The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

Too busy to draft you paper abstract before deadline? Good news! We are extending our deadline for abstract submission to Oct. 10, 2022. Don't miss it this time by submitting your great research abstract on our website:
https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/

We're thrilled to announce our brilliant cast of keynote speackers for ! Our speakers come from around the world with their in-depth and groundbreaking research on East Asian regions. Join us for their exciting keynotes! We are still calling for papers by Sep.22, so please don't hesitate to submit your abstracts on https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/

We are excited to announce two panel dicussion sessions at !

[Panel Discussion] Post-Military-Industrial Development?

Organizer: Jim Glassman (University of British Columbia)

Participants:
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)

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.

[Panel Discussion] IJURR: Authors meet Editors

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

Participant:
Nik Theodore (University of Illinois Chicago)

Session Abstract:
This panel session, led by the editors of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 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.

For those interested in participating in these sessions, please stay tuned on our website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022) for the future information.

The self-organized session "Exporting Asian Urbanism: Circulations of urbanism, capital, and knowledge" at is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

Organizer: Do Young Oh (Lingnan University) and Hyun Bang Shin (LSE)

Contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

Title of Session: Exporting Asian Urbanism: Circulations of urbanism, capital, and knowledge

Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

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

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

The self-organized session "Post-gentrification: Urban Redevelopment on ‘X’ Continents" at is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

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

Contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

Title of Session: Post-gentrification: Urban Redevelopment on ‘X’ Continents

Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

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.

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

The self-organized session "Volume, Territory and Terrain: East Asian perspectives" at is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

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

Contact: [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]

Title of Session: Volume, Territory and Terrain: East Asian perspectives

Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

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([email protected]), Chih Yuan Woon ([email protected]), and Shiuh-Shen Chien ([email protected]) 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

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

The self-organized session "International Political Economy of platforms" at is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

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

Contact: [email protected]

Title of Session: International Political Economy of platforms

Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

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.

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

EXTENDED DEADLINES:

Due to venue factors, the 10th EARCA Conference will be postponed by 2 days to December 9-11, and the deadlines have been adjusted accordingly. Please see the updated CFP for details (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dZ4xo6bFMyTpDnNPXSeOCpPn4gQM-D05/view?usp=sharing)

Key updates:
-The meeting is held on December 9 (Fri)-11(Sun), 2022 at National Taiwan University, Taipei
-Post-meeting field trip to Matsu Islands from December 12 to 14, 2022
-August 22, 2022, is the extended deadline for submission of proposals for the organizational meeting (acceptance to be announced by August 25)
-September 22, 2022, is the extended deadline for submission of abstracts (acceptance to be announced by September 30)
-Online registration will be open from October 1 to 31, 2022

Call for paper (EARCAG, Taipei)_V20220829.pdf

The self-organized session at "Commons unbound: Radically reimagining commons through experiences of East Asia " is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

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

Title of Session: Commons unbound: Radically reimagining commons through experiences of East Asia
Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

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)

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography

We are pleased to have Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) as one of the keynote speakers at .

Title: The Spatial Politics of Non-Integration: Temporary Migrant Workers in (Post-)Pandemic Times

The challenges of contemporary migration in Asia have to be understood in the context of the postcolonial development of nation-states in the region. When large-scale labour migration began in the 1970s, many Asian countries had only recently cut their colonial apron strings, and were still in the process of consolidating nation-building projects. In this context, the specific labour migration regime that developed in Asia, was one that minimised challenges to the fragile imaginary of the nation-state in the making. This is accomplished by rendering migrants as transient sojourners whose place in host societies is to sell their labour but make no claims on the receiving nation-state. The migration regime that emerged in Asia was premised on keeping migration temporary, and apart from creating a privileged pathway for highly skilled migrants to gain residency and citizenship, most Asian receiving nation-states ruled out settlement, family reunification, long-term integration, and the acquisition of legal citizenship for less skilled migrants. In this context, this paper first examines how states manage the non-integration of low-waged transient migrants through spatial-temporal strategies of disciplinary power. It then assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and stalled mobility on the regime of enforced temporariness and examines potential pathways forwards towards a more sustainable regime of transnational labour.

Post-meeting field trip

From December 12 to 14, we will visit Matsu, a small group of islands across the Taiwan Strait, very close to mainland China but under the control of Taiwan. From 1958 to the end of 1978, Matsu (as well as Kinmen) was under Chinese fire for decades before the United States established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic and severed formal ties with the Republic of China on Taiwan. These "frontline islands" in between not only witnessed the rise and fall of the Cold War, from which they constantly sought to reposition themselves, but even accidentally triggered geopolitical changes in East Asia.

The self-organized session "Sharing in cities of speculation and aspiration" is now open for participants!

For those interested in this topic, please first request inclusion by emailing your abstract to the organizer. Please note that any participant who has been included still needs to formally submit an abstract on the website (https://sites.google.com/view/earcag2022/abstract-submission)

Organizer: Yoonai Han (LSE, UK) and Maurice Yip (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

Contact: [email protected] and [email protected]

Title of Session: Sharing in cities of speculation and aspiration

Type of Session: Typical presentations (open call for participants)

Session Abstract:
This session seeks to raise critical discussions on the emerging spaces and practices of sharing in East Asian cities in times of uncertainty. Ranging from coworking spaces, co-living spaces, and communal kitchens to makerspaces, incubators, and space rental platforms, we are witnessing transformation of working, living and ways of being in cities. These emerging spaces are creative, sharing, and flexible but also precarious, fragmented, and speculative. This session builds upon the growing debates on the ambivalence of the transformation, driven by technological innovation, labour flexibilisation, and growing inaccessibility to resources required for (re)production. We are interested in discussing how sharing serves to operate the continued desires of speculative cities, while also enabling the imagination of alternative sociality as well as the aspiration of socio-spatial mobility and flexibility. We invite contributions to develop theoretical, yet empirically-informed reflections upon the landscape of sharing urbanism in East Asia, with special reference to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to advance critical urban theories. The questions and perspectives we intend to address in this session centre on, but are not limited to:
- Working under the pandemic: What is happening to ‘work’ in East Asia and how do we theorise it?
- Ethnographic navigations of sharing - Sharing under everyday crisis and precarity
- Sharing and urban commons: Political potential of shared spaces of working and living
- Fragmented space, fragmented labour, and property politics
- Legal and digital geographies of shared workspace, gig economy, and platform urbanism
- Critical assessment of sharing urbanism
We hope to bring into dialogues a wide range of empirical examinations, conceptualisations, and methodological explorations from different geographies, discussing the impacts of these geographies of ‘sharing’ on urban inequalities and alternative-making.

EARCAG 2022 - Abstract Submission The 10th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography