I recently wrote a short piece about the talk I gave as part of the London School of Economics Centre for Southeast Asia Studies seminar series, about a month ago. It has been published on the CEAS blog. The opportunity to present my talk to an engaged audience and writing the piece for the blog was a useful exercise as I revise my manuscript and prepare to submit the paper for review. It will feature in a special issue on speculative urbanism, which I’m excited to see come to fruition hopefully some time next year.
In the blog, I introduce an important finding in the paper, which is that the environmental future of Jakarta is also subject to speculation. Thus, I write: “Speculation is not an activity confined to the world of global finance, real estate, and investors. It extends into conversations and debates about cities, which are increasingly dominated by predictions and prophesies of how cities will fare under conditions of climate change”. I also reflect on the risks of researching hegemonic processes like speculative urbanism, capitalism and neoliberalism: namely that we sometimes fail to engage with their respective “outsides”.
““Speculation is not an activity confined to the world of global finance, real estate, and investors. It extends into conversations and debates about cities, which are increasingly dominated by predictions and prophesies of how cities will fare under conditions of climate change.””
You can read my full blog post here. You can also read a reflection piece on my talk here written by Al Lim, a doctoral student at Yale University.
I have really enjoyed interacting with the LSE SEAC community. Directed by Professor Hyun Bang Shin, I have found the centre to be incredibly supportive for early career researchers. I highly recommend that graduate students and faculty connect with the centre via their early Early Career Scholars network, and take a look at the robust scheduling on the site. There are so many excellent events and talks planned, and the Centre makes an explicit effort to organize these at times that facilitate participation from those in the region.