Bounding the Mekong

Abstract

This chapter presents a geographical-historical analysis with several summary observations about uneven development and “actually existing globalization” in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). It argues that capital bounds the Mekong—the ADB discursively constructs the borders of the region, thereby naturalizing processes of capital accumulation enabled by the infrastructure it has helped build. Along this infrastructure move various kinds of capitalists and workers, bounding into, through, and beyond the GMS, producing a broader East Asian regional economy marked by uneven development and competitive displacement. The two forms of bounding produce a process of regionalization more salient at the scale of East Asia as a whole than at the scale of the GMS—a process of regionalization that can also be taken as an instance of “actually existing globalization.”

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