Prof. Benjamin Hodges has published a new article “Some Things are not held together by Glue: Chunambo and other ‘Sticky Matter’ in Subtropical Macao, China” as part of a special issue of the eTropic journal on “Tropical Materialisms: poetics, practices, possibilities” co-edited by Anita Lundberg and Christian Benitez. The issue brings together work that considers new materialism, posthumanism, and material poetics in the tropics.
In his article Prof. Hodges uses the traditional rammed earth material known as chunambo to consider how Macao’s urban development and recent land reclamation projects might be affected by climate change and future sea level rise. He draws parallels between the adhesive qualities of this traditional building method and a contemporary reliance on concrete. He also compares these construction techniques with the natural ability of oysters to hold on to rocks and each other in intertidal zones. Drawing inspiration from the speculative tendencies found in new materialist literature, he imagines possible climate futures and their effect on the city and its multispecies inhabitants.
Link to the article: https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic/article/view/3901
