Political Economy of Land Dispossession: Disintegrating Social Bond and Family Kinship,and the Changing Facets of Social Capital

Abstract

Drawing on two cases of large-scale land grabs destined successively for a planned neoliberal city-making and a steel special economic zone (now a stalemated project), this article delves into how the local political economy of land dispossession leads to the tearing of social solidarity, neighbourhood cohesion and family kinship of the dispossessed farming community in a process of development and economic change, and how the undercurrents of variegated socio-economic and political–administrative forces involved in the orchestration of land expropriation play a central part in thinning out the dispossessed farming community’s collective social capital. It, however, argues that in a process of development and economic change through dispossession where development-driven newfangled livelihood opportunities are trammelled and unevenly dispensed, the components of social capital fail to work together for the collective benefits of the dispossessed communities. Instead, the dispossessed individuals utilise their social networks and political connections to maximise individual gains.