Landscapes of political memories War legacies and land negotiations in Laos》.pdfVIP

Political Geography 31 (2012) 290e300 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Political Geography journal homepage: /locate/polgeo Landscapes of political memories: War legacies and land negotiations in Laos Ian G. Baird a, *, Philippe Le Billon b a Department of Geography, University of WisconsineMadison, United States b Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada a b s t r a c t Keywords: Wars and their aftermaths frequently transform land use and ownership, reshaping ‘post-conflict’ Political memories landscapes through new boundaries, population movements, land reforms and conditions of access. Land-grabbing Within a global context of controversial land concessions and farmland acquisitions, we bring to light the Conflict War continued salience of historical memories of war in the ways land conflicts are being negotiated in Laos. Laos Considering circumstances at different scalesdfrom bilateral government relations to village-level claimsdwe find that political capital linked to memories of wartime affiliations have crucial spatial and place-based connections, and that they affect the ways investors, government officials and villagers negotiate over land concessions. Ethnographic