A community book read with Alice Beban, author of Unwritten Rule: State-Making through Land Reform in Cambodia and winner of the 2023 Benda Prize. This conversation is hosted by the GETSEA Consortium.

This event is open to current graduate students at any university, but participants must read the book first to facilitate an active conversation!

Via Zoom: Click here to register.

Alice Beban’s Unwritten Rule: State-Making through Land Reform in Cambodia is a first-rate study of the politics of land redistribution. Challenging the idea that land reform strengthens land tenure, Unwritten Rule shows that instead it entangles citizens in patron-client relations, creates anxiety, and actually undermines title to land. Citizens in Cambodia must contend with a state that, Beban argues, is not so much lacking in state capacity but actively making things illegible through obfuscation, secrecy, and unwritten rules. Through multiple methods, including in-depth ethnography, survey research, as well as comparative analysis within Cambodia, Unwritten Rule provides a sharp, unique, and counterintuitive perspective on land reforms in an autocratic regime. This is a superb book from which political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians can all gain deep and grounded insights.