ABSTRACT
Wasteland is the only keyword in this chapter. The latest round of global land enclosures that have been associated with the contemporary land grabs have been justified by a particular narrative. This narrative assumes and argues that lands that are not demarcated and actually made productive are thereby declared ‘wasteland’. At the heart of this view is the assumption that demarcation means privatization with titles, and productive use is set according to particular standard and is usually a monetarist-oriented benchmarking. A fallow land left that way by swidden farmers, small-scale pastoralist or Indigenous peoples easily fits this definition, and is thus vulnerable to being categorized as wasteland. This is a popular way through which many governments in the world grabbed lands from the working people.
