session topics

Session 1-2: 13:30-15:00, 12/9 (Fri), in Clasroom II (in-person)

• ‘Tent Village’ and the Politics of Urban Commons: Exploring the History of Squatting in Osaka, Japan. Takeshi Haraguchi

• Commons Movement and Post-developmental Urban Politics in Korea. Bae-Gyoon Park

• Conditions of urban commons: where the private serves, belongs to, and co-works with the commons. Hanbyul Shim

• Integrating urban commons and community solar studies: a preliminary exploration. Chihsin Chiu

Session 2-2: 15:20-16:50, 12/9 (Fri), in Clasroom II (in-person)

• Radical Left Movements as Infrastructure for Anti-Poverty Movements and Creation of Alternative Spaces in Japan. INABA Nanako

• Rearticulating Commons by a View from East Asia: From a Village Community to Urban Commons. Didi Kyoung-ae Han

• Urban Commons and the politics of populism: a critical reflection on the public and the space politics with the case of ‘Sharing City Seoul’ Plan. Seoungwon Lee

Organizer: Didi K.Han (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Bae-Gyoon Park (Seoul National University )

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

Fundamental structural crises from the global financial crisis to the pandemic and the ecological crisis have pushed us to change our ways of understanding/ordering/altering the world. Many scholars have illuminated commons as a conceptual and practical tool for social transformation (see Bauwens & Niaros, 2017; Boiller, 2014; Caffentzis, 2014; Caffentzis & Federici, 2014; De Angelis, 2007; Ostrom, 1990). But, the concept has been developed into highly diverse, if not contesting, meanings, demonstrating that commons is a fundamentally political concept. Then, how do we develop commons as a practical and theoretical tool to help us reproduce our livelihood in a more liberated way yet without totalising it? Also, the discourse around commons in East Asia has tended to adopt commons as developed in the Anglophone context, either by trying to find traditional examples of common-pool resources or by reclaiming commons against neoliberal capitalism. In other words, albeit with the rich cultural, and socio-economic experiences that cannot be captured by the language of the state and capital in the history of East Asia, we have not discussed such historical and contemporary experiences in their own terms.

In West Europe and North America, the political-economic turn from the welfare state to neoliberalism and the resulting growth in socio-ecological crisis and conflicts have provided an essential ground for the recent growth in the commons-oriented discourses and practices. Unlike this, however, the East Asian countries have experienced rapid and compressed industrialisation led by the so-called ‘developmental states’ – instead of the welfare states –, which have acquired political legitimacy on the basis of their ability to achieve national economic growth, rather than to promote social welfare and wealth distribution (Park, Hill, & Saito, 2012). Under the strong influences of state-led developmentalism and economic nationalism, individualism has never been in East Asia as it is meant and sensed in the Western context while the community has been utilised both as the unit of competition as well as the basic unit of the modern nation-state (Chang, 2014; Han 2021). At the same time, isolated families have roled as welfare providers in many East Asian countries where social welfare and housing provisions were limited (Cook & Kwon, 2007).

In this context, people in East Asian countries have been driven to become financially self-reliant. Furthermore, with the experiences of speculative urbanization, they began to experience real estate speculation, and develop financial literacy much earlier than in Western societies (Song, 2014; Shin, 2014). Even in Japan, the welfare provision was based on personalised home ownership supported by company loans, showing neoliberal traits in advance (Peng, 2000). With the official arrival of ‘neoliberalism’, financialisation and privatisation have proceeded much intensively in many East Asian countries, encroaching a wide range of public fields and legacies of commons. Would it mean that there is now very little room for the imagination of commons in the current East Asian context? How do we turn these historical contours and grounded experiences into critical insights to radically reimagine commons beyond the theories of commons developed in the West?

Of course, East Asia itself is a contested terrain, which entails asymmetrical relationships, not only in terms of size or political and economic power but also based on a shared history yet from different positions. While “East Asia” has constantly been postulated as an economic block or a military alliance by the state and capital, the shared history has been utilised by the states to promote nationalism and restrengthen borders. What is at stake here is, therefore, how to facilitate a process of commoning various physical and sensory borders in East Asia as a people’s level of interaction beyond a state and capital level affair (Chen, 1998).

In this regard, this session aims to bring together papers that radically reimagine ‘commons’ beyond the existing theories of commons by taking East Asia as a new site of critical theory formation. The session also aims to create a field where we share practices and ideas of commons embedded in each context while collectively searching for alternative strategies aiming to counteract the current crises fundamentally caused by the neoliberal accumulation of capitalism. Finally, the session will be the very site of commoning where scholars and researchers from diverse academic fields across different regions of East Asia encounter each other and engage in the collective process of producing the radical common notion by deeply thinking and reflecting on commons from the view of East Asia.

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers that discuss, for example, the following topics and more:

-Rethinking the theory of commons from the grounded experience of East Asia

-Rethinking state, commons, and the public in the context of East Asia

-Conceptualising urban commons beyond traditional commons

-Exploring various experimentations of urban commons in East Asia (housing, urban gardening, alternative financing, transportation, law, energy, knowledge, information, foods, technology, and more)

-Methods for research on commons

-Commoning borders in East Asia (various territorial and sensory borders, migration issues, peace, postnational citizenships, security and more)

Session 7-4: 10:50-12:20, 12/11 (Sun), in Room 202 (in-person, live-stream)

Chair: Sung-Yueh Perng

• Endless frontier? State power, territorial security, and digital innovation. Andrew Stokols; Justin Kollar

• Steering Fin+Tech: the geographical political-economy of China’s innovation economy in the Greater Bay Area. Dimitar Anguelov

• Silicon Republic: Semiconductor Industry and the Ruling Class in Taiwan. Gabriel, Yi-Heng, Lin

• Institutional Memory of Developmentalism: An Evolutionary Economic Interpretation of Smart City Export Policies in South Korea. Jung Won Sonn; Jaemin Song; Chanho Kim; Myungje Woo

• The state’s role in shaping the smart city industry development: the Taiwanese case. Lin-Fang Hsu

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

East Asian cities have been immensely shaped by geopolitical and digital processes in the past decade. Geo-political dynamics in and beyond East Asia affects how the digitization of infrastructure, work, consumption, everyday life and social and political contestation unfolds. This process in turn creates further tension and unintended consequences to digital life in and around the city. We invite submissions that examine opportunities and challenges associated with new geo-politics in digitized East Asia, paying attention to the following issues:

• changing digital cultures, socialities or spatialities

• digital and data infrastructures for social, economic, environmental or political life

• governing digital city, region, state or suprastate

Session 2-4: 15:20-16:50, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 202 (on-line)

• Asian Connections: A Real Estate Boom with Iranian Characteristics. Azam Khatam

• Materialising global China through multimodal and multiscalar circulations. Sin Yee Koh; Hyun Bang Shin

• Questioning Asian urbanism: grounding the Belt and Road Initiative in Piraeus, Greece. Alberto Valz Gris; Francesca Governa

• Questioning the ‘Asian model’ thought situated research: The heterogeneity of Chinese infrastructure-led developments. Leonardo Ramondetti; Astrid Safina

Session 3-2: 17:00-18:30, 12/9 (Fri), in Classroom II (in-person)

• From Globalizing Taipei to Learning Amsterdam: Referencing as a politicalizing strategy for urban development in Taiwan. Yi-Ling Chen; Chantalle Elisabeth Rietdijk

• New urban development as the arena of competition: Diverse strategies and behaviours of Asian capital and expertise in New Clark City, Philippines. Do Young Oh; Hyun Bang Shin

• Yearning for Singapore? Blockchain imaginaries, regional development, and Korea’s special economic zones. Jamie Doucette; Seung-Ook Lee

Organizer: Do Young Oh (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) and Hyun Bang Shin (The London School of Economics and Political Science)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

This session aims to bring together papers investigating various aspects related to the idea of exporting Asian urbanism within and outside Asia. One recent trend in international development is the rise of Asian cities such as Shenzhen and Shanghai in China, Singapore, or Songdo in South Korea as reference points for developing cities in the Global South (Shin, 2019). These Asian cities have become replicable models for other cities in developing countries to solve their urban problems and achieve their growth (ibid.: 14). For instance, the innovative urban planning models of Singapore are marketed and exported to other developing countries in Asia (Chua, 2011), leading to the rise of what can be dubbed as ‘intra-Asian urbanism’ (Percival and Waley, 2012). Songdo, a new city on reclaimed land in South Korea, is often branded as the ‘first smart city’ and publicises itself as a ‘ubiquitous eco-city’ (Shwayri, 2013) that gets referred to by smart city experiments around the world, including in Africa (e.g., Nigeria) and Latin America (e.g., Ecuador). The destinations of Asian urbanism are also not limited to lower-income economies but also high-income ones like Kuwait.

Such export occurs through the use of particularistic urban discourses. The Asian model was pioneered by Japan, which was built upon its experiences of rapid economic and urban development. Japan’s ODA programmes focused on large-scale infrastructure development projects in Asia between the 50s and 70s, distinguished from the US and European models due to Japan's strong focus on economic development (Sasada, 2019). As latecomers, China and South Korea follow a similar strategy by promoting their rapid urban development experiences (Kim et al., 2020). Singapore’s government-led industrialisation-based urban development projects in Indonesia and China also have become a model for other countries (Yeoh et al., 2003). Then, smart urbanism has emerged as the most frequently sought-after discourse in recent years as a technological fix to urban problematics. However, as Kim et al. (2020) argue, their approaches are somewhat variegated, and there are substantial knowledge gaps

In this regard, to gain a deeper and contextualised understanding of this emerging circulation of urbanism and capital as well as knowledge transfer from Asia, we invite theoretical, methodological and empirical papers to promote an in-depth understanding of how circulations of Asian urbanism, knowledge and capital expand and diversify. The questions and perspectives we intend to address in this session centre on, but are not limited to:

i. Models of Asian urbanism

• Different urbanism models promoted by Asian countries

• Exportation of these models to different continents

ii. Circulation of capital and expertise in Gulf cities

• Existing ‘urban knowledge’ markets in Asian cities

• New trends in these markets, including the emergence of Asian urbanism

iii. Reproduction of hybrid urban development models in destination cities

• Reproduction and representation of urban development ideologies, knowledge and expertise in destination cities

• Differences between their origins and actual outcomes

Session 7-2: 10:50-12:20, 12/11 (Sun), in Classroom II (in-person)

• Po-Yi Hung (Organizer, National Taiwan University)

• Ian Rowan (Organizer: National Taiwan Normal University)

• Shu-Wei Huang (National Taiwan University)

• Da-Wei Kuan (National Chengchi University)

• Cheng-Heng Lu (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)

• Brian Scanlon (National Taiwan University)

Organizer: Po-Yi Hung (National Taiwan University); Ian Rowan (National Taiwan Normal University)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Panel

Session Abstract:

This forum develops the notion of Taiwan as an archipelago rather than an island. It explores new approaches to Taiwan’s shifting boundaries, contested sovereignty, and interconnected ecology. In doing so, it opens up new avenues for border studies of the wider region.

Border studies has undergone a series of turns in recent years, from “processual” to “mobility” to “material” approaches. As valuable as these turns’ insights have been, most continue to predicate on a terrestrial notion of borders, leading some scholars to propose a decentering of land in favor of the maritime as an analytic frontier (Hung and Lien 2022). In a similar vein, many in the growing field of Taiwan Studies have treated Taiwan as a transnational or transcultural assemblage, further challenging the boundedness of terrestrial and island borders. Reconsidering these turns and trends through an archipelagic lens, the forum follows the proposition of Baldacchino and Tsai (2014) that, “Thinking with the archipelago can change how we think about the world and our place in it,” in Taiwan and beyond.

The scope for the theme is broad and capacious. One avenue is the notion of the “maritime gray zone,” whether in the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, Pratas Island in the South China Sea, or the heavily militarized islands of Kinmen and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait. These gray zones are archipelagic enclaves not only for human, but more-than-human kinds of life. Another possible direction may go beyond Taiwan’s administered territories, to consider the dispersed people, places, and polities that constitute the global Taiwanese diaspora.

Session 2-3: 10:50-12:20, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 305 (in-person, live-stream)

Chair: Kristina Karvelyte

• Arts-led or arts-fed? The implications of culture-led urban regeneration on Taiwanese artists. Kristina Karvelyte

• Enclosure and its limit: compare the land accumulating path of science park in Shanghai and Taichung. LI Qi

• Geographies of smart urban futures: The emergence and implementation of Singapore’s E-Payments initiative. Si Jie Ivin Yeo

• How is an Internationalized Urban Landscape Produced in the Chinese City? Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City in Guangzhou, China. Yichi Zhang

• The Impact of Japanese Government's Sharing Economy Regulatory Policy on Business Development - A Comparative Institutional Analysis. Shao Hsun Wang

Session 3-3: 17:00-18:30, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 305 (hybrid)

Chair: Creighton Connolly

• Building a ‘Smart State’: Analysing the discourses and rationalities of smart-led urban development. Creighton Connolly

• Contextualising smart city politics: Smart city initiatives and post-politics in Seoul, South Korea. Sangwon Chae; Kwon Heo; HaeRan Shin

• Ecofeminist Coops as a Regeneration Strategy in the Global South. Asli Telli

• The power of the ancestral philosophy of Alli kawsay (Buen Vivir) in the indigenous movements of Colombia - Ecuador vs. the exclusion by the big mining development, contribution to the Rights of Mother Nature from the global south in middle of climate change. Eduardo Erazo Acosta

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

Regenerating city towards the smartised/sharing economy are promoted as the ‘new’ developing paradigm to many urban environmental and socio-economic problems in global south. Diverse policies, forms and trajectories of being smartised are idealised, assembled and normalised to regenerate regions, cities, neighbourhood and buildings in line with political, economic and civil agendas of further modernisation. Particularly in East Asia, such agendas have re-shaped state’s urban regeneration schemes, or sugar-coat the old ideology of property-led development or developmental state. Nevertheless, we have less understanding and comparison of inter-dependence between concepts of smart-led development and urban regeneration within different non-western context, and the ways in which such concepts transfer between Global North and South, and shape the socio-political assemblages to generate the new urban objects and subjects of governance on the ground. We wish to “decolonize” the above phenomena by excavating and foregrounding the following issues:

• mechanisms and rationalities of smart-led urban regeneration

• intersections, circulations, and representations of smart-led urban policies

• new forms of inequalities and geographies produced by smart-led regeneration

Session 1-3: 10:50-12:20, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 305 (hybrid)

Chair: Iam-chong Ip

• A Stepstone to a Greater World: From Hong Kong, China to China’s Hong Kong by Issuing the National Security Law. CHAN On Loi

• Emptying Oneself and the City: A New Understanding of Hong Kong’s New Wave of Emigration. Iam-chong Ip

• Hong Kong as method? Navigating China’s political prospects in the wake of the National Security Law. Alessandro Albana

• Recent Hong Kong Family Migrants to London: A Study into Migrant Families Educational and Settlement Strategies. Henry, Hin Yan Chan

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

In the two decades since the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Hong Kong has experienced a number of social movements. The outbreak of the anti-amendment movement in 2019 not only exacerbated the conflicts between Hong Kong and China and within Hong Kong society, but also affected cross-strait relations and China's diplomatic relations with other Western countries. The passage of the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020 symbolizes the full institutionalization of Beijing’s control over Hong Kong. The social changes in Hong Kong since the transfer of sovereignty show the influence of Hong Kong on global geopolitics in the process of its development from a colony, a global city to China’s special administrative region. Against this context, this panel calls for papers address the changing geopolitical position of Hong Kong in the post-National Security Law era, focusing on the geopolitical relations between China and Hong Kong, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and China and the West.

• the national security law and its impact

• the changing geopolitical positions of Hong Kong

• Sino-Hong Kong relationship

Session 1-4: 10:50-12:20, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 202 (in-person, live-stream)

Chair: Chantalle Elisabeth Rietdijk

• A Win-Win Solution or Fallacy? Investigating the Hybridity of Impact Investing in Cambodia's Microfinance. Kyungmin Park

• Government-led Development of the Rental Housing Market in Taipei City: The Creation of a Generation Landlord? Chantalle Elisabeth Rietdijk

• The "Taipeilized" Suburbs? Keelung suburban areas transformation and planetary urbanization in Taipei Metropolitan Area. Jing-Ren, Yang

Type of Session: Typical Presentations

Session 5-4: 15:20-16:50, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 202 (on-line)

• Original content producers and contemporary debates on labour law and policy. Julia Louise Tomassetti

• Platformation and Production Reconfiguration of the creative and cultural industries under the Covid-19: Some insights from the cases in Hong Kong. CHAN Yuen Tung David

• Platforms, Informality and Citizenship: Perspectives from Vietnam. Marie Gibert-Flutre

• Short video platforms and the “localised marketisation” of grassroots indigenous media. Wei Wang; Hung Yu

Session 6-4: 17:00-18:30, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 202 (hybrid)

• “Women as an island”: Becoming a career girl on platforms. June Wang; Yishake Gulinigaer

• Digital Sovereignty against Global Platform Capitalism? An Alternative Model for East Asia. Cartus Bo-Xiang You

• Green fintech as environmentality: the case of the Ant Forest app in and out of China’s borders. GIULIA DAL MASO

• How repeated unpredictability shapes inequality: Exploring the time-space of short-term workers in Seoul, South Korea. Yoonai Han

• Last-mile platforms, labour, and risk in Nairobi, the “testbed” city. Andrea Pollio; Liza R. Cirolia

Organizer: June Wang (City University of Hong Kong) and Julia Tomassetti (City University of Hong Kong)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

We aim to assemble interrogations to the variegated and actual experimentations on the transnational landscape of ‘platform economy’ by the international political economy of platforms. Two currents of research are of particular interest.

First, we are interested in the international political economy of platforms, meaning how platform companies transcend sectoral and territorial boundaries to gain, exercise and justify their power. We will examine the tension between the state’s territorial sovereignty and ‘functional sovereignty’ that platforms advocate and claim based on infrastructural power. Through opaque decision-making on matters such as algorithms, gatekeepers such as search engines and social networks shape the realities of billions by governing information flows. If code is law, its makers, digital platform and firms are powerful sovereigns in their respective fields (Pasquale, 2018). They not only assume the role of government and courthouse to run dispute resolution schemes to settle conflicts between buyers and sellers (Rory van Loo, 2020) but also intervene in law or regulation-making (Pinto et al., 2019). As digital firms move to displace more government roles over time, the logic of territorial sovereignty is replaced with functional sovereignty.

Second, we are interested in the organisation, experience, meaning and mobility of platform labour. Platforms become the intermediary agents that give rise to a revised, flexible employment regime, linking different types of precarious workers, such as content producers without formal jobs and idle labour in the supply chain. In addition, new business practices, combined with “labour-saving technologies” in logistic platforms such as delivery platforms, have triggered the flexibilisation of transportation and distribution workers (Danyluck 2018). Cheap labour forces are re-created, and workers' unions and regulations are weakened through outsourcing and subcontracting systems facilitated by the platform companies (Bonacich and Wilson 2008). This perspective also highlights the role of the state in the process of internationalising capitals as local labour systems are mutually constructed through the infrastructural project of platforms.

For a comparative purpose, we welcome studies from different cities/regions and insights from various perspectives, from the law, space, communication, data science, and public policy. Together, these inquiries will illuminate how the platform economy is materially and ideologically reshaping essential Fordist distinctions between hierarchies and networks, markets, state and the society, formal and informal work, professionalisation and amateurism, and value creatine and extraction.

Session 4-1: 10:50-12:20, 12/10 (Sat), in Classroom I (in-person)

Chari: Yu-Ting Kao

• Foreign Labor Workforce, Migration Patterns And Issues: Taiwan Semiconductor Industry And Human Capital Flows. HSIN-YU YEH

• From Homecoming to City-Homemaking: The Emergence of Aesthetic Returnees in Changhua City, Taiwan (2010-2020). Kao, Yu-Ting

• Risk and self-protection: an ethnography of migrant labor in Taiwan’s fishing and manufacturing industries. Samia Dinkelaker

• The impact of Labour Market Intermediaries on Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan: migration infrastructure. Tingchien Chen; Daniel Schller

Session 5-3: 15:20-16:50, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 305 (hybrid)

Chair: Mizuuchi Toshio

• Brokerage practices, labour relations and Taiwan’s evolving migration infrastructure in geopolitical and historical contexts. Yannis-Adam Allouache

• Chinese-investment-led Gentrification without Displacement in the Metropolitan Area of Osaka and Tokyo. ZHU ZECHUAN; Zhu Zechuan; Lu Lijun; Nomura Yuhei; Mizuuchi Toshio

• Gazing Women: Nostalgia and the Identification within the Transcultural Framework. Leigh Lin

• Intersectionality and assimilation: An analysis of Mongolian marriage migration to South Korea. Martina Vittoria Sottini

• New urban and regional transformation triggered by a shift in Japan's immigration administration that has opened the door to settlement for grey- and blue-collar foreigners. Mizuuchi Toshio; Zhu-Zechuan

Session 6-3: 17:00-18:30, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 305 (hybrid)

Chair: Yuling Song

• A Reconsideration of Chinese Migrant Women in Transnational and Family Migration. Chieh Hsu

• Temporariness and Uncertainties in Life: A Study of Taiwanese Temporary Academics’ Negotiations of Professional Identity, Work–Life Balance, and Future Imaginations. Hsien-Ming Lin; Yu-Chun Huang; Yu-Hsien Sung

• The Way Home – Drifting or Settled down of Taiwan's Returning Talents from China and ASEAN. Yuling Song

• Young People’s Desire to Move and Temporary Spatial Mobility: Taiwanese Pre-School Teachers Working in Singapore. Chia-Yuan Huang

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

Most global migration is thought to occur between Global North and South, and hints at the respectively success or failure of these expatriates. However, in East Asia, which is neither South nor North, but somewhere in between, there is a special phenomenon of population migration, which has transcended the North-South geographic framework and been influenced deeply by geopolitics. The “South-South” mobility of migrant workers, talents, students, etc. within the region portrays the characteristics of the current population migration in East Asian and fills the gaps in the Global North-South migration discourse. In this session, we hope to focus on several topics:

• migrant workers in East Asia

• female expatriates in East Asia

• talent flow and knowledge transfer in East Asia

• international students in East Asia

• returning migration in post-Covid19 in East Asia

Session 8-4: 15:20-16:50, 12/11 (Sun), in Room 202 (hybrid)

Chair: Chih-Ming Wang

• Anticipating the legacy of wastewater surveillance: a spatio-legal geography of infrastructure and disease in Singapore. Dhiraj Nainani

• Assessing the spatial pattern of health inequalities and driving blueprint during COVID-19 pandemic in Kolkata Municipal Corporation, West Bengal (India). Biraj Kanti Mondal; Tanmoy Basu

• Informality, solidarity and support: exploring the tradition of Okinawan Moai (模合) in post-pandemic Japan. Abel Polese

• The Experience of Foreign Domestic Workers’ Work and Lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case in Hong Kong. Wong Mei Ling, May

• The return of the state, human rights and ecological security. Byung-Doo Choi

Session 9-4: 17:00-18:30, 12/11 (Sun), in Room 202 (in-person, live-stream)

Chair: Michal Jan

• Are We in the Same Planet to Feel the Post or Prolong Covid Geography? Reality of Spatial De-liberalization in Urban China. Jeffrey J. Guo

• The Spread of Disinformation under the Influence of the China Factor/ A Case Study of the "Face Mask Chaos" in Taiwan. Huang Hsin Wei

• Hyperreality and Personal Geographies. Michal Jan Grzegorzewski

• Rethinking human-mountain relationships in Eastern Taiwan: Mobilities of Indigenous Bunun, state infrastructure, and hiking. Ying-tzu Ena Chang

• The Aftermath of COVID-19: The Nuances of the ‘Digital Divide’. Luba Pirgova-Morgan; Iveta Todorova-Pirgova

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

The global pandemic has made explicit what Bruno Latour once said, "We do not live on the same planet." Indeed, COVID-19 has exposed the inequality of our world which is geographically marked, conditioned by race, class, and gender, and exacerbated by geopolitical calculations. The new geopolitics of East Asia has to grapple with the inequality of health, mobility, and security that is ushered in by the pandemic and intensified by the new Cold War between the US and the PRC. This topic invites geographers and cultural critics to engage in the imagination and analysis of post-Covid geography by tackling the issues of inequality, as currently manifested in the global disparity of vaccine distribution, the reduced mobility due to public health concerns, and the breaches of security produced by the coupling of climate change, pandemic racism, and global geopolitical shifts, such as the withdrawal of U.S. military from Afghanistan. We believe it is imperative to the rethinking of geopolitics as a humanity-based project, rather than an inter-state dynamic. We invite scholars to consider:

• intensified global inequalities across geography, race, class, and gender in the pandemic

• impacts on the human rights for health, mobility, and survival in the context of geopolitical realignments

Session 8-1: 15:20-16:50, 12/11 (Sun), in Classroom I (hybrid)

• Towards a Land Situated Spatial Story as Informed by the Tongbian Philosophy. Wing-Shing Tang; Solly Benjamin

• SinoKleptopia? Understanding Recent Attempts to Transform Colombo. Nihal Perera

• Social Urbanism – Contesting Medellín’s Redevelopment. Angela Stienen; Omar Alonso Urán Arenas

• What about gentrification at face value? A perspective of (re)densification on the Nishinari Special Zone Project in Osaka. Geerhardt Kornatowski; Toshio Mizuuchi; Johannes Kiener

Session 9-1: 17:00-18:30, 12/11 (Sun), in Classroom I (hybrid)

• New Cities in China and the Territorial Urbanization of Towns. Carolyn Cartier

• “The Rental Society”: Regulation and Experimentation of a Paradoxical Norm in German Cities. Christina West

• Emplacement With The Center: Re-Making City And Self In Shenzhen’s Urban Margins. Shaun SK Teo

Organizer: Carolyn Cartier (University of Technology Sydney) and Wing-Shing Tang (Independent Scholar)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

This session, “Post-gentrification: Urban Redevelopment on ‘X’ Continents,” presents new research on urban redevelopment and simultaneously problematizes the rubric gentrification in favor of broader examinations of comparative urban transformation. Post-gentrification codes neither a time nor an argument for the absence of gentrification. Post-gentrification marks the pressing need to reevaluate the tendency for copy-and-paste accounts that assimilate Asian realities into pseudo-global norms. The problem of command-C command-V is not just the problem of western concepts awkwardly applied to different urban histories, or lack of research innovation and geographical imagination, or widespread popular discourse of gentrification in Asia that conflicts with scholarship’s precise theoretical and empirical work. The problem of mere application backgrounds and even leaves out critically significant realities in favor of selectively matching empirics to categorical notions of theory, which, in turn, forestalls both general understanding of actual conditions in Asia and contextual and transnational theory-building. This session supports research dealing with messy empirical findings, challenges of conceptualization on the state-market spectrum, state power and its absence in normative urban theory, and the many processes of urban redevelopment that ‘gentrification’ does not see.

Session 4-3: 10:50-12:20, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 305 (hybrid)

• Jim Glassman (University of British Columbia)

• Woo-cheol Kim (University of British Columbia)

• Chris Meulbroek (University of British Columbia)

• Prashant Rayaprolu (University of British Columbia)

Organizer: Jim Glassman (University of British Columbia)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Panel

Session Abstract:

The end of the Cold War was hoped by some to bring prospects for a “peace dividend” and forms of development that would be devoted less to military projects and more to civilian-oriented projects of industrial growth. That promise has rarely come to full fruition, and this panel explores cases which illustrate some of the reasons why. Focused on specific cases of industrial development in South Korea (Ulsan and Pyongtaek/Hwaesong) and the United States (Seattle and Austin), the panel explores varies ways in which military spending and military-industrial connections have continued to drive industrial development in fields such as ICT, medical industries, and media.

Session 6-1: 17:00-18:30, 12/10 (Sat), in Classroom I (in-person)

• Hyun Bang Shin (The London School of Economics and Political Science)

• Nik Theodore (University of Illinois Chicago)

• Roger Kiel (York University)

Organizer: Hyun Bang Shin (The London School of Economics and Political Science)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Panel

Session Abstract:

This panel session, led by the editors of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), is to introduce the journal to conference participants who may have interests in publishing with the journal. Based on the journal's keen interests in nurturing authorship among critical urban scholars working on Asia, the session would include introductions by the journal about author guidelines and a summary of the latest updates on the journal's operation including its future development strategies.

Session 7-3: 10:50-12:20, 12/11 (Sun), in Room 305 (hybrid)

Chair: Kuang-Chi Hung

• A Musealised Geography of Postcolonial Asia: Initial Points of Geopolitics and Epistemology. Francis Chia Hui Lin

• Ancestral Philosophy of Alli Kawsay, the voice of the Mother Nature in middle of antropoceno. Eduardo Erazo Acosta

• Extractive industry, indigenous diaspora, and the politics of natural resources in Taiwan: The history and political economy of Indigenous land struggles in the Taroko area. Chen Yi-Fong

• Reflecting on the Geopolitics of 'Critical Zones' in Chin. David Edwards

Session 8-3: 15:20-16:50, 12/11 (Sun), in Room 305 (in-person, live-streamed)

Chair: HaeRan Shin

• Environmental justice as a theory of environmental conflict: Herders’ perceptions of grassland conservation in Inner Mongolia, China. Xinxin WANG; Kevin Lo

• Flexible Landscaping: Potted Plants as Urban Governance Strategies in Taipei. Rui Liu; Chih-Hung Wang

• Ride a White Horse: Equine Historical Geographies of North Korea. Robert Winstanley-Chesters

• South Korean attitudes towards Joseonjok as social responses to geopolitical dynamics. HaeRan Shin

• The “New Cold War” and the Restructuring of Geoeconomic Social in Taiwan. Szu-Yun Hsu

Type of Session: Subtheme of the Conference

Session Abstract:

The past few decades have witnessed geographers’ rising enthusiasm in redefining the term “geo.” Geographers literally interrogate animals, plants, fungi, soils, waters, rocks, and air, in the hope of unveiling their respective agency and therefore revealing more earthly, more-than-human and down-to-earth geopolitics. This conference seeks papers that replace East Asia in geopolitics as such. We are particularly interested in but not limited to the following topics:

• climate change and justice

• environmental conservation and its discontents

• environmental protests and emerging forms of environmentaliy

• ontological politics

• affective politics of companion species

• relocating East Asia in Anthropocene

Session 4-4: 10:50-12:20, 12/10 (Sat), in Room 202 (on-line)

• Escape, family network and shadow border-crossing system: Mainland Chinese students’ ‘home return’ amid the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong. Victor Chan

• Manoeuvring the sanitized border: Macao’s petty traders under COVID-19. Eva Hung; Saul Chan

• Sanitized and sanitizing borders: China’ border policies amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yuk Wah Chan　

• Sino-Kazakh cross border freight transport: Zero-COVID, multiple scrutinization and cascading marginalization. Linda Yin-nor Tjia; Azhar Serikkaliyeva

Organizer: Yuk Wah Chan (City University of Hong Kong)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

Border regions are often spaces where different levels of national powers are at work, and where diverse cultural forces converge. At times of diplomatic tension and political struggles, borders can be limiting and constraining. Yet, border reopening in Asia and diplomatic amiability has helped thrive many borderlands and develop them into prosperous zones. Ever since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, border-crossing has been seriously affected. Country lockdowns and border closures have virtually prompted borderlands as spaces of denial, denying crossing of people and flows of material goods. China’s insistence on a zero-COVID policy has imposed strict control at its border regions and different policies to ‘sanitize’ its borders.

In the name of health security, material surfaces are frequently sanitized, people are tested multiple times, and economies frozen. Such policies often go beyond the medical sense of sanitation, and serve multiple goals including social sanitization, enhanced public surveillance and heightened vigilance in order to avoid entries of the unwanted. While there has been top-down sanction and prohibition, there were also ground level resilience and survival strategies that tried to subvert the prevalence of control. The panel seeks to bring together various Chinese borderland stories under the effect of China’s ‘sanitized border’ and COVID-eliminating policy.

Session 3-4: 17:00-18:30, 12/9 (Fri), in Room 202 (hybrid)

• Building community epidemic prevention resilience systems: An exploratory study on environmental planning and design combined with responsive land-use models in the post-pandemic era. Rung-Jiun Chou; Feng-Tzu Huang; Yi-Lun Chung

• Effect of natural features outside the windows of quarantine hotels on people under quarantine. Min-Hsuan Yen; Yen-Cheng Chiang

• Emotional geography in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis: The dynamic complexity of affective atmosphere and affective governance. Sang-Ju Yu　

• Improving the Life Quality of Community Residents through Participatory Design: A Case Study of the Chengdu Neighborhood Community. Chung-Heng Hsieh; Yu-Yuan Yang

• The betweenness, Janus-face’s state and Schrödinger's cat: a research framework seeking to investigate the “gray” characteristics of digitalizing/smartizing the urban governance in the global east. Wen-I Lin

Organizer: Wen-I Lin (National Taipei University)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

By using a case study of Taoyuan Aerotropolis and related regeneration, this proposal seeks to develop certain key “subjected knowledges” and academic contributions in relation to Taiwan’s reformative agenda of smartizing and digitalizing spatial governance. Firstly, it aims to explore the “subjected knowledge” or missing pieces of Robinson (2006) ordinary city between the Global North/South. Taiwan’s ordinary cities, such as Taoyuan, refer more to what Muller (2020; 2021) has called recently – the global East, that is situated in/between the dualism of Global North/South. They are covered by with a progressive surface but mixed with the “old” agenda of modernity or the legacy from non-western colonialism (not like global South). They are good in learning from everywhere, particularly the non-western competitors, such as cities of Japan or Korean, to shape their not-so-global dispositive/assemblage of governance. The second “subjected knowledge” relates to the critical review of spatial representation (or mapping) and related different “regimes of governance” (regime of truth, representation and simulation) between the “new” digitalzing/ smartzing agenda and “old” customary/legal institution. This could refer to the literature of governance about the Janus-face’s state, but with the new version. Thus, it is important to investigate the complexity and tension of coexisting and co-working situation between the paper and multiple-layers of digitalizing versions of spatial representation within the process of governing land use and regeneration. This also shapes the fragmented/collage city that means digitalizing the territory by different spatial and temporal phases without well coordination and consistence. Finally, the diverse digitalizing and smartizing agendas might produce the more precise and updating truths in theory, but also expose more uncertainties and spatial problems than before, particularly in the territory of fast urbanization (like Taoyuan Aerotropolis). The inconsistent truths of land management, and conflicts between these truths and realities can be conceptualized as a socio-political status of 'gray zones’ or the metaphor of the Schrödinger's cat.

Session 4-2: 10:50-12:20, 12/10 (Sat), in Classroom II (in-person)

Chair: Hsu, Jinn-yuh (Geographer, National Taiwan University)

• Wang, Chih-Ming (Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica)

• Chu, Ling-I (Geography, National Changhua University of Education)

• Guo, Pei-yi (Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica)

• Hung, Kuang-Chi (STS researcher, National Taiwan University)

• Ko, Chia-Cian (Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University)

• Lin, Guo-Sian (Graduate Institute of Taiwan History, National Chengchi University)

Organizer: Jinn-yuh Hsu (National Taiwan University)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Panel

Session Abstract:

The panel will explore the positionality and advantage of island study in Taiwan. Although Island studies attempts to critically engage with Western knowledge systems, it inevitably falls back into the binary frameworks of mainland/island, colonial/colonized, Western/non-Western, core/periphery, and development/protection. The special historical context makes Taiwan fall between and at the same time excluded from any of these binary frameworks. As a post-colonial country, Taiwan was on the frontier of the expansion of Japanese imperialism in the late 19 century, but became the offshore island of the Republican national territory after the WWII, and soon the Civil War between the Nationalists and Communists resulted in a Cold War Island in 1949, and has its own political and economic system separated from the Communist China in the mainland. As a member of the East Asian Newly Industrializing Countries, Taiwan has not been truly accepted as part of the global North, but hesitates to be placed in the global South. Taiwan is at the interstice of compressed development and premature deindustrialization, and the in-between space of the frontier of competing grand powers from different continents. In other words, relational and interstice geography will feature the island study in Taiwan.

We, a group of scholars from varied disciplines, including geography, history, anthropology, STS (science, technology, and society), and literature studies intend to take the strategic geography of Taiwan as an interstice and in-between spaces to join the island studies around the world. In the panel, we will treat islands not merely as concrete entities but also as metaphors of connectivity and conviviality that Epeli Hau’ofa calls the “sea of islands.” Through a relational comparison of islands that are subjected to what Vernadette Gonzalez calls “militourism,” we seek to bring together East Asian islands with Southeast Asian and the Pacific islands to better examine the contours of empire and explore how an archipelagic imagination may deepen our understanding of islands in resistance to colonial possession, imperial domination, and capitalist appropriation.

Session 5-2: 15:20-16:50, 12/10 (Sat), in Classroom II (hybrid)

• Financialisation and urban waterfront redevelopment in Shanghai. Yawei Chen

• Resistant, Path Creation, or Resilient? An Empirical Study of 87 Innovation Cities Worldwide. Chan Yuan Wong; I Kim Wang

• REVISITING LAND FINANCE AND LAND DEVELOPMENT IN TAIWAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY. Yeng-Chieh Tsai; Shih-Jung Hsu

• The role of urban intermediary organisations in market-oriented planning systems-using Taipei Urban Regeneration Centre as a case study. Ying-Chun Hou

• Urban land readjustment and informal land financing networks: The case study of cost equivalent land’s pre-sale in Taichung. Jerry Zhi-Jun Yan; Daniel You-Ren Yang

Organizer: Ying-Chun Hou (the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

Since the 2008 financial crisis, burgeoning financialisation studies have become increasingly important under the intensification of neoliberalism. However, it is noticed that the understanding of financialisation is ‘variegated’ and has different forms and impacts among various social and economic contexts. It is thus becoming a critical issue to study the ‘growing complex financial-led urban governance’ and its implications on spatial development. In particular, financial models have been adopted and practised in East-Asian cities as part of broader governance strategies of developmental-states after democratic reform along with intensifying deployments of neoliberal practices. It is worth examining the driven forces, mechanisms and impacts of these financial-oriented urban developments.

Therefore, in this session, it will focus on 1. What types of financial-led policy discourses and mechanisms shape urban financialisation in East-Asia cities? 2. How do urban spaces and land involve the process of ‘assestisation’ through land-value capture approaches? 3. What impacts of financial-led urban practices generate on urban governance structures, planning systems and the built environments of cities?

Session 7-1: 10:50-12:20, 12/11 (Sunt), in Classroom I (in-person)

• Ride the Lightning: Volumetric territory and geopolitical conflict in West Pacific typhoon monitoring. Max D. Woodworth; Shiuh-Shen Chien; Yi-chen Wu; Hsiung-Lin Po

• Fluid territory: sand dreading, geo-politics and earthly elements. Chi-Mao Wang

• Ride the Lightning: Volumetric territory and geopolitical conflict in West Pacific typhoon monitoring. Shiuh-Shen Chien; Yi-Chen Wu; Max D. Woodworth; Po-hsiang Lin

• Theorizing with Chinese Narratives of the “Digital Silk Road” (数字丝绸之路): Volumetric Infrastructures, Geopolitics and Sovereignty. Chih Yuan Woon

Organizer: Chi-Mao Wang (National Taiwan University), Chih Yuan Woon (National University of Singapore), and Shiuh-Shen Chien (National Taiwan University)

Type of Session: Self-Organized Presentations

Session Abstract:

Political geographers have recently drawn attention to the political materiality of territory (Elden, 2017, 2021), forcing us to rethink the geo in geopolitics (S. Dalby, 2014; Simon Dalby, 2020). However, inspired by post-colonialist and feminist thinking, critical scholars have been problematising the Anglophone concepts of territory and terrain, seeking to diversify and deconstruct accountings of these spatial concepts (Halvorsen, 2019; Jackman, Squire, Bruun, & Thornton, 2020). Efforts have been made to examine territory and terrain in extended ways, with particular attention to such regions as Latin America (Halvorsen, 2019; Marston, 2019). However, few critical East Asian scholars are engaged in diversifying territory and terrain. As such, this session welcomes research papers on volume addressing the challenge. Papers may include but are not limited to, the following topics: territory beyond terra, atmospheric governance, subterranean geopolitics, and embodied/corporeal experiences of volumes. Interested participants should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to Chi-Mao Wang(chimaowang@ntu.edu.tw), Chih Yuan Woon (chihyuan@nus.edu.sg), and Shiuh-Shen Chien (schien@ntu.edu.tw) by 12 September 2022. The organizers will notify authors of acceptance in the session latest by 16 September 2022. Details about attending the conference are available from the EARCAG website: https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022

Dalby, S. (2014). Environmental Geopolitics in the Twenty-first Century. Alternatives, 39(1), 3-16. doi:10.1177/0304375414558355

Dalby, S. (2020). Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability. Ottawa, Ontario: University of Ottawa Press.

Elden, S. (2017). Legal terrain—the political materiality of territory. London Review of International Law, 5(2), 199-224. doi:10.1093/lril/lrx008

Elden, S. (2021). Terrain, politics, history. Dialogues in Human Geography, 11(2), 170-189. doi:10.1177/2043820620951353

Halvorsen, S. (2019). Decolonising territory: Dialogues with Latin American knowledges and grassroots strategies. Progress in Human Geography, 43(5), 790-814. doi:10.1177/0309132518777623

Jackman, A., Squire, R., Bruun, J., & Thornton, P. (2020). Unearthing feminist territories and terrains. Political Geography, 80, 102180. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102180

Marston, A. (2019). Vertical farming: tin mining and agro-mineros in Bolivia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1-21. doi:10.1080/03066150.2019.1604511