"Bird cages and boiling pots for potential diseases": contested ecologies of urban 'Swiftlet farming' in George Town, Malaysia

This article details the social construction of the 'swiftlet farming' industry in George Town, Malaysia. It argues that narratives of health and disease continually police which landscape practices are acceptable for the increasingly globalizing and image conscious city. 'Swiftlet farming' refers to the use of inner city shophouses and other commercial buildings for harvesting the edible nests of swiftlets (constructed from their saliva). Due to the high global demand and prices for birds' nests, the number of swiftlet farms have exploded in cities and towns across the country over the past decade, as entrepreneurs have been trying to cash in on the lucrative industry. The competing discourses and reactions to swiftlet farming in George Town, particularly in relation to its alleged potential for causing outbreaks of disease such as avian flu or dengue fever offer an apt entry point for studying this contested normative landscape. In doing so, I draw on recent writing on landscape and political ecology to analyze how swiftlet farm(er)s have been politicized by various stakeholders as (in)appropriate for the urban landscape. The article concludes by considering the significance of such an approach can help to make sense of the contradictions and uncertainties that abound in urban health controversies. Key words: political ecology, health, disease, landscape, birds' nest, Malaysia

Book review: Patricia Cormack and James F Cosgrave, Desiring Canada: CBC Contests, Hockey Violence, and other Stately Pleasures. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2013.

Patricia Cormack and James F Cosgrave, Desiring Canada: CBC Contests, Hockey Violence, and other Stately Pleasures. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 257 pp. $27.95. ISBN: 9781442613911 (paper);$70.00. ISBN: 9781442645653 (cloth

Living Landscapes Connected Communities: Culture, Environment and Change across Asia edited by JustineVaz and NarumolAphinives (eds). Areca Books

This ambitious book is derived from a multiyear project titled ‘Community-based Initiatives toward Human–Ecological Balance’, which was initiated by the Asia Pacific Intellectuals (API) Foundation and centred upon five diverse sites across Asia. This captivating volume examines the lives and environments of each community visited and asks how the residents in each place have adapted and responded to various forms of environmental and social transformation

Urban Political Ecologies of Heritage: Integrating Cultural and Natural Landscapes in Penang, Malaysia

Over the past few decades, there have been numerous studies examining the interface between cultural heritage conservation and urban (re)development, particularly in rapidly developing regions. On the other hand, scholars have also examined nature conservation movements in the con-text of encroaching (urban) development. However, this body of research has, with a few exceptions, not considered the inter-relationship between natural and cultural heritage in urban settings. The pa-per argues that a renewed understanding of urban heritage - consisting of both cultural and natural elements – is required for effective and socio-ecologically sustainable approaches to heritage conservation and urban development. To illustrate this argument, the paper draws on an empirical examina-tion of Penang Hill, which is a culturally and ecologically significant area of Penang Island, Malaysia. In conceptualising this relationship, the paper draws on the urban political ecologies of landscape, which is useful in examining the urbanisation of nature and problematising distinctions between urban/rural and natural/cultural. As I will demonstrate, invocations of Penang’s rich natural heritage are often framed alongside urban and cultural heritage in local resistance to these developments, which relate to the particular socio-environmental sensibilities of local stakeholders. The analysis is based on discursive analysis of primary written sources and original interviews with local residents and civil society activists, which helps to demonstrate the crucial role of local communities in achieving more socio-ecologically just forms of heritage management

Landscape political ecologies of urban ‘swiftlet farming’ in George Town, Malaysia

In previous engagements with political ecologies, cultural geographers have been interested in intersections between place making and environmental health, nature, environment and landscape interrelations, and their mutually co-constituted, socially constructed and contested nature. This article explores these themes through the experiences of urban activists in George Town, Penang, who have been involved in resisting the proliferation of ‘swiftlet farms’ n residential areas. ‘Swiftlet farms’ are typically converted shophouses or other buildings which have been modified for the purpose of harvesting the nests of the edible-nest swiftlet. They have generated significant controversy in George Town given their perceived impacts on urban health, quality of life, and (in)tangible forms of urban heritage. In examining spaces of the city that have been transformed through the ‘swiftlet farming’ industry, this article aims to highlight the ways in which individuals experience everyday landscapes of swiftlet farming, and how they might engage in reshaping them. In tracing this controversy, the article develops the conceptual framing of landscape political ecology, which allows for a closer understanding of the socio-natural production, transformation and contestation of urban landscapes. The 6 months of participatory ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Malaysia, much of which was developed in collaboration with local stakeholders. The article concludes with a reflection on how the particular approach set out here can shed important light on the role of praxis and everyday lived experience in shaping contemporary urban environmental politics

Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global - By Ananya Roy & Aihwa Ong

Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong's Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global is a timely intervention in the hegemonic discourses surrounding the epistemologies and methodologies of urban studies. The authors take the position that dominant theories of globalization or post‐coloniality are over‐determined in their privileging of capitalism and class struggles in the analysis of urban problems in emerging world regions

Extended urbanisation and the spatialities of infectious disease: Demographic change, infrastructure and governance

This paper argues that contemporary processes of extended urbanisation, which include suburbanisation, post-suburbanisation and peri-urbanisation may result in increased vulnerability to infectious disease spread. Through a review of existing literature at the nexus of urbanisation and infectious disease, we consider how this (potential) increased vulnerability to infectious diseases in peri- or suburban areas is in fact dialectically related to socio-material transformations on the metropolitan edge. In particular, we highlight three key factors influencing the spread of infectious disease that have been identified in the literature: demographic change; infrastructure and governance. These have been chosen given both the prominence of these themes and their role in shaping the spread of disease on the urban edge. Further, we suggest how a landscape political ecology framework can be useful for examining the role of socio-ecological transformations in generating increased risk of infectious disease in peri- and suburban areas. To illustrate our arguments we will draw upon examples from various re-emerging infectious disease events and outbreaks around the world to reveal how extended urbanisation in the broadest sense has amplified the conditions necessary for the spread of infectious diseases. We thus call for future research on the spatialities of health and disease to pay attention to how variegated patterns of extended urbanisation may influence possible outbreaks, and the mechanisms through which such risks can be alleviated

Tracing narratives and perceptions in the political ecologies of health and disease

Political ecology has, in the past decade, emerged as an increasingly accepted framework for studying issues of health and disease and has thus given rise to a distinct sub-field: the political ecologies of health and disease (PEHD). More recently, scholars have suggested more specific avenues through which the sub-field can be further developed and focused. Building on recent work, we suggest that the role of health perceptions and health discourses is one area that could benefit from examination through the lens of political ecology. The papers in this special section thus intend to further contribute to the empirical richness of this area of study, through an emphasis on anthropological and cultural aspects of health injustices. We emphasize the role of health perceptions, in particular, as a way of exploring how people's experiences of the local environment often differ from dominant discourses related to un/healthy environments, and the effects stemming from this disjuncture

Worlding cities through transportation infrastructure

This paper engages with emerging literature on worlding cities in analysing the contested ways in which mid-sized cities attempt to ‘globalize’ through the redevelopment of urban infrastructure, and in particular, transportation infrastructure. The paper focuses specifically on the World Heritage City of Penang, Malaysia and critically examines controversies over the extensive urban redevelopment and regeneration projects that have emerged since 2012. In particular, it examines the ambitious Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP), which has posed considerable implications for the city’s heritage landscapes, but also several socio-environmental impacts. The paper analyses the state government’s vision for the PTMP, before turning to an alternative strategy and critique of this plan put forth by local civil society organizations. As I demonstrate, both plans make use of worlding strategies in ‘selling’ their particular vision for the city’s future, but the ways they do so are markedly different. In reviewing this case, the paper challenges the conceptualization of inter-referencing and urban modelling practices as it is currently documented in the literature on worlding cities. What is novel in Penang is the way local stakeholders identify comparable cities outside of the Global North as models to follow, rather than established mega- or ‘world’ cities, which act as more realistic reference points. In doing so, the paper highlights key technologies of governance that are being used to counter the neoliberal worlding strategies put forth by city managers