The Hambantota Connection: Constructing Landscapes, Contesting Modernity
Kerstin Hamilton, Jonas Lindberg and Karl Palmås
Glänta
English
Hardcover
256 pages
240 x 260 mm
2014
ISBN 9789186133597
As China re-emerges as a superpower and Western hegemony wanes, the Indian Ocean has become a geopolitical nexus. In the centre of this new map lies Hambantota, a fishing village on the south coast of Sri Lanka. Here, Chinese capital and labour has been ploughed into the construction of an international airport, a cricket stadium, and what is expected to become the largest port in South Asia. Hambantota seems to fit perfectly into what American and Indian military strategists refer to as the ‘String of Pearls’: a plot of vital infrastructure developments, scattered along the rim of the Indian Ocean. The West no longer represents the only model of development, and there are now alternative versions of modernity that compete with each other. Hambantota can be understood as a microcosm that contains this contested modernity.
Drawing upon documentary photography, development geography and economic anthropology, the authors trace connections between local phenomena and global patterns. The Hambantota Connection presents a visual sociology of logistics and livelihoods, of authoritarian leadership and anthropocenic landscapes, and of economic fictions and planetary fluxes. It explores what a place can say about the world, and how the world can be grasped through abstraction and speculation.
(source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hambantota-Connection-Constructing-Landscapes-Contesting/dp/9186133594)
About the Artists
Kerstin Hamilton is an artist and PhD candidate in artistic practice with a focus on photography, based in Gothenburg, Sweden.
kerstinhamilton.com
(source: https://kerstinhamilton.com/bio/)
Jonas Lindberg is a researcher and professor of human geography at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
(source: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonas-Lindberg-3)
Karl Palmås is a researcher at the Division of Science, Technology and Society. Originally trained as an engineer, he holds a doctorate in sociology from the London School of Economics & Political Science, and has worked as associate professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg since 2012.
(source: https://www.chalmers.se/en/staff/Pages/karl-palmas.aspx)
About the Publisher
Glänta is an independent publishing house and a quarterly cultural journal, in both cases operating in the intersections between theory and politics, philosophy and literature, art and science. Glänta also produces films and events, including filmed events. The editorial office is situated in Gothenburg, Sweden.
(source: https://www.glanta.org/about/)
