ABSTRACT

By examining three successive attempts at registering land and issuing titles in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, this chapter focuses on one aspect of property relations during one particular period of time. Property relations are social relations enforced by an authority. The extent to which the state is, or seeks to be, the authority which determines property relations may vary over time according to the nature and reach of the state. Furthermore, the formal pronouncements, laws and regulations issued by the state may bear little resemblance to how property relations are actually enforced. Interventions in the name of the state will rarely be as consistent, comprehensive or impartial as they are represented. That enactment and enforcement are invariably the remit of different state actors only adds to this inconsistency. This chapter is therefore inescapably concerned with both the creation of property and the building of state authority (Sikor and Lund 2009).