Book Talk - Upland Geopolitics: Grounding the Global Land Rush in Postwar Laos
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2023-01-23

'Book Talk - Upland Geopolitics: Grounding the Global Land Rush in Postwar Laos' by Michael Dwyer (Indiana University Bloomington) and chaired by Prof Michael Charney (SOAS) was held online at SOAS on 17th January 2023.

In the twenty-first century, transnational land deals in economically poor but “land-rich” countries of the global South have become increasingly prevalent and controversial. Drawing from the author’s new book Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush (University of Washington Press, 2022), this talk uses the boom in Chinese rubber plantations in the borderlands of northwestern Laos to theorize the uneven geography of the new global land rush. By examining the human terrain that underlies foreign land allocations that are both economically “necessary” and politically difficult, the talk shows how legacies of Cold War conflict continue to pave the way for transnational enclosure in a socially uneven landscape.

Further details: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/book-talk-upland-geopolitics-grounding-global-land-rush-postwar-laos