key theorists, including Marx, Polanyi and Harvey; the realities of China’s involvement in Africa; how contemporary land grabbing differs from earlier plantation agriculture; and how social movements—and rural people in general—are responding to this new threat. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Large-scale land acquisitions, or ‘land grabbing’, has become a key research topic among scholars interested in agrarian change, development, and the environment. The term ‘land acquisitions’ refers to a highly contested process in terms of governance and impacts on livelihoods and human rights. This book focuses on South-East Asia. A series of thematic and in-depth case studies put ‘land grabbing’ into specific historical and institutional contexts. The volume also offers a human rights analysis of the phenomenon, examining the potential and limits of human rights mechanisms aimed at preventing and mitigating land grabs' negative consequences. Contributors include: Maria Lisa Alano, Ioana Cismas, Olivier De Schutter, Michael Dwyer, Christophe Gironde, Christophe Golay, Andreas Heinimann, Martin Keulertz, Marcel Mazoyer, Peter Messerli, Hafiz Mirza, Vong Nanhthavong, Gerben Nooteboom, Patricia Paramita, Amaury Peeters, Emily Polack, Laurence Roudart, Oliver Schoenweger, Gilda Senties, Sokbunthoeun So, Mohamad Shohibuddin, William Speller, Eckart Woertz, and James Zhan.

Winner of the 2019 Global and Transnational Sociology Best Book Award, American Sociological Association Winner of the 2019 Political Economy of World System (PEWS) Distinguished Book Award, American Sociological Association Received Honorable Mention for the 2019 Asia/Transnational Book Award, American Sociological Association Since the mid-2000s, India has been beset by widespread farmer protests against land dispossession. Dispossession Without Development demonstrates that beneath these conflicts lay a profound shift in regimes of dispossession. While the postcolonial Indian state dispossessed land mostly for public-sector industry and infrastructure, since the 1990s state governments have become land brokers for private real estate capital. Using the case of a village in Rajasthan that was dispossessed for a private Special Economic Zone, the book ethnographically illustrates the exclusionary trajectory of capitalism driving dispossession in contemporary India. Taking us into the lives of diverse villagers in "Rajpura," the book meticulously documents the destruction of agricultural livelihoods, the marginalization of rural labor, the spatial uneveness of infrastructure provision, and the dramatic consequences of real estate speculation for social inequality and village politics. Illuminating the structural underpinnings of land struggles in contemporary India, this book will resonate in any place where "land grabs" have fueled conflict in recent years.

Since the 2008 world food crisis a surge of land grabbing swept Africa, Asia and Latin America and even some regions of Europe and North America. Investors have uprooted rural communities for massive agricultural, biofuels, mining, industrial and urbanisation projects. ‘Water grabbing’ and ‘green grabbing’ have further exacerbated social tensions. Early analyses of land grabbing focused on foreign actors, the biofuels boom and Africa, and pointed to catastrophic consequences for the rural poor. Subsequently scholars carried out local case studies in diverse world regions. The contributors to this volume advance the discussion to a new stage, critically scrutinizing alarmist claims of the first wave of research, probing the historical antecedents of today’s land grabbing, examining large-scale land acquisitions in light of international human rights and investment law, and considering anew longstanding questions in agrarian political economy about forms of dispossession and accumulation and grassroots resistance. Readers of this collection will learn about the impacts of land and water grabbing; the relevance of key theorists, including Marx, Polanyi and Harvey; the realities of China’s involvement in Africa; how contemporary land grabbing differs from earlier plantation agriculture; and how social movements—and rural people in general—are responding to this new threat. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.