Robert J. Dobias and Kirk Talbott
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195125788
- eISBN:
- 9780199832927
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195125789.003.0017
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter discusses the environmental and social consideration in the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) road network. The authors offer ideas for improving the balance between road ...
More
This chapter discusses the environmental and social consideration in the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) road network. The authors offer ideas for improving the balance between road development and socioenvironmental prioritiesLess
This chapter discusses the environmental and social consideration in the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) road network. The authors offer ideas for improving the balance between road development and socioenvironmental priorities
Jim Glassman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834449
- eISBN:
- 9780824870430
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834449.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Transnational economic integration has been described as an opportunity for all participants to achieve greater prosperity through a combination of political cooperation and capitalist economic ...
More
Transnational economic integration has been described as an opportunity for all participants to achieve greater prosperity through a combination of political cooperation and capitalist economic competition. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has championed such rhetoric in promoting the integration of China, Southeast Asia's formerly socialist states, and Thailand into a regional project called the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). But while the GMS project is in fact hastening regional economic integration, the book shows that the approach belies the ADB's idealized description of “win-win” outcomes. The process of “actually existing globalization” in the GMS does provide varied opportunities for different actors, but it is less a rising tide that lifts all boats than an uneven flood of transnational capitalist development whose outcomes are determined by intense class struggles, market competition, and regulatory battles. The book makes the case for adopting a class-based approach to analysis of GMS development, regionalization, and actually existing globalization. First it analyzes the interests and actions of various Thai participants in GMS development, then the roles of different Chinese actors in GMS integration. It provides two cases illustrating the serious limits of any notion that GMS integration is a relatively egalitarian process—Laos' participation in GMS development and the role of migrant Burmese workers in the production of the GMS. The final chapter blends geographical-historical analysis with an assessment of uneven development and actually existing globalization in the GMS.Less
Transnational economic integration has been described as an opportunity for all participants to achieve greater prosperity through a combination of political cooperation and capitalist economic competition. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has championed such rhetoric in promoting the integration of China, Southeast Asia's formerly socialist states, and Thailand into a regional project called the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). But while the GMS project is in fact hastening regional economic integration, the book shows that the approach belies the ADB's idealized description of “win-win” outcomes. The process of “actually existing globalization” in the GMS does provide varied opportunities for different actors, but it is less a rising tide that lifts all boats than an uneven flood of transnational capitalist development whose outcomes are determined by intense class struggles, market competition, and regulatory battles. The book makes the case for adopting a class-based approach to analysis of GMS development, regionalization, and actually existing globalization. First it analyzes the interests and actions of various Thai participants in GMS development, then the roles of different Chinese actors in GMS integration. It provides two cases illustrating the serious limits of any notion that GMS integration is a relatively egalitarian process—Laos' participation in GMS development and the role of migrant Burmese workers in the production of the GMS. The final chapter blends geographical-historical analysis with an assessment of uneven development and actually existing globalization in the GMS.
Jim Glassman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834449
- eISBN:
- 9780824870430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834449.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This prologue stresses the significant impact of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) development project within East and Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. At the same time it also briefly ...
More
This prologue stresses the significant impact of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) development project within East and Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. At the same time it also briefly looks into news media coverage in Asia, noting that, especially the coverage on the major natural disasters that occurred in the region in 2008. The chapter remarks that while the impact of the GMS is comparatively less evident and less “newsworthy,” the GMS is worthy of understanding for those living within the GMS as well as those living outside of it—beyond invocations of “global citizenship,” the GMS is an integral part of the broader world in which processes of “globalization” and “regionalization” are occurring.Less
This prologue stresses the significant impact of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) development project within East and Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. At the same time it also briefly looks into news media coverage in Asia, noting that, especially the coverage on the major natural disasters that occurred in the region in 2008. The chapter remarks that while the impact of the GMS is comparatively less evident and less “newsworthy,” the GMS is worthy of understanding for those living within the GMS as well as those living outside of it—beyond invocations of “global citizenship,” the GMS is an integral part of the broader world in which processes of “globalization” and “regionalization” are occurring.
Jim Glassman
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834449
- eISBN:
- 9780824870430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834449.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter discusses three approaches to the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): institutional, discursive, and class-based. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, enabling and constraining the ...
More
This chapter discusses three approaches to the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): institutional, discursive, and class-based. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, enabling and constraining the production of certain kinds of analyses, and each has some influence on this volume's analyses of the GMS. None are mutually exclusive of the others, although there are different strains within each family of approaches, some of which are more congenial to strains within other approaches, some less so. Though this study primarily uses a class-based approach, it does not do so to the exclusion of insights from either institutional or discursive analyses. The focus on class here is primarily for the ways such an approach can highlight agency in the production of regions, not because of any prejudice that class is the sole (or even in all cases the primary) force driving regionalization.Less
This chapter discusses three approaches to the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): institutional, discursive, and class-based. Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, enabling and constraining the production of certain kinds of analyses, and each has some influence on this volume's analyses of the GMS. None are mutually exclusive of the others, although there are different strains within each family of approaches, some of which are more congenial to strains within other approaches, some less so. Though this study primarily uses a class-based approach, it does not do so to the exclusion of insights from either institutional or discursive analyses. The focus on class here is primarily for the ways such an approach can highlight agency in the production of regions, not because of any prejudice that class is the sole (or even in all cases the primary) force driving regionalization.
