Uploaded March 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush
Book Talk with Michael B. Dwyer | Recorded February 15, 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 Michael B. Dwyer'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 Laos’s so-called Northern Economic Corridor to examine and 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.
With moderator Jessica DiCarlo and discussant Juliet Lu from the University of British Columbia.
Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush: A Conversation with Michael Dwyer (in Global China Pulse) thepeoplesmap.net/globalchinapulse/postwar-laos-and-the-global-land-rush-a-conversation-with-michael-dwyer
Open-access to the book, Upland Geopolitics: books.openmonographs.org/articles/book/Upland_Geopolitics_Postwar_Laos_and_the_Global_Land_Rush/20756434
Upland Geopolitics: Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush
Book Talk with Michael B. Dwyer | Recorded February 15, 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 Michael B. Dwyer'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 Laos’s so-called Northern Economic Corridor to examine and 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.
With moderator Jessica DiCarlo and discussant Juliet Lu from the University of British Columbia.
Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush: A Conversation with Michael Dwyer (in Global China Pulse) thepeoplesmap.net/globalchinapulse/postwar-laos-and-the-global-land-rush-a-conversation-with-michael-dwyer
Open-access to the book, Upland Geopolitics: books.openmonographs.org/articles/book/Upland_Geopolitics_Postwar_Laos_and_the_Global_Land_Rush/20756434
