Legal geographies of neoliberalism: Market-oriented tenure reforms and the construction of an ‘informal’ urban class in post-socialist Phnom Penh

Abstract

Chinese

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cambodia’s transition from socialist to market-oriented tenure became associated with severe tenure insecurity for those living in areas of self-built housing in the capital, Phnom Penh. This paper explores the legal geographies of this tenure insecurity by assessing how low-income urban dwellers interacted with a rapidly shifting legal system. Through analysis of historical legal documents, survey data and archived land disputes, it is found that market-oriented tenure reforms were exclusionary by design, and directly resulted in an ‘informal’ tenure system that legally rendered self-built dwellings in a constant state of provisionality. The findings provide a critique of orthodox accounts of tenure reform in post-socialist cities, which propose the deepening of market reforms to increase security. Instead, the paper builds on critical legal geographies of neoliberalism by suggesting that insecurity in Phnom Penh was perpetuated by laws, rather than their absence or the circumventing of laws. The analysis also contributes to understandings of informal tenure by presenting a post-socialist, state-constructed and exclusionary system of informality.

Keywords

exclusion informality land use poverty tenure reform

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acemoglu

Johnson

Robinson

(2001) The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review 91: 1369–1401.

Agamben

(2005) State of Exception. University of Chicago Press. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NTZBBfnmYowC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=agamben+the+state+of+exception&ots=b6Pz4LgXsM&sig=1e8m-kYP_2Ige3sHrLaUjLLJa24 (accessed 15 July 2016).

Beng Hong

(1984) Survey of the Housing and Infrastcutrue of Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh: State of Cambodia.

Black

Kraakman

Tarassova

(2000) Russian privatization and corporate governance: What went wrong? Stanford Law Review 52: 1731–1808.

Blomley

(1994) Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York: Guilford Press.

Brandao

Feder

(1995) Regulatory policies and reform: The case of land markets. Available at: http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=GB2013200655 (accessed 14 July 2016).

Brickell

(2016) Gendered violences and rule of/by law in Cambodia. Dialogues in Human Geography 6(2): 182–185.

Briggs

(2011) The land formalisation process and the peri-urban zone of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Planning Theory and Practice 12(1): 115–153.

CDRI (Cambodia Development Resource Institute) (2007) Land Titling Urban Baseline Study. Phnom Penh: CDRI.

10.

Chan

Saravy

Acharya

(2001) Land Tenure in Cambodia: A Data Update. Phnom Penh: CDRI.

11.

Collins

(2016) Postsocialist informality: The making of owners, squatters and state rule in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1989–1993). Environment and Planning A 48(12): 2367–2382.

12.

De Soto

(2000) The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books.

13.

Durand-Lasserve

Royston

(2002) Holding Their Ground: Secure Land Tenure for the Urban Poor in Developing Countries. Earthscan. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DcrLxppydcQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=Durand-Lasserve+and+Royston+2002&ots=HHiBqo1uVy&sig=ah_eKtF–0Gkqx9bYYIeNJmnf6Y (accessed 14 July 2016).

14.

Engvall

Koko

(2007) Poverty and Land Policy in Cambodia. Stockholm: EUS.

15.

Feder

Nishio

(1998) The benefits of land registration and titling: Economic and social perspectives. Land Use Policy 15(1): 25–43.

16.

Flower

BCR

(2018) Does informal tenure result in land inequality? A critique of tenure formalisation reforms in Cambodia. Land Use Policy 77: 240–248.

17.

Flower

BCR

Grimsditch

(2015) Legal Analysis of Land Tenure in Urban Poor Settlements in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh: People in Need.

18.

Flower

BCR

Fortnam

Kol

et al . (2018) Using participatory methods to uncover interacting urban risks: A case study of three informal settlements in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Environment and Urbanization 30(1): 301–316.

19.

French

Turkstra

Farid

(2016) Vacant land plots in Afghan cities: A problem and an opportunity. Urbanisation 1(2): 79–94.

20.

Frings

(1994) Cambodia after decollectivization (1989–1992). Journal of Contemporary Asia 24(1): 49–66.

21.

Gerber

Hout

(1998) More shock than therapy: Market transition, employment, and income in Russia, 1991–1995. American Journal of Sociology 104(1): 1–50.

22.

Gilbert

(2002) On the mystery of capital and the myths of Hernando de Soto: What difference does legal title make? International Development Planning Review 24(1): 1–19.

23.

Gottesman

(2004) Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building. Yale University Press. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ESatwt6zGD0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=gottesman+cambodia&ots=1fSC1uYc_j&sig=ngAoS0d99IDQQIjLpIHAyXbuqjU (accessed 15 July 2016).

24.

Grimsditch

Henderson

(2009) Untitled: Tenure Insecurity in the Cambodian Land Sector. Phnom Penh: COHRE.

25.

Hall

Hirsch

(2011) Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Singapore: NUS Press.

26.

Spoor

(2006) Whose land? The political economy of land titling in transitional economies. Land Use Policy 23(4): 580–587.

27.

Hughes

(2003) The Political Economy of the Cambodian Transition. Routledge. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bE0eJLASs68C&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=shatkin+cambodia&ots=847TGNeCeu&sig=vDxticfTPJ0GxBNGVawwaEdgySw (accessed 22 March 2016).

28.

Hunt

(2004) Unintended consequences of land rights reform: The case of the 1998 Uganda Land Act. Development Policy Review 22(2): 173–191.

29.

Khemro

BHS

(2001) Patterns of Squatting in Phnom Penh: An Evaluation of the Socio-economic Characteristics of Squatters and their Reasons for Squatting. London: UCL Press.

30.

Khemro

BHS

Payne

(2004) Improving tenure security for the urban poor in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: An analytical case study. Habitat International 28(2): 181–201.

31.

Lal

(1985) The misconceptions of ‘development economics’. Finance and Development 22(2): 10–13.

32.

Ledgerwood

(2008) Ritual in 1990 Cambodian political theatre: New songs at the edge of the forest. At the Edge of the Forest: Essays on Cambodia, History, and Narrative in Honor of David Chandler, Ithaca, Southeast Asia Program. Available at: https://seap.einaudi.cornell.edu/sites/seap/files/Ledgerwood%20Theatre%20Forest_0.pdf (accessed 22 March 2016).

33.

Lemanski

(2004) A new apartheid? The spatial implications of fear of crime in Cape Town, South Africa. Environment and Urbanization 16(2): 101–112.

34.

Murrell

(1993) What is shock therapy? What did it do in Poland and Russia? Post-Soviet Affairs 9(2): 111–140.

35.

Parsons

Lawreniuk

(2018) Seeing like the stateless: Documentation and the mobilities of liminal citizenship in Cambodia. Political Geography 62: 1–11.

36.

Payne

(2001) Urban land tenure policy options: Titles or rights? Habitat International 25(3): 415–429.

37.

Payne

(2005) Getting ahead of the game: A twin-track approach to improving existing slums and reducing the need for future slums. Environment and Urbanization 17(1): 135–146.

38.

Phnom Penh Post (13 June 1997) Accusations Fly Over Arms Deals. Available at: https://www.phnomhpenhpost.com/national/accusations-fly-over-arms-deals (accessed 11 August 2018).

39.

Phnom Penh Post (12 October 2012) Gunslinger Tycoons. Available at: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/gunslinger-tycoons (accessed 11 August 2018).

40.

Pickvance

(1994) Housing privatization and housing protest in the transition from state socialism: A comparative study of Budapest and Moscow. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 18(3): 433–450.

41.

Rodrik

(2006) Goodbye Washington consensus, hello Washington confusion? A review of the World Bank’s economic growth in the 1990s: Learning from a decade of reform. Journal of Economic Literature 44(4): 973–987.

42.

Roy

(2005) Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association 71(2): 147–158.

43.

Sahakum Teang Tnaut (STT) (2009) The 8 Khan Survey. Phnom Penh: STT.

44.

Sahakum Teang Tnaut (2011) Displacement Figures for Phnom Penh 2011. Phnom Penh: Sahakum Teang Tnaut.

45.

Scott

(1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

46.

Shatkin

(1998) ‘Fourth World’ cities in the global economy: The case of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 22(3): 378–393.

47.

Sjaastad

Cousins

(2009) Formalisation of land rights in the South: An overview. Land Use Policy 26(1): 1–9.

48.

(2009) Political Economy of Land Registration in Cambodia. Dekalb, IL: University of Northern Illinois.

49.

Sovannarith

Sopheap

Utey

et al . (2001) Social Assessment of Land in Cambodia: A Field Study. Phnom Penh: CDRI.

50.

Springer

(2013) Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change 13(4): 520–546.

51.

State of Cambodia (1989a) Circular 05, 05/06/1989: On the Implementation of Sub-Decree Regulating the Granting of Ownership on the House of People Living in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh: SOC.

52.

State of Cambodia (1989b) Prakas No. 2746 02/08/1989: Prakas on the Papers Relating to the Land. Phnom Penh: SOC.

53.

State of Cambodia (1989c) Sub-Decree No. 25 ANK 22/04/1989: Sub-Decree on Providing House Ownership to the Cambodian Population. Phnom Penh: SOC.

54.

State of Cambodia (1992) 1992 Land Law. Phnom Penh: SOC.

55.

Stiglitz

(2003) What I learned at the world economic crisis. In: Clark

(ed.) Globalization and the Poor: Exploitation or Equalizer? New York: IDEAS, pp. 195–204.

56.

Turkstra

Popal

(2010) Peace Building in Afghanistan through Settlement Regularization. Nairobi: International Society of City and Regional Planners.

57.

Urban Resource Centre (2002) Study on the Relocation of Urban Poor Communities in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh: ACHR.

58.

Urban Sector Group (1994) Report on the Survey of Phnom Penh Squatter Settlements, 1994. Phnom Penh: USG.

59.

Varley

(1998) The political uses of illegality. In: Fernandes

Varley

(eds) Illegal Cities: Law and Urban Change in Developing Countries. London: Zed Books.

60.

Varley

(2002) Private or public: Debating the meaning of tenure legalization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(3): 449–461.

61.

Varley

(2013) Postcolonialising informality? Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31(1): 4–22.

62.

Williamson

(1993) Democracy and the ‘Washington Consensus’. World Development 21(8): 1329–1336.

63.

Yiftachel

(2009) Theoretical notes on gray cities: The coming of urban apartheid? Planning Theory 8(1): 88–100.