How transboundary processes connect commons in Japan and Thailand: A relational analysis of global commodity chains and East Asian economic integration

Abstract

In this paper, with a focus on Japan and Thailand, we outline a relational environmental and economic history of East Asian economic integration (EAEI) and its implication for the commons in both places. We draw attention in particular to global commodity chains as relational processes not only of trade and investment, but also geopolitics and aid, to argue that these transborder processes have connected together commons in distant localities resulting in their simultaneous enclosure, dispossession and (re-)commoning with implications for community vulnerabilities in positive and negative ways. To demonstrate this argument we analyse three periods of EAEI: the late nineteenth century until World War II, when Japan and Thailand both began to modernise and new trade and geopolitical relations emerged in the context of colonialism; the post-World War II recovery until the Plaza Accord in 1986, during which time Japan rapidly industrialised, as did Thailand to a lesser extent and regionalism was largely defined by US hegemony; and the post-Plaza Accord period, when Japan deindustrialised its labour intensive manufacture and heavy industry and Thailand rapidly industrialised and EAEI became defined by new and intensified global commodity chains.

Market integration and volatility spillover across major East Asian stock and Bitcoin markets: an empirical assessment

“…, 2019). We also see a positive and significant two-way relationship between trade integration and financial integration in these countries (Vo, 2018; Middleton and Ito, 2020). Financial integration similarly improves cross-border capital flows and the dissemination of financial information (Rahman and Shahari, 2017).…”

Governing transboundary commons in Southeast Asia

“…Geopolitical power relations are bound up in commodity chains that shape not only relational processes of trade and investment but also the construction of corresponding commons and resource enclosures in distant places. Middleton and Ito (2020) demonstrate this relational (re)patterning of human–nature interactions in their study of (de)industrialisation and connected cross‐border processes in Thailand and Japan, set within the historical context of East Asian economic integration. They argue that relationally examining transformations in localised commons lends important insights into multi‐scalar forms of hybrid governance that are transboundary in nature in addition to being domestically driven.…”

The Salween River as a transboundary commons: Fragmented collective action, hybrid governance and power

“…But the commons exist at multiple scales. The local commons are those most immediately affected by [events such as large dam collapses]…, yet existing transboundary governance arrangements tend to be blind to such impacts' (see also Middleton and Ito, 2020).…”