Vandergeest, PeterSchoenberger, Laura Therese2021-11-152021-11-152018-042021-11-15http://hdl.handle.net/10315/38630When the land grab emerged as an object of study in the late 2000s, Cambodia was a 'hotspot' due to the scale, rapaciousness, and violence of the land grab. The overall objective of this dissertation is to examine how fear, uncertainty and hope animate and infuse the processes by which relations to land are shaped and reshaped in the context of the land grab. I draw from 20-months of multi-method fieldwork – inclusive of multi-site ethnography, interviews, a large survey across six provinces (n=480), and collaborative research projects with civil society – to make four core contributions. First, I argue that land grabs are not just events but are ontologically more complex because affect and fear contours the process by which people come to know and experience the land grab. Reframing the land grab to see it as a networked object that is tied into, and made up of, wider webs of power unmoored from the moment of displacement has epistemological and methodological implications. The second contribution of the dissertation is to explore these implications. I examine how the workings of fear and uncertainty surrounding the land grab posed challenges to the researcher and the research process. Facing these challenges led me to argue for alternative methodologies that are attentive to affective encounters. Third, I examine how a titling campaign ruptured the land grab and how citizens' organizing work contributed to destabilizing the dominance of land grabs. I detail two cases in which communities left out of the campaign grabbed onto the openings it provided to make newly legitimate claims to land. Fourth, this dissertation contributes to an emerging literature surrounding land relations in Cambodia. I examine the continuities and ruptures that shaped land relations in the Cambodia-Vietnam borderlands starting with the French colonial period and continuing to contemporary processes of enclosure. These four insights contribute to the study of state formation in post-conflict settings by integrating the roles that fear, uncertainty and hope play in shaping territorial relations in ways that run counter to common narratives about capitalism and authoritarian-style rule.Author owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.Asian studiesElectronic Thesis or Dissertation2021-11-15Political ecologyLand grabbingPropertyEvictionsFeminist researchCambodiaFeminist political ecologyEmotional political ecologyEmbodimentAffectFearUncertaintyHopeLegibilityExcuses