Reviewed by
Erik Harms (Department of Anthropology, Yale University)
In this insightful, wide-ranging, and empirically detailed book, Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch, and Tania Murray Li show that all land dilemmas are, at root, defined by the basic fact of exclusion. Studiously avoiding moralizing arguments about what position readers should take about the various land dilemmas animating contemporary Southeast Asia, the authors focus instead on developing analytic tools. The tools they develop are elegant, ready for application in a wide range of situations, and will surely inform the next generation of writing about land in Southeast Asia. The authors begin by offering a clear, unambiguous argument that guides the book and informs the title: “all land use and access requires exclusion of some kind. Even the poorest people, farming collectively and sustainably, cannot make use of land without some assurance that other people will not seize their farms or steal their crops” (4). In other words, land is an increasingly scarce resource. If one person has it, another person does not. Inclusion implies exclusion, which is always a “double edge.” Granting access for some typically implies limiting access for others (8). This approach is purposefully apolitical: “Nowhere in this book do we reduce the problem of access to a dichotomy in which exclusion (bad) can be counterposed to inclusion (good)—indeed, the very terms of such a dichotomy are incoherent, since the inclusion of some land uses, and some land users, necessarily means the exclusion of others” (13). Rather than forcing readers to take sides, this book demands that readers take all sides into account, a position that will appeal to many readers and also frustrate others. Regardless of one’s position, however, this calm analytic detachment is no small accomplishment in the politically fraught world of Southeast Asian “land dilemmas,” where fortunes rise and fall, accumulation and dispossession run wild, and people from Sulawesi to Vietnam’s Central Highlands seem increasingly able to cite the current market value of their land off the top of their head.
