Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Editorial update and SJTG paper prize announcements

2014; Wiley; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/sjtg.12057

1467-9493

Tim Bunnell,

Asian Studies and History

Following David Higgitt's move from the National University of Singapore (NUS) to the University of Nottingham's campus in China late last year, Lu Xi Xi has joined me as Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (SJTG) co-editor with effect from 1 January 2014. David served as co-editor from 1 January 2012 having joined the journal's editorial board in August 2004 and served as Associate Editor during 2011. During his time as co-editor, we oversaw several significant transitions to the journal in terms of administrative and technical personnel, a shift to the ScholarOne online submission and review system, and the introduction of annual paper prizes (Bunnell & Higgitt, 2013—and see below for announcement of the 2013 paper prize winners). Although he has stepped down as co-editor, David will continue to be formally associated with the journal as a member of the International Advisory Board (IAB). On behalf of everyone at SJTG, I thank him for his important contributions to the journal during his time at NUS, wish him well in his new appointment in Ningbo, China, and am very glad to be able to continue to draw upon his expertise from a distance through his new IAB role. Like David, Lu Xi Xi has been a member of the journal's editorial board since 2004 and so is very well placed to step up to the role of physical geography co-editor. Lu Xi Xi is a physical geographer who specializes in fluvial geomorphology of large Asian rivers. He is keen to encourage submissions to the journal in the increasingly important areas of climate change and water-related fields. Among David Higgitt's final contributions to the journal as co-editor was involvement in the selection panel for the award of annual paper prizes. Beginning in 2013, a prize of USD1000 will be awarded each year both to the best paper by a graduate student and to the best overall paper. Any kind of paper published in the journal—theoretical, empirical and/or methodological—will be considered for the awards. In this inaugural year, the co-editors shortlisted three papers for each category and a special selection panel chose the winning papers from the two shortlists. The results are as follows: Managing migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: regulation, extra-legal relation and distortion Sai S.W. Latt Cross-border rubber cultivation between China and Laos: Regionalization by Akha and Tai rubber farmers Janet C. Sturgeon Spatial modelling of road network development, population pressure and biophysical properties of upland crop and forest conversions in Lop Buri province, Thailand, 1989–2006 Risa Patarasuk and Timothy J. Fik The transnational assembling of Marina Bay, Singapore Erica X.Y. Yap Unravelling property relations around forest carbon Sango Mahanty, Wolfram Dressler, Sarah Milne and Colin Filer Reading Lanyu's tourism landscape: Hybridity and identity on Orchid Island, Taiwan Ethan Yorgason and Hsia Li Ming Congratulations to all of the shortlisted authors and especially to the authors of the prize-winning papers. Sai S.W. Latt (author of the best paper by a graduate student) and Janet C. Sturgeon (author of the best overall paper) are both based at Simon Fraser University in Canada and their papers appeared in the same special section of the journal, which Janet Sturgeon also edited. The special section on ‘Regionalization at the margins: ethnic minority cross-border dynamics in the Greater Mekong Subregion’ consisted of six papers in total, and was published as part of the first issue of 2013. Sai S.W. Latt's paper provides a grounded empirical analysis of cross-border mobilities and labour experiences among migrants from Myanmar in northern Thailand (Latt, 2013). Two key thematic strands are developed in the paper. The first concerns the disjuncture between the Asian Development Bank's rhetoric about regional community in Greater Mekong Subregion on the one hand, and the realities of national regulation and securitization of migration on the other. The second strand concerns various forms of ‘everyday’ financial extortion from migrants on the part of Thai authorities. The intertwining of these two strands makes for an important, critical contribution to issues for which official data are lacking and for which official pronouncements and policy discourse are often misleading. Janet C. Sturgeon's paper examines cross-border rubber cultivation between southwest China and northern Laos (Sturgeon, 2013). Based upon multi-sited ethnographic research spanning the national border, the paper shows how ethnic minority groups in China have emerged as successful transnational entrepreneurs by outsourcing their rubber cultivation expertise to their kin across the border in Laos. The success of this ‘informal regionalization’ contrasts with the failure of state initiatives at cross-border rubber cultivation and allows ethnic Akha and Tai farmers on China's periphery to challenge conventional imaginings of them in China as ‘backward’ and ‘poor’. The paper not only advances understandings of regionalization in this specific borderland but also unsettles some influential existing mappings of wider geographies of uneven development (e.g. Glassman, 2010). Congratulations again to both Sai S.W. Latt and Janet C. Sturgeon for their prizing-winning contributions to volume 34 of the journal (2013). Prizes for both the best paper by a graduate student and best overall paper will be awarded again for the current volume. I look forward to being able to announce—together with my new co-editor, Lu Xi Xi—the award of prizes to similarly high-calibre papers next year.