Postsocialist informality: The making of owners, squatters and state rule in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1989–1993)
本文分析1989-1993年柬埔寨金边土地改革中的斗争，揭示后社会主义转型期国家统治的重塑过程，对研究土地政治、城市治理的学者有参考价值。
In this paper, I analyze struggles over land in the capital city of Phnom Penh in the course of Cambodia's postsocialist transition. In 1989 Cambodia's socialist regime adopted a set of liberal reforms including comprehensive land reform. While land reform was a source of authority for the regime, the rapidity and unevenness of the land reform process created deep divisions within its state apparatus itself. Drawing on land disputes filed with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992 and 1993, I document shifting conditions of ownership and authority in the city. I first discuss the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia land dispute files in general, before analyzing two, group disputes over formerly state lands in detail. Struggles over formerly state lands were particularly contentious, as who could claim, govern, and allocate these lands was an open question in the transitional period. I argue that these struggles were integral to the remaking of state rule. I use the term “postsocialist informality” to foreground this particular historical moment of state–society reconfiguration, while also underscoring the political constitution of the categories of public and private, owner and squatter, themselves.