Asia Pacific Viewpoint最新文献

Postcolonial Macau is keen to celebrate its colonial legacy to preserve its cultural distinctiveness. This study explores the reordering of a Portuguese colonial site, the Village of Our Lady in Ka Ho, into an architectural heritage in the broader postcolonial context. Employing the Foucauldian concept of ‘other spaces’, specifically ‘utopia’ and ‘heterotopia’, the study argues for the heterotopic nature of heritage. It identifies the discourses and material representations of heritage, their construction and their mirroring of mainstream social ideals. Heritage as heterotopia is a conceptual entity that informs and is realised with material objects. The discourse takes heritage spaces as mediums for performances through symbolic loading on material objects to demonstrate the space's otherness. In addition, colonial nostalgia emerges as a dominant narrative in shaping urban identity. The primary proposition of this research is that heritage is made through othering, and the otherness of heritage is presented through performing. Heritage-making transforms the site from a ‘heterotopia of deviation’ to a ‘heterotopia of performance’, which reveals the societal transition from early modernity that advocates for scientific knowledge to postmodernity that embraces neoliberalism, and then to the arriving era of post-postmodernity based on performatism.

In structuration theory, Giddens emphasises the importance of social practices in shaping and reproducing social structures, believing that the constitution of agents and structures represents a duality and advocating that structure is both a medium and outcome of the reproduction of practices. The traditional culture and customs embodied in Macanese cuisine can be considered as a structured process. Macanese cuisine reflects the unique food culture and customs of Macao society, presenting an irreplaceable way of life and cultural value. Macanese cuisine has developed based on the traditional customs and practices of the Macanese. It is recognised as an important intangible cultural heritage, receiving protection and promotion from the government. However, high-speed modernity challenges the guarantee for continuity of Macanese traditional customs. Debates continue regarding how to promote the sustainability of Macanese cuisine. This study adopts Giddens' structuration theory to understand the evolutionary process of Macanese cuisine. It reveals the significance of individual agents' initiatives in promoting the rebirth of Macanese cuisine, and preserving the distinctiveness and self-assertion of the Macanese community. Furthermore, the fusion culture that underlies Macanese cuisine can moderate the high-speed modernity of gastronomy tourism and promote this cuisine's sustainability.

Indonesian rural youth face challenges accessing farmland and sustaining an agricultural livelihood while their labour is not necessarily absorbed by other sectors. In that context, the Omnibus Law on Job Creation (Law 11/2020) promises to liberalise trade and investment across multiple sectors, including agriculture and food security. Combining legal research and political economy approaches to youth and agrarian challenges, we identify amendments to legislation that reduce safeguards for the environment, workers' and farmers' rights and their livelihoods. If fully implemented, the legislative amendments could further narrow youth's options both for secure formal work and futures in farming by accelerating the expansion of infrastructure, industrial plantations and extractive industries that utilise low-wage labour and huge areas of land. This exposes inconsistencies in the government's approach to increase future food security by promoting intensification of agriculture and attracting youth to farming, while enabling agro- and resource extraction that absorbs land yet offers limited and precarious employment prospects.

Debates surrounding craft-making have long centred on the intricate relationship among the head, hand and the materials. While studies have typically differentiated between traditional craft and creative crafts by focusing on specific aspect of the relationship, the co-existence and interdependence of these elements remained largely unexplored. This research focuses on ceramic craft making in Jingdezhen, where traditional and creative crafts coexist. We employ ethnographic research to comprehend the connotation of traditional and creative crafts, examining them from the perspectives of engagement and detachment. In doing so, this study challenges oversimplified narratives that undervalue the making role of traditional craft and position creative craft as a means for self-expression and resistance against alienation. Instead, we emphasise the complex relationship between the two, characterised by mutual dependence and mutual detriment. These findings partly stem from the predominance of detachment in traditional crafts, which prioritise the act of making and, to some extent, maximising efficiency. They also relate to the prevalence of engagement in creative craft, where the pursuit of creativity is supported by traditional crafts.

Macau, an internationally renowned gambling city, has experienced rapid growth in casino space expansion and tourism since 2002 when the new Macau SAR government liberalised gambling. Despite the impact of COVID-19 on the city's economy over the past three years, infrastructure construction and remodelling of casino resorts continue. This study focuses on the spatial production of casino resorts and tourist identity in Macau's Cotai Strip. Methodologically, the study conducts an assemblage analysis to interpret the data collected mainly through participant observation and in-depth interviews. The research findings show that the Cotai Strip homogenises the human and non-human elements through the repetitive rhythms of buildings and multi-tiered enclosed territorialisation. The identity of Macau casino tourists emerges from their interactions with other components within the Strip assemblage. The emerging identity is defined as a post-postmodern flâneur, characterised by their programmed and controlled tourist activities and their intensified visual sensations and photographic gazes.

Formal education in Nauru can only be fully understood in the light of the external influences, mostly Australian in origin, acting upon it as a small island state in the Central Pacific. Australia's influence began in the early 1900s as a leading stakeholder in Nauru's lucrative phosphate reserves. In the last few decades Nauru's dramatic economic decline has meant it has come into the orbit of Australia's official development assistance (ODA) to the Pacific region. However, Australia has ties to Nauru that go beyond mere economic and development assistance, for example, the country is a crucial site in Australia's own immigration policy and the offshore processing of asylum seekers bound for Australia. Geopolitically, Nauru is also important to Australia as one of a decreasing number of Taiwan-loyal Pacific nations in the face of China's increasing assertiveness in the region. The nature of the relationship with Nauru has meant that for many decades Australia has provided an almost exclusive conduit of educational ideas, values, beliefs and practices flowing into the country to uniquely shape formal education provision. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, via a synthesis of research literature and debate, it critiques the long-running, primarily, Australia-facing relationship Nauru has in terms of the educational assistance it receives, including the Nauru Education Program, a significant Australian development assistance initiative about to commence through to 2030. Secondly, with a basis in the advocacy literature of the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative, the article highlights the possibility of a much more Pacific regionally facing Nauru over the next few decades as a result of relatively recent regional instrumentalities such as the Pacific Island Forum's 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

Extant scholarly discourse on ecological governance within China predominantly underscores the salient role of the central state. This is unsurprising given the statist policy trajectory transitioned from an emphasis on swift economic growth to focusing on emerging ecological challenges in the last decade. However, this article deviates from this prevailing emphasis, pivoting instead to the tangible practices and realities of ecological governance at the grassroots level. Through an ethnographic investigation, this article delves into the nuances of ecological governance within the Tibetan regions of Qinghai Province, China, emphasising the interplay between local communities, environmental non-governmental organisations and the local state. The article introduces the concept of ‘pluralistic ecological governance’, advocating for the integration of diverse governance structures, institutional frameworks and stakeholder involvements. This approach encompasses a thorough consideration of diverse knowledge systems, motivations of community participation and local-state relations, vital for addressing the complex nature of ecological issues. The study contends that ‘pluralistic ecological governance’ not only encompasses different stakeholders but also critically examines various forms of knowledge and motivations, along with the diverse interests these stakeholders contribute to both the discourse and practice of ecological conservation on the ground.

The main objectives of this research are to identify (i) how women in Can Tho City experience the impacts of flooding on their health, income, household and personal finances; and (ii) limitations to women's participation in flood-related planning activities. Qualitative data collection included a household survey, followed by field observation and in-depth interviews of the affected women and other actors. Following a feminist framing, the research not only offers insight into the unique harms that women experience from floods, but also demonstrates that women have important knowledge and insights into flood-related planning. The research found that women took on additional flood management roles in the home. Carrying out this work in polluted flood waters placed a physical burden on their bodies, and led to associated financial burdens related to health treatment and protective equipment. Moreover, the time dedicated to this labour resulted in a reduction in women's incomes. Their houses were also damaged by the floods, resulting in repair costs. Women in higher income of full-time employment are dealing with the losses of income activity and housing, women in lower income or unemployment are dealing with the losses of personal expense and housing. Though women have a unique understanding of and relationship to flooding, government officials exclude them from local planning and training workshops about flooding risks. As a result, they have limited opportunities to use their knowledge to shape flood mitigation efforts. This research concludes that addressing vulnerability to future flooding must draw on Vietnamese women's knowledge and experiences.

To increase the understanding of how the external environment impact the local industrial development, this study builds a conceptual framework of industrial evolutionary development by integrating evolutionary and developmental theories from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. This study emphasised the combination of two mechanisms. The first evolutionary mechanism consisting of variation, selection and retention, and the diversity within and between enterprise clusters serves as the starting point for evolution. The external environment selects and retains the most competitive enterprises under the mechanism of selection. The second developmental mechanism is the influence of the external environment on enterprises. The external environment screens and affects the development of firms at and across multiple levels, same level and across levels. Based on the case studies of the e-sports industry in China, this study finds that technological development has driven the transformation of the e-sports industry. Additionally, location cost, spatial proximity, local policy, urban strategy and national planning have been identified as crucial factors that influence the location choice of the e-sports industry. This study highlights the importance of paying more attention to environmental dynamics in the research and practice of industrial evolution.