Search

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

This paper develops a psychogeographical approach to our apocalyptic urban present, based on a journey down a highway on the outskirts of the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. The intensity of psychogeographical method brings out elements of the senselessness and violence of planetary urbanization imperceptible at more abstract levels of analysis, while the subjective impact of this spatial unravelling demands a surrealist psychogeography less attuned to the oneiric and marvellous than the chaotic and absurd. These conceptual reflections are interspersed with depictions of my walk along the highway, as fragments of a psychogeography of planetary urban breakdown. Instead of seeking to explain the political ecology of the road, I aim to contribute to an aesthetic of accelerating collapse that can undermine the normalizing ideological function of our sense‐making mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from an analysis of the processes of migration and governance, this paper documents the suburban dynamics of Dankuni—an industrial town located on the western periphery of Kolkata. While in the last few decades, a significant portion of suburban Kolkata has witnessed economic and demographic stagnation or decline, Dankuni has grown by attracting migrants mostly from nearby suburban towns/cities rather than from the city core or distant rural areas. The town also has a robust industrial foundation which provides gainful employment to the majority of its working residents underscoring their independence from the central city for livelihoods. Although the town's growth is driven by the sustained flow of migrants, they are unevenly distributed as majority of them prefer to settle in the inner part of the town where civic infrastructure and communication facilities are better than those in other parts of town. However, over time, especially since the establishment of the municipality in 2008, property prices swiftly escalated in this most sought‐after zone. Consequently, lower‐income migrant households have filtered out to the outer parts of the town. This spatial filtering has increasingly fragmented the suburban landscape. This splintering effect has been reinforced by the municipality's inclination to prioritize relatively affluent inner city neighbourhoods when it comes to the provision of basic amenities and civic infrastructure. [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]