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The paper explores the connection between computerised techniques of mapping and the role of maps in modern nationhood, interrogating the ways that maps are naturalised and deployed in postcolonial neoliberal statecraft. A case study of Ecuador demonstrates how the relationship between cartography and the nation-state is being both altered and reaffirmed by new mapping practices and institutional processes. Despite neoliberalising moves to decentre state cartographers and the technological advances supporting the proliferation of national maps and map-makers, Ecuadorian cartographies are still authorised by the nation-state, as explored in relation to spatial information about the country, and in relation to the processes of land-titling. Under neoliberal governance and with advanced mapping techniques, land-titling produces small territories that replicate-in miniature-the jigsaw-like and modular quality of national territories. As such, mappings of individual private properties produce the reality of neoliberal statecraft.

This paper explores how rural land in Cambodia has been incorporated into global networks of finance capital through the technical and political processes of turning land into a financial asset. Since the 1990s, the Cambodian government and international development institutions have issued land titles to people to formalise land ownership and increase people's access to formal credit. At the same time, Cambodia's commercial microfinance industry has rapidly grown to become one of the largest markets in the world per capita. The industry has expanded in part because microfinance institutions use land title for collateral on household loans as a method to manage the financial risk of their foreign investors and shareholders. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted with ACLEDA Bank, Combodia's largest provider of microfinance loans, to examine how the rural land market and microfinance sector are assembled together. I argue that microfinance markets in Cambodia depend on credit officers establishing a capitalist regime of land value. To do so, credit officers engage in daily bricolage, using technologies of representation and data inscription, to create new grids of land evaluation that allow people to treat their land as a financial asset. I also argue that collateral is a kind of technology of control that reworks and respatialises household social reproduction for the benefit of financial accumulation. This paper thus contributes to our theoretical understanding of how land, labour, and finance capital are assembled together, and the political economic ramifications of such an assemblage.

Land registration system is a very critical component of a revenue department as it holds the record of lands and their owners. In many countries, land records are stored in paper form at centralized locations, making them vulnerable to forgery. Moreover, the centralized system has performance bottleneck, non-transparency, double-spending problems, and a single point of failure. Such issues lead to corruption and conflicts. Recently, Blockchain has been conceived as a technology having the potential to implement and enforce critical security requirements in land revenue systems. With Blockchain, the common issues in revenue systems, such as forgery, falsification, misrepresentation, and human-induced anomalies in records at various levels/stages, can be prevented. The focus of this research is to identify the relationship between Blockchain technology and the land administration system. We discuss issues with current paper-based centralized systems. The potential benefits of Blockchain technology in land management systems are also examined. We present the comparisons of state-of-the-art solutions along with their problems in detail. Finally, research challenges and future directions in Blockchain-enabled land management systems are explored.

There is growing recognition that land grabbing is a global phenomenon. In Canada, investors are particularly interested in Saskatchewan farmland, the province where 40 % of country’s agricultural land is situated. This article examines how the changing political, economic, and legal context under neoliberalism has shaped patterns of farmland ownership in Saskatchewan, between 2002 and 2014. Our research indicates that over this time, the amount of farmland owned by investors increased 16-fold. Also, the concentration of farmland ownership is on the rise, with the share of farmland owned by the largest four private owners increasing six-fold. Our methodology addresses some of the criticisms raised in the land grabbing literature. By using land titles data, we identified farmland investors and determined very precisely their landholdings thus allowing us to provide a fine-grained analysis of the actual patterns of farmland ownership. Although the article analyzes changes to farmland ownership in a specific historical, cultural and legislative context, it serves as the basis for a broader discussion of the values and priorities that land ownership policies reflect. Namely, we contrast an ‘open for business’ approach that prioritizes financial investment to one based on a land sovereignty approach that prioritizes social investment. The latter has greater potential if the aim is ecological sustainability and food sovereignty.

This article analyzes what we call a third scenario of resistance and adaptation, which can take shape when a public land policy is implemented. In particular, it examines the encounter between the Program for the Formalization of Rural Property (PFPR), designed and structured by the Colombian central government, and the political and identity struggles of the communities of black and/or Afro-descendant peasants organized in the Upper Cauca, one of the areas where the program was implemented. We used a qualitative methodology that included a review of public policy documents, as well as field work conducted over the course of three visits to Santander de Quilichao, Buenos Aires and Jamundí, which comprised interviews, focus groups, and a survey. We concluded that: 1) formalization policies must also be understood from the political and cultural dimensions of the territories they are intended to regulate; 2) public policies are reinterpreted and resignified both by those who implement them and by the communities they are intended for. In this case, the latter contest the normative notions contained in the policy regarding the “peasantry.” and 3) the political stakes of the region’s peasantry are related, on the one hand, to territorial identity struggles for access to land and productive resources and, on the other, to the fact that the immeasurable visions of territory do not exist among rural communities, but rather between them and the neoliberal political project. The singularity of this work lies in the fact that it resumes the post-colonial theories on hybridization, to reveal the scenario that emerges in the Upper Cauca and its potential to renew/change the relations and practices concerning the public policy of formalization in the territory.

In 1964, the National Forest Reserve Act (B.E. 2507) of Thailand classified all unoccupied forested areas as forest reserve, or pa sanguan. It became illegal to obtain individual land titles in forest reserves, thus reducing the land rights of farmers. In addition, roads could not be built, electricity access could not be provided, and agricultural support programs could not operate on land without land titles. However, in recent years, Thailand’s National Committee on Land Policy (Khana Kammakarn Natyobai Thidin Haeng Chat) has been promoting the Kor Tor Chor (KTC) program for communal land titling, designed to create land tenure clarity but not to provide full ownership rights. The objective of this article is to assess the vertical geographies associated with the KTC program in Nan Province, northern Thailand, and their implications with regard to land rights and accessing government funding, one of the key objectives of KTC. The article reveals that vertical land classification aspects associated with watershed classification present particular challenges to KTC. In particular, we argue that while farmers are generally happy with the benefits that have come to them due to KTC, vertical geographical circumstances have significantly influenced the abilities of village communities to benefit from the KTC program.

Land property rights reform has been a key driver of agricultural productivity growth in post-reform China. Clearly defined land tenure arrangements also play a crucial role in maintaining rural social stability. This study assesses the impact of enhanced land tenure security on rural social stability, focusing on both the overall effects and the underlying mechanisms. Leveraging the new round of agricultural land rights confirmation initiated in 2013 as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ a staggered difference-in-difference model using panel data from the National Fixed-Point Survey for 2013–2021 to examine how enhanced land tenure security affects rural conflicts and disputes, which are important indicators of rural social stability. The empirical results indicate that the new round of land titling has significantly reduced the incidence of rural disputes. Mechanism analysis suggests that increased household income, strengthened bargaining power of farmers, and reduced infringements on property rights are the primary channels through which land titling mitigates rural conflicts. Furthermore, the effects are more pronounced in villages characterized by balanced clan power, larger income disparities, and non-suburban locations. These findings highlight the importance of consolidating land property rights and integrating them with local governance to sustain rural social stability.

In areas of land conflict, fear and the threat of violence work to reproduce imaginaries of land as a resource that powerful people can grab. An urgent question for agrarian scholars and activists is how people can overcome fear so that alternative imaginaries might flourish. In this article, we argue for attention to the affective dimension of imaginaries; ideas of what land is and should be are co-constituted through the material and social, imbued with powerful emotions that enable imaginaries to be reproduced, to be challenged, and even to be transformed. We draw from long-term research projects in Cambodia—a country known for plantation-fuelled dispossession—where the Prime Minister’s surprise announcement of a land titling campaign in 2012 ruptured the wave of land grabbing, creating openings to imagine different outcomes that are rooted in the potential for legal recognition of smallholder claims. Although the campaign was an uncertain rupture in land imaginaries, these moments matter. Land claimants sought to create affective ties with volunteer land surveyors that embedded hopeful land imaginaries in rural areas and into the national cadastral system. The land title in this context is the material bearer of a land imaginary that centres on rural people’s connection to the land, and also reinforces rural people’s connection to the Cambodian state and the potential to gain the state’s protection. We contribute to an emerging literature that locates the formative effects of hope as an orientation and as a method by exploring the possibilities inherent in rupture.

Land titling, a critical land institution reform aimed at enhancing tenure security, serves as a pivotal policy instrument to strengthen rural laborers’ mobility intentions. Leveraging a balanced panel dataset from the 2014 and 2016 China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS), this study employs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to evaluate the policy effects of the latest round of land titling on rural laborers’ mobility intentions. The results demonstrate that land titling significantly enhances rural laborers’ willingness to migrate. To ensure robustness, we incorporate individual and year fixed effects, cluster robust standard errors at the household level, and conduct multiple robustness tests, including placebo test, propensity score-matching difference-in-differences (PSM-DID), replacement of dependent variable, clustered adjustment, adding control variables and interaction fixed effects. Mechanism analysis reveals that land titling elevates laborers’ mobility intentions primarily by reducing land reallocation and stimulating investments in agricultural machinery. Heterogeneity analysis further identifies stronger effects in villages dominated by agricultural employment, and among middle-aged laborers. These findings highlight the nuanced role of tenure security in reshaping rural laborer dynamics and provide empirical support for optimizing land-related policies to facilitate structural transformation.

We develop a model that shows that asymmetric information can result in two types of credit rationing: conventional quantity rationing, and \"risk rationing,\" whereby farmers are able to borrow but only under high-collateral contracts that offer them lower expected well-being than a safe, subsistence activity. After exploring its incidence with respect to wealth, we show that risk rationing has important policy implications. Specifically, land titling will be only partially effective because it does not enhance producers' willingness to offer up the collateral needed to secure loans under moral hazard constraints. Efforts to enhance agricultural investment and the working of agricultural credit markets must step beyond land titling and also deal with risk.