Guest editorial: ecological knowledge co-production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

In Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Human Geography there is increasing interest in how development can be understood as a process of co-production: a process in which science, technology and socio-political orders draw together to inform “developmental imaginaries” – an “imaginary” being the multiple means through which societies arrive at a collective understanding of their social whole. These developmental imaginaries are co-produced by ecological knowledge practices and technical expertise, and vice versa.

The special section took up this understanding of co-production through a variety of disciplinary frames: geography, sociology and anthropology. The three articles all examined ideas of knowledge co-production in the context of ecological governance in Southeast Asia. The articles built on existing scholarship on developmental imaginaries in the region, but extended the work done in the field through their use of STS literature.

The papers included work on clamshell fishers in the South China Sea, the Kristang community in the Melaka Straits, and Transnational City Networks in Southeast Asian cities.