ABSTRACT
Contested spaces abound in cities in Southeast Asia due to the nature of interactions between spaces, places and households. The nature of this contestation may be read in broad terms as the juxtaposition of agricultural and non-agricultural activities in the landscape captured by what McGee (2003, 1991, 1989) calls the desakota (‘village’ and ‘town’ in Bahasa Indonesia). This has resulted in mixed and intersecting livelihoods and patchy ecosystems especially around the urban fringe. Peri-urban aquatic food production systems are one such case. These systems abound in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta and Manila (Nguyen Thi Dieu Phuong et al. 2006, Kuong et al. 2006, Huynh Pham Viet Huy and Le Thanh Hung 2006, Little and Bunting 2005, Leschen et al. 2005). We can see such livelihoods as occupying marginal or contested ‘space’ in four regards. First of all, such systems physic - ally occupy liminal spaces at the edge of the city, between urban and rural, on land (or water) that has indeterminate tenancy and a considerable degree of insecurity. Second, the households and individuals involved in production are often migrants to the city, sometimes ethnic minorities, and in various ways excluded from the mainstream of city life. Third, the production systems themselves – in their use of waste – often contravene public health legislation and challenge the public’s assumption about ‘safe’ and ‘wholesome’ food, and also about the ‘status’ of different foods. And finally, agriculture and aquaculture in cities is, for many planning agencies, an activity that is ‘out of place’, a relic and anachronism in the urban world. It is these senses of waste re-use aquaculture being on the ‘edge’ – on the edge of the city, at the margins of legality and hygiene, at the interface for consumers between the acceptable and the unacceptable, and out of place in terms of the urban space that it occupies – that this chapter explores.
