From Mekong Commons to Mekong Community

Considering the Mekong region as an aggregation of various commons, the contributors to this volume investigate the various commons across the boundaries of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.The book incorporates the specialized fields of political science, area studies, public policy, international relations, international development, geography, economics, business administration, public health, engineering, agricultural economics, tropical agriculture, and biotechnology. The contributions to the book cover various issues including innovation and technology, transport and logistics, public health and literacy, traditional medicine, infectious diseases, advanced agricultural technologies, irrigation, water resources, labor migration, human trafficking, and counterfeiting. They examine various commons and goods related to these issues, and discuss practices, policies, decision-making processes and governance strategies for imagining a future Mekong Community that will avoid the tragedy, and explore the comedy of the commons/anti-commons.A valuable resource for scholars of the Mekong region, and more broadly for academics working on the interdisciplinary study of transboundary governance issues.

Seiichi Igarashi is a professor at Chiba University’s Graduate School of Social Sciences. He graduated from Keio University, Faculty of Letters, Japan, in 1994. He earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. from Waseda University, Graduate School of Social Sciences, Japan. In 2002, he was a research associate at Waseda University’s School of Social Sciences; subsequently, he became a post-doctoral research fellow at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in 2005, an assistant professor at Waseda University’s Faculty of Social Sciences in 2008, a researcher for the Global Centers of Excellence (COE) program at Kyoto University in 2010, and a lecturer at Chiba University’s Faculty of Law and Economics, also in 2010. In 2014, he obtained an associate professorship at Chiba University’s Faculty of Law, Politics, and Economics. He specializes in international relations and Asian studies. His recent research focuses on civil society in regionalism, and he is undertaking a study in the Mekong region.