The String of Pearls is a photography based artwork that addresses questions of capitalism and power structures. Hamilton visited the fishing village Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka on several occasions to follow the changes that the community was undergoing. As China re-emerges as a superpower and Western hegemony wanes, the Indian Ocean has become a geopolitical nexus. In the centre of this new map lies Hambantota. The Hambantota region has undergone rapid changes as a result of large investments made in the area by China. The most noticeable manifestation of the influx of capital, is the newly constructed port expected by some to become the largest port in South Asia. American and Indian military ¬strategists refer to the port as part of the »String of Pearls«: a plot of vital infra-structure developments, scattered along the rim of the Indian Ocean. Other constructions in the area, also financed with Chinese capital, include an international airport, an expressway and a cricket ¬stadium. The president of Sri Lanka until 2015, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was a key player in realising these modernisation developments. While overseeing infrastructure projects, the authoritarian president was accused both of nepotism and war crimes. The West no longer represents the only model of development, and there are now alternative versions of modernity that compete with each other. Hambantota can be understood as a microcosm that contains this contested modernity. The above account describes the contextual framework for the artwork The String of Pearls. The same framework also provided the context for the book The Hambantota Connection: Constructing Landscapes, Contesting Modernity, which was made in collaboration with sociologist Karl Palmås and cultural geographer Jonas Lindberg. Drawing upon documentary photography, development ¬geography and economic anthropology, the authors trace connections ¬between local phenomena and global patterns. The Hambantota ¬Connection: Constructing Landscapes, Contesting Modernity presents a visual sociology of logistics and livelihoods, of ¬authoritarian leadership and anthropocenic landscapes, and of ¬economic ¬fictions and planetary fluxes. It explores what a place can say about the world, and how the world can be grasped through abstraction and ¬speculation. Published at Glänta förlag.