Post-Politics and Civil Society in Asian Cities

Sonia Lam-Knott was a postdoctoral fellow in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She received her DPhil in anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2015, for her research on youth activism in Hong Kong. Her research explores the socio-political ambiguities in post-1997 Hong Kong, viewed through the lens of heritage politics, nostalgia, and vernacular experiences of the city. She has published in journals such as Asian Anthropology, Anthropology Matters, and Urban Studies, as well as in edited volumes. Creighton Connolly is a lecturer in the School of Geography, University of Lincoln (UK), focussing on development studies and the Global South. He is an urban political ecologist by training, having received his PhD in geography from the University of Manchester, where he was a member of the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE). His research focuses primarily on contestations over urban (re)development and environmental governance in peninsular Malaysia. He has published this work in numerous journals, including the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), Cultural Geographies, and Geoforum. Kong Chong Ho was trained as an urban sociologist at the University of Chicago, and his research interests lie in neighbourhood and community development, heritage and place-making, the political economy of cities, and a more recent interest in higher education. He has produced edited volumes such as Service Industries and Asia Pacific Cities (2012, with Peter Daniels and Tom Hutton), and Advancing the Regional Commons in the New East Asia (2016, with Siriporn Wajjwalku and Osamu Yoshida). Forthcoming publications include Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia (2019).

Introduction: Theorising the post-political in Asian cities Sonia Lam-Knott, Creighton Connolly, And Kong Chong Ho

PART I Post-political governance in Asia

1. A return to the political?: Civil society and post-politics in authoritarian regimes David Matijasevich

2. Managing grievances in the age of post-politics: The relocation of communities for the Thilawa Special Economic Zone in Myanmar Tamas Wells

3. Emerging post-political city in Seoul U-Seok Seo

4. Back to the land: Post-political utopias of organic living Karl Beelan

PART II Post-politics in heritage governance

5. Between state and society: Heritage politics in urban China Yujie Zhu

6. ‘Connecting emotions through wells’: Heritage instrumentalisation, civic activism and urban sustainability in Quanzhou, China Yunci Cai

PART III Post-politics in environmental governance

7. Constructing space for participatory governance in Vietnam: Reflections from the Hanoi tree movement Seohee Kwak

8. Environmental civil activism in Central Asia: Emerging civil society governance and fragile relations with the state Reina Artur Kyzy

9. Post-political planning and insurgent mobilisation in the post-disaster city: The experience of Tacloban city, Philippines after typhoon Haiyan Dakila Kim P. Yee