Political memories of conflict, economic land concessions, and political landscapes in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic》.pdfVIP

Geoforum 52 (2014) 61–69 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: /lo cate/geoforum Political memories of conflict, economic land concessions, and political landscapes in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Ian G. Baird Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 550 North Park St., Madison, WI 53706, USA a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Political memories—which are crucial for establishing and maintaining ‘political capital’, based on indi- Received 16 April 2013 vidual and group positioning during past conflict and wars, but also in relation to presentday politics— Received in revised form 17 December 2013 are important when considering varied outcomes from negotiations and other interactions that occur in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic in relation to large-scale economic land concessions. This paper continues to expand on the idea of political memories of past conflicts and wars by considering the con- Keywords: cept in relation to the theoretical framework proposed by Hall et al. (2011) in their book Powers of Exclu- Memory sion, which stresses the importance of interactions between regulation, force, the market and Land grabbing legitimation for understanding different types of exclusionary pr