9 research outputs found
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Tidal Cities: Pedagogical (Mis)adventures in Game-based Visualizations of Adaptation Planning and Urban Justice
Tidal Cities was an interdisciplinary, transnational experiment that brought together an environmental anthropologist, an urban geographer, and two landscape architects/artists. We aimed at co-creating a visualization-based pedagogical tool for contemplating and teaching manifold relations between the city and the sea, drawing on ethnographic material from Metro Manila and Jakarta. The project was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its digital format integrated an immersive role play component to spark further debate among tertiary students. Players were encouraged to critically reflect on and engage with trajectories and contestations around coastal planning and urban placemaking, particularly in spaces of informality beset by recurrent flooding, tenurial insecurity, and dispossession. While engaging with the poetics and politics of 2D visual representation, we reflect on the thinking behind the gameÂŽs pedagogical co-design and a number of paradoxes that arose from two test-runs with departmental students, researchers, and teaching faculty in Bremen, Germany. 
The âWickednessâ of Governing Land Subsidence: Policy Perspectives From Urban Southeast Asia
Drawing on Jakarta, Metro Manila and Singapore as case studies, we explore the paradox of slow political action in addressing subsiding land, particularly along high-density urban coastlines with empirical insights from coastal geography, geodesy analysis, geology, and urban planning. In framing land subsidence as a classic âwickedâ policy problem, and also as a hybrid geological and anthropogenic phenomenon that is unevenly experienced across urban contexts, the paper uses a three-step analysis. First, satellite-derived InSAR maps are integrated with Sentinel-1A data in order to reveal the socio-temporal variability of subsidence rates which in turn pose challenges in uniformly applying regulatory action. Second, a multi-sectoral mapping of diverse policies and practices spanning urban water supply, groundwater extraction, land use zoning, building codes, tenurial security, and land reclamation reveal the extent to which the broader coastal governance landscape remains fragmented and incongruous, particularly in arresting a multi-dimensional phenomenon such as subsidence. Finally, in reference to distinct coastal identities of each cityâthe âSinking Capitalâ (Jakarta), âFortress Singaporeâ, and the âDisaster Capitalâ (Manila) the paper illustrates how land subsidence is portrayed across the three metropolises in markedly similar ways: as a reversible, quasi-natural, and/or a highly individualized problem
Putting Lifeworlds at Sea: Studying Meaning-Making in Marine Research
An individual's âlifeworldâ guides perceptions, the attachment of meaning and in sum, the interpretation of reality in everyday life. Yet the lifeworld (Ger. Lebenswelt) has been an undertheorized concept within interdisciplinary marine research. Through a two-stage analysis, we critically engage with the philosophical foundations, heuristic value and the methodological versatility that the interpretivist concept of the lifeworld stands to offer, drawing from contemporary marine scholarship. With two illustrative case studies exploring the lived realities of vastly different waterworlds in rural Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, we further engage with the strengths and limitations of integrating a lifeworlds analysis into interdisciplinary work on localized perceptions. As a second step, we analyze the efficacy of adopting a phenomenological-lifeworlds approach in order to inductively explore diverse realities of coastal and sea-based peoples, while acknowledging the terrestrially-bound and anthropocentric genesis of the lifeworld as a concept. Therefore, in order to enliven hybrid thematic currents, conceptual debates and methodologies on âmarine lifeworldsâ on its own terms, we propose two thematic vantage points for interdisciplinary intervention by: (a) critically engaging with cognitive-material meanings and lived interpretations of âsaltwaterâ realities; (b) tracing multiple modes of sociality and being with/in-the-world that go beyond human entanglements. In sum, we argue that while the lifeworlds concept affords spaces through which to study the complexities and ambivalences rife in surface-level perceptions, it promises the means with which to sidestep over-simplistic inferences to the vague and embattled notion of âculture,â while widening horizons for reflective and experimental-experiential lines of inquiry
Watery Incursions: The Securitisation of Everyday âFlood Culturesâ in Metro Manila and Coastal Jakarta
This article explores the normalisation of urban flooding through two distinct sets of securitised practices in two Southeast Asian megacities â localised disaster management surveillance regimes and the policing of informal settlements in Metro Manila and northern Jakarta, respectively. As a point of departure, we problematise the question of how the incidence of recurring floods (and flooding) is diversely interpreted as both event and as an experiential reality, insofar as the manifestation of the floods never entirely occupies a state of either normalcy or exception. It is this fluid state of inbetweenness in which these diverse securitisation trajectories are explored. The first entails the recent emergence of Metro Manilaâs disaster Command Centres, marking a break from conventional ways of responding to flood risks. The second case study engages with Jakarta Cityâs coercive use of its municipal police unit â the Satpol P.P. â in relocating urban informal settlers who have otherwise actively learned to reshape their familiarity to flooding as a non-issue in order to avoid being evicted. While the paper reflects on the formal structures of flood cultures, we illustrate how vernacular interpretations around security entrenched in notions of âliving with floodsâ lead to broader questions of ontological normalisation regarding watery incursions â as both spectacular as well as mundane, routinised events
The unruly arts of ethnographic refusal: power, politics, performativity
Refusal remains a core concern in processes of research across the sciences. Drawing on previous anthropological theorisations, this paper contemplates on the manifold âartsâ of refusal during ethnographic research praxis, drawing on diverse thematic experiences and contexts across coastal India, Malaysia, and Uganda. We argue for a concerted engagement with refusal as more than an act of withholding co-operation and as an expression of resistance. While recognizing refusal as a locally situated and historically contingent sensibility, we ask in what other ways might the more generative qualities of refusal be explored, paying particular attention to the performative nature of refusal itself that may entrench as much as reverse power differentials in the âfieldâ. Drawing on decolonial and post-development epistemologies and diverse experiences as scholars situated and working across different geographies and disciplines, we explore the many entanglements, articulations, and enactments that remain ubiquitous in everyday ethnographic research praxis through several thematic angles. These include the negotiation of uneven (and often violent) forms of research collaboration and co-optation, the enactment of benevolent sexism as an âethics of careâ, and embodied practices such as silence(-ing), together with play and humour in participantsâ critiques of scientific truth-telling. While illustrating subtler manifestations of refusal across ethnographic research-based encounters, we also contemplate pedagogical practices of un/learning (to âreadâ) and to teach the arts of identifying and productively working with the many appearances of refusal â both manifest and less visible.
Exploring how non-native seagrass species could provide essential ecosystems services: a perspective on the highly invasive seagrass Halophila stipulacea in the Caribbean Sea
The loss of biodiversity by the replacement of invasive species could lead to the loss of functional traits that maintain certain ecosystem services (ES). The ES method provides a conceptual framework to value changes of functional traits related to this loss of biodiversity. The Caribbean Sea offers a multifaceted seascape to evaluate this approach as native seagrass species (Thalassia testudinum, Syringodium filiforme or Halodule wrightii) cohabit this region together with the invasive seagrass Halophila stipulacea, native to the Indian Ocean. The functional traits of native seagrass species in the Caribbean are compared to different traits of H. stipulacea observed worldwide with the aim of evaluating the dimensions of this change in terms of the ES that seagrass meadows provide in the Caribbean. Under a changing seascape due to climate change and anthropogenic pressures that have driven the disappearance of most seagrass meadows in the Caribbean, we explore how this invasive seagrass could play a role in restoration attempts as a pioneer species where native species have been lost. The potential unintended consequences of the presence of H. stipulacea to replace services of native species are also noted
Five social science intervention areas for ocean sustainability initiatives
Ocean sustainability initiatives â in research, policy, management and development â will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge. We synthesize five intervention areas for social engagement and collaboration with marine social scientists, and in doing so we appeal to all ocean science disciplines and non-academics working in ocean initiatives in industry, government, funding agencies and civil society. The five social intervention areas are: (1) Using ethics to guide decision-making, (2) Improving governance, (3) Aligning human behavior with goals and values, (4) Addressing impacts on people, and (5) Building transdisciplinary partnerships and co-producing sustainability transformation pathways. These focal areas can guide the four phases of most ocean sustainability initiatives (Intention, Design, Implementation, Evaluation) to improve social benefits and avoid harm. Early integration of social knowledge from the five areas during intention setting and design phases offers the deepest potential for delivering benefits. Later stage collaborations can leverage opportunities in existing projects to reflect and learn while improving impact assessments, transparency and reporting for future activities
Five social science intervention areas for ocean sustainability initiatives
Ocean sustainability initiatives â in research, policy, management and development â will be more effective in delivering comprehensive benefits when they proactively engage with, invest in and use social knowledge. We synthesize five intervention areas for social engagement and collaboration with marine social scientists, and in doing so we appeal to all ocean science disciplines and non-academics working in ocean initiatives in industry, government, funding agencies and civil society. The five social intervention areas are: (1) Using ethics to guide decision-making, (2) Improving governance, (3) Aligning human behavior with goals and values, (4) Addressing impacts on people, and (5) Building transdisciplinary partnerships and co-producing sustainability transformation pathways. These focal areas can guide the four phases of most ocean sustainability initiatives (Intention, Design, Implementation, Evaluation) to improve social benefits and avoid harm. Early integration of social knowledge from the five areas during intention setting and design phases offers the deepest potential for delivering benefits. Later stage collaborations can leverage opportunities in existing projects to reflect and learn while improving impact assessments, transparency and reporting for future activities