Illegal Evictions? Overwriting Possession and Orality with Law's Violence in Cambodia

The unfolding of a juridico‐cadastral system in present‐day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that has swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well‐understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi‐nomadic lifestyles, barter economies and – until recently – widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country's majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this paper examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.