{"word_count": 646, "character_count": 5135}
by Franz Waldenberger (DIJ Tokyo)The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien and theMax Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland hadinvited 18 doctoral and postdoctoral scholars from the humanities and socialsciences to attend a Transregional Academy convened at the National Universityof Singapore (NUS) on the topic of “Infrastructures, Regions and Urbanizations”.The Academy was chaired by Weiqiang Lin and James D. Sidaway (NationalUniversity of Singapore), Franz Waldenberger (Deutsches Institut fürJapanstudien, Tokyo) and Simone Lässig (Deutsches Historisches InstitutWashington). It was arranged in cooperation with the Asia Research Instituteand its director Jonathan Rigg as well as the Max Weber Foundation Research Group onBorders, Mobility and New Infrastructures at NUS.The participants coming from ten different countries represented diversecultural and disciplinary backgrounds and research interests. They were splitinto three discussion groups, that met six times during the one-week programgiving each member of the group the opportunity to present and discuss anongoing research project. Seven parallel sessions, where presenters wouldintroduce leading scholarly contributions related to the overarching theme ofthe Academy provided additional intellectual input and allowed participants tomeet and discuss in different compositions. One public plenary lecture, one roundtableand a closing session offered possibilities for intellectual exchange among allparticipants. The academic program was complemented by two excursions exploringthe city of Singapore.Infrastructure has become a lively domain ofscholarship. Whilst often seemingly mundane and quotidian, the politics,histories and geographies associated with infrastructures invite criticalscrutiny and are a mirror to wider, socio-economic, historical-geographical andnatural trajectories. Infrastructure has both tangible, material forms, such asroads, cables, wharfs, power and water grids and more intangible forms, such asformalized and informal civil society socio-political networks and institutions.&#160; The interactions between these forms andbetween infrastructures and regions merit examination. Regions include both “areas”as well as the scholarly approaches to them. The latter include a range of areastudies traditions and trans-area studies. Infrastructures consolidate andtransform 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-PacificPartnership), cross-border formations (such as the Indonesia-Malaysia-SingaporeGrowth Triangle, sometimes known as SIJORI) and cities. In regard of latter, the problematique of urbanizationhas also become a very lively subject of scholarly debate. This includes claimsthat sociologically and in terms of reconfigurations of space and nature,urban-centred networks span the globe, and hence the development of argumentsthat the appropriate analytical lens should be “planetary urbanization”bestowing a network perspective on cities, resources and territories. Either way,regions and inter-city dynamics are themselves continually reconfigured byinfrastructure. A significant contemporary example, is China’s Belt and Roadinitiative that promises to reconfigure the spaces of Eurasia and East Asia’sinteractions with the rest of Asia, the wider Indian Ocean and beyond intoAfrica.Offering ample room for a broad range of topics and multidisciplinaryperspectives, the research projects presented by participants covered a wide varietyof subjects from supply chains in the age of big data, solar micro-grids,environmental justice, migration, urban and regional development projects,global infrastructure programs, oceanic urbanization, border conflicts tophotographic representations of cities. The historic and contemporary examplesof cities, regions and borders span across the globe, although several of theurban development projects took examples from India. Justice, poverty andenvironmental concerns were among the common socio-ecological issues problematizedin many of the presentations. One important aspect addressed in the roundtable discussionwas the imbalance between the increasing interdependencies created within denseurban as well as global infrastructures and the cognitive abilities of thepeople connecting to these multi-layered material and virtual networks. Theinability to grasp the increasing complexity implies a growing individualignorance of the total whole and creates fundamental governance issues.The thematically dense and scholarly demanding one-week program stillleft room for personal exchange and networking, which, of course, is one of thegoals pursued within the event format. Already prior to the start of theAcademy, participants were connecting over the virtual platform provided by theForum for Transregional Studies. The interaction in virtual space continuedthrough and beyond the period of the Academy, providing a useful infrastructurefor further transregional debates. 