ABSTRACT
Resource companies are, of course, not the only large footprint industry that displace people. Hydropower, forestry, and even conservation projects have the potential to dispossess people of their land, their homes and their livelihood. This latter set of large-scale population-displacing projects has provided the historic foundation for what is now close to half a century of detailed, careful and mostly critical literature on development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR). It is this same literature that gives us, and other researchers, our basic set of conceptual tools and terminology (displacement, dispossession, reconstruction, disarticulation) and is the scholastic bedrock from which the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC)—and others-have built their policies and performance standards on involuntary land acquisition and resettlement.
