SJTG paper prizes for 2014

Abstract

We begin volume 36 with the announcement of paper prizes for 2014 (volume 35). This is the second year that prizes have been awarded both to the best paper by a graduate student, and to the best overall paper. Like last year, when the inaugural prizes were awarded to Sai Latt and Janet Sturgeon respectively (Latt, 2013; Sturgeon, 2013), the co-editors compiled a shortlist for each category from which special committees of editorial board members selected the winning papers. The results are as follows. Strategic coupling in ‘Next Wave Cities’: Local institutional actors and the offshore service sector in the Philippines Jana Maria Kleibert Subaltern geographies: Geographical knowledge and postcolonial strategy Tariq Jazeel ‘The forest is our inheritance’: An introduction to Semai Orang Alsi place-naming and belonging in the Bukit Tapah Forest Reserve Karen Heikkilä Monaco with bananas, a tropical Manhattan, or a Singapore for Central America? Explaining rapid urban growth in Panama City, Panama Thomas Sigler Knowing into oblivion: Clearing wastelands and imagining emptiness in Vietnamese new urban zones Erik Harms Congratulations to all of the shortlisted authors, and especially to Jana Maria Kleibert (author of the best paper by a graduate student) and Tariq Jazeel (author of the best overall paper). Jana Maria Kleibert is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her paper, published in issue 2, concerns the role of local actors and institutions in the development of business process outsourcing in the Philippines (Kleibert, 2014). In addition to contributing to work that shifts analysis of economic globalization beyond structuralist and corporation-centred framings, the paper's comparative analysis furthers understanding of variability in the extent to which localities are ‘successful’ in attracting footloose service investment, and the kinds of local strategies and activities that enable ‘strategic coupling’ to global production networks. The fact that the two comparative cases are both small cities is itself welcome, given the pervasive metrocentricity of geographical scholarship on cities. Tariq Jazeel is a Reader in the Department of Geography at University College London, UK. His paper was published in issue 1 as part of a special issue on ‘Advancing postcolonial geographies’ (see Sidaway et al., 2014). Advancing a dialogue in particular between geographical scholarship and Subaltern Studies, the paper is concerned not with recuperating subaltern subjects and voices, nor with exposing the situated particularity of ostensibly universal geographical knowledge production (Robinson, 2003), but rather with spatialities that are obscured by hegemonic forms of disciplinary theorization and representation (Jazeel, 2014). Possibilities for engagement with what Jazeel terms ‘quite other spatialities’ are demonstrated through work on the politics of nature, environment and religion in Sri Lanka, building upon his recent book (Jazeel, 2013). However, this paper has resonances that extend far beyond Sri Lanka, especially in asserting the continued importance for geographers of critically engaging with questions and strategies of representation. We will award prizes of USD 1000 again next year to the best papers in the current volume. However, a significant difference is that the next pair of winning authors will not get to see their papers in a hard copy version of the journal. Volume 35 in 2014 was the last one to be published in printed form (such that issue 3 of volume 35, which included the special section on ‘Wastelands, degraded lands and forests, and the class(ification) struggle’, has the distinction of being the last ever to appear in print). There has been discussion of a move to electronic-only publication for several years now, and while we appreciate that there are still readers of the journal—including several members of the editorial board—who value print versions, the editorial board as a whole decided that the time is right to make this transition. In 2013, the proportion of direct subscriptions that included the print version fell to only 10 per cent (having accounted for 20 per cent as recently as 2011). In addition, those figures need to be set in a wider context in which direct subscriptions account for a small (and still shrinking) proportion of the ways that SJTG is accessed globally. For every one direct institutional subscription in 2013, there were 25 institutions (3688 in total) with electronic access to the SJTG as part of a wider collection of Wiley journals. Importantly, given the wider mission of the journal (Bunnell et al., 2011), it is also now available in 5217 institutions in the developing world via philanthropic initiatives. These figures mean that papers published in the SJTG are more widely accessible than ever. Our congratulations again to Tariq Jazeel and Jana Maria Kleibert. We look forward to shortlisting and selecting prize winning papers from a similarly strong set of (electronic-only) contributions to tropical geographical knowledge in the current volume.