Putting the Place in Flow Restructures: Networks, Assembled Positionalities, and the Special Economic Zone Development

Abstract

This article attempts to further develop the positionality of place through aggregated effects of vision construction by different positioned actants. We attempt to integrate two concepts: the feminist positionality that stresses the subjects’ situatedness in networks and their relational power of vision constructions in host places and the networking behavior of brokers with their exclusive connections to small world clusters, as argued by international relations network analysis. Our attempts at the bodily level of situated and subjective vision construction aim to address two challenges: first, how to address the entanglement of geopolitics and biopolitics, and second, how do encounters account for the power of a place premised on its areal resources through the behavior of brokers. The institutionalization of special economic zone development in Cambodia, from the introduction of new norms to law-making and planning, is chosen as a case for its dynamic process.

本文研究不同立场行为者的视觉构建的聚合效应, 推动了场所的立场研究。我们试图整合两个概念: 1)女权主义立场——强调主体在网络中的情境性以及场所视觉构建的关系型权力, 2)基于国际关系网络分析, 代理节点的网络行为及其与小世界集群的排它性联系。我们研究了个体水平的情境化和主观化视觉构建, 旨在探讨两个挑战: 如何解决地缘政治和生物政治的纠缠, 冲突如何诠释基于区域资源和代理节点行为的场所权力。本文以柬埔寨经济特区开发的制度化为案例, 研究了特区引入新规范、制定法律和规划的动态过程。

Este artículo intenta desarrollar más la posicionalidad del lugar a través de los efectos agregados de la construcción de visión, por diferentes actores posicionados. Intentamos integrar dos conceptos: la posicionalidad feminista, que enfatiza la situación de los sujetos en las redes y el poder relacional de las construcciones de visión, en los lugares de acogida, y el comportamiento en red de los intermediarios con sus conexiones exclusivas a pequeños conglomerados mundiales, tal como se argumenta en el análisis de redes de relaciones internacionales. Nuestros intentos en el nivel corporal de la construcción de visiones situadas y subjetivas pretenden abocar dos retos: primero, cómo abordar el entrelazamiento de la geopolítica y la biopolítica, y segundo, cómo explican los encuentros el poder de un lugar afianzado en sus recursos zonales, a través del comportamiento de los intermediarios. La institucionalización del desarrollo de las zonas económicas especiales en Camboya, a partir de la introducción de nuevas normas hasta la expedición de nuevas leyes y la planificación, se elige como un caso para estudiar su proceso dinámico.

Key Words:

• Cambodia
• network
• positionality
• special economic zone
• territoriality

关键词:

• 柬埔寨
• 网络
• 立场
• 经济特区
• 领土性

Palabras clave:

• posicionalidad
• red
• territorialidad
• zona económica especial

Acknowledgments

An early version of this article was shared at the PEAS group discussion at the National University of Singapore. We are indebted to James Sidaway, Nathan Green, Chih-yuan Woon, Carl Grundy-Warr, and Shaun Lin. We also have benefited from conversations on Southeast Asia with K. C. Ho, Chen Xiangming, Shaun Teo, Yang Yang, Weiqiang Lin, Emily Chua, Tim Bunnell, Elaine Ho, Brenda Yeoh, Henry Yeung, Chua Beng Huat, and Jack Qiu. We are grateful for comments from the two anonymous reviewers. The errors in the present version are, however, our own.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was supported by the Hong Kong General Research Funding project (RGC Ref No. 11609523) and the Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Grant Project (Cityu 7020070).

Notes on contributors

June Wang

JUNE WANG is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. E-mail: [email protected]. Her long-term research interest dwells on the Deleuzian (re)territorialization of state space; that is, how the intertwined political and economic logics put human and nonhuman things on the move, resulting in ceaseless reconfiguration of economy and population.

Chao Yao

CHAO YAO is a PhD from the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on China’s practices of relational sovereignty through Chinese-invested SEZs in Cambodia in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, especially the production process of SEZs from a relational networked perspective by exploring the infrastructural power and the effectuated spatial reach.