Mistrust, War-Fatigue, Unusual Alliances – Post-War Contestation of Land Deals and Repercussions for Conflict Transformation

Though promising in terms of reconstruction, the recent global land rush has led in most cases to displacement, ecological damages, loss of livelihoods, and conflicts and hence entails unpredictable risks for societies in transition. Confronted with a wide range of negative externalities, affected communities increasingly resist the capitalization of their land in various ways. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia and Sierra Leone, I focus on the destabilizing effects of post-war market liberalization. More specifically, I explore the interplay between emerging resistance against large-scale land deals and conflict transformation dynamics. Relational approaches and assemblage thinking in particular enable a new way of seeing contestation, spaces for agency, and power shifts. I am particularly interested in understanding the choice of (non-) violent resistance and the role of war networks and identities in post-war contentious politics. First, I analyze how land deals shape and are shaped by post-war social configurations and reinforce gender, class, or intergenerational disparities. In this vein, I also probe whether the former Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Kamajor militia fighters in Sierra Leone are directly affected by or are in favor of contemporary land deals. Second, I pay attention to the agency of affected community members and ex-combatants in particular as well as the overall degree of solidarity, trust, and social cohesion among contesting post-conflict communities and their support networks. Third, I explore whether land struggles in post-war environments are more prone to turn violent.