BOOK REVIEW - Review of Powers of Exclusion

In Southeast Asia, conflicts over land are a hot topic. In part because of rising commercial pressures on land associated with a long boom in demand for agricultural and resource commodities, contests between and among local communities, states, and private actors over access to and control of land resources have arguably never been more pressing or significant. In 2010 the German development agency GIZ estimated that two to three million hectares of land (about 13 percent of the countrys territory) in Lao PDR had been allocated to private investors as concessions by different levels of the state, although the rate of actual project implementation remains far lower.