Triangulating the borderless world: geographies of power in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle

This paper argues that the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle makes manifest the complex geographies of power that subvert efforts to read cross-border regionalization as a straightforward geographical corollary of 'globalization'. As such, the region needs to be examined not simply as a complementary transborder assemblage of land, labour and capital, but rather as a palimpsest in which the imagined geographies of cross-border development and the economic geographies of their uneven spatial fixing on the ground are mediated by complex cultural and political geographies. We seek to unpack these by triangulating how the geographies of capital (including its uneven development and its links to the geo-economics of intra-regional competition), land (including post-colonial relations across the region, the geopolitics of land reclamation and the enclaved landscapes of tourism) and labour (including the divergent itineraries of migrant workers) overlay and complicate one another in the region. By charting these complex triangulations of space and place, we seek to problematize narratives of the Growth Triangle as an exemplary embodiment of the 'borderless world'.     

Environmental science, sustainability and politics

Research evidence and pleas that humans are undermining their own survival on a robust and unforgiving planet seem to be falling on deaf ears. The drive for economic and military security remains more powerful than the evidence that both of these objectives are being undermined by environmental damage, social disruption, unjust treatment and forced migration. Yet the signs are growing that environmentally and socially sound futures may be vital prerequisites for economic and military stability. So, at the heart of multi-nationalism, sustainable development is beginning to be recognized as a crucial element in reliable international agreements. The consequence of all this is that environmental science has become highly political, and geographers need to recognize and work within an expanding political process. Examples of new forms of governing via sustainability science for sustainable futures are offered in the latter part of the paper, especially at local government level. The antagonistic pressures of established power and economic hegemony are never far away. Indeed, the confirmation of these established patterns of power still pervades the politics of environmental science. But it is possible that these antagonistic political frameworks are beginning to be transcended by the more influential aspects of sustainability partnerships incorporating new arrangements between government, private capital and civil associations. These partnerships will not be easy to create, for they criss-cross boundaries of familiarity and rules of operation. But geographers can play a critical role in helping to shape them and assess the best circumstances for ensuring their success.     

From Siam to New York: Jacques May and the ‘foundation’ of medical geography

The history of medical geography is marked by a search for ancestors. The story usually begins in the writing of Hippocrates before re-emerging in the works of 18th and 19th century practitioners. In recent years, historical geographers have called for the destabilising of such assertions of lineage and descent. This paper offers a reconsideration of the history of medical geography through an exploration of the often hidden connections and intersections that have helped to frame the future trajectory of the sub-discipline. More specifically, we focus on the important contribution made by Dr Jacques Meyer May and offer a complex and multi-layered account that examines the close interweaving of his work as a colonial surgeon and specialist in tropical medicine and his role as a medical geographer in the United States.     

Values in a vacuum? Towards an integrated multi‐level analysis of the governance of European space

This article calls for a new analytical approach to address how the emergence of a new European spatial policy field conditions policy‐making and implementation across Europe. This is now urgent because as the new policy field takes shape, its core ideas and values are being contested across different scales, sectors and territories of governance, creating new debates and arenas where understandings of space, place and connectivity, and relations between environment, society and economy, are being recast in a European light. In the full flow of generating a new policy field, we still seem to know little about what is being put at stake, or specifically how this is occurring. A value‐driven critical response from the research community is therefore needed, informed by research activity reaching across many dimensions of governance and policy‐making. The point of developing such an approach is not to discount previous research, but to explore how to generate synthetic and critical insights from different disciplinary and conceptual approaches within an integrated analytical framework. After this discussion, we conclude by proposing that IMAGES (Integrated Multi‐level Analysis of the Governance of European Space) can provide such a framework for analysing the emerging policy field of European spatial polices by constructing narratives of how spatial policy ideas and concepts turn into programming space, and how different territories interrelate with these policy concepts, and at the same time contribute to shaping them. This viewpoint and framework are predicated on the authors' belief that values behind the concepts remain hidden at present, both in policy processes and related research. Spatial policies seem to happen in a vacuum of values. By putting spatial justice as a value into this vacuum and by exploring the multi‐level governance of European space within an integrative analytical framework, the further development and application of the IMAGES framework can fulfil the need to contest the idea of objective policy‐making and analysis in European spatial policy.     

Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey

This article argues that, since the early 1980s, there have been two regimes in Turkey. The first, which is broadly akin to Michael Mann's characterization of Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation, has predominated in areas of the country not administered through emergency legislation. In keeping with his model, it has been most fully asserted in areas of key economic value — particularly the Marmara region and the environs of the capital, Ankara. In the thirteen predominantly Kurdish provinces of the south‐east of the country, on the other hand, a second of Mann's regime types, Autocratic Militarism, is discernible. This was institutionalized under a new constitutional structure introduced following the 1980 coup as a means of dealing with a rise in pro‐Kurdish insurgency.