Till F. Paasche - Transecting Securityscapes: Dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq, and Mozambique

Transecting Securityscapes

GEOGRAPHIES OF JUSTICE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

SERIES EDITORS

Mathew Coleman, Ohio State University

Sapana Doshi, University of California, Merced

FOUNDING EDITOR

Nik Heynen, University of Georgia

ADVISORY BOARD

Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto

Zeynep Gambetti, Boazii University

Geoff Mann, Simon Fraser University

James McCarthy, Clark University

Beverley Mullings, Queens University

Harvey Neo, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Geraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia

Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles

Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, CUNY Graduate Center

Jamie Winders, Syracuse University

Melissa W. Wright, Pennsylvania State University

Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore

DISPATCHES FROM CAMBODIA, IRAQ, AND MOZAMBIQUE

TILL F. PAASCHE
JAMES D. SIDAWAY

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS
Athens

2021 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Paasche, Till F., author. | Sidaway, James D., author.

Title: Transecting securityscapes : dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq, and Mozambique / Till F. Paasche, James D. Sidaway.

Description: Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2021] | Series: Geographies of justice and social transformation; 52 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021021243 (print) | LCCN 2021021244 (ebook) | ISBN 9780820360607 (hardback) | ISBN 9780820360614 (paperback) | ISBN 9780820360591 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Security sectorMozambique. | Internal securityMozambique. | Security sectorIraq. | Internal securityIraq. | Security sectorCambodia. | Internal securityCambodia.

Classification: LCC HV8271.A2 P33 2021 (print) | LCC HV8271.A2 (ebook) | DDC 363.209567dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021243

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021244

For Jasmin Leila Sidaway and our parents

. World map indicating sites informing Transecting Securityscapes by Till F. Paasche and James D. Sidaway

. The communist pincersDjakarta-Hanoi-Peking-Pyongyang axison the move

. Meccan securityscape, 7 January 2020

. CNN coverage of Iranian missile strikes on American military targets

. Memorial at the wire fence surrounding the World Trade Center site

Transecting Securityscapes has been long in the making. James initially wrote about power and space in Maputo and wider Mozambique in the early 1990s, following doctoral fieldwork there (198990). However, the journey to Transecting Securityscapes started with a visit the two of us made to Maputo in 2009. This was funded by a grant from the pump-priming research fund of the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Plymouth, England, where James was a faculty member and Till a graduate student. When James moved to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2012 while Till held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Universit de Neuchtel, Switzerland, we had the opportunity to work in Phnom Penh. We also decided then to work together in Iraqi Kurdistan, subsequently enabled by Till taking up a position as a faculty member at a Kurdish university in 2013.

Hence this book is the result of recurring research, reflection, and writing. Portions of draw on articles that appeared in Environment and Planning A (Paasche and Sidaway 2010, 2015; Sidaway et al. 2014). In that earlier incarnation, what here has become our dispatch from Phnom Penh also had two other authors. We thank Piseth Keo and Chih Yuan Woon for working with us in Cambodia and allowing us to adapt the results here. In Maputo, Manuel Francisco Ngovene was an efficient research assistant and Aurelio Mavone was a superb host and source of facts and opinions. Robina Mohammad also joined us in Maputo, and for tolerating our stories from Iraq and for continually reminding him that an embodied feminist perspective on security should never be lost sight of and greatly complicates assumptions about security and insecurity, James is especially grateful.

The research in Cambodia and Iraq was funded by a grant from the National University of Singapore (Crucibles of Globalization: Landscapes of Power, Security and Everyday Lives in Post-Colonial Asian Cities, R-109-000-, Yangon thereby becomes a site for critical reflections about complex and multiple imbrications of frontiers, security and the urban with implications for how these may be conceptualized elsewhere (Sarma and Sidaway 2020, 447). A Humanities and Social Sciences grant from the Office of the Senior Deputy President at NUS (then headed by Ho Teck Hua) allowed James a semester free of teaching and service and hence a return to Iraqi Kurdistan during the fall of 2014, when he was generously hosted by Soran University. The Politics, Economies and Space and the Social and Cultural Geographies research groups within the Department of Geography and the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster of the Asia Research Institute at NUS have offered sounding boards to discuss some of the arguments that unfold in Transecting Securityscapes. James also thanks Neil Coe, Robbie Goh, Brenda Yeoh, and Henry Yeung who enabled sabbaticals from January through May in 2015 and 2019. These offered time to advance the manuscript.