ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the position of one prominent scholar in the field of legal geography, Nicholas Blomley, when he wrote, talking about the institution of private property, that it “does just rule through signs, but enrols things, such as fences, contracts, and closed-circuit television cameras”. It discusses the factors are that lead to legal pluralism when positive law suddenly introduces private ownership, a concessionary system into a customary space. The chapter considers the changes that occur in and through space when a property regime determined by positive law is suddenly imposed in a context where customary land tenure used to prevail. Slash-and-burn is always supplemented with collected plants, and hunting and fishing products in the forest, and in some occasions the Bunong also cleared small-scale flooded paddy land. The key factor in the changes currently affecting the Bu Sra area is the Land Law of 2001 which was promulgated following the Constitution that made Cambodia a liberal democracy.
