Dr Miles Kenney-Lazar takes a seat in the studio to discuss his new book Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos. His book touches on the Lao government's land development program through foreign investment. Lazar acknowledges that, in a modern post-colonial society, land is an economic resource to be turned into capital, and he elaborates on what that means for a socialist country like Laos. He breaks down what it means for land to be “socialized” within the government, both land distribution to the community and allocation for foreign investment.
He narrows in on two case studies, a private and state-owned company. Both encounter their own struggles with the bureaucratic structure within the Lao government, and both have their own way of dealing with the socialist structure. The discussion wraps up by highlighting how the Lao government understands and claims to interact with ethnicity in a self-proclaimed multi-ethnic nation.
Dr Miles Kenney-Lazar is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on plantation and agrarian governance in Southeast Asia.
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