ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The bulk of the research for this book was conducted during a period of regulatory reform in Laos, when central-government institutions were taking a series of steps to address mounting concerns about large-scale land deals. Resource concessions had long featured in the socialist development arsenal, but the ramping up of land concessions in the boom years of the early 2000s created a set of distinctly new problems. The Lao government was pursuing numerous large-scale and often interacting hydropower, mining, and infrastructure projects, all of which demanded detailed and up-to-date knowledge of the rural social landscape. In such a context, worries about out-of-control concession-granting carried a mix of social, economic, environmental, and political dimensions. Numerous individuals and institutions—many connected directly or indirectly to Laos’s newly created National Land Management Authority—welcomed me into this regulatory milieu. As my research interests overlapped with their work, they generously offered me unique access to study concession-making in practice, both on the ground in northern Laos and within the Lao capital of Vientiane.

For privacy reasons, I can only thank a handful by name of the many who helped me navigate this fieldwork setting. First and foremost, a few dozen anonymous key informants deserve my greatest thanks. Without them, the land deals, maps, and hinterland geographies that comprise the bulk of this book would have remained hopelessly beyond my reach. Jerome Whitington, who was himself in the field when I made my first trip to Laos, provided essential early help and inspiration. Numerous others, including Ian Baird, Andrew Bartlett, Khamouane Boupha, Charlie Carroll, Sean Foley, Yayoi Fujita Lagerqvist, Richard Hackman, Andreas Heinimann, Nick Hogarth, Chanthaviphone Inthavong, Melody Kemp, Souphab Khouangvichit, Stuart Ling, Chantha Luanglath, Pete Messerli, Garry Oughton, Khamla Phanvilay, Florian Rock, and Peter Vandergeest, opened key doors for me, both conceptual and practical. Fellow researchers Keith Barney, Antonella Diana, Glenn Hunt, and Weiyi Shi provided essential comradery and discussion in the field, while subsequent collaborations with Ian Baird, Naomi Basik Treanor, Cornelia Hett, Phil Hirsch, Micah Ingalls, Miles Kenney-Lazar, Juliet Lu, Vong Nanhthavong, Natalia Scurrah, Thoumthone Vongvisouk, Jerome Whitington, and Kevin Woods have improved my work in numerous ways.

The National University of Laos’s Faculties of Environment and Forestry Sciences provided me with institutional homes away from home at key points, while a number of other institutions in Vientiane helped me contextualize and understand what I was seeing in the field through a mix of library materials and informal discussions with staff. These included the Asian Development Bank, CIDSE-Laos, German Technical Assistance, Helvetas, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the Japan Volunteer Center, the Land Issues Working Group, the Lao Department of Forestry, Laos’s National Forestry Research Institute, the United Nations Development Program, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and WWF-Laos. Outside Laos, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center provided a key source for archival materials from the 1980s.

At the University of California, Berkeley, the Energy and Resources Group provided an ideal home for the early stages of this project, allowing me the support and flexibility to learn slowly and deeply across multiple related disciplines. Nancy Peluso, Michael Watts, Jeff Romm, and Nathan Sayre provided an invaluable mix of guidance, inspiration, patience, and critique; I also learned so much along the way from Gillian Hart, Dan Kammen, Dick Norgaard, and Isha Ray. Nancy Peluso’s Land Lab provided a forum to develop key ideas among a revolving cast of amazing scholars. Mez Baker-Médard, Catherine Corson, Dan Fahey, Derek Hall, Alice Kelly, Juliet Lu, Christian Lund, Johannes Stahl, Dan Suarez, Kevin Woods, and Megan Ybarra all read early versions of some of the material presented here, as did Sapana Doshi, Rozy Fredericks, Asher Ghertner, Tracey Osborne, and Malini Ranganathan. Thank you all!

The later stages of this project have benefited from my time as a researcher at the University of Bern’s Center for Development and Environment (CDE) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), as well as my time as a university faculty member in geography, first at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and currently at Indiana University, Bloomington. At these institutions, Rebecca Lave, Pete Messerli, Tim Oakes, Krystof Obidzinski, Scott Robeson, and Emily Yeh have each helped this project develop in crucial ways for which I remain deeply grateful.

I have also been lucky enough to workshop portions of this book in various stages of its development. The comments I have received, and in many cases the ongoing discussions I have had with the following colleagues, have been immensely valuable: Zach Anderson, Sarah Besky, Erin Collins, Jason Cons, Rodolphe De Koninck, Michael Eilenberg, Jamey Essex, Jennifer Fluri, Tyler Harlan, Cheryl Holzmeyer, Reece Jones, Julie Klinger, Jean Lave, Philippe Le Billon, Christian Lentz, Christian Lund, Ashwin Mathew, Duncan McDuie-Ra, Ellen Moore, Josh Muldavin, Galen Murton, Gustavo Oliveira, Jonathan Padwe, Nancy Peluso, Alessandro Rippa, Anu Sabhlok, Annie Shattuck, Melanie Somerville, Janaki Srinivasan, Yaffa Truelove, Yang Yang, Emily Yeh, and Wen Zhou. Special thanks go to Jun Borras, who read an early version of the text with graduate students in the Agrarian Studies Program at The Hague’s International Institute of Social Studies; Jim Scott and K. Sivaramakrishnan, whose invitation and gracious hosting allowed me to present a version of what became chapter 5 at the Yale Agrarian Studies Colloquium; and Elizabeth Dunn, who generously read the full text as it was nearing completion.

At the University of Washington Press, Lorri Hagman and K. Sivaramakrishnan offered a wonderful combination of ongoing support and critical review. Likewise, two anonymous reviewers provided excellent feedback that has helped me sharpen the book’s ideas as well as its execution. Ben Pease did an outstanding job with the book’s cartography, which was often anything but straightforward, while John Crowley’s photo editing worked miracles on images taken under less-than-ideal field conditions. Chad Attenborough and Joeth Zucco helped guide the manuscript through production, while David Hornik and Chris Dodge, respectively, expertly provided copyediting and indexing.

Funding for the research on which this book is based was generously provided by the Social Science Research Council (International Dissertation Research Fellowship, with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), the National Science Foundation, the University of California, the University of Bern, Indiana University, and the Academy of Finland.

Portions of chapter 1 appeared in articles published in the journals Political Geography and Territory, Politics, Governance, while an earlier version of chapter 4 appeared in Geopolitics. Short sections of chapters 3 and the conclusion appeared, respectively, in the Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia and Development and Change.

For multiple reasons, my family will be happy that this book is done. My parents (all of them!) have been endlessly supportive of this project in its various stages, and in both my father Eugene Dwyer and my wife Annie Shattuck, I have models to emulate in disguising serious scholarship as good storytelling. With Annie and our son Rubin, I look forward to the next project, whatever that turns out to be.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Khamla Phanvilay, ajaan, teacher, scholar, and mentor to so many at the Faculty of Forestry Sciences, National University of Laos.