Toward a feminist housing commons? Conceptualising care - (as) - work in collaborative housing

This article conceptualizes care-(as)-work in collaborative housing and addresses current debates on the potential of cohousing to embody a feminist commons. A focus on purpose-built cohousing projects in the UK enables us to focus on the values present in the initial phases of collective design and on the ongoing negotiations and mediation that take place through social interactions, resident-led self-management, and formal and informal mutual support. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with two communities in England. Our contribution focuses on two aspects of care-(as)-work: how difficult emotions related to cohousing maintenance work are minimized for the good of the common and how such work is differentially embodied. Returning to cohousing’s transformational capacities as a feminist commons, we show that while boundaries of care in commoning are critical to residents, they are inherently blurry, performative and gendered

Evaluation Transformation Implies Its Decolonization

Transformational evaluation implies a decolonization process focused on relieving the misery and suffering of the oppressed. To inform such a reorientation, this article describes the challenges of social transformation; probes the links between capitalism, slavery and racism; takes stock of the post-colonial development order; examines the legacy of the evaluation occupation; and recommends new policy directions inspired by indigenous evaluation.

Disasters as Contingent Events: Volcanic Eruptions, State Advisories, and Public Participation in the Twentieth-Century Philippines

By revisiting the eruptions of Taal in 1911, Hibok-Hibok in 1951, and Pinatubo in 1991, this article interrogates Greg Bankoff’s argument that “cultures of disaster” in the Philippines produce “coping mechanisms” manifested in public apathy and the state’s failure at mitigation. It argues for historical contingency as illustrated by the relative success at disaster mitigation in Pinatubo’s case, despite extreme challenges. It highlights the warning system in which the Aeta who lived on Mount Pinatubo, along with volcanologists and other key actors, played crucial roles. The Aeta’s nonscientific perspective was not an obstacle to understanding risks and taking defensive action

Confronting climate crisis: A framework for understanding the criteria for addressing dangerous climate change

Despite wide acknowledgement of the threats from human-induced climate change to human societies and the wider ecosystem, no comprehensive long-term global agreement to tackle the problem has yet been reached to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In arguing for a replacement, evaluative claims are often made that certain policy proposals are more environmentally effective, equitable or efficient than others. However, these three dominant criteria are subject to a range of interpretations, and can come into conflict with one another. This limits their use for guiding policy. Philosophy can and should play a role in scrutinising alternative conceptions, their justifications and assumptions, and help develop justifiable formulations of the criteria. Existing philosophical contributions have focused on aspects of the equity criterion, but have largely overlooked the other two criteria and have not considered how they should be prioritised overall. This thesis, for the first time, considers and proposes an ordering of these three criteria (focusing on mitigation), drawing on a Green Economic conceptual framework. This places ecological effectiveness first, defining the ecological limits of economic greenhouse gas-emitting activity; equity is then applied second, to define equitable resource sharing of the emissions space; and efficiency last, to imply genuinely efficient use of emissions space in contributing to equitable human well-being. The thesis then examines in detail how each criterion should be interpreted within this context, so that they are mutually consistent. As well as offering a set of ordered evaluative criteria for a climate change mitigation agreement, it aims to highlight the role of the conventional political-economic framework in climate policy debates and draw out the hidden conceptual and ethical assumptions it imports. This thesis also, therefore, aims to further the development of Green Economic thinking and show its relevance to the current substantial threat of dangerous anthropogenic climate change

A critical analysis on the efficiency of property development approval processes in the City of Cape Town

The Western Cape Government Economic War Room has identified that land-use management in the City of Cape Town is inefficient. Coupled with the fact that there is a housing crisis within the City of Cape Town, it is imperative that such inefficiencies are addressed with urgency. Current development regulations in the City of Cape Town are said to be hindering the involvement of the private sector in the property development space and adding unnecessary delays to the property development sector in general. This paper will argue that a reason for this can be attributed to convoluted legislation linked to property development approval processes, that is being too rigidly interpreted and not administered efficiently. There is therefore a need to understand how the overall development application system is run, especially in relation to the land use and building plan application processes, to assist in identifying the inefficiencies affecting the property development space as a whole. This will allow pragmatic solutions to be formulated and expanded on, to better expound how a more efficient development environment can be created. A further important factor in better understanding the property development space, is comprehending the context within which it functions. Namely, the governance systems which affect it, the laws and regulations applicable to it, and the lack of emphasis on saving time throughout the application process. The purpose of this paper is to show where the inefficiencies lie in the land use management and building development management application processes, and why such inefficiencies may be happening. This paper will also discuss and recommend further topics that should be studied in order to resolve the various issues named. The methodology used to achieve the aforementioned was a mixed method of data collection, which encompassed various interviews with experts working within the property and planning development fields, iterative communication with these professionals, and literature reviews. In sum, there is no one answer to the identified issues as there are many interconnected complexities that must be dealt with in order to address the inefficiencies effectively. What is clear however, is that the current implementation of administrative penalties by the City of Cape Town are causing major capacity issues within the Development Management department and Municipal Planning Tribunal, and which ultimately has a ripple effect on the system as a whole

Climate Change and Ethics of Geoengineering -- Implications Of Climate Emergency Ethics

Global climate change and intentional climate modification, i.e. geoengineering include various ethical problems which are entangled as a complex ensemble of questions regarding the future of the biosphere. The possibilities of catastrophic effects of climate change which are also called “climate emergency” have led to the emergence of the idea of modifying the atmospheric conditions in the form of geoengineering. The novel issue of weather ethics is a subdivision of climate ethics, and it is interested in ethical and political questions surrounding weather and climate control and modification in a restricted spatio-temporal scale. The objective of geoengineering is to counterbalance the adverse effects of climate change and its diverse corollaries in various ways on a large scale. The claim of this dissertation is that there are ethical justifications to claim that currently large-scale interventions to the climate system are ethically questionable. The justification to pursue geoengineering on the basis of considering its pros and cons, is inadequate. Moral judgement can still be elaborated in cases where decisions have to be made urgently and the selection of desirable choices is severely limited. The changes needed to avoid severe negative impacts of climate change requires commitment to mitigation as well as social changes because technical solutions cannot address the issue of climate change altogether. The quantitative emphasis of consumerism should shift to qualitative focus on the aspiration for simplicity in order to a move towards the objective of the continuation of the existence of humankind and a flourishing, vital biosphere.Globaali ilmastonmuutos ja ilmastonmuokkaus sisältävät useita eettisiä ongelmia, jotka kietoutuvat monimutkaiseksi kysymysten sarjaksi koskien koko biosfäärin tulevaisuutta. Ilmastonmuutoksen aiheuttamia mahdollisia katastrofaalisia seurauksia kutsutaan myös ilmastohätätilaksi. Ajatus ilmastonmuokkauksesta on syntynyt tämän mahdollisen hätätilan myötävaikutuksesta. Soveltavan etiikan uusi alue, sääetiikka, on ilmastoetiikan osa-alue, joka on kiinnostunut ajallisesti ja paikallisesti rajatuista sään- ja ilmastonmuokkaukseen liittyvistä eettisistä ja poliittisista kysymyksistä. Ilmastonmuokkauksen tavoitteena on tasapainottaa eri tavoin suuressa mittakaavassa ilmastonmuutoksen haitallisia vaikutuksia. Tämän väitöskirjan keskeisin väite on, että on olemassa eettisiä perusteita, joiden mukaan tällä hetkellä laajamittaisesti toteutettu tai suunniteltu ilmastojärjestelmän muokkaaminen on eettisesti kyseenalaista. Ilmastonmuokkauksen oikeutusta ei voida puolustaa vain arvioimalla sen hyötyjä ja haittoja. Sellaisissakin tilanteissa, joissa moraalinen päätöksenteko on tehtävä välittömästi ja toivottujen valintojen valikoima on äärimmäisen rajallinen, on kuitenkin mahdollista tehdä päteviä moraalipäätelmiä. Ilmastonmuutoksen haitallisten vaikutusten välttämiseen tarvittavat muutokset edellyttävät kuitenkin sitoutumista kasvihuonekaasujen hillinnän lisäksi myös sosiaalisiin muutoksiin, sillä pelkät tekniset ratkaisut eivät pysty käsittelemään ilmastonmuutoksen haasteita. Kulutusmyönteisyyden ja -keskeisyyden sijaan tulisi tavoitella laadullisesti arvokkaampia asioita, kuten esimerkiksi pyrkimystä yksinkertaisempaan elämäntapaan. Tämän pyrkimyksen tavoitteena on ihmiskunnan olemassaolon jatkuminen, mikä sisältyy elinvoimaisen ja kukoistavan biosfäärin elämään.Siirretty Doriast