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This paper examines community, environmental, and human rights activists’ influence on adoption of environmentally-friendly technologies in Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry. The story begins with conflict over the development of an export pulp mill in North Sumatra in the 1980s and continues with the adoption of environmental technologies in Indonesia’s pulp and paper industry in the 1990s. Organising around a number of specific events associated with pulp industry development, activists drew attention to the industry which led to a strengthening of government environmental regulation and enforcement, and hastened the adoption of cleaner production technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a case study of art activism in Nang Loeng, a historic neighbourhood in Bangkok, Thailand. Long recognised for its rich cultural heritage from food to architecture, Nang Loeng has established its name as a site of cultural tourism, drawing interest from tourists, artists, and professional experts. Like many neighbourhoods nearby, Nang Loeng today is being threatened by looming gentrification and eviction, as the inner city is transforming itself into a tourist destination. In particular, the upcoming underground construction has put their housing security under pressure. The paper first discusses the context of rail‐led urban transformation in historic Bangkok, fuelled by the discourse of transit‐oriented development. Then, it introduces Nang Loeng and their series of art‐based programmes. Disappointed by their failure to secure housing tenure from the landlord, Nang Loeng residents have turned to activism as a tool of resistance. Here, the paper pays particular attention to the role of community architects who creatively translates neighbourhood concerns into artistic forms. Through the case of Buffalo Field Festival, the paper illustrates how the community architects, artists and local residents collaboratively use Nang Loeng's cultural assets to make subtle political statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on assemblage theory to propose a new theoretical understanding of modernity. While the conceptual framing is meant for modernity at large, this paper locates its conceptual discussion in the context of tourism in Macao and illustrates how plasmatic thinking, the new conceptual framework proposed, advances analysis of aspiration, exploitation and freedom of its tour guides. Plasmatic thinking helps examinations of tourism labour to engage with the fragile and fluid nature of the sociomaterial environments. Instead of structures, networks or fluidities, plasmatic thinking sees the world as composed of 'plasmas' – 'charged' sociomaterial clustering of objects, humans and the processes between them. Plasmas are a form of charged matter falling outside solid, liquid and gaseous states and metaphorises the fragility and impermanence of sociomaterial situations for plasmas disintegrates when discharged. The attention to charges and fragility of plasmas helps describes both pandemic levels shocks and everyday disruptions. Through a plasmatic analysis of the falling apart and coming together of such plasmas and how they bring about significant consequences to Macao's tourism, I showcase plasmatic thinking as a theoretical approach which vividly uncovers the fragility and fluidity of modernity and the workings of power in our sociomaterial worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A referendum to decide on Bougainville's future political relationship with Papua New Guinea was held in November 2019. The deferred, non‐binding, referendum is a key milestone contained in the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA), which sought to reconcile a violent conflict from 1988 to 1998. Although the Bougainville peace process has been deemed a success and significant milestones have been reached towards implementation of the BPA, the conflict continues to have enduring impacts. Particular concerns have been raised about Bougainville's large youth population, often referred to as the 'lost generation'. This paper documents observations of the 2019 referendum from the perspective of four university students born during the conflict in Siwai District, South Bougainville, whom participated officially in the referendum as an observer group. While trauma and a disrupted education have contributed to youth unemployment and substance abuse in Bougainville, the paper offers a stark contrast to negative narratives of young Bougainvilleans as lacking capabilities to contribute to social and political life. As Bougainville embarks on yet another period of political uncertainty, the paper calls for greater attention to finding avenues to support these young voices to ensure that their generation is not 'lost' forever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal‐fired thermal power has recently become one of the most pressing issues in Vietnam's development agenda. The country's economic development, industrialization and modernization, and population increases have put increasing pressure on energy demands. The Vietnamese government sees coal‐fired power as a way forward in ensuring energy security, which had led to the planning and construction of plants nationwide, particularly from 2016. Simultaneously, a growing anti‐coal power development movement argues that coal‐fired power adversely transforms local people's lives and livelihoods, and negatively impacts the ecological balance in plant locations. Through the lens of environmental justice, this paper examines the development of Vietnam's power sector with a focus on coal‐fired thermal power and its impacts on local livelihoods, food production and water resources. The paper argues that Vietnam's development of coal‐fired power is about much more than energy. It speaks to the state's rule over resources, and how this very process of power generation disproportionately affects local communities in the Mekong Delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Chinese transnational investments, as (re)framed in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), contribute to changes in urbanisation processes in Southeast Asia. On the ground, the BRI becomes contextualised and intersects with local and national development trajectories. The growing presence of Chinese actors in the region intensifies urban dynamics, especially in secondary cities and emerging urban sites, where the BRI is used as a lever for local internationalisation strategies. The heterogeneous nature of the links between the BRI and various large urban projects is demonstrated on the basis of case studies involving changing consortia of private and public Chinese and Southeast Asian actors. A regional approach allows us to identify connections and shared processes across Southeast Asian countries. It provides a historically grounded understanding of how the BRI incorporates long‐term interactions with China and more recent partnerships in Southeast Asian countries. The paper paves the way for a research agenda that contests the image of China as a monolithic actor implementing the BRI uniformly and consistently. Further analyses are needed to examine systems and networks of actors as well as the local urban politics that affect the BRI on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, by looking at the role of Taiwanese citizens in civic organisations for marriage migrants, explores how women's agency and negotiation occur not only against masculine dominance within patriarchal family arrangements, but also in alliance with it, when oppression is located somewhere beyond the family. In contrast to literature that depicts marriage migration as a women's and migrants' issue, this paper explores the role of Taiwanese citizens (often husbands in cross‐border marriages) in shaping the evolution of the phenomenon in both the private and public spheres. The aim of this paper is to fill a gap in empirical literature on marriage migration in Taiwan and East Asia, as well as contribute to feminist debates on women's agency in the context of masculine dominance. Building on ethnographic data collected through fieldwork in Taiwan, including in‐depth interviews and participant observation within civil society organisations for marriage migrants, this paper reveals how Taiwanese male citizens and Chinese female migrants responded to the challenges brought by their decision to engage in cross‐border unions by creating a new narrative that could explain their condition of shared oppression and by developing joint actions to address the structural discrimination they faced as cross‐border couples in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews progress towards the establishment of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Power Grid (APG) and the key barriers to multilateral cross‐border electricity trade in ASEAN. An analysis across political, technical, institutional, economic, environmental, social and time dimensions is employed. Using a policy sequencing framework, the paper concludes it remains premature for ASEAN to pursue a strong form of power sector market integration on account of the sizeable barriers that currently remain, especially economic and institutional barriers. Focusing on bilateral power purchase agreements and large‐scale investments in solar and wind power over 2022–2030 would help to develop stronger foundations for ASEAN to make steps towards deeper regional integration in the electricity sector in subsequent years, while also being consistent with renewables adoption goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Originated in southern China, nanyin (南音) is regarded as 'the sound of motherland' (乡音) performed and loved by the Hokkien dialect speakers in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and diasporic populations living in Southeast Asia. Having thrived in transnational spaces, nanyin is now celebrated as a shared heritage in China and Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore. This paper explores the process of heritage‐making, that is, the ways in which the art form and cultural practice of nanyin have been re‐shaped and re‐appropriated by the diasporic communities and the native place to articulate different understandings of the Chinese identity in their distinct nation‐state frameworks. In this ambivalent entanglement, China has re‐appropriated the diasporic history of nanyin to gain international recognition and build soft power through United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Singapore, the Siong Leng Music Association has actively engaged in the heritage‐making of nanyin, leading to the creation of a unique Singapore brand that speaks to hybridity and cosmopolitanism, in the same way as the re‐construction of their Chinese identity. Examining the two processes of heritagisation of nanyin along the China‐Singapore 'heritage corridors', the paper argues that the two ends are connected in important ways but always seek to maintain distance to articulate their own cultural representations at international stages. Thus, nanyin through a comparative perspective enables a critical examination of issues of centre versus periphery, authenticity, and hybridity in the Sinophone world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sponsored by the Asia Pacific Viewpoint, this paper was originally delivered as a keynote address at the New Zealand Geographical Society (NZGS) conference in November of 2020. Building on the conference theme, 'Embracing Diversity: Expanding Geographies', it argues that any consideration of our diverse, layered and growing environments must consider the sacred. Rather than focus solely on what are often deemed 'sacred' sites – or those places marked by physical signposts, particular rituals or sanctioning – it encourages us to think deeply about the everyday sacred though recognising how places feed. Flowing between places and times, between Kumutoto Stream in Te Whanganui‐a‐Tara and Pōhakuloa in Hawaiʻi, this paper is a call to stand on whenua and see it, smell it, taste it and love it. It is an invitation to relate to place on an intimate level. It is a prompting to be critical of the urban and colonially constructed spaces that have become naturalised in our daily lives and to uncover the stories, histories and peoples they work to displace and erase so that we can plant collective roots of resistance and solidarity for better futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhoods are places of social encounters on a daily basis, but they are getting insufficient attention from policy makers and urban studies in conceptualising the city. While the city is often the unit of analysis and boundaries of data collection, social constructions of the city are mostly from neighbourhoods. By shifting the analysis to the neighbourhood scale, we are moving scholarship and research on two fronts. First, we need to think about city building knowledge at a pedagogical and methodological level. Second, we want to examine processes and amenity creation at the neighbourhood scale and make visible the ways these add to city politics, economy, and culture. Articles in this special issue contribute to urban scholarship in the following ways: (i) neighbourhood as a method of urban studies; (ii) understanding urban politics and government; (iii) the role of urban informality and small businesses; and (iv) the role of traditional neighbourhood institutions in the social life of the city. Neighbourhoods can be poorly resourced and inward‐looking, but in many cases localised interests, relationships and organisations are capable of collective action, networking beyond their localities, and inspiring its residents with aspirations of the city's future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no such thing as a neighbourhood. But neighbourhoods are everywhere. Neighbourhoods are regularly described as things, but we cannot touch them. We typically understand neighbourhoods as places, but we can neither see them nor find their edges. The more one stares at a neighbourhood, the more it seems impossible to see it. Nevertheless, there is something—an often intangible and indescribably social something—compelling us not only to imagine but to experience the neighbourhood being stared at as a real thing. In social science analysis, one important thing that we stare at but cannot see is 'the social'. To more properly understand the neighbourhood, then, this paper takes the social seriously. It places people and their relationships at the centre of a project to develop a working understanding of the neighbourhood. Instead of asking, 'What is a neighbourhood?' the paper suggests that we must always begin by asking, 'Who is a neighbourhood?' The empirical basis for the paper's conceptual reflections on the neighbourhood emerge out of a collaborative research project conducted under the auspices of a multicity research project called the Southeast Asia Neighbourhoods Network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic has adversely affected tourism globally, particularly in small island states heavily dependent on tourism. The closure of borders to regular flights for over a year in places such as Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands and Vanuatu, where this research was undertaken, has resulted in massive job losses. Many tourism employees have left the once‐bustling tourist hubs, returning to villages and family settlements. Such clear urban to rural migration behaviours do not dominate movement patterns in the Pacific, but are an important and enduring strategy when shocks strike. In the case of the pandemic‐induced migration to villages, former tourism workers have had to engage in a complicated process of adapting to the communal setting, employing new – as well as traditional – strategies to sustain a livelihood. Thus, this paper will discuss how the pandemic has influenced return migration patterns in the Pacific, and the implications of this shift. Findings suggest that, despite their financial struggles, people have adapted to life in their ancestral homes by rekindling their relationships with kin and increasing their engagement on their customary land. They have relearned about traditional Indigenous knowledge, diversified their skills and reconnected with their social and ecological systems. This spiritual homecoming observed in the Pacific ultimately shows that there can be silver linings to the dark clouds of the current disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon a literature review, this paper first identifies and articulates the importance of studying physical activity and sport (PAS) engagement of new Asian migrants within a particular geographical location – New Zealand. A pilot study with a series of in‐depth interviews highlights some challenges that New Zealand Regional Sports Organisations (RSOs) and new Asian migrants face in terms of PAS engagement. Findings from the pilot study interviews indicate that RSOs in New Zealand are well aware of these challenges, and these challenges mainly stem from a lack of understanding of the needs of new Asian migrant communities. These findings also indicate that ethnicity plays a significant role in influencing migrants' PAS engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instances of civil unrest and disorder have pockmarked the mainly peaceful functioning of multiple Pacific states in recent decades. This paper examines factors which can be seen as fault lines for predicting and mitigating such unrest, with a particular focus on Fiji and Solomon Islands. Drawing on data collected through interviews with youth advocates and activists, it becomes clear that the common justification of 'ethnic tensions' for past unrest and fears of future unrest being necessitated by a 'youth bulge' oversimplifies the complexity of factors that lead to disorder. Issues of land rights, uncertain livelihood futures and public perceptions of inequality provide more salient framings for understanding why citizens engage in unrest. Indeed, it is perceptions of injustice and inequality which may well prove to be the greater indicator of the likelihood of any future destabilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Vietnam's capital city Hanoi, the growing popularity of application based (app‐based) motorbike taxis has offered many inhabitants new opportunities to pursue a mobile livelihood with ride‐hailing platforms. Nonetheless, as this influx of app‐based drivers has hit the city's streets, specific livelihood and mobility frictions have emerged, notably with informal, 'traditional' motorbike taxi drivers, or xe ôm. In this paper we analyse these evolving sites and moments of friction and their impacts on driver livelihoods and mobilities for both driver groups. We draw conceptually on debates regarding mobility, platform economies, and urban livelihoods, while specifically interrogating the concept of friction to highlight three possible analytical applications. Methodologically, we interpret static and ride‐along interviews completed with over 130 drivers. We highlight a range of tactics 'traditional' and app‐based motorbike taxi drivers have employed to respond to rising frictions, defend their 'turf', and maintain their street‐based livelihoods. Driver responses reveal differing access to distinctive forms of social capital and social networks, and contrasting levels of agency regarding their mobilities. By conceptually teasing apart the notion of friction, we wish to expand and deepen understandings of the experiences of vulnerability, precarity, and other impacts of platformisation for different motorbike taxi driver cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss how community relational economic practices in virtual spaces are effective in building resilience because they are borne of and sustained by familiar traditional Fijian values of collective work and social interdependence. The researchers adopted a pandemic‐induced methodology, conducting online‐based talanoa (fluid conversations between two or more people) with a number of people leading, or involved in, these initiatives. We also engaged with online community groups behind a number of initiatives. Examples are provided of online crowdfunding, livestreaming of concerts to solicit donations, and bartering facilitated by social media sites. To conclude, we stress the enduring nature of communal bonds and traditional systems which Pacific people readily adapt and translate into different forums and forms in the face of challenges such as the restrictions and financial hardships caused by COVID‐19. The findings highlight that solesolevaki – a tradition of working together for a common cause – can also occur in the digital era: this demonstrates the deep connection of Fijian peoples and their sense of obligation to one another and to their culture, regardless of where they are in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing demands for energy to boost the Mekong economies have attracted the keen interest of riparian countries for hydropower development. This is evidenced by extensive investment in hydropower projects across the region over the last few decades. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, including officials from Ministry of Energy and Mines, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, private sector actors, civil society organisations and academics, as well as secondary data from public and policy resources, this paper aims to examine how the government of Laos' (GoL) decisions in hydropower development are influenced by regional energy dynamics, and how these shape the country's future energy development. The paper argues that the GoL's decisions on hydropower development are highly dilemmatic, given the current limited institutional capacity in hydropower governance and the accelerating evolution of alternative energy in neighbouring countries. While uncertainty in power markets is recognised, this places greater pressure on new hydropower projects as to how much power could be sufficiently produced and exported. The paper calls for GoL's policy considerations on the development and planning of alternative energy to secure the sustainable and equitable use of water resources as stipulated in the 1995 Mekong Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the adaptation processes with reference to the narrative analysis of human–environment interactions in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. From the political ecology perspective, it focuses on the discourses of the power relationships embedded within the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus over the course of its 'opening‐up and closing‐off' processes (e.g. excavating large‐scale canals for human settlements and agricultural expansion (opening‐up) and human interventions into natural systems through water control structures (closing‐off)). Drawing on empirical data gathered from 33 interviews and nine focus group discussions in three study areas and relevant literature, the paper argues that human interactions with the flood environments are intertwined with adjustments of adaptation patterns as evidenced through three periods: free adaptation (pre‐1975), transitional adaptation (1976–2010) and forced adaptation (after 2010). These processes have witnessed a gradual power shift in the 'state‐society' relations in manipulating floods, which moves from the top‐down towards a more collaborative fashion. By unravelling the political ecology of the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus, this paper exhibits the skewed development in the delta, which is largely bound to short‐term development planning to prioritise local socio‐economic and political objectives. The paper contributes important policy implications for achieving socially just and environmentally sustainable development in the delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing the agricultural sectors of Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore, this paper examines the capability‐building process that encourages productivity and innovation. It describes and explains the origins and subsequent evolution of three forms of agricultural production system, each generating different farming capabilities and distinct forms of competitive advantages. The paper argues that Taiwan's rice‐oriented agricultural production system stimulates both productivity and innovation, helping Taiwanese farmers raise their income level and living standards. The active deployment of state institutions and a malleable labour force, evidenced in the Malaysian palm oil industry, is effective in raising farming productivity but not the ability to innovate. Singapore's aquaculture‐oriented agricultural production system is somewhat useful in stimulating productivity and innovation. Yet the city‐state's inherent lack of space and open international trade regime have circumscribed the potential of its aquaculture industry. It now relies on the regional ethnic Chinese business networks to expand the aquaculture industry's knowledge base and its industrial commons. The principles discussed in this paper provide policy lessons, or at least some initial guidance, for other developing economies aspiring to modernise their agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political intricacies inherent in the management of Southeast Asia's transboundary haze pollution. It argues for a scalar perspective in understanding the complexities of the haze problem. The so‐called 'inconvenient truth' is unravelled by teasing out some issues in the national and regional political ecologies, and the challenges of synchronising co‐operation at the national, regional and global scales. Discussion shows that the 'environment' takes on different meanings at each scale, and both Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) need to recognise this in order to engage more effectively with the transboundary environmental issue. Specifically, inadequate management of forest resources in Indonesia, ASEAN's principle of 'non‐interference' and a lack of a holistic ecosystem perspective are amongst some of the interconnected issues addressed. The paper calls for a greater awareness of structural weaknesses in the management of forest resources and a change in ASEAN's environmental paradigm to a more holistic ecosystem perspective that prioritises not just environmental and human health, but also a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A more polycentric global development landscape has emerged over the past decade or so, rupturing the formerly dominant North–South axis of power and knowledge. This can be traced through more diversified development norms, institutions, imaginaries and actors. This paper looks at one trend within this turbulent field: namely, the ways in which ‘Northern’ donors appear to be increasingly adopting some of the narratives and practices associated with ‘Southern’ development partners. This direction of travel stands in sharp contrast to expectations in the early new millennium that the (so‐called) ‘traditional’ donors would ‘socialise’ the ‘rising powers’ to become ‘responsible donors’. After outlining important caveats about using such cardinal terms, the paper explores three aspects of this ‘North’ to ‘South’ movement. These are (i) the stronger and more explicit claim to ‘win‐win’ development ethics and outcomes; (ii) the (re)turn from ‘poverty reduction’ to ‘economic growth’ as the central analytic of development; and (iii) related to both, the explicit and deepening blurring and blending of development finances and agendas with trade and investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainstream development agenda highlights how important access to health care is for poorer regions of the world. In the area of maternal health, this is expressed in a concern to drive down rates of maternal morbidity and improve access to maternal health care services. While important, the focus on metrics misses the way that relations of care are fundamental to good health. This paper takes an example of a project which is offering a different approach to health and development in the resource scarce environment of Luang Prabang Province, in northern Laos. Here, a group of antipodean midwives has partnered with provincial health authorities to offer a midwifery training programme to health workers posted in remote rural health centres. Supported by the analytical tools of diverse economies, this paper explores how this programme centres relationality, collectivity and an ethic of kindness, and discusses the advantages of being relationship based, small and informal. The paper concludes that this training programme can be understood as an example of a community economy of care: based on global networks of care instead of formal development programmes built on global networks of bureaucracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into rural peasants' livelihood‐related agrarian changes revolving around their three major livelihood strategies in Qinghai. These strategies include peasant agriculture, seasonal migrant labour and caterpillar fungus harvesting, the latter two of which have been adopted since the mid‐1990s. The research particularly focuses on rural Tibetan peasants' lived experiences in their efforts to achieve sustainable livelihoods through these three strategies in a specific village context. In doing so, the paper highlights resources, qualifications, opportunities, changes and challenges in rural peasants' livelihood realities. The empirical evidence from this paper suggests that rural Tibetan peasants' diverse ways of making livelihoods have a greater potential to imagine and build sustainable and equitable livelihoods. I argue that sustainable livelihoods approaches must be pursued in tandem with a diverse economies framework for analysing rural peasants' present way of making livelihoods. This new and critical way of studying rural peasant livelihoods can particularly highlight non‐capitalist economic relations and practices that are the major contributors to sustainable and equitable livelihoods for Tibetan peasants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of climate change in the Pacific and worldwide have prompted researchers and practitioners to find ways to define, assess and support community resilience. This paper presents a community resilience framework to help meet this challenge. While traditional framings of resilience in scholarship are often based on deficit models that focus on vulnerability and gaps, this framework draws on strengths‐based principles and systems thinking approaches to support a holistic and integrated perspective of community resilience. Pacific community resilience literature underpins the framework, which values and prioritises diverse community insights to support locally defined pathways towards adaptation and resilience building. We offer examples of future application of the framework in a range of contexts such as research, programme design, strategic policy, programme implementation or evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although capitalism is now widely seen to be the world's only remaining form of political economy, most discussion of capitalism is vague regarding what it is and gives it little analytical importance. In this paper, I attempt to determine whether two more explicit conceptions of capitalism– those of Ellen Meiksins Wood and Hernando de Soto– can shed any light on the literature on rural smallholder commodity production in the Asia Pacific, and vice versa. I use the papers collected in this volume to analyse the relevance of‘market dependence’ (Wood) and the various‘mysteries of capital’ (de Soto) for agrarian relations in the Asia Pacific. The paper tries to point towards a definition of capitalism that distinguishes it from such related terms as commercialisation, markets, and globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted wide scholarly attention. However, discussions among social scientists on BRI have largely premised on the academic infrastructure in English language contexts. Academic research on BRI in China has often been only briefly mentioned as background information in English language publications. This disjuncture between scholarship on BRI inside and outside China reflects the multiple geographies of BRI. Thinking through BRI in English and Chinese scholarship, this paper considers how existing and future factors such as funding sources, language politics, political framing of the research and institutional surveillance may yield different intellectual spaces for understanding the knowledge production of BRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social support of Timorese workers under the Australian Seasonal Workers Programme (SWP). The SWP, which allows citizens from Pacific Island countries and Timor‐Leste to work in Australian agriculture for six to nine months, has become the major source of remittances for seasonal workers from Timor‐Leste. The paper describes how access to the internet and the availability of social media devices can help to maintain long‐distance family relationships, support migrants' well‐being and alleviate the effects of socio‐spatial segregation to some extent. However, the need to earn remittances in a fixed period of time forces them to accept a trade‐off in the quality of their social and personal lives in rural Australia. According to the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM), isolation and separation from families are part of a rational household strategy to accumulate remittances. This paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the social costs borne by workers and left‐behind households and that the sustainability of the SWP depends to a large extent on the ability of workers to find ways of meeting their needs for social support. The analysis is based on data from participant observation and semi‐structured interviews with 50 Timorese seasonal workers in Australia and Timor‐Leste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tourism industry has long been recognised for supporting women in achieving economic empowerment and social freedom through entrepreneurial and employment opportunities. Widely recognised as a women‐dominated sector, tourism is deemed to be a facilitator of women's development following the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the existing literature suggests, women's involvement in tourism activities supports local economic growth and development, while facilitating social transformation that enables them to create their own identities. Despite these achievements, several studies noted the persisting issues women face in participating in tourism. With the goal of contributing to existing discourses, this paper aims to analyse their experiences in community entrepreneurship by examining several community‐involved tourism enterprises in the Philippines. The findings of this study reveal that women have been largely involved in tourism activities in that country, yet their experiences working in these enterprises vary. The opportunities and challenges identified in this study can serve as a springboard for further analysis of the experience of women working in the Philippine tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the influence of mobility on place attachment has received attention in the literature, this relationship varies between groups. Unlike those who move to enjoy their retirement, for example, older migrants arriving in Shenzhen come to the city 'passively,' drawn by the needs of their children. This paper advances understanding of the concept of place attachment by illustrating the relationships between its components. Analysis of interview and questionnaire responses revealed the following relationships between three focal components of place attachment. Place dependence first directly influenced affective attachment and then indirectly affected place identity. Leisure involvement had a positive impact on place dependence and affective attachment but no direct effect on place identity. Residential satisfaction was an antecedent of all three focal dimensions of place attachment. No direct relationship was found between leisure involvement and residential satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Later‐life migrants, as older people living away from their home nations, occupy multiply‐precarious positions in relation to national COVID‐19 pandemic responses. Concern has particularly centred on this group's increased risk of social and linguistic exclusion. We explore the perspectives of later‐life older Chinese and Koreans living in New Zealand during the nation's COVID‐19 lockdown of 2020. This paper presents a sub‐analysis of culturally‐matched interviews conducted with 3 Korean and 5 Chinese later‐life migrants. These participants are a sub‐sample of a larger qualitative interview study comprising 44 interviews. A social capital approach has been used to aid conceptualisation of participants' experiences and a reflexive thematic approach guided analysis. Despite their underrepresentation in national response efforts, Chinese and Korean later‐life migrants resourcefully participated in ethnically‐specific pandemic initiatives. Three themes identified were: (1) taking it seriously (2) already digitally literate (3) challenges and difficulties. Older Asian migrants engaged in a range of creative strategies to stay connected during COVID‐19 lockdowns which drew heavily on pre‐existing social capital. Future pandemic responses should seek to improve connectedness between the national government COVID‐19 response and older Korean and Chinese later‐life migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change education (CCE) can be an important tool to increase local community resilience. In 2017, the Pacific Community ratified the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific (FRDP) aiming to equip local communities with skills needed to become more climate change resilient. In 2018, Fiji implemented the Climate Change Resilience Programme (CCRP) at the University of the South Pacific (USP), the first of its kind in the South Pacific. This paper evaluates (i) the orientation and aim of the programme and (ii) how different stakeholders influenced the curriculum development process. Tribe's concept of curriculum space is used to highlight the overall aim of the CCRP. Freeman's stakeholder theory allows to identify key stakeholders and their influence on the curriculum. Results indicate that the programme seems to foster climate resilience in the workplace rather than the local community. Unfortunately, current and future community leaders, the notional targets of this course, were almost completely unrepresented in the process to accredit the course, with the body responsible for accreditation being dominated by industry representatives. This study helps to inform the current review of the Regional Certificate Programme to realign it with its initially envisioned community focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using China Migrants Dynamic Survey Project data from 2012 to 2018, this paper evaluates the causal impact of equalisation of basic public health and medical services on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants by the difference‐in‐differences approach. The results reveal that the equalisation of basic public health and medical services has a negative impact on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants of 4%. Male, middle‐aged, and unmarried internal migrants have a much stronger negative response, in terms of long‐term urban settlement intentions, to changes in basic public health and medical services. Moreover, more recent internal migrants, those in first‐tier cities and those in cities in eastern regions also have a much stronger negative response. Mechanism checks imply that the negative impact on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants is caused by social integration decline after implementation of equalisation of basic public health and medical services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will likely increase the scale of this displacement, leading to new and intensified patterns of migration as well as planned resettlement (also known as retreat or relocation) of people from high-risk areas (de Sherbinin et al., [11]). Recognising resettlement as evidence of loss and damage is likely to elevate attention on the seriousness of the impacts of resettlement and resist the normalisation of resettlement as anything other than the option of last resort. Price argues that, '[a]ny laws governing climate change relocations must protect rights, livelihoods, well-being, inclusive decision-making and community initiatives with procedures whilst not relinquishing climate-change-reducing action'. 30 Wilmsen, B. and M. Webber (2015) What can we learn from the practice of development-forced displacement and resettlement for organised resettlements in response to climate change?. [Extracted from the article]

Increasingly the environment, and climate risks in particular, are influencing migration and planned resettlement in Vietnam, raising the spectre of increased displacement in a country already confronting serious challenges around sustainable land and water use as well as urbanisation. Planned resettlement has emerged as part of a suite of measures being pursued as part of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation strategies. This paper provides an historical, political, legal and environmental overview of resettlement in Vietnam identifying key challenges for framing resettlement as climate change adaptation. The paper outlines the scale of past resettlement in Vietnam, identifying the drivers and implications for vulnerability. Detailed case studies of resettlement are reviewed. Through this review, the paper reflects on the growing threat of climate change and the likelihood of increased displacement associated with worsening climate risks to identify some critical considerations for planned resettlement in climate change adaptation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Solomon Islands, women's groups play an important role in promoting socially inclusive development and women's empowerment. In this paper, we summarise the experiences of a 5‐year participatory action research partnership to enhance rural livelihood activities based on aquatic foods. The women's savings groups that participated in this research identified solar‐powered freezers as an innovation suitable to their skills and environment. The 12 freezers we used in our partnership to pilot this innovation had tangible benefits. More than 700 unique users accessed the freezers, 3900 kg of fish was stored and over USD6,000 was saved in total; however, accumulation of savings varied greatly between groups. The women's groups demonstrated that operating solar‐powered freezers can be financially viable, and the innovation integrated well with their livelihood activities. This conclusion provides an alternative to dominant development narratives, which tend to focus on building large‐scale infrastructure, and often exclude women. Existing marketing skills and cooperation were strengths on which the women built. Poor‐quality technology was the biggest impediment to success. Solving this basic problem should be a priority for any future cold‐storage initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities of the Global South constitute a wide band in terms of their integration into the global economy. For cities like Hanoi, the sustained influx of foreign direct investments has propelled them into playing increasingly important roles as manufacturing centres. Along with this new role is the influx of expatriate managers who watch overseas manufacturing subsidiaries. Our paper focuses on Korean expatriate neighbourhoods and their impacts on Hanoi. More specifically, we show how the presence of such communities has resulted in important changes in the host city, firstly in housing typology (such as the introduction of high‐rise mixed‐use complexes), and secondly, in cultural consumption. We argue that Korean privilege, cultural consumption practices, and the desire for support and solidarity within the Korean social network in Hanoi work to create new forms of city‐building knowledge, one that originates from the neighbourhoods of these new and rich settlers in the city. Such forms of knowledge subsequently go on to reshape the economic, cultural and social spaces in the globalising city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores neighbourhood‐based projects such as "local project" (Magnaghi, 2005), the strategic scenarios that set out a process of mobilisation and promotion of local resources, planned and run by local people. It focuses on two residential communities in Wua‐Lai neighbourhood, namely Chumchon Wat Muen‐Sarn and Chumchon Wat Sri‐Suphan. The analysis deals with three local projects: Wua‐Lai Walking Street and Saturday Market, Lanna Arts Study Centre and community museums. It seeks to understand how the residents use silver handicraft, Buddhist temple and local marketplaces for shaping their projects and for connecting the neighbourhood to the city. This study allows us to identify the key elements in place on which the local projects are premised and how these elements reproduce sense of belonging and sociability that create the potential for collective action. It intends to highlight on the neighbourhood capacities, and its limits, to carry out local initiatives and to challenge more economic forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighbourhood gastronomy, the agglomeration of restaurants and smaller eateries in residential urban areas, contributes to the lives of residents and visitors economically, culturally, and socially. Since winter 2020, neighbourhood gastronomy in Asian cities has been severely disrupted by COVID, compounded by many other long‐term stressors. In urban Japan these stresses include gentrification, the aging of proprietors, urban renewal, and corporatisation of gastronomy. Empirically, this paper discusses how independent restaurants in Tokyo contribute to community life by supporting grassroots creative industries, small business opportunities, meaningful artisanal work, convivial social spaces, local cultural heritage, and a human‐scale built environment. The study uses intensive single‐site urban ethnography to discuss how restaurateurs face immediate and long‐term crises at the community level. By using the "neighbourhood as method," a concept of sustainable neighbourhood gastronomy is developed that should be applicable in other urban contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With large tracts of forested land planned for, or already converted to, industrial palm oil concessions, there is a need to better understand the gendered implications for, and responses by, communities affected by such landscape change. This paper examines the differentiated gendered responses and livelihood strategies of Dayak Modang women and men in a hamlet in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, surrounded by industrial palm oil plantations. Informed by feminist political ecology, we investigate how the compounding impact of industrial oil palm – the basis and outcome of enclavement – curtails livelihood options and reinforces gender differentiation in terms of access to and use of customary resources. Gendered inequalities and food insecurity dynamics emerge as a result. We show how, however, that despite gendered exclusions, Dayak Modang women use their own knowledge and practices to diversify livelihoods to negotiate emerging constraints over resource access and use. Our paper demonstrates that ways in which Dayak women 'sustain livelihoods' reflects forms of everyday negotiations and resistance to intensifying constraints over life and livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has opened questions as to the everyday actions of the Khmer Rouge and those living under the regime which led to the Cambodian Genocide. Current work examines the critical cultural geographies of the Khmer Rouge: photography, poetry and music, for example. Music specifically has an interesting underpinning, as it was previously understood to be have been eradicated in the genocide as the standard narrative has us believe. This paper instead investigates the pieces of evidence that exist, which explain the use of music by the Khmer Rouge. I explore the geographies of music beyond the lyrics and look at the transformation and use of music in Cambodia and Democratic Kampuchea. What elements of traditional Khmer music were used during the regime? What modifications occurred to the music of Cambodia during the regime, and how did the Khmer Rouge modify existing Cambodian (and other) music to best fit their desired uses (state‐building and genocide)? This paper goes beyond traditional geographies of music, which rely on lyrical analyses, to bring an ethnomusicological perspective to the work of music and its role in shaping the idea of the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with the pressing challenges of poverty, climate change and disasters, identifying opportunities for interventions that offer positive outcomes across the trifecta of development, adaptation and disaster risk reduction is critically needed. While the overlaps between these streams can be straightforward in theory, practical opportunities for convergence are often lacking. Drawing on 10 focus groups with women market vendors who are part of the UN Women's Markets for Change programme in Vanuatu, this paper explores how markets as places can be useful entry points for this trifecta. Marketplaces can be important sites for developing capabilities and empowering women. As transient and interactive spaces, marketplaces also have inherent strengths that can be built upon and utilised to heighten intervention reach and foster positive outcomes across the development‐adaptation‐disaster trifecta. This paper encourages further exploration into the capacity of marketplaces to achieve this trifecta of outcomes across various scales and locations, and to find solutions to existing challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Western paradigm of foreign aid promoted by the Development Assistance Committee is rapidly losing relevance in development studies and its related academic teaching programmes. The longstanding Southern‐led approaches to aid and development are now coming to the fore. China's Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (finalised at Bandung in 1955) and the Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries (1964) are increasingly emphasised as points of difference to Western aid. It is the rise of the South that has challenged the dominant development paradigm(s) over the past 50 years. The discipline of development studies has been slow to address these challenges in how it trains future development practitioners. I will argue that development studies programmes in Australian universities have a focus on Western foreign aid: either questioning its hegemonic nature as a tool for neo‐liberal or neo‐colonial development on the one hand; or questioning aid effectiveness and how well it addresses contemporary challenges. This paper explores the challenges in examining South–South cooperation and a different development paradigm in producing relevant development studies curricula and pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A diversity of place‐based community economic practices that enact ethical interdependence has long enabled livelihoods in Monsoon Asia. Managed either democratically or coercively, these culturally inflected practices have survived the rise of a cash economy, albeit in modified form, sometimes being co‐opted to state projects. In the modern development imaginary, these practices have been positioned as ‘traditional’, ‘rural’ and largely superseded. But if we read against the grain of modernisation, a largely hidden geography of community economic practices emerges. This paper introduces the project of documenting keywords of place‐based community economies in Monsoon Asia. It extends Raymond William’s cultural analysis of keywords into a non‐western context and situates this discursive approach within a material semiotic framing. The paper has been collaboratively written with co‐researchers across Southeast Asia and represents an experimental mode of scholarship that aims to advance a post‐development agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the international migration of health workers in recent decades has taken place in the context of the transnationalisation of healthcare provision as well as of governance and policy responses. This paper examines international policy responses to cross‐border health worker migration in the Asia Pacific region. These include multilateral (global and regional) and bilateral policy agreements, policy dialogue and programmes of action in relation to key issues of ethical recruitment, ‘circular’ migration and labour rights and key themes of health workforce planning and management. The paper brings original new analysis of international datasets and secondary data to bear on the pressing and important questions of what international policy initiatives and responses are at work in the Asia Pacific region, and what these mean for the nature of migration governance in the region. The paper's focus routes the evidence and argument towards current research and policy debates about the relationship between health worker migration, health worker shortages and poor health outcomes. In this, the paper brings new insights into the analysis of the international policy ‘universe’ through its emphasis on multiple and intersecting cross‐border institutions, initiatives and actors operating across different scales. Coherent national and international strategies for integrated health worker migration governance and policy need to incorporate these insights, and the paper considers their implications for current strategies to attain universal health care and improved health outcomes in Asia Pacific and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tertiary education scholarships for individual students from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Islands, are a key pillar of Australia's development policy. Understanding students' experiences of these scholarships are important in identifying both positives and challenges, which can help foster improved future opportunities. This is especially the case for Pacific Islander students engaging in the Australia Awards Scholarship programme for which there is limited understanding of experiences. As such, this paper identifies that although educational mobility programmes can offer a wealth of opportunities for students, the COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges of such programmes which can inhibit students from reaching their full potential. Educational mobility programmes that effectively address the needs of students and empower them to achieve their goals are required to better facilitate transformative development pathways for Australia's Pacific Island neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ways in which the religious subject can be a contingent position that is responsive to the broader socio‐religious context within which it is expressed. These contingencies are acutely observed among short‐term missionaries (STM), who seek out encounters with difference in pursuit of a more cosmopolitan subjectivity. Yet, while spaces of missionary encounter are inherently relational, the missions literature has tended to downplay the effects of relationality on the realisation of these subject positions. By focusing on the experiences of Singaporean missionaries working among Christian communities in Southeast Asia, I contribute a more nuanced and less pre‐determined understanding of the dynamics that underpin intra‐Asian missionary encounters. Drawing on interviews conducted with Singapore's STM community, I explore how materiality and new media can structure encounters and subject positions within relational missionary space. I also emphasise the limits of relational space by highlighting its untranslatability beyond the missionary terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality requires commitments by policy-makers, practitioners and scholars to transformative practices. One challenge is to assemble a coherent conceptual framework from diverse knowledges and experiences. In this paper, we present a framework that emerged from our involvement in changing market culture in the Pacific, which we name a radical empowerment of women approach. We draw on detailed narratives from women market vendors and women-led new initiatives in marketplaces to explain this approach. We argue that the primary focus of recently developed projects for marketplaces in the Pacific is technical and infrastructural, which is insufficient for addressing gendered political and economic causes of poor market management and oppressive conditions for women vendors. By exploring the complex array of motives and effects of the desire to transform or improve marketplaces in the Pacific, we caution against simplistic technical or infrastructural solutions. This paper also introduces the practice of working as a cooperative, hybrid research collaboration. The knowledges and analyses that we bring to this issue demonstrate that substantive analysis generated from diverse and shifting 'locations' and roles, but underpinned by a shared vision of, and commitment to, gender justice, can provide distinctive policy and research insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viewing the Salween River as a transboundary commons, this paper illustrates how diverse state and non‐state actors and institutions in hybrid and multi‐scaled networks have influenced water governance in general, and large dam decision‐making processes in particular. Putting power relations at the centre of this analysis and drawing on the conceptual lenses of hybrid governance and critical institutionalism, we show the complexity of the fragmented processes through which decisions have been arrived at, and their implications. In the context of highly asymmetrical power relations throughout the basin, and the absence of an intergovernmental agreement to date, we argue that hybrid networks of state and non‐state actors could be strategically engaged to connect parallel and fragmented decision‐making landscapes with a goal of inclusively institutionalising the transboundary commons and maintaining connected local commons throughout the basin, foregrounding a concern for ecological and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the 'the unseen transboundary commons' of residues, nutrients and mobile matter associated with the annual flood pulse that support Cambodia's inland fisheries. We develop the idea of biophysical geopolitics concentrating on political‐socio‐natures rather than the purely biophysical. In the context of multiple mega‐projects in the Basin, we argue the flood pulse has become increasingly compromised, which is an urgent socio‐ecological security issue facing the Mekong region. Scores of livelihoods are dependent on the hydrological flood pulse via the reproduction of the inland fisheries, and a diversity of wetlands resources. Our paper builds on cross‐comparative research focusing on a geo‐strategic mouth of the Tonle Sap (Chhnok Tru) and a transborder area along the Mekong main‐stream (Stung Treng, Cambodia – Champasak, Laos area). By viewing biophysical matter as becoming trans‐border geopolitical matter, we wish to emphasise the critical socio‐ecological character of the hydrological flood pulse, and the urgency of cumulative spatial and temporal changes affecting diverse wetlands communities. Loss of wild capture fisheries and the more unpredictable flows of the Mekong are signs of an emergent and dangerous era of increasing environmental insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]