ABSTRACT
This chapter has two entries with a prefix that is negative, ‘none’, namely, non-operational (and failed) land deals and non-(re)distributive reform. Non-operational land deals or ‘failed’ land deals is a very recent term, closely associated with the literature on the contemporary land rush. It turned out that many of the publicly announced large-scale land deals would not see their promised capitalist enterprises operationalized, or if these did operate, later these were halted or cancelled, partially or fully. There is an implicit assumption that since these are cancelled operations or withdrawn land deals that the lands reverted back to the villagers who lost them. The keyword here takes this a priori assumption of what the term suggests to be not unproblematic. The second concept suggests that many policies publicized as reforms to benefit working people actually do not and may even result in the opposite, that is, benefitting the already better off social classes and groups in society.
