China Came, China Built, China Left?: The Sarawakian Experience with Chinese Dam Building
This paper uses a political ecology approach to unpack the experience of local governments and displaced communities in Sarawak, Malaysia, with Chinese dam construction at the Bakun Hydroelectric Dam. Data for the study was collected over 32 months from 2014 to 2016. The field site offered a unique insight into how recipient countries of aid are also often at the receiving end of domestic politics of donor countries. The paper finds that Chinese and Australian enterprises involved in the dam construction and resettlement of indigenous communities displayed different understandings with regards to social and environmental safeguards, resulting in a dysfunctional handover of the project from Australian to Chinese leadership. Consequently, indigenous communities were dispossessed from their land, affecting their ability to successfully reconstruct their livelihoods, with their attempts to do so causing further damage to the environment around the reservoir of the dam.
Quelle: https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/1110
Regionalism, Identity, and Hydropower Dams: The Chinese-Built Lower Sesan 2 Dam in Cambodia
The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) has been styled as a natural region drawn together by the Mekong River. However, the literature on regional identity has argued that regions are socially constructed phenomena. River basins in particular are historically evolveed constructs of specific political and social relations. Drawing on concepts of regional identity and on the literature examining the links between culture and water, the article argues that the actors driving the GMS have exacerbated social tensions through hydropower programmes, thus failing to establish social coherence. These programmes focus on energy production for national economic growth and economic integration between GMS countries, but they ignore the need to govern water resources for the benefit of local communities, many of which are made up of ethnic minorities with specific cultural attachments to the river. This produces tensions around the type of development that takes place in the GMS, leading to value fragmentation rather than value convergence. The article explores these issues by focusing on the Chinese-built Lower Sesan 2 Dam in Cambodia.
Quelle: https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/1109
Nuclear (Geo)Political Ecologies: A Hybrid Geography of Chinese Investment in Namibia’s Uranium Sector
Namibia’s Husab uranium mine is the Chinese government’s largest investment in Africa to date. This article develops a theoretical framework of hybridity to analyse the (geo)political and ecological implications of China’s rising global influence in uranium mining. Drawing on multiple-methods fieldwork, the article explains how Husab has resuscitated Namibia’s uranium industry and facilitated the political goals of both Chinese and Namibian leaders. Husab’s materialisation of “South–South solidarity,” however, also appears to be deepening the marginalisation of minority communities near uranium mines. Far from paradoxical, this uneven distribution of benefits and costs is as intertwined with nuclear geopolitics as it is with the materiality of uranium mining.
Quelle: https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/1108
Repository Africa in the Evolving “Chinese Century”: The Uneven Sino–Nigerian Water Conservation Partnership
Although extant reconstruction of the limits of international development practice has been implicated in the budding involvement of China in Africa, debates on China’s actual intents and prospects have continued to rage. Engaging an exploratory design and a political-ecology approach, which affirms the significance of human factors in contextualising, structuring, and contesting the natural world, this study assesses specific short-term and long-term outcomes of China’s Gansu-modelled water conservation project in Kano, Nigeria. The shared ecological interface between China and Nigeria has facilitated transfer of relevant technology to the Guinea and Sahel regions in Northern Nigeria. Chinese involvement in the Nigerian water/agricultural sector has resulted in improved indigenous farmers’ skills, yields, and incomes. Sustaining the trend of ongoing intervention would imply a significant boost to Nigeria’s drive towards self-reliance, though a long-term cleavage towards such Chinese interventions might eventually imply neo-dependency.
Quelle: https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/1107
Dancing to China’s Tune: Understanding the Impacts of a Rising China through the Political-Ecology Framework
Introduction to Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 3/2017: Political Ecology of a Rising China
Quelle: https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/1106
‘Superman Believes that a Wife’s Place is in the Home’: Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane and the Representation of Women
Gender &History, EarlyView.
Quelle: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0424.12361?af=R