Community economies in Monsoon Asia: Keywords and key reflections

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 In the modern development imaginary, these practices have been positioned as ‘traditional’, ‘rural’ and largely superseded.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

Seeing farmers for the trees: Community forestry and the arborealisation of agriculture in northern Thailand1

Abstract: The campaign for community forestry in upland areas of northern Thailand reflects an ‘arborealised’ perspective on upland agriculture. Arborealisation – which I define as the process whereby upland livelihoods are recast as forest livelihoods – is evident in the main elements of NGO and academic advocacy for the resource rights of upland peoples. As a result of this arborealised perspective, securing rights to forest resources has come to be seen as the key to enhancing the livelihood security of upland farmers. However, the emphasis of the proposed community forest legislation on communally managed forest resources means that it will do little to enhance the tenure security of farmers in relation to agricultural land.      

Samoan children's sense of place: Experiential landscapes in an urban village

Pacific Island communities are experiencing significant societal changes as a result of rural urban, inter‐island migration and migration to New Zealand. These relocations have significant implications for children's relationship to place. However, virtually nothing is known about children's sense of place in Samoa or places and activities that are important to them. This exploratory study worked with eight children aged 5–12 years growing up in an urban village in Samoa drawing on ‘Talanoa’ as research methodology and method by employing photo‐elicitation. The study provides a first snapshot of Samoan children's sense of place growing up in an urban village.     

Positionality and protocol in field research: Undertaking community‐based investigations in Samoa

This article considers the experiences of a Samoan female geographer undertaking community‐based field research in her home country, and identifies some lessons for researchers working in similar circumstances. The paper suggests that ethical behaviour in research is ‘place‐specific’, and there is therefore a need to employ culturally sensitive and ‘location‐specific’ methodologies when undertaking community‐based research fieldwork. For the lead researcher, growing up in Samoa played a significant role in gaining an understanding of a set of robust and effective procedures to evaluate citizens' resilience to climatic and other environmental challenges. Fluency in everyday and more formal local languages, and awareness of local differences, each with multi‐layered connections to local communities, understanding cultural nuances and practising respect for va tapuia [sacred space or relationships] protocols, together facilitated the process of knowledge acquisition and helped to confirm the validity of the conclusions derived from the study.     

Spices as the saviour? The complex vulnerabilities of three commodity crop booms and ethnic minority livelihoods in Yunnan's agrarian frontier

Commodity crops are redefining land use and rural smallholder livelihoods across Asia. These crops often have boom‐bust cycles with important implications for the drivers of farmer entry into and exit from particular cash crop opportunities. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the boom‐bust processes of three popular spice crops cultivated in Yunnan Province, southwest China. Drawing from agrarian frontiers and rural livelihoods literature, we disentangle the vulnerability contexts associated with black cardamom, cinnamon and star anise production, finding that farmers cultivating these spices face a combination of interlocking forms of vulnerability. Despite the monetary potential that each crop offered during its ‘boom’, the associated environmental, economic and political vulnerabilities caused most farmers to exit their production, responding with myriad on‐farm and off‐farm diversification strategies. Using a multi‐sited ethnographic approach, we draw on 52 in‐depth interviews with ethnic minority cultivators, spice traders and local government officials to untangle the complexities associated with cash crop production in this agrarian frontier, the interwoven vulnerabilities that result in their ‘busts’ and the coping and adaptation strategies that smallholder farmers employ. Our findings underline the importance of disaggregating farmer vulnerabilities and the need for more nuanced policy responses to adequately support small‐scale farmers.     

Work and struggle of fishing livelihoods in the Delta: Development and ‘new’ change along the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River,Myanmar

Fishing constitutes a key source of income and food for rural communities worldwide. This is the case in predominantly rural Myanmar (World Fish, 2019), particularly in the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River Delta. Fishing has long been a central livelihood strategy and valuable source of food security in the Delta, and now also generates a substantial contribution to the gross domestic product. However, the livelihood practices of the fishers, particularly small‐scale fishers, are largely ‘invisible’ in the literature and policy. In this article, we advance understanding of the significant but understudied livelihoods of small‐scale fishers through interviews with fishers and a range of other actors in 2018. Taking a careful examination of the challenges, practices and responses of fishers in the Delta, our research underlines that fishers are important actors in the ‘making’ of the Delta as a geographical scale and concept, yet they are being pushed out of the very landscape they have helped co‐create and have lived in for generations. At this crucial point in Myanmar's development and change, we contend that a better understanding of the livelihoods of fishing households, as some of the nation's most vulnerable, is important for inclusive policy development, economic reforms and research strategy going forward.     

Multifunctionality and agrarian transition in alternative agro‐food production in the global South: The case of organic shrimp certification in the Mekong Delta,Vietnam

Processes of globalisation in the conventional food provision system have had widespread negative impacts on small‐scale farmers. Yet, alternative food networks, which are characterised by more sustainable production/consumption practices and fairer trade relations, have increasingly been ‘going global’ and, in the process, have been integrating small‐scale farms in the South. One such high‐value export‐led commodity is certified organic shrimp. International third‐party certification schemes are becoming popular as a tool to verify the intangible attributes of such commodities. Using concepts of multifunctionality and agrarian change, this paper examines the implications of introducing an international environmental certification programme to a site where the ‘peasantry’ has been preserved and has limited integration in the global agro‐food system. Drawing on a case study that examines the first certified organic shrimp production project in Vietnam, this paper concludes that the current movement towards post‐productivism in the global North has potential to keep local farming practices in the global South by justifying the value of peasant‐like production methods through international certification. As a result, the development path of agrarian transition might be reshaped into a form not necessarily pursuing industrialisation. This leads to the new interpretation of pre‐ and post‐productivism beyond the North and South divide.     

Multiple dimensions in negotiating the cross‐border transport links that connect and divide Singapore and Johor,Malaysia

Abstract: Despite recent literature pointing to the need for a multidimensional approach to border processes, transport links across borders are usually uncritically associated with cross‐border ‘integration’. This paper focuses on examining the roles played by transport facilities in border processes. It uses case studies of three key transport links at the border between Singapore and Johor, Malaysia. As would conventionally be expected, enhancing these links was often seen in terms of the economic opportunities expected to arise from the easing of bottlenecks. However, the findings also reveal multiple roles for the transport links at this border, many of which cannot be enlisted in any simple conception of cross‐border integration, even when clear enhancement of the links is involved. These roles include: as ‘filters’ (or ‘valves’) used to encourage or discourage certain flows; as ‘gateways’ asserting territoriality; and as ‘bargaining chips’ in the bilateral relationship. A role as ‘collision points’ between policy regimes was also surprisingly important. However, contrary to usual expectations none of the transport links examined appear in the guise of ‘bridges’, contributing towards integrated governance. These findings highlight the complexity of border processes, and underline the contingent interactions between different dimensions of cross‐border processes sometimes simplistically conflated as ‘integration’.     

Researching Pacific island livelihoods: mobility, natural resource management and nissology

Small island literature is vast in focus and aim, and is rooted in many different disciplines. The challenge is to find common grounds for researching small islands conceptually and theoretically. The aim of this article is to comment on how to research small islands, including a discussion on contemporary theories of nissology and conceptual analytical frameworks for island research. Through a review of selected case-study-based island literature on changing livelihoods coming out of the South Pacific, we wish to illustrate and discuss advantages of finding common grounds for small island studies. The focus is on two dimensions of island livelihood, migration and natural resource management, both of which are significant contributors in making island livelihoods and shaping Pacific seascapes. We argue that there is still a substantial lack of studies targeting small island dynamics that are empirical and interdisciplinary in focus and link socio-economic and ecological processes of small island societies at temporal and analytical scales.     

Scaling the environmental commons: Broadening our frame of reference for transboundary governance in Southeast Asia

The transboundary environmental commons in Southeast Asia are normally conceived in terms of shared resources and environmental impacts that transcend national borders. The Mekong's ‘fugitive resources’ of water, fish and sediment and the issue of Indonesia's smoke haze drift into Malaysia and Singapore dominate discussion. Assumed national interests shape actors and institutional arrangements for transboundary commons governance. Failure to address the governance challenges is explained in terms of their politico‐cultural failings (e.g. the ‘ASEAN Way’ of non‐interference), the weak regulatory remit of agencies with a specific transboundary governance role (Mekong River Commission), the dominant developmental agenda of subregional cooperative arrangements (Greater Mekong Subregion) or the geopolitical dominance of China (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation). This article builds on these critiques by considering the relationship between the local commons impacted by transboundary projects and the framing of the commons at an inter‐governmental level. It shows that neglect of the local commons and the impacts on them of projects with transboundary effects is partly to be explained by the institutional scaling of the transboundary commons at a country‐to‐country level. It also argues for an expanded notion of transboundary, including investment and governance flows as well as the material environmental footprint of large‐scale investments.     

Alienation and obligation: Religion and social change in Samoa

This paper will explore social change in contemporary Samoan society with respect to the traditional expectations of the church and kinship conflicting with the modern needs of an urbanising population. In the Samoan way of life – the fa'aSamoa – religion, matai (chiefly system) and reciprocal ‘gift‐giving’ kinship arrangements among the aiga (extended family) are fundamental and closely related elements. However, pressures from continued integration into the global economy, the importance of remittance income and related migration of well‐educated and highly skilled Samoans overseas are presenting several challenges to the strongly held traditions of kinship and church obligations. Among these challenges, low‐income households are increasingly placing the material well‐being of the immediate household first, thus ‘opting out’ of the culturally defined primary obligation to the church and risk alienation from beneficial familial ties. As a result, settlement patterns are shifting towards leaseholds in urbanising Apia, with consequences, we will speculate, that may have deeper cultural implications. Our research revealed that the church has been slow to accept that, increasingly, Samoans are seeking relief from hardships that spirituality alone cannot address. However, given its influence, strengths and resources, the church is well positioned to take a lead role in facilitating opportunities for ‘bottom‐up’, alternative development in Samoa, as well as providing lessons for church‐led participatory approaches in the Pacific Island Region.     

Reclaiming community spaces in the Mekong River transboundary commons: Shifting territorialities in Chiang Khong,Thailand

In Northern Thailand's Chiang Khong district, which lies along the banks of the Mekong River and the Thai‐Lao border, an community‐based environmental movement under the leadership of the Rak Chiang Khong conservation group emerged in response to processes that have appropriated territories traditionally used by locals for state‐led economic exploitation. The Rak Chiang Khong has put up fierce opposition to large‐scale development projects such as the China‐led navigation project, which planned to blast ecologically and culturally significant rapids, and hydropower dam development along the Mekong River. As a result, local‐level governance arrangements of the transboundary commons in Chiang Khong have shifted to counter threats both within and beyond the borders of Thailand. Through adapting fishing arrangements, engaging in community‐led research and establishing village conservation zones, overlapping forms of territorialisation have emerged in response to socio‐ecological changes to the river. These new forms of territorialisation are produced by complex configurations of political, cultural, and ecological histories, politicaleconomic changes, and transboundary dynamics. These territorial strategies have been key towards reclaiming the transboundary commons of the Mekong River for riparian communities, and providing a deeper understanding of the values that drive community involvement in the transboundary environmental governance of the Mekong River.     

We're 15 years behind Africa,Asia and Latin America!: Fair Trade meets the Pacific

Fairtrade market growth is characterised by expansion and exclusion in terms of producer opportunity. This paper draws producers in the Pacific region into the debate, analysing the development context among these small‐island developing states and, specifically, the practices and principles of four ‘ethical’ enterprises. The analysis reveals that the unique and complex context in which these organisations operate is at odds with Fairtrade's requirements, standards and assumptions. The paper highlights the need for contextually relevant requirements and principles, and the likelihood of alternative governance arrangements and actors, for an inclusive Fairtrade system and market in the region.     

Development on the periphery: A case study of the sub‐national island jurisdiction of Pitcairn Island

This research reports on empirical findings of remote Pitcairn Island, the last remaining British Overseas Territory in the Pacific. It uses a qualitative methodology to discuss the island's potential for tourism development while recognising the issues and challenges faced by many small island developing states. However, as a sub‐national island jurisdiction Pitcairn presents a number of issues unique to its temporal socio‐political development and its centre periphery relationship with the metropole. The concept ‘decolonising without disengaging’ is posited to argue sub‐national island jurisdictions are places/spaces of innovative, creative and differentiated development processes that offer interesting departures from the conventional realms of sustainable discourse and island development. This concept is posited as a strategy of empowerment whereby autonomy without sovereignty does not necessarily hinder the development of tourism industries.     

Power over,power to,power with: Shifting perceptions of power for local economic development in the Philippines

Power has long been recognised as crucial to the sustainability of community development interventions; however, the way in which space affects power relations within such interventions has remained relatively under‐theorised in the development literature. Many practitioners continue to regard power as located centrally and as embedded in particular institutions, networks, knowledge and resources. According to this logic, processes of empowerment involve the redistribution of these resources to marginalised groups through their participation in development interventions such as microfinance and sustainable livelihood initiatives. The danger inherent in such development approaches is that they can discourage the potential for participants to use their own agency by overemphasising an existing lack of resources locally and inadvertently feeding a sense of dependency on formal development interventions initiated by external agencies. This paper suggests that a post‐structural conceptualisation of power as dynamic, multiple and mediated at the local level offers a more productive starting point for thinking about approaches to empowerment. Drawing on data from an action research project designed to initiate community enterprises in a small rural municipality in the Philippines, I suggest how a post‐structural approach to power can be enacted by building on the existing local resources and practices of everyday life.     

Wishful sinking: Disappearing islands,climate refugees and cosmopolitan experimentation

Disappearing islands and climate refugees have become signifiers of the scale and urgency of uneven impacts of climate change. This paper offers a critical account of how sea level rise debates reverberate around Western mythologies of island laboratories. I argue that representations of low‐lying Oceania islands as experimental spaces burden these sites with providing proof of a global climate change crisis. The emergence of Tuvalu as a climate change ‘canary’ has inscribed its islands as a location where developed world anxieties about global climate change are articulated. As Tuvalu islands and Tuvaluan bodies become sites to concretize climate science's statistical abstractions, they can enforce an eco‐colonial gaze on Tuvalu and its inhabitants. Expressions of ‘wishful sinking’ create a problematic moral geography in some prominent environmentalist narratives: only after they disappear are the islands useful as an absolute truth of the urgency of climate change, and thus a prompt to save the rest of the planet.     

Symbolic and social dimensions in the economic production of seaweed

Abstract: Based on the thesis of ‘deagrarianisation’ of farming economies, work on sustainable rural livelihoods (SRL) has successfully captured the agency of rural producers as they diversify their livelihoods to minimise risk. SRL captures a complex interplay of local and global factors, as well as the synergies emanating from natural (environmental), economic and social capital that underpin diversification. The framework has been found useful for analyses of change in coastal, marine‐based livelihoods. However, agency at the local level implies equal power to accept and reject development interventions. The way groups diversify or use the options open to them depends as much on access to resources (the means), as on how that access is interpreted (the meaning), and the latter dimension is a creative (unpredictable) one. New introduced forms of economic activities, in this case seaweed farming, can be assigned meaning by participants that were unanticipated by change agents. Livelihood diversification through seaweed cultivation on Banggi island off Kudat, northern Sabah (East Malaysia) is not attained by economic factors alone but also by the meaning attached to the activity.     

‘Shifting ground’: Renegotiating land rights and rural livelihoods in Sarawak,Malaysia

In this paper, we use an actor‐oriented perspective to explore the nature and extent of conflict and negotiation with regard to land use and tenure among the Iban of Sarawak. The Iban are shifting cultivators who have long been involved in smallholder cash crops. We argue that the complexity of land‐use change and the major shifts in land law and policy in Sarawak in recent decades, particularly those favouring the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations on both state and customary land, have created a situation of indeterminacy that can be exploited to renegotiate land rights and livelihoods. We present a case history of an Iban community that has ‘shifted ground’ several times over the past century, both geographically and in its strategic position relative to state and private sector actors. We show how, under formidable pressure from these actors, this community has nevertheless renegotiated its access to land and other resources, and opportunistically developed a diversified livelihood system that has enabled it to survive in rapidly changing political and economic conditions. While not necessarily typical, the case sheds light on the limits and modes of negotiability in the context of a strong developmental state.     

The peri‐urban Pacific: From exclusive to inclusive cities

Abstract: As the Pacific Islands continue to urbanise, existing models of governance and planning are coming under greater pressure and scrutiny. Both the city council approach and the ‘good’ urban governance agenda of donors have weaknesses in the region, especially in dealing with peri‐urban settlements where the most rapid urban population growth is occurring. This is resulting in increased social discontent and conflict. This paper critiques the ways in which Pacific Island towns and cities are governed and calls for an approach which is more inclusive (and less hierarchical) and informed by concepts of citizenship and social justice. Indeed, policy makers will need to broaden their concepts and practices of governance if many Pacific cities are to be socially, politically, and envir‐onmentally sustainable. However, the political‐economy of urban development in the region is not proving conducive to consensus, with conflict a more likely outcome in the foreseeable future.