Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co‐production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

Abstract

In Human Geography, there is growing interest in how accounts of development can be wedded to an understanding of society in which the material or technical is connected to the social. Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches this division by emphasizing the inextricable relationship between technology and society. This process of co-production—between science and technology on the one hand and social and political order on the other—drives the focus of this special section and its investigation of ecological knowledge and contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia. We align with critical geographers of development who are drawing on insights within the STS literature, in order to explore how particular ecological knowledge practices and forms of technical expertise co-produce contested developmental imaginaries and socio-political authority and order. This productive engagement between critical geography and STS, which this special section speaks to, has foregrounded the insights gained from discourse and narrative analysis in understanding the social and ideational complexity that underlies complex technical systems (Jasanoff, 2015: 2). Furthermore, in a vein familiar to critical political economy that in turn relates to critical geography, STS's approach towards social and technical authority, expertise and order also stresses the importance of materiality in historical transformation. This drives an understanding of technological processes as being contingent and open to change, as opposed to being pre-determined and closed by existing developmental pathways. The authors of this special section contribute to this growing engagement between STS and critical geography with regard to the co-production of science and society; that is, ‘the structural interdependency of knowledge and social norms’ (Forsyth, 2019: 2). This entails attending to the norms and values through which science and technology mutually constitute social orders (Watts, 1999; Gregory et al., 2009). Exploring knowledge co-production opens up the imaginative constellations that bind science and technology to particular authoritative social and political arrangements and developmental pathways. In this special section, the authors therefore seek to bring together the concept of knowledge co-production with geographical imaginaries of development. What emerges is an understanding of the co-production of developmental imaginaries as a site of contestation. This contestation is marked by points of friction—not only over the metaphysical distinctions underpinning nature and society or the perceived ontological character of more-than-human relations—but also over the conditions of possibility for bringing together of new epistemic communities and discursive coalitions. Crucially, we see the contestation underpinning development not merely in oppositional terms, but rather as an interactional process of co-production in and through which technical expertise and knowledge is rendered authoritative and stable (Forsyth, 2019: 2). Geographical imaginaries of development are conveyed here as collective social practices constitutive of socio-environmental contestation and transformation. This understanding of the sociality of collective imagination has its roots in modern anthropology/sociology, which has sought to uncover the underlying social logic and tacit rules governing human relations (Durkheim, 1938 [original 1895]; Weber, 1930). The legacy of such work assigns the imagination a social force—akin to Durkheim's ‘social facts’ and/or Weber's ‘spirit’ (geist)—distinct from material or physical ‘reality’. The ethnographic gaze of these studies collapsed the boundary between imagination and reality, and through the thick descriptions of sociocultural context that they provided, helped to point philosophy of science towards the deeper inconsistencies underpinning the relationship between scientific knowledge, human agency and rationality (Evans-Pritchard, 1937; Winch, 1958). Although anthropologists applying structural-functionalism largely confined their work to non-Western colonial societies, structuralists from the mid-twentieth century onwards attempted to extend this project beyond these particularities so as to undercover the underlying structure of structures universal to the human mind (Levi-Strauss, 1969 [original 1949]). A significant body of work within geography has drawn from this anthropological view of the collective social imagination, expanding upon its spatial implications through the concept of geographical imaginaries. This recognition of the imagined reality constitutive of socio-political authority and order is represented for example in landmark works—Harvey's (2010) [original 1973] Social Justice in the City, which discusses place, power and space in relation to geographical imaginations. Another work that has become influential across disciplines, including the field of human geography is Anderson's (2006) [original 1983] Imagined Communities, which examines processes of nation state building and the development of print capitalism in the formation of national identity. Similarly, Thongchai Winichakul's Siam Mapped made an explicit connection between cartography and the emergence of the modern Thai nation state (Thongchai, 1994), which he refers to as the ‘geo-body’. Scott's account of the optics of state power in Seeing Like a State also takes forward the question of cartography and social control. This is expressed in the deep connection he shows between the necessities of legibility and simplification underlying modern logics of governance and imaginaries of modernist developmental futures (Scott, 1998). Each of these works have explored how the development of collective geographical imaginations are shaped by technologies, such as maps, printing presses and censuses. In doing so, they have highlighted the way in which the spatial ordering of the world is inextricably connected to social order (Gregory, 1994). Although this scholarship acknowledges the role of communication and cartographic technologies in creating particular imaginaries, it does not always give the role of science and technology their due as a significant material force shaping social control and transformation. This disavowal of modernity's most conspicuous feature—technoscience—is suggestive of the limited attention that has hitherto been given to ‘the seminal role of knowledge and its materialisation in generating and anchoring imaginaries of social order’ (our italics; Jasanoff, 2015: 8). Imagination is understood here largely along constructivist lines as the collective and shared cognitive structure in and through which discourse, narrative and memory have come to bind together human experience across time and space. The constructivist legacy of this anthropological/sociological perspective on imagination, although firmly established across the social sciences, is inadequate for understanding the sociomaterial complexity of co-production. Literature in the constructivist tradition tends to proffer a partial view of knowledge that overlooks how knowledge is not only mental—that is, held ‘within’ the individual human mind—and collectively shared across society intersubjectively—but also corporeal and heterogenous, consisting of different materials embedded in (and distributed through) technological systems (Mackenzie, 2002). Yet, knowledge cannot often be readily described as either mental or social given the heterogeneity of sociomaterial interconnections, and it is this partial view of knowledge that the concept of co-production helps us address. In the context of environmental knowledge politics, Forsyth (2019) has shown that understandings of knowledge co-production have generally fallen into two camps. On the one hand, we see what he describes as ‘constitutive co-production’ with its conceptual antecedents in poststructural notions of assemblage and governmentality (Li, 2007), and on the other hand, ‘interactional co-production’. The latter ‘shows how knowledge can become authoritative through diverse actors or configurations of interests and values, rather than through one predefined powerful group’ (Forsyth, 2019: 3). In a similar vein, Gururani and Vandergeest's work on ecological knowledge co-production has stressed the importance of identifying constellations of actors and their networks and power relations instead of looking to make firm distinctions between particular groups, for example the state and local communities (Gururani & Vandergeest et al., 2014). In this special section, with a focus on Southeast Asia, we add to this literature by highlighting how expertise and knowledge becomes authoritative and dominant not only through networks of actors and institutions but also crucially through practices of technical mediation. Highlighting the materiality of co-production in this way contributes to our understanding of the production of developmental imaginaries and the ways in which they are contested. This focus on how expert knowledge becomes dominant and stable through networks and practices of technical mediation allows us to see contestation not only in oppositional terms, i.e state versus society, but also as a complex sociotechnical process in which the connection between interests and identities is not entirely socially preordained. Therefore, the papers in this special section ask: How are networked processes as well as practices of technical mediation linked with the generation, mobilization and contestation of developmental imaginaries? Key to exploring this question is the connection between knowledge co-production and the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. As explained above, this concept emphasizes that technoscientific expertise and knowledge becomes authoritative not only through networked social relations but also through practices of technical mediation. A classic example of this sociotechnical entanglement is found in STS literature's understanding of the onset of modernity (Latour, 1986), which did not correspond with transformations in human cognition (i.e., our brains did not suddenly become bigger). Instead, modernity was linked to technoscientific advances and the development of specific technical inscription devices, and forms of standardization and classification techniques, such as those highlighted by the scholars above—printing presses, cadastral maps and so on. It was the adoption of these devices and techniques, rather than an adherence to scientific method (Feyerabend, 2010), that enabled the expansion of expertise and knowledge through standardization (and disciplining) in relation to our cognitive power and imaginative vision. In this way the rationalization of measurement (Koyré, 1968), the expansion of visibility (Levitt, 2009), and new forms of knowledge circulation (Anderson, 1998) enabled the development of new geographical imaginaries and forms of sociopolitical authority and order. These technical inscription devices, forms of standardization, and classification techniques are essential to practices of technical mediation and, by extension, to knowledge co-production. Technical mediation is integral to the networked relations of actors and institutions, helping to stabilize different developmental imaginaries. This understanding of co-production is significant to how the authors of this special section conceive of contestation around developmental imaginaries. They show the possibilities for how socially networked and technically mediated co-production disrupts particular imaginaries, and challenges exclusions and dominant developmental pathways. It also adds insight towards understanding the political capabilities that non-hegemonic actors have in embedding new or alternative knowledges and networks in decision making and governance. The co-productive dynamic of sociotechnical imaginaries is central to how we conceive of contestation. For example, as we will see in this special section, contestation is inextricably bound up in the measuring devices, technologies of data collection, and observational tools, such as maps and drones, which act to stabilize particular sociopolitical authorities and orders. The authors of this special section explore this understanding of knowledge co-production—as socially networked and technically mediated—in the context of ecological governance in Southeast Asia. A growing body of literature by scholars of the region has looked at the co-production of developmental imaginaries from different perspectives. For example, Hirsch (2016) has shown how the various imaginations of the Mekong as a region are entangled with geopolitics. Similarly, Lamb's study along the Salween River demonstrates how local participatory knowledge of riparian environments gives shape to co-produced ethnic and gendered identities (Lamb, 2018). Meanwhile, as touched on above, Gururani and Vandergeest et al. (2014) explore how governance in Asian frontier ecologies is co-produced with ecological knowledge, through messy and multi-scalar networks of actors and institutions. They show the role of ‘new knowledge technologies’ within these networks, noting how technological devices often marginalize people from participation in ecological governance—for example in the lack of access to the internet or technical training (Gururani & Vandergeest et al., 2014: 348; LeBlond, 2014). This special section complements this work but, as discussed above, seeks to emphasize technology as an active medium in and through which expertise and knowledge become embedded, stabilized and authoritative, avoiding viewing technology in instrumental terms (i.e. as inert devices socially overdetermined by networked actors and institutions in power relations). Technical mediation plays a key role in shaping contestation in these networks because of the norms and values, as well forms of standardization and classification, that it perpetuates and the developmental pathways it delimits. As noted earlier, in outlining the political efficacy of an interactional approach to ecological knowledge co-production, Forsyth has persuasively shown that ‘how knowledge gains political authority’ (Forsyth, 2019: 1) is an essential—yet inadequately addressed—problematic for understanding the complex dynamics of contestation in late modernity. The multiple developmental imaginaries that reflect social plurality are key, we suggest, to understanding contestation in the non-oppositional terms outlined by Forsyth. For him, constitutive approaches to knowledge co-production tend to ‘analyse expert knowledge as forms of governmental rationality seeking to control others’. The interactional approach is distinct from this in that it views ‘how knowledge becomes authoritative within political disputes when it is accepted as unchallenged by diverse parties, and then acts as a tacit framework for political discussion’ (Forsyth, 2019: 15). Fundamental to this process of acceptance and/or legitimacy is not only the ecological knowledge circulated in these actor networks, but also how such expertise and knowledge is performatively embedded and stabilized through practices of technical mediation. It is worth emphasizing then that the authors of this collection are conceiving of developmental contestation as an interactional process of knowledge co-production, bound up in networked relations and forms of technical mediation. Crucially, an emphasis on the primacy of what Barry (2013) calls ‘the political situation’—that is, the indeterminacy of any given controversy or dispute—suggests that the historical power of technical inscription devices (Forsyth, 2019: 16), to transform expertise into governmental authority, does not rest solely on their ability to render knowledge technical (Li, 2007). By exploring the connection between the materiality of knowledge and imaginaries of development we are able to see that the separation of the material or technical from ideational networked relations is in fact a misleading starting point for thinking through contestation in ecological knowledge co-production. The technical and ideational are mutually constitutive, so that developmental imaginaries are always bound up with practices and forms of technical mediation, and the discourse and narratives embodied in these technological devices and practices are also inextricably material. This conceptual approach enables the authors to point to the ways in which ecological knowledge becomes authoritative and dominant in political conflicts, and the epistemic communities and discursive coalitions under which contested developmental imaginaries subsequently emerge. This allows us to see that there can be multiple developmental imaginaries simultaneously at play. In the articles that follow, this dynamic of co-production and its connection to contested imaginaries of development has been explored through different conceptual modes and empirical contexts. Roszko's (2023) paper spotlights the interplay between geopolitical and scientific expertise as co-produced knowledges through an exploration of the discursive construction of the South China Sea. Arnez (2023) contributes an investigation of the networked processes and procedures that co-produce ecological knowledge in the space between sea and coast in the Straits of Melaka. Kamiński's (2023) approach is to examine how knowledge in Transnational City Networks (TCNs) is co-produced, how it circulates and how Southeast Asian cities attempt to adapt to and/or contest the imaginaries of urban development that emerge. The co-production of science and society is integral in all of these empirical contexts. For Kamiński, this is evident where the networked actors and institutions in TCNs cannot be separated from the technologies that enable ecological knowledge sharing. Similarly, in Arnez and Roszko's papers, technology—whether in the form of drones or maps—is not a passive medium but rather one in and through which a particular form of ecological knowledge is rendered authoritative. By exploring ecological knowledge co-production as both socially networked and technically mediated, these papers are able to highlight the generation, mobilization and contestation of developmental imaginaries. We see challenges to particular developmental imaginaries playing out at different scales and registers, with Arnez moving between grassroots and state developmental imaginaries, Roszko foregrounding state-state and local interactions and Kamiński focusing on the networked city scale. Across these different scales and registers, these contested imaginaries of development emerge from a hierarchical process of ecological knowledge co-production. Roszko shows how clamshell fishers are intermittently co-opted and excluded from the dominant state-led developmental imaginary of the South China Sea. In Arnez's paper, it is the Kristang community that feels itself at the bottom of the hierarchy as it contests statist visions for the future of the Melaka Straits. Similarly, Kamiński finds that there are some members of the city networks who contest what they argue is a hierarchical neocolonial imposition of external ideas and knowledge practices. Processes of exclusion and the contestation that it fosters thus come strongly to the fore through the interactional co-production perspective that this special section advocates. The research in this special section was kindly supported by the Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia (CRISEA) interdisciplinary research program funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Program. Additional funding has been provided by UK Research and Innovation through the Global Challenges Research Fund's ‘Political Capabilities for Equitable Resilience’ project, Grant/Award Number: ES/T00259X/1.