Common Property as Enclosure: A Case Study of a Backswamp in Southern Laos

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study we examine the enclosure of a common pool resource and ways in which a changed property rights regime has been legitimized by reference to the common property arrangements inherent therein. Legitimizing discourses of common property are situated in the wider discursive context of postsocialist development, territorialization, and community benefits. The resource in question is a backswamp1 in southern Laos that has traditionally been fished by 17 villages, but which since 1997 has been claimed exclusively by one village. Multiple contexts for this altered property regime include an experimental fish stocking program, a nationwide land and forest allocation program, a development approach that seeks to simplify property regimes, and traditional management and belief systems that have adapted to new circumstances. The exclusion process has resulted in relatively little conflict, in part due to the legitimizing role of common-property regimes in incremental microprocesses of enclosure.