Publications

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Further information

Visit webpage of Dr. Marvin Joseph Fonacier Montefrio at Yale-NUS website.

Contact

Contact Dr. Carl Middleton for further details.



Project Status: Ongoing


Across Southeast Asia, urban agriculture is widely practiced, and includes home food gardens, community gardens, commercial enterprises, and urban farm restaurants, amongst others. Urban farming has emerged as an increasingly enduring feature of contemporary urban landscapes, taking on multiple purposes and meanings, ranging from a necessity to supplement income or food security, to educational activities, to recreation and engagement in associated social networks. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has given additional significance to urban farming for many who face urban poverty and precarity.

In this research, we undertake a comparative study of the range of urban agricultural practices in Bangkok and Manila. Conceptually, the research draws on assemblage theory to examine the political economy, cultural politics and biophysical context of food and urbanism in differing geographies, as well as related themes such as urban land politics. We will explore the actors and their social networks, motivations and purposes, access to various forms of capital, and production practices including kinds of food grown, practices and technologies employed, and location of production spaces. We also examine the metropolis-level institutional and regulatory structures, and distribution networks and consumers of urban agriculture when it is practiced commercially.

Our research will contribute towards an emerging academic field on the political ecology of urban agriculture, generating new empirical knowledge from Southeast Asia. In the context of neoliberal urban economic development in Southeast Asia, we will engage in critical debates on the transformative potential of urban agriculture including on its inclusiveness and sustainability. The research will generate policy recommendations on urban food security, land use and social justice that relates to urban agriculture practices in SE Asia.

This research is a collaboration with Dr. Marvin Joseph Fonacier Montefrio, a Faculty member of Yale-NUS college, Singapore. Our CSDS team is formed of Dr. Carl Middleton and Orapan Pratomlek.