Search

The article informs that the "Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography" has been awarding prizes for the best paper by a graduate student since 2013 and authors of the prize-winning papers for 2017 are Michael Rose and Federico Ferretti. It is noted that paper of Rose analyzes human-land relationships among Meto people in the Oecussi enclave of Timor Leste.

In this paper we argue that there is a 'missing middle' between policies to ameliorate poverty of those in need and the experience of poverty. Drawing on interviews with respondent poor(er) households in Brunei's 'water village' of Kampong Ayer and with officials and local leaders, the paper details a complex and well‐funded system of support for those in need. It then shows how this impressive architecture of welfare does not always meet the needs of those it seeks to support. Through rendering poverty technical, policies implicitly ascribe persistent destitution as arising from the failure of the poor to take advantage of the opportunities made available to them. The paper suggests that this gap could be bridged by giving non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), social enterprises and informal businesses a greater role in the delivery of support. Kampong Ayer's experience has its parallels in other places and situations: the tendency to bureaucratize poverty and its amelioration; the desire to simplify poverty but complicate programmes for poverty eradication; and the expectation that the onus for adaptation should be on—and with—the poor. When the poor fail to adapt and to respond in the manner desired, they are blamed for their enduring poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have extensively studied the spiritual and cultural interpretations of the afterlife. This paper builds on these works by exploring how the afterlife can be discussed as a 'place' meriting geographical discussion. To do so, I consider how the afterlife is spatialized drawing on the 'trialetic' interactions described in Henri Lefebvre's work. This is done in the context of Singaporean Chinese beliefs that place emphasis on ritualistic remembrance. Firstly, the emotive‐affective aspects of remembrance imbued into material practices produce spaces of representation that prolong the deceased's 'presence'. At the same time, the Singapore state exercises significant regulation of these practices. While common understandings of the afterlife relate to spirits and culture, the analysis charts how in Singapore's case, the spatialization of the afterlife becomes a contested politicized process. Conceptualizations of the afterlife are not statically enshrined in cultural beliefs but evolve with changing times. This paper thus elaborates Lefebvre's spatial triad to examine networks of prescription, alteration, and negotiation, whereby the afterlife is a dynamically produced space charged with power relations among various actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire is a highly relevant governance challenge in the tropics: altered fire regimes, among other phenomena, threaten the persistence of various ecosystems. Fire is also widely used by smallholders. Yet, wildfires can put people's livelihoods in danger through direct damages and by impoverishing ecosystem services. Conventional approaches have sought to suppress any type of fire in the landscape. However, since the late twentieth century, researchers and practitioners have recognized the benefits of strategic fire use and, in some cases, of local fire use traditions. In many tropical areas, the coexistence and interaction of the conventional ('suppression‐only') approach, integrated approaches, and communities' traditional ways of using fire, create a complex network of actors with different interests and outlooks. The ways these actors make decisions and interact can be summed up under the notion of fire governance. There is a growing body of literature dealing with this kind of situations, although they do not always mention the term governance. This paper thematically analyses 38 studies in this field, showing that research has been scattered and often addresses the issue partially, leaving out key aspects of environmental governance. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes a more connected and holistic research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings together three parallel strands of work—Black Geographies, geographies of Caribbean creative practice, and quantum geographies. The paper begins by considering static linear spacetimes as colonial spacetimes, and draws on Michelle Wright's critique of Middle Passage epistemologies, from Black Studies, to elaborate on this. It then moves through a number of ways in which, over the last couple of decades, I have drawn together insights from Wilson Harris and Karen Barad to explore how quantum mechanics can facilitate a conversation about uncertainty, connectedness, entanglement and the liveliness of always already climate‐changed landscapes in relation to Black embodiment. In pushing briefly into string theory, the paper ends with the possibility of connecting spirituality with materialities, to push towards more politically attuned forms of emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly fragile small island states experience disproportionate climate impacts given their limited capacity to implement cost‐effective tools for detecting emerging signals of drying conditions and monitoring systems for sensitive sectors such as agriculture, especially for uncertain, ‘creeping’ events such as droughts. Despite the existence of open‐source Google Earth Engine datasets, untapped potential remains for their full deployment in disaster management infrastructure. Given this gap, this paper explores the utility of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) for detecting spatio‐temporal variations of Mid‐Summer Drought (MSD) impacts on vegetation in the small island of Jamaica, with emphasis on major historical drought events. Geospatial analyses of EVI datasets from the Terra Moderate‐Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) between 2000−2015 archived by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), were computed, and validated by station‐based precipitation and production data for selected parishes for historical case study MSD events. Results revealed highly asymmetrical drought impacts, with Jamaica's agriculturally intense Southern coastline displaying the most stressed vegetation (EVI < 0.5). North‐Western and North‐Eastern regions had the healthiest vegetation during the MSD (EVI > 0.6). A ‘fair’ to ‘moderate’ concurrent correlation was found between EVI and precipitation (R > 0.6), with lower correlations vis‐a‐vis agricultural production (R = 0.2–0.4). The results provide evidence of EVI's utility as a drought monitoring tool in a small island context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has recently become an agent of intensified agricultural production in Southeast Asia by constructing large‐scale irrigation systems. Funded with Chinese development finance, such infrastructure projects have been interpreted as a 'spatial fix' for capital accumulation in China, which helps explain the shifting balance of power within the region's political economy. However, we argue that explaining the local outcomes of these projects requires mapping out Chinese development finance in relation to the multi‐scalar network of actors, circuits of capital, and struggles over water that produce irrigated landscapes. We draw on our joint research about the Chinese‐funded and built Kanghot Irrigation Development Project in Cambodia. We explain how the construction of Kanghot was shaped by the historical and political relations between China and Cambodia. Since completion in 2016, Kanghot irrigation has transformed agricultural production by enrolling farmers into a network of volatile commodity markets and harmful pest ecologies. There have also been ongoing community struggles over Kanghot's water due to the project's design and institutional management. By broadening the idea of infrastructure as spatial fix to include these material and social processes of agrarian landscape production, this paper advances a political ecology of Chinese development finance in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the extent of the haze problem in Brunei Darussalam and on Brunei's unique position in contributing to the haze through fires occurring in disturbed parts of its peatlands. Brunei's peatland fires, which have their roots in infrastructure development, juxtapose drastically with the drivers of peat fires in other parts of southern Southeast Asia, which are mainly due to small‐ or large‐scale agriculture development. Our discussion highlights how Brunei's status as both a small state in ASEAN and a minor producer of smoke haze has resulted in Brunei remaining at the sidelines of haze diplomacy and cooperation at the ASEAN level. Further, the paper points out a lack of attention to the role of infrastructure development on peatlands in driving fires and haze in the country and how this is also increasingly becoming an issue in neighbouring countries, where massive infrastructure projects are underway, cutting through Borneo's peatlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tiger conservation in India has been driven for the most part by a philosophy that prioritizes the need for inviolate tiger reserves free of human beings. Such reserves, it is argued, provide much needed territory to 'care' for the tiger. In this paper, we examine the biopolitics of tiger conservation in India and argue that the current approach to tiger conservation amplifies the nature‐culture divide and ignores other imaginations of tiger conservation that are more cognizant of human—non‐human entanglements in protected area landscapes. The paper argues that tiger conservation has been a mix of sovereign, disciplinary and neoliberal environmentalities, all built on a certain 'truth' about tigers. The paper raises questions and concerns about the 'truth' discourse that underlies tiger conservation and also argues that tiger conservation has marginalized the environmentalism of the poor. It makes the case for more debate and discussion about tiger truths and suggests the need for a more than human approach to tiger conservation that recognizes the adverse consequences of fortress conservation as well as its limits in caring for the tiger in more than human geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses physical geography, human geography and climate change.

Small‐scale fisheries are crucial for improving livelihoods by providing fisher employment, and food security. As part of their work, fishers frequently move to different fishing communities to catch and trade in fish. This paper analyses the living circumstances of artisanal fishers and discusses their mobility patterns, lodging arrangements, and the difficulties they encounter as they carry out their work. This paper is based on a study that involved 385 artisanal fishers in the fishing community of Elmina in the Komenda Edina Equafo Abirem (KEEA) Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana. The results show that there are not many suitable places to stay for fishers when they travel from home to other fishing locations, and the few places that do offer affordable lodging also lack toilets, bathrooms and drinkable water. The paper also reflects on the gendered dynamics of these and related issues of insecurity for women in this case study. District authorities whose economies are heavily dependent on fishing ought to collaborate with private housing developers and the state to build affordable lodging facilities with standard household amenities like water, toilets and baths in fishing destinations to address the housing issues faced by fishers while travelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography has announced the winners of its annual prizes for the best graduate student paper and the best overall paper. The winning graduate student paper, written by Zhijian Sun, explores the techno-politics of China and the Soviet-bloc's socialist tropical architecture in Africa during the 1960s-1980s. The best overall paper, written by Stephen Taylor, Laurent Mavinga, and Moise Bashiga, examines the experience of trauma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, bridging insights from geographies of trauma into global mental health scholarship. The journal also includes an open letter discussing the cancellation of a Palestinian literary event by the Royal Geographical Society. [Extracted from the article]

The analytical inseparability of natural environment and society is reiterated by the findings of this study which contributes to a genre of studies that centre‐stages the socio‐ecological system. This study seeks to understand the interplay of state‐related and other modes of securing property rights in the context of pervasive coastal hazards through a case study from the Indian Sundarbans region (Sagar Island in West Bengal). This paper also contributes to research pertaining to slow‐onset disasters and attempts to examine emerging dimensions of land scarcity as well as diverse modes of access to land in the context of progressive ecological vulnerability. The analysis highlights the varying shades of declining land access and investigates how existing land policies and disaster management mechanisms remain far from extending security to communities experiencing environmental crisis. The paper thereby examines how community and state agencies adopting means to allocate property may in fact refute legality and perpetuate informality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how extreme weather events affect the mobility of low‐income urban residents in Ghana. Bringing together scholarship on extreme weather and mobilities, it explores the differential impact of flooding on their everyday lives as they navigate the cities of Accra and Tamale. A range of qualitative methods were drawn on, including semi‐structured interviews, focus group discussions, and follow‐along‐participant observations in selected communities of both cities. Three key themes emerged: disrupted road and transport infrastructure, everyday mobility challenges, and coping/adaptive strategies. In flooding conditions, residents experienced difficulties leaving/returning home, engaging in income‐generating activities, and accessing transport services and other key urban infrastructure. Conceptually, the paper reveals how disruption to urban residents' daily movements and activities (re)produces new forms of mobilities and immobilities, which have three relational elements: postponed, improvised and assisted. Throughout the analysis, we show how these mobilities/immobilities vary by age and gender: all urban residents, (though women in particular), experience postponed mobility; young people especially engage in improvised mobility; and children and the elderly are in greatest need of assisted mobility. The paper thus contributes to scholarship on extreme weather events and mobility by providing a more spatially nuanced understanding of the multi‐faceted domains in which flooding, socio‐economic conditions and adaptive strategies intersect to influence urban mobility in resource poor settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being part of this I SJTG i plenary exchange has reminded me to think and work about the Caribbean more, which was not that easy as I lived in Singapore and recently located to New Zealand - the Caribbean is a long watery way from here. The title change from ' I Abyssal Geographies' i (version one, circulated before the conference presentation) to ' I Abyssal geography' i (in the published paper: Chandler & Pugh, [2]) is interesting because the turn to the singular seems to close the possibilities of various geographies and multiplicities around the spaces, places and people of the Caribbean. From this short description I have attempted to examine the word abyssal in a context connected with Chandler and Pugh's paper and the Caribbean. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper I demonstrate the ways that the everyday state is produced in and through Lusaka's rubbish, although the state is largely absent from the day‐to‐day management of the solid waste in the city. This analysis draws insight from over 90 semi‐structured interviews with a range of respondents in Lusaka, primarily focussed on the cities' lower income settlements. I build on the overlapping conversation in political geography on the state as assemblage and the prosaic on the one hand, and the everyday state in the Global South on the other to focus on three key aspects of the production of the state: materialities, performance and temporalities. I argue that in order to understand the state in present day Lusaka, one must account for the history of state performance and imaginaries of the state that was. And secondly, that even in the absence of the state, the state may continue to perform and be known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal tourism has grown significantly across South‐East Asia from the 1960s, particularly in three key destinations hosting large tourist numbers: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. It encompasses different scales from basic backpacker accommodation in budget enclaves to large scale capital‐intensive luxury resort enclaves. Coastal tourism studies typically range from descriptive analyses of destinations' evolutionary dynamics and resort morphology to more granular ethnographic inspections of socio‐economic patterns of transformation and resource conflicts. More recent critical research theorizes the spatial reorganization of coastal tourism in relation to economic restructuring processes. Although national tourism policy and economic development is often analysed, forces shaping coastal tourism development have been little examined and research typically focusses on impact case studies without analysing the underlying political economy. This paper interrogates the political‐economic drivers of the historical‐geographical and spatial organization of coastal tourism in these three major destinations and demonstrates how processes of tourism capital accumulation are experienced/contested via intensified commodification leading to increasingly complex and diversified coastal tourism political economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) is one of the major modes of public transportation in Singapore. Understanding the mobility patterns of MRT passengers has implications for improving transportation efficiency. As a city‐state with a high population density, Singapore provides a representation of balanced urban dynamics that informs smart urban planning. In this paper, we investigated and visualized (using both static maps and dynamic web map applications) the spatiotemporal characteristics of Singapore's MRT commuting patterns before the COVID‐19 pandemic (January 2020) and during the first outbreak (May 2020) and the Omicron wave of the pandemic (February 2022), using MRT smart card data. We also investigated the relationship between the passenger flows of individual MRT stations and the nearby land use types. Our results showed that the spatial patterns of Singapore's MRT commuters match the polycentric urban structure. In addition to central areas, several regional centres were identified as passenger hotspots in multiple time periods. Furthermore, during the outbreak of the pandemic, especially in the period of the 'circuit breaker', there was a major decline in MRT passenger flows and a decrease in average MRT commuting distances during weekend/holiday peak hours. Lastly, correlations between passenger flows of MRT stations and the proportion of nearby land use types have been identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to position socialist China in the mobility of global socialism in the context of Cold‐War politics. It examines how the techno‐politics of China and the Soviet‐bloc's socialist tropical architecture differently reconfigured thermal exchanges between the environment, human body and a series of other multi‐scalar things in Africa during the 1960s−1980s. Drawing on the theories of thermal material culture, techno‐politics and science and technology studies (STS), it constructs a cross‐cultural comparison between China and Soviet‐bloc, aiming to achieve a more nuanced techno‐political understanding of mid‐late twentieth century socialist architecture in the Global South. It also hopes to contribute to recent scholarship about thermal comfort and governance in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a polycentric world, cities increasingly bear responsibility for implementing climate policies. To do so, they establish transnational city networks (TCNs), which produce ambitious imaginaries of the future of cities, such as 'smart cities' or 'resilient cities', based on ecological knowledge. This paper analyses Southeast Asian (SEA) cities' participation in TCNs. First, this paper presents city networks operating in SEA. Then, drawing on a case study of Quezon City, this paper shows how SEA cities often position themselves in the network as knowledge consumers rather than (co)producers and prefer to learn from cities in the Global North. This research also shows how TCNs--with limited success--seek to counter this neo-colonial knowledge flow model. The paper contributes to the literature on TCNs, arguing that the ongoing North-South imbalance needs to be addressed if networks are to promote viable models of future SEA cities. Identifying the patterns of knowledge flows inside TCNs, this study argues that networks should assist cities in imagining possible city futures beyond the experiences of the select world and global cities. TCNs should pay more attention to supporting their SEA members in looking 'outwards' to comparable cities worldwide rather than merely 'upwards' to global and mega-cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the winners of the graduate student paper including approaches to slums in Chennai by Tara Saharan, Karin Pfeffer and Isa Baud, on rubber plantation in Southern Thailand by Will Shattuck, and introduction to the issue on topics including geo-visualization technologies, different geographies, and technological innovations.

Building on a 'biographical' approach to national boundaries, this paper traces the history of the China‐Myanmar border—its formations, disappearances and rematerializations. In doing so, it identifies three alternative imaginaries that have characterized and shaped these borderlands throughout the past one and a half century. These imaginaries—terrain, technology and trade—sketch out some of the ways in which borderlands are seen, perceived and therefore acted upon by state authorities and powerful outsiders. They are central to how the boundary was demarcated, and to how it is managed today. These imaginaries, then, are reflected into specific practices—and thus have direct impact on everyday life along the China‐Myanmar border. Drawing on both archival and long‐term ethnographic research, this paper thus sheds light on the embedded processes of anticipation that underscore how the borderlands are envisioned today in dominant narratives centred around Belt and Road promises and fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annually, around 10 million Chinese tourists, constituting almost a quarter of Thailand's total foreign visitors (before COVID‐19), have started to make a strong imprint on Thailand's tourist landscape. At the same time, a new wave of Chinese migrants to Thailand are seeking business and work opportunities. This paper focuses on these new encounters between local Thais and the incoming mainland Chinese in terms of how cultural boundaries are created, contested and renegotiated, specifically within the context of Thailand's long history of Chinese migration, which dates back several generations. The paper investigates the phenomenon of 're‐Sinicization' in Thailand, and its contested nature within the broader Thai political and cultural milieu. It draws upon recent controversies regarding online battles between Thai and Chinese netizens to argue that the controversies are indicative of the unease from the increasing Chinese presence within Thai society and the increasing embroilment of Thailand within the political contestation of the wider Sinosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As international health organizations have increasingly acknowledged the global burden of psychological trauma, global health experts have sought to appraise and organize the treatment of trauma through objective, neutral forms of classification and calculation. Rather than see trauma as a singular thing whose biological, social and psychological formation is bracketed by expert perspectives, this paper focuses on how psychological trauma is enacted—that is, brought into being and sustained—in particular contexts and practices. If trauma can be made and unmade in practices, rather than assumed to be a stable thing, then these practices become a matter of concern rather than fact for geographers. We take as our empirical focus the province of North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where trauma has become a matter of growing local, national and international concern. Working with and beyond the conceptual work of Annemarie Mol, we demonstrate how different 'versions' of trauma uneasily co‐exist in the region. Interrogating these versions, we explore the tensions that arise from attempting to explain and summate the incidence of trauma that is not singular or stable but is, instead, emergent and enacted in a variety of practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global fisheries sector has undergone both rapid industrialization and considerable resource depletion. Unlike fisheries in the Northern Hemisphere, the Indonesian (and indeed Southeast Asian) sector is still largely dominated by small‐scale producers, who are partially embedded within a subsistence economy. Changes in the nature of production and livelihoods in the fisheries sector appear similar to those in land‐based agriculture but have received far less attention in the literature and demand further analysis given the distinct characteristics of the natural resource base. Using national datasets complemented by insights from a two‐month period of fieldwork in South Sulawesi, this paper presents the process of capital intensification underpinning national fisheries growth and how it is transforming small‐scale production systems. Despite increasing market integration, we found that smallholders have persisted across coastal production systems to an even stronger degree than land‐based agriculture. We suggest some reasons why this is so. However, we also observed evidence of internal class differentiation within coastal communities. Such differentiation, combined with resource degradation and depletion, exposes the poorest in the community to enhanced livelihood vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floods are a frequently occurring calamity in deltaic Bangladesh. This paper aims to assess the temporal expansion of waterbodies during flooding using geospatial techniques. Several water indices were applied to classify the satellite images at various temporal scales. Among them, the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) showed the highest correlation (r = 0.831; where p = 0.01) with rainfall data. Specifically, the NDWI results showed that perennial waterbodies measured 37 km2 and 60 km2 in Sunamganj District in 2017 and 2019, respectively. The area of waterbodies notably increased 52‐fold from March to April (37 km2 to 1958 km2) during the pre‐monsoon flash flood of 2017. During the July 2019 monsoon flood, waterbodies started to extend after May and flooded 2784 km2 in area. NDVI analysis showed that in 2019, floodwater submerged 361.7 km2 of vegetation cover. At the same time, the Surma River's flooding resulted in a 73.9 per cent inundation of the total area of the Sunamganj District. We hope that this study will provide better understanding of the varying nature of floods that occur in the low lying bowl shaped Haor region which will in turn assist the government with flood mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that Dan Cohen, Sarah Turner and Natalie Oswin are the recipients of the annual awards from the "Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography."

Their turn to the abyssal through engagement with the work of Caribbean and Caribbean-inspired thinkers - notably, Glissant, Benítez-Rojo, Moten and Sharpe - strives to "question the lure of ontology" (Chandler and Pugh, [2]: 1), and it does so by foregrounding how, as Pugh ([12]) has written elsewhere, ontologies are human creations. Chandler and Pugh's paper thus provides us with additional tools to further unsettle the sedimented subject of white, heterosexual, male, Anglo-American geography. Abyssal geographies, as I read them in Chandler and Pugh's work, thus direct our attention to the entwinement of desire and thought, where-ever thinking takes place. [Extracted from the article]

Mangroves thrive in tidally influenced environments and will be central to any discussion regarding the implications of sea‐level rise for coastal communities. Mangrove forests can respond to sea‐level rise by adjusting their position within a tidal frame that is transitioning upwards, and this response is dependent upon a range of hydrological, sedimentological and ecological factors. The availability of accommodation space, defined as the lateral and vertical space in which mineral and organic sediments and organic material from in situ vegetation can accumulate, is increasingly proposed as a means of conceptualizing the response of shorelines to sea‐level rise. Recent analyses demonstrated the significance accommodation space has on global carbon storage in coastal wetlands over the past few millennia, and likely influence on future carbon sequestration and coastal wetland resilience. Mangrove forest vulnerability is commonly indicated by comparing rates of substrate elevation change to rates of sea‐level rise, but these comparisons may overemphasize mangrove forest vulnerability to sea‐level rise as they do not adequately account for the resilience provided by mineral and organic sediments that previously filled accommodation space and increased substrate elevations beyond critical thresholds for submergence. This paper demonstrates that the geological concept of 'accommodation space' applied in a way that incorporates ecological processes and recognizes the full range of processes altering accommodation space may provide a unifying framework for integrating information between disciplines and increasing our understanding of the response of mangrove forests to sea‐level rise. This paper also defines available accommodation space as the space available for sediment accumulation; realized accommodation space as the space that has converted from being available, primarily due to sediment accumulation; and the boundary conditions delimiting both available and realized accommodation space (See Appendix I for the full list of definitions). It is anticipated that this paper will serve as a challenge for researchers across disciplines to collaborate, share and integrate knowledge so that the past is interpreted appropriately and integrated into models, and the best information is available to inform coastal planning and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) has experienced drastic political, socio‐economic, and ecological changes. On a conceptual level, numerous studies started to emphasize that livelihood shifts are driven by not only climate but also socio‐economic and institutional changes. Nevertheless, on an analytical and operational level, research taking up both aspects of social and ecological changes in analysing the dynamics of livelihood is still lacking. This paper therefore is to present a typology of livelihood transitions to capture complex sets and interactions of environmental and non‐environmental drives for livelihood changes. The paper thus aims at providing a valid representation of the shifts on the ground that can also be used in policy‐making and future research. Using data from a household survey conducted in three provinces (n = 524), we propose a typology of six livelihood‐change trends that reflects the level of intensity of agrarian adjustments, particularly system‐shift versus diversification, as well as the role of non‐agricultural income changes. The typology allows further analysis of characteristics of the six household groups respectively, thereby facilitating the identification of enabling factors and barriers to sustainable livelihood improvements. This classification method can also be transferred to develop similar household livelihood‐change typologies in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we leverage on a case study about the governance of groundwater and the hazard of land subsidence in Yunlin, Taiwan, to address the state's political strategies of producing 'hydro‐social territories'. Our goal is to examine how local agents and their knowledge of the socio‐technological system shape groundwater use, with particular attention on how that system has changed due to the governmentalized regulation of groundwater resources as a means to mitigate land subsidence. Drawing from the local agrarian development and its tube well irrigation networks that underlie the groundwater‐scape in this research, the paper demonstrates that the 'hydro‐social territory' itself is complicated, as local farmers who rely on groundwater are never fully controlled by the state, regardless of whether or not they use groundwater for agricultural cultivation or other purposes, yet at the same time, the intention of governmentalizing the local groundwater regime is concealed and has become more concrete with the introduction of new sciences and technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines historical legacies left on the Mekong Delta's waterscape during French colonization in Vietnam and the implications this has had on the complex ways peri‐urban residents access water today for diverse purposes. French colonialism began constructing various transportation networks and extensive canal systems, all resulting in changes to farming village dynamics. Today, the Delta is home to active citizens who have the historical legacy of colonial infrastructure providing the means to combat the vulnerabilities that are often prevalent in periurban areas. Periurban landscapes are in a state of constant change where farming activities are juxtaposed with commercial and/or residential activities. This paper discusses the relationship between the changing waterscape and the social strategies that developed over time in response to the changing landscape. I explore some pertinent resiliency literature alongside extensive fieldwork to understand how the infrastructural interventions of the French relate to resilience today. This paper contributes to the wider literature about the importance of Delta systems in South and Southeast Asia, as all have experienced important transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Memoryscapes,' the intangible expression of memories perceived through physical landscapes, are designed by the state to reinforce national identity in Singapore. However, state‐curated memoryscapes become contested when diverging and diverse memories of the people, which manifests as place attachment, are overlooked. The easy accessibility of content creation and consumption empowers people to bypass the perceived rigidity and performativity of top‐down community engagement to express their nuanced opinions on contentious memoryscapes through various media and artform. For example, local cinema that expresses the richness and complexity of place attachment. This research employs a 'grounded theory' approach, using local cinema as data to inductively construct a localized conception of place attachment. Findings reveal place attachment as an incremental range of behaviours with varying degrees of activity. With the emergence of a consultative government and progressive society in Singapore, this paper recommends community‐driven engagement in urban redevelopment to create authentic, localized landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most existing studies use 'reterritorialization' to describe the outward expansion of Chinese power in Southeast Asia. This paper, however, flips this familiar narrative. It examines Sino‐Southeast Asian diplomacy hidden in the Chinese hinterland and embedded in the everyday. I focus on the landlocked province of Jiangxi, where the Chinese government created two enclaves for communist exiles and displaced diaspora respectively—both hailing from Southeast Asia. I argue that this domestic operation of foreign affairs helped absorb the impact of unfavourable foreign policy outcomes or drastic policy reversals. As post‐Mao China re‐engaged with the world, the PRC state's management of Cold War migrants enabled its reconstruction of geopolitical relations with Southeast Asia. With China's foreign policy reorientation and the progression of market reform, the state's governing strategy in the two study areas changed from one of privileged segregation to a strong push for economic self‐reliance. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurial individuals from these two communities represented, repackaged and retooled an inconvenient past the state tried to erase for the elevation of their individual socioeconomic statuses and the development of their respective communities. Through their creative mediation, the history of PRC's Cold War engagement with Southeast Asia is reinscribed in new time‐space contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the lodestar of Beijing's efforts to increase its global political and economic influence. This article interrogates BRI discourse, arguing that the normative adoption of BRI narratives as a means for making sense of connectivities between China and other places risks producing new forms of epistemic violence against subaltern populations. The empirical focus of this paper is on China‐Laos relations, and the epistemic positioning of highland ethnic minority groups in northern Laos. This context offers a valuable case study for examining BRI discourse due to: (a) the profound effects of Chinese investment in Laos; (b) the geostrategic importance of Laos as a BRI 'gateway' between China and Southeast Asia; (c) the deep histories of ethnic minority engagements across China and Laos; and (d) the limited extant research on both China‐Laos relations and the more localized effects of Chinese actors within the highland border regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, sustained economic growth in Indonesia has lifted many millions of Indonesians out of poverty. But despite these developments, 28 per cent of the population still live below the official poverty line and many more remain vulnerable to falling into poverty. Coastal and fishing communities represent some of the poorer populations across Indonesia, their livelihoods increasingly threatened by deleterious environmental impacts and overfishing. This paper draws on an analysis of household surveys from two Sama Bajo fishing settlements in coastal Southeast Sulawesi. A predominantly maritime language community, Sama Bajo livelihoods are shaped by seasonal patterns of fishing and marine based harvesting and trading. Using a modified poverty survey instrument, the paper explores comparative patterns of poverty and prosperity in these two communities with a focus on livelihood dynamics, seasonality effects, and the enduring patron‐client relationships that sustain their market‐oriented way of life. Key findings highlight the vulnerability of female headed households given the highly gendered access to fishing success, and the significance of relational co‐dependencies between patron‐client networks that sustain the current patterns of fishing livelihoods. The paper highlights the need for more focussed livelihood research among vulnerable populations in Indonesia and smallholder fishing communities in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on winning of Graduate Student Paper by Amber Murrey of Clark University and Best Overall Paper by Christian Vium of Aarhus University, published in the issue II and III respectively. He mentions that Murrey's paper narrates emotional geographies of people living in two different settlements along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline after their dispossession, while Vium's paper shows the emplacement strategies of people living in the urban fringe areas of Nouakchott, Mauritania.

Throughout the contemporary Pacific, relationships that indigeneity makes possible are emerging as celebrated resistance to post‐colonial development anxieties. In the process, lived experience heightens the commitment to decolonize thinking, language and practice in teaching and research. Not only because these imperatives are highly personalized but also because they are gendered and heavy with generational trauma. These gendered dynamics circulate around popular culture and imaginaries of Pacific paradise but also problematically around the challenges of long‐standing intolerances especially around gender and race. The paper asks how a gendered politics of positionality engages with emerging positionalities that uncritically allow for such intolerances. I touch on two ways in which colonial continuities of belittlement are often reinforced, but are also offering hopeful and careful decolonial scholarly futures. The first is the naming of the Pacific and the second is supervising women doctoral candidates from the Pacific. In this paper, the audacity of the ocean offers a metaphorical opportunity to carefully reconcile these tensions and provide trajectories for decolonial knowledge‐making. However, it also offers a material way of understanding the on‐going work with 'tensions' and disruptions in their ever present but changeable forms. Oceanic tropes and a feminist Oceanic audacity of embodied engagement in the Pacific offer dynamic and gendered intellectual agility which runs counter to the tropical imageries of languid indifference.black/is a state of mindlike the colour of an islandTeaiwa (2017)we sweat and cry salt water,so we know that the oceanis really in our bloodTeaiwa (2008) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change adaptation (CCA) 'barriers' are frequently seen as responses to biophysical climate impacts, and thus defined as 'obstacles' to be 'overcome', rendered into categories of the techno‐managerial. However, barriers are often undertheorized and are blind to explanations of their origins or the causal mechanisms by which they operate. This is especially complex for barrier critiques in the Global South in particular. Using a 'hybrid' assemblage and postcolonial approach, this paper disentangles existing barrier critiques in Thailand to lay bare underlying power imbalances and tensions. It finds that 'simplistic' vulnerability framings have deep roots in postcolonial histories; 'complacent' mainstreaming/budgeting trajectories have been nurtured by various IOs, and not necessarily much‐maligned Thai bureaucrats; and limited technical expertise/willingness to engage are not so illogical, but rather results of diverse external forces. Given this, this paper urges institutional actors and researchers to reflect on epistemology, ontology, and their own positionality when assessing barriers in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitherto, the path‐dependent understanding of regional diversification in Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) has drawn largely on insights into industrialized countries. However, in the past few decades several regions in the Global South have undergone rapid structural transformations despite starting out with unfavourable regional asset bases. This raises the question as to whether the strong emphasis on endogenous capabilities in EEG also provides a sound theoretical framework for explaining these tremendous diversification dynamics. This paper therefore aims to re‐evaluate the wider validity of the path‐dependent conceptualization of regional diversification in the context of a lower‐middle income economy. To this end, we analyse the diversification of Vietnamese regions between 2006 and 2015. In order to take into account context‐specific conditions that characterize Vietnam's economy, we add the role of foreign‐owned firms and state‐owned enterprises to the conceptualization of regional diversification processes. While the role of relatedness holds true for Vietnam, the presence of foreign‐owned firms allowed Vietnamese regions to break away from path dependency and diversify to unrelated industries. The findings highlight that only by adapting the analysis to context‐specific conditions are we able to understand how regional diversification takes place across different settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantitatively analyzes the spatial heterogeneity of district‐level correlates of open defecation in rural India. We employ standard non‐spatial regression, spatially explicit regressions and multi‐scale geographically weighted regression to compare the stability of measurable correlates of open defecation across these different methods as well as across analyzed spatial units. Attributes like ownership of household assets, drinking water inaccessibility and prevalent literacy rates were identified as the most stable district‐level correlates of open defecation. Our results also demonstrated the relevance of our hypotheses about (a) possible negative sanitation externalities stemming from the co‐concentration of Scheduled Caste communities and other communities in densely populated rural districts, and (b) possible positive sanitation externalities stemming from the co‐concentration of Muslim and non‐Muslim communities in densely populated districts. Overall, however, our analyses demonstrate notable spatial clustering and significant spatial non‐stationarity of examined variables. Therefore, in our opinion, research findings that ignore spatial heterogeneity of sanitation drivers provide incomplete information for policy development and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the winners of the journal's best paper awards includes the best paper award for graduate student given to doctoral candidate Jana Maria Kleibert and the best overall paper award given to reader Tariq Jazeel.

The Hill intellectuals were part of Rodney's description of "guerrilla intellectuals", the term that was used to capture politicization of knowledge within an empire (see Daley & Murrey, 2022: 159). Daley and Murrey offer a fresh and unconventional way of reflecting on decolonization of knowledge production. From where I sit - fondly called the Hill (the University of Dar es Salaam's main campus) - the reading of Patricia Daley and Amber Murrey's special lecture paper has been thought provoking. [Extracted from the article]

This study considers displacement occurring around the Jakarta flood mitigation projects between 2015–17 and explores the emergence of social innovation by affected kampung communities along the Ciliwung River. A framework combining theories on domicide and social innovation is developed to scrutinize two main case studies, Bukit Duri and Kampung Tongkol, revealing their connection to the city's urban development trajectory as well as the continuous struggle over adequate housing for low‐income groups. The study questions official plans, policies and responses towards flood‐induced displacement and resettlement planning. It also brings social innovation into the debate to unpack how displacement became a key moment for transformative change. The paper argues that, although urban eviction is related to globalization, outcomes are not foreclosed. Predominant urban mechanisms are contested, shaped, and transformed by local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conclusion, this collection of papers shows that, just as delta environments are continually remade through the interplay of human intervention and environmental forces (more so than most other environments because of the dynamic nature of riverine erosion and deposition and the interface between land and sea), so too are livelihoods of delta dwellers continually adapting to the effects of similar sets of forces. The three deltas considered here were perceived by colonial administrations as "food bowls" that would generate wealth in British India (the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Delta) and Burma (the Ayeyarwady Delta), and for French colonial interests in Indo-China (the Mekong Delta). Delta regions in South and Southeast Asia have historically been key sites of trade, exchange and wealth-creation. What remains difficult to answer is the question of how future delta economies and residents' livelihoods will change, particularly for the resource-poor, should the social-ecological delta systems cross tipping points and reach a point of collapse (Renaud I et al i ., 2014). [Extracted from the article]

Recent strategies to address rural poverty and food insecurity in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta emphasize the scope for market‐based and smallholder‐led agricultural development to catalyze broader positive change for rural populations. This paper challenges the appropriateness of this development model for the Ayeyarwady Delta. Assumptions of latent growth potential among an emerging smallholder capitalist agricultural class fundamentally misinterpret how farming is embedded within the Delta's regional economy. Using a long historical perspective informed by the food regimes approach, as well as household‐level data from a recently completed livelihoods survey in two townships, we reveal a contemporary situation in which medium‐sized and large landholders control most agricultural production. We argue that this is a path‐dependent legacy from how the Delta has been successively incorporated into the politics of food production and trade at global and national scales. These arrangements have left the Delta without a broad smallholder base, meaning that policies that prioritize smallholder‐led market development will not generate the type of pro‐poor outcomes required to address the Delta's pervasive rates of food insecurity and poverty. Instead, a rural development agenda for the Delta should focus on its actually existing social and economic dynamics that are a legacy of its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early part of the twentieth century, South African cities were segregated in accordance with British city planning concepts that embodied the belief that social order can be manipulated through the urban form. This paper surveys the history of South African planning practices to understand the spread of segregation policies and practices. Whereas scholars tend to agree that the apartheid city (post−1948) is a more highly organized and structured version of the colonial city (pre−1910), the literature lacks consensus on the development of the segregated city (1910−1948) within South Africa. How did concepts of segregation circulate and why was it implemented with such consistency? Accordingly, this paper employs concepts of policy mobilities to trace historical configurations in South Africa to international influences. The focus on the circuits of knowledge explains how concepts and designs transplanted from elsewhere helped create the form of South African cities today. Understanding the movement of planning ideas through policy mobilities furthers geographical understandings of historical circulation processes, the role of the local actors, and policy mobilities failure. This history of learning also challenges the assumption that South African cities are unique and in so doing opens the doors for knowledge sharing between postcolonial cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever‐changing spatial divisions of labour have led to an altered integration of many developing countries into global production networks (GPNs), leading to new spaces of territorial development in these countries. Against this background, this paper examines the role of local institutional actors in co‐shaping territorial development driven by global industrial relocation. Drawing on the case of Bekasi District, Indonesia, this paper nuances the notion of 'strategic coupling' in specific national and local settings of developing countries. Drawing on empirical material obtained through a series of in‐depth interviews conducted between 2012 and 2016, our analysis reveals that although local institutional actors have participated in Bekasi District's territorial development processes they sometimes exhibit a hesitant and less‐than‐creative attitude in this participation. Meanwhile, non‐local actors, most notably private developers and central government agencies, tend to have a more significant leverage in these development processes at the local level, suggesting complex institutional arrangements in tying Bekasi District's assets with GPNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a methodological response to the challenge of decolonizing geographical knowledge. It mobilizes post‐ and de‐colonial critiques of geographical knowledge production and conceptual work, suggesting how such work unwittingly disfigures the precise contours of the places and socio‐spatial formations on which geographers work, drawing them into implicit and reductive forms of comparison. Drawing on research and sources from South Asia, the paper moves instead toward more uncertain engagements with, and dispositions to, the production of geographical knowledge; ones attuned to the poetics of planetary difference. The paper speculates on five intellectual and methodological resources, or tactics, aimed toward producing geographical scholarship attuned to the tableaux of heterogeneous and incomparable singularities at large across the world: theory and reading; friction and fragments; translation/untranslatability; abiding by; and poetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]