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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Throughout the process, we think it is probably fair to say, Grove has been the most interested in the potential of the project, Skelton has been tentatively sceptical, and Philogene Heron the most doubtful regarding what an abyssal analytic may have to offer. The crux of the problem which Philogene Heron (and to a lesser extent Skelton) has with the abyssal analytic - the distinctiveness of "abyssal thought" - is that it does not seek to correct the errors of modern reasoning by appealing to the "real" Caribbean. As Grove effectively illustrates through his cross-references to scholars working in many different regions of the world, this is not a shift which is I literally about i the Caribbean but how the Caribbean is figured in, for and through a particular line of contemporary thought. Whereas Grove immerses himself in the literature we engage, Philogene Heron and Skelton declare they are not familiar with much of this scholarship. [Extracted from the article]

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]

Guest Editorial: Crossing the river by feeling the stones - Alternative imaginaries of China and Southeast Asia in contemporary contexts The second aspect is to uncover alternative imaginaries and responses of the Chinese government's official development discourses such as the BRI in Southeast Asia with historically informed perspectives in examining current and future China-Southeast Asia relations as China repositions itself. On 27 February 2021, I The Economist i published a briefing titled "Tea and Tributaries", stating 'in no region is China's influence felt more strongly than in Southeast Asia', noting that historically Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam were important tributaries to imperial China ( I The Economist i , 2021). Indeed, the balancing act of engaging China and United States fruitfully is ASEAN's bread and butter business, which highlights situating China relationally with other major powers in the alternative imaginaries of China in Southeast Asia. [Extracted from the article]

'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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

This commentary serves as a tribute to the late Pow, a remarkable scholar in urban geography and urban studies, summarizing his contributions to urban China studies. It aims to showcase the way in which Pow's work manoeuvred adroitly with an implicit comparative gesture--building a bridge between situated Chinese cases and wider theoretical debates in urban studies in order to enrich both domains. The essay then summarizes Pow's work in the field of urban China studies by focusing on two most emblematic topics that he delved into in great depth, i.e., gated communities and eco-city developments. The final section develops a brief quantitative analysis of the impact that Pow's work has generated. Using the software packages CiteSpace and HistCite, I unpack how his publications are cited and used by scholars, journals, and different areas of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond by Trevor J. Barnes and Eric Sheppard (eds). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban Heat Island (UHI) refers to a phenomenon whereby urban areas experience higher temperatures compared to the surrounding areas. Remote sensing‐based Land Surface Temperature (LST) measurements can be utilized to measure UHI. This study emphasized on geostatistical remote sensing‐based hot spot analysis (Gi*) of UHI in Dhaka, Bangladesh as a way of examining the influences of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) on UHI from 1991 to 2015. Landsat 5 and 7 satellite‐based remote sensing indices were used to explore LULC, UHI and environmental footprints during the study period. The Urban Compactness Ratio (CoR) was used to calculate the urban form and augmented characteristics. The Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) intensity (ΔT) was also used to explore the effects of UHI on the surrounding marginal area. Based on our investigations into LULC, we discovered that around 71.34 per cent of water bodies and 71.82 percent of vegetation cover decreased from 1991 to 2015 in Dhaka city. Contrastingly, according to CoR readings, 174.13 km2 of urban areas expanded by 249.77 per cent. Our hot spot analysis also revealed that there was a 93.73 per cent increase in hot concentration zones. Furthermore, the average temperature of the study area had increased by 3.26°C. We hope that the methods and results of this study can contribute to further research on urban climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International financial centres (IFCs) are regarded as important nodes in governing global flows of money and capital. With increased globalization and rapid technological changes, the rivalry among IFCs has further intensified competition for financial labour—as a concentrated pool of highly skilled finance workers in an open and flexible labour market is crucial to sustaining the competitive dynamics of these urban financial hotspots. This study investigates the importance of different skills and tasks in financial work. Based on surveys and interviews conducted among Singapore's IFC workers, the findings show that cognitive, interpersonal communication and managerial‐leadership skills and tasks are more important in financial work, whereas programming, mathematics and systems‐based skills are perceived to be less important. Additionally, a network visualization of finance occupational skills obtained from Singapore's national skills database reinforces the importance of cognitive and relational skills in that sector. Higher‐order cognitive and relational skills are expected to become even more critical as the financial sector undergoes rapid digital transformation, reinforcing the importance of IFCs as agglomerations of skilled finance talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study highlighted the severity of paddy harvest failure under various water regimes by elaborating on spatiotemporal variations, and estimating the influence of climatic variation on such crop failure in Sri Lanka. A panel data set obtained from 18 districts from 1981 to 2019 was analysed. The Unharvest Index (UI) (i.e., an index that was developed to measure the intensity of crop failure) was estimated according to seasonal water regimes for each district. The panel data regression method was used for analysis. On average, 5 per cent of areas planted for paddy was unharvested annually, fluctuating with the coefficient of variation at 60 per cent with remarkable spatial variation. Harvest failure was more prominent in rainfed production as compared to irrigated cultivation; in dry and intermediate zones as opposed to wet zones; and in the Maha season (October to March) rather than the Yala season (April to September). Climate variability during the crop season significantly altered UI, especially during the early growth phase (Growth Phase I) as compared to the later growth phase (Growth Phase II). Temperature variability increased UI in rainfed production; an increase in the number of days above optimum temperature in Growth Phase I affected UI in minor irrigation; higher rainfall during Growth Phase I reduced UI in rainfed production; and higher rainfall variation reduced UI under all water regimes. Our findings suggest the importance of formulating localized climate‐smart adaptation policies and specific crop insurance programs for rainfed paddy production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic has prompted researchers to rethink their fieldwork. My doctoral fieldwork plans, which involved conducting ethnographic research amongst Afghan refugees and migrants in New Delhi and Kolkata, were upended because of the recurring waves of the pandemic and the lockdowns/curfews that were imposed in their wake (2020−2022). Locked out of my field, my inability to conduct my research as planned amounted to a failure that could not be redeemed, especially because of time constraints. Using autoethnographic vignettes of my encounters in the lead up to the eventual suspension of in‐situ fieldwork, I critically reflect on how I approached and felt towards failures in/of field and how these encounters speak back to the discourse on failure in academia. In doing so, this article advocates for the need to revisit failures simply for what they are, without necessarily demanding and/or (self) expecting that we recast them as stepping stones towards success. By challenging the neo‐liberal desire to re‐present failures in a productive light, I argue we can make greater room for more supportive discussions around failures without committing ourselves to the task of having to find triumph in (every) adversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

And yet they offer a second order reading of, for instance, Glissant's reading of his Caribbean milieu. In the spirit with which this collegial call and response invites my participation, I offer this reply to Chandler and Pugh's ([4]) powerful provocation.[3] I order my remarks as follows. Should the Caribbean be thought of as an "enabling" geography for unpicking such ontological puzzles? It is with a similar approach that I have tried to work out what the "abyssal geographies" frame might contribute (a) to our understandings of Caribbean worlds[1] or (b) these authors' ("abyssal thinkers") bodies of thought. [Extracted from the article]

The influence of environmental familiarity on spatial knowledge development in the context of campuses and their surrounding environments has been well documented. However, existing studies have rarely stressed the distinction between the architectural styles of a campus and its surrounding environment. This study thus targets a campus with a historical architectural style that contrasts strongly with the surrounding modern environment, to gain a fresh view on how spatial knowledge develops with environmental familiarity on such a unique campus. This study recruited 30 freshmen and 28 sophomores to complete landmark selection, route sketching, and distance estimation tasks used to measure their spatial knowledge. The results mainly revealed that spatial knowledge developed by freshmen and sophomores stayed at a similar level as no significant differences were detected. As such, the key implication of this study is that spatial knowledge could be developed to the largest cognitive extent within a short period (i.e., 1.5 months) after students have entered a new campus in which the architectural style contrasts strongly with its surrounding environment. Increased environmental familiarity did not significantly promote their spatial knowledge development as sophomores with about an added year of campus stay performed similarly to freshmen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of rainfall as an environmental factor that influences landscape dynamics is an important and ongoing topic of discussion. This discussion can be centred on the discovery of impacts caused by the increase or decrease in rainfall frequency and intensity. From this perspective, this study sought to analyse the rainfall variability in the Iguaçu River basin, located in the State of Paran-a, southern Brazil. The main objective was focused on the temporal-spatial rainfall distribution in the study area and its interaction with landscape dynamics (different land uses). Precipitation data for the period 1988-2018 were obtained from the 'Águas Paraná' Institute. To calculate the Concentration Index-CI values of the study area, data analysis was performed using the 'R' software with Climatol and Precindicon subroutines of the software, and analysis of Landsat 8 satellite images through ArcGIS. The results indicated that there was a well-defined spatial variability in the study area, as the CIs defined higher rainfall concentrations upstream from the river basin and lower rainfall concentrations downstream--implying that these processes may be strongly associated with land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2010s, the South China Sea (SCS) became a geopolitical flashpoint over the sovereignty of the Paracels and Spratlys. China envisioned its transformation of coral reefs into military bases and island cities as an SCS 'green construction' project. This article analyses how the SCS is discursively construed and practically constructed as maritime national territory, by mobilizing fishing legacies and extending state limits through 'state-led environmentalism' rhetoric. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in China, I show that state-led environmentalism is a hierarchical process that intermittently co-opts and excludes local populations to advance the state's territorial ambitions, which are anchored in geographical, geopolitical and socio-technical imaginaries of 'maritime civilization'. Yet, I also show that in this process, the SCS emerges as spaces of vernacularized political claims. Thus, I argue that territory is not only a political technology of control but also vernacular practice through which universalizing discourses--whether on the Exclusive Economic Zone regime, sovereignty or nature--are adapted and modified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ambivalent relationship between members of the Portuguese-Melakan Kristang minority and the state from the 1940s to the present day through the lens of ethnic politics. It reveals how ambivalent imaginaries of the future have shaped the politics of community members and what strategies they have used to assert their place. Moreover, it analyses how partly contradictory, partly converging imaginaries of the future of the Melaka coastline fuelled the failure of the Melaka Gateway land reclamation project. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork in Melaka in 2018 and 2019, it focuses on the Melaka Gateway, a large-scale land reclamation project located in the Melaka Straits where three man-made islands and one natural island with high-rise buildings, a cruise terminal and a deep sea port have been planned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]