Abstract
In areas of land conflict, fear and the threat of violence work to reproduce imaginaries of land as a resource that powerful people can grab. An urgent question for agrarian scholars and activists is how people can overcome fear so that alternative imaginaries might flourish. In this article, we argue for attention to the affective dimension of imaginaries; ideas of what land is and should be are co-constituted through the material and social, imbued with powerful emotions that enable imaginaries to be reproduced, to be challenged, and even to be transformed. We draw from long-term research projects in Cambodia—a country known for plantation-fuelled dispossession—where the Prime Minister’s surprise announcement of a land titling campaign in 2012 ruptured the wave of land grabbing, creating openings to imagine different outcomes that are rooted in the potential for legal recognition of smallholder claims. Although the campaign was an uncertain rupture in land imaginaries, these moments matter. Land claimants sought to create affective ties with volunteer land surveyors that embedded hopeful land imaginaries in rural areas and into the national cadastral system. The land title in this context is the material bearer of a land imaginary that centres on rural people’s connection to the land, and also reinforces rural people’s connection to the Cambodian state and the potential to gain the state’s protection. We contribute to an emerging literature that locates the formative effects of hope as an orientation and as a method by exploring the possibilities inherent in rupture.
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Notes
Examples of the karaoke videos can be found on YouTube at https://youtu.be/zdrwplDEbAw and https://youtu.be/4SbDA7h0L-M.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the three guest editors, Sarah Ruth Sippel, Daniel Münster and Oane Visser for comments on earlier versions of this paper, as well as all participants at the Workshop ‘Constructions, Representations, Productions: Exploring Historical and Contemporary. Institutions of Land’ for their insights. We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback. We extend deep gratitude to all participants who took part in the research, the communities we work with in Cambodia, and the networks of committed individuals who support their efforts, for sharing their experiences with us. Laura Schoenberger received financial support for this research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Joseph Armand Bombardier Doctoral Fellowship, Award Number: 767-2011-0280), the International Development Research Centre (Doctoral Research Award, Award Number: 107473-99906075-037) and York University. Alice Beban received financial support from US Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, CFDA Number: 84.022).
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Schoenberger, L., Beban, A. Rupturing violent land imaginaries: finding hope through a land titling campaign in Cambodia. Agric Hum Values 38, 301–312 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10156-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-020-10156-z