i Thinking outside the Fence: Exploring Culture/Land Relationships:

ii Over the past 10-15 years Ratanakiri Province, in the far northeast of Cambodia, has been undergoing rapid land use change. This thesis explores this change process and, in particular, two countervailing aspects of this. The first is the privatization of the pre-existing communally owned landscapes of forest fallows and swidden agriculture fields for cash cropping (cashews, soybeans, cassava and more recently rubber) by outside farmers and companies. The second aspect is the much slower attempts to secure the lands of Ratanakiri’s indigenous communities through communal land titling. The aim of this investigation is to better understand the links between property rights and land use. I argue that there is a disconnect between the theoretical models which are used to explain the benefits of land privatization for agricultural development, and the impact of these models on the very farmers they are supposed to benefit. The social and environmental impact of these privatization processes highlights the need to question contemporary models of agricultural development based on land privatization and mono-culture. Adjusting property rights arrangement