Events

The forum is jointly organized by the Transregional Academy, which is part of the strategic cooperation between the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland; the Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien; Max Weber Foundation Research Group on Borders, Mobility and New Infrastructures, and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. 

Infrastructure has become a lively domain of scholarship. Whilst often seemingly mundane and quotidian, the politics, histories and geographies associated with infrastructures invite critical scrutiny and are a mirror to wider, socio-economic, historical-geographical and natural trajectories. Infrastructure has both tangible, material forms, such as roads, cables, wharfs, power and water grids and more intangible forms, such as formalized and informal civil society socio-political networks and institutions. Infrastructure can be seen as a form of spatial-temporal “fix” within the circulation of capital, goods and services. Infrastructures connect places with different capabilities and power. Especially, if you integrate a stronger value chain or/and global production network, crucial questions arise about who, where and what will be able to appropriate value. Infrastructures consolidate and transform uneven development, regional value regimes and landscapes at diverse, interacting and often contested scales. These include territorial states, regional organizations (such as ASEAN, the EU or APEC and the Trans-Pacific Partnership), cross-border formations (such as the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle, sometimes known as SIJORI) and cities.

The closed-door forum aims to provide scholars from different disciplines who are interested in discussing and exchanging on contemporary and historical cases, and diverse and dissident approaches to these questions of infrastructures, regions and urbanization.

For more information, please email to academies@trafo-berlin.de.
CONVENORS

Andreas Eckert, HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin, Germany
Franz Waldenberger, Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien, Japan
James D Sidaway, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
Jonathan Rigg, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Weiqiang Lin, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore