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We argue for a radical reconfiguration of existing theorizations of the "lively commodity"—beings captured, cultivated, and traded for their very lives—on more inclusive terms. Specifically, we advocate the inclusion of animals intended for dietary consumption, in recognition of the demonstrable centrality of encounters between human beings in their role as consumers and the animals and animal parts offered for sale in Hong Kong's many wet markets to the processes of commodification. Based on semistructured interviews with vendors and consumers (n = 86) and a variety of modes of ethnographic observation (including narrative, photography, and several forms of videography), we analyze three groups of practices and strategies for structuring and negotiating productive encounters (which we label provoking motion, stimulating appetite, and maintaining life) observed in twenty-seven different wet markets across Hong Kong between June and September 2022. Our analysis also suggests critical issues and directions for future research rooted in, at minimum, crucial differences in the scalar, temporal, ecological, and ethical dimensions of diverse processes of lively commodification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a peculiar case of neighborhood change in Sham Shui Po, one of Hong Kong’s densest and poorest neighborhoods. Based on two mixed-methods research projects conducted in 2021 and early 2022, we use social media analysis and data gathered through a four-component “aesthetic survey” methodology to demonstrate the drastic transformation of a particular section of this neighborhood in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. A key question of this research is why such a transformation should be taking place in this exact moment, as previous attempts have been made to stimulate precisely the sorts of changes now observed over the course of the last decade or so, all to no avail. We argue that this unexpected “boom” is the result of a conjunction of pandemic mitigation policy implemented by the Hong Kong government (which we label “immobility policy”) and the widespread and enduring reputation of Sham Shui Po in the city’s cultural geography (which we explore through the concept of “territorial stigma”). This case therefore stands to contribute substantially to ongoing debates on the nature and pace of urban change, especially at crucial historico-geographical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strident focus on atmospheric carbons and on climate change as its distinguishing feature has seen much debate and research surrounding the Anthropocene stray from its conceptual grounding in geology. Yet new research argues that hallmarks of the Anthropocene such as sea-level rise, melting ice sheets, and environmental engineering projects designed to mitigate chronic shortages of potable water all increase the potential of seismic activity, placing geological forces back at the center of conversations on planetary futures. Following calls to consider the political dimensions of environmental change in the Anthropocene, this article examines the multiple layerings of natural hazards, political crises and transformations, and mega-urbanization through the lens of catastrophic geological events, drawing evidence from an ongoing longitudinal study of the devastating Mexico City earthquakes of 1985 and 2017. This case suggests that such events intersect with contemporary political economy in a variety of ways, from the disruption of urban investment patterns and the initiation of processes of mass abandonment or of creative destruction and gentrification to the exacerbation of political crises at scales from the submunicipal to the supranational, the facilitation of social movement formation, and the acceleration of political revolutions such as Mexico's democratic transition of 2000. These insights offer productive avenues for engaging with the political economies of geological events and processes and the prescriptive powers of geology as a field of knowledge production and political power that increasingly demand attention across an urbanizing planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on roughly ten months of ethnographic and archival research, this article examines successful resistance to a planned redevelopment project along Avenida Chapultepec, one of Mexico City's historic boulevards. Local residents and their allies objected not only to the specifics of the project but also to its planning process, in which citizen input was foregrounded but extremely limited. This case illustrates the instantiation of a 'postpolitical condition' in Mexico City, a situation in which any opportunity for dissensus has been foreclosed and ironically replaced by a growing set of carefully managed participatory schemes and an ever‐greater rhetorical commitment to democratization. The public contest over the so‐called Corredor Cultural Chapultepec effectively demonstrates two claims I seek to advance in this article. The first is that strategic vulnerabilities of such political orders can be effectively sought in their conditions of emergence or the contextually specific ways that such orders consolidate political power. The second is that in seeking to elucidate and challenge these conditions, resistance must account for the ways in which certain 'partition[ings] of the sensible' (Rancière,) operate at the quotidian level of attitudes, norms and routines to assign and continually reproduce the places and roles of urban citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]