This talk examines the intersection of Chinese and Vietnamese pulpwood and rubber plantations with the lands of the Indigenous Brou people in southern Laos. Based on the book Socializing Land (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025), I conceptualize land as a web of social relationships that entangle peasant farmers, state officials, civil society groups, and plantation capitalists. I examine how and why ties to land are socialized in different orientations, being pulled and stretched in contradictory ways that shape control over land by capital versus the peasantry. The talk reflects on how the histories of socializing land might affect control over resources as Laos pursues more “sustainable” paths of capitalist development.

About the speaker:

Miles Kenney-Lazar is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (SGEAS) at the University of Melbourne. His scholarship investigates the political ecologies of land, plantations, forestry, and agrarian change in Southeast Asia, especially in Laos and Myanmar. His latest research conceptualizes projects of “sustainability capitalism” in Southeast Asia, especially the pursuit of sustainable natural rubber and forest carbon credits. His work has been published widely in Geography, Agrarian Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies journals. His monography, Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos was published by the University of Hawai’i Press in 2025.

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