Occasionally a book appears that represents an especially important contribution, one likely to have lasting impact, and fill a crucial gap in the literature. Powers of Exclusion is such a book. This volume is worthy of attention by those with an interest in political ecology, land tenure and conflicts, as well as nature-society issues in Southeast Asia more generally. The interdisciplinary collaboration that brought a political scientist (Hall), geographer (Hirsch) and anthropologist (Li) together emerged as a result of a multi-faceted Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded research project titled Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (CHATSEA).
The book is focused on the idea of “exclusion,” a term commonly used in studies of land access globally. However, the authors conceptualize it differently than most, not simply thinking of exclusion as something negative counterposed with the positive idea of “inclusion,” but rather as inevitable; something that everyone...
