Constructing the public in roadmapping the transition to a bioeconomy : A case study from the Netherlands

In recent years there has been increasing attention to the transition toward a bioeconomy. From comparable transitions toward sustainability, we know that transitions require integral, inclusive approaches toward developing a long-term strategy, focusing not only on technological innovation, but also on involving the public. This is not easy. Public engagement encompasses diverse forms of public and civil society participation, and it is crucial to understand the specificities of these interactions and their effects on potential transition pathways. We present a conceptual-analytical paper where the focus lies on understanding sense-making practices in the construction of publics in the bioeconomy. Using a case-study approach, this article describes five partialities of the constructed public in the bioeconomy and analyzes the orchestration, productive dimensions and effects of these constructions. Our analysis offers a new perspective on, and appreciation of, the partiality of different forms of public participation, and varying degrees in which possibilities of system change in the bioeconomy transition are inclusive or exclusive toward differentially constructed publics. This offers an alternative, constructive way of exploring actor dynamics and politics in system change. We aim to contribute to a more nuanced and integral interpretation of public engagement in sustainability transitions, which is relevant to actors from academia, policy, industry and other spheres relevant to the bioeconomy transition.</p

Mapping diverse visions of energy transitions: co-producing sociotechnical imaginaries

The need to rapidly decarbonise energy systems is widely accepted, yet there is growing criticism of ‘top–down’, technocentric transition visions. Transitions are, such critics claim, unpredictable, contested, and comprise of multiple and competing perspectives. This paper opens up to diverse visions of energy transitions by studying a corpus of 12 visions produced across different ‘institutional settings’ of the state, business, science and technology, and civil society in the UK. We introduce a new analytical framework grounded in relational co-productionist perspectives in science and technology studies (STS) to comparatively analyse the similarities and differences of the visions in relation to four dimensions of sociotechnical transformation: meanings, knowings, doings, and organisings. Whilst research on energy transitions often focuses on dominant imaginaries within political cultures, regimes and centres of power, it is an explicit intention of this paper to also comparatively map the distributed, diverse and counter-hegemonic visions. The paper reveals that what is often presented as a primarily ‘technical’ transition is always normative in bringing forward particular forms of social and political order. Our analysis reveals important distinctions between more ‘centred’ and more decentred or ‘alternative’ imaginaries of the energy transition, differences which reveal the inherently political nature of energy futures. Visions which emerge from civil society settings are shown to be a key locus of diversity in sociotechnical imaginaries and tend to open up to alternative models of progress, social change, and the roles of publics. This emphasises the significant role played by the settings and the make-up of collective practices through which energy visions are co-produced. We suggest that mapping diverse visions to reveal their respective partialities, exclusions and sociopolitical dimensions in this way, can offer a more humble, reflexive, and responsible foundation for practices of future-making and sociotechnical transformations

De-centering the Myth of Normalcy in Education: A Critique of Inclusionary Policies in Education through Disability Studies

The intention of this paper is to inhabit a mode of exploration that foregrounds the hopeful possibility that teaching and learning might be otherwise than the continued perpetuation of hierarchies of exclusion. In focusing on this hopeful possibility, this paper focuses on two related questions. First, how does the story of normalcy continue to maintain and sustain its grip on education through inclusionary policies and practices? Second, what are the effects of this domineering narrative upon the lives of children with disabilities in our public schools? Numerous scholars in the field of disability studies with a wide array of backgrounds and research interests have offered considerable insight into how education works very hard to represent itself as a smooth road of progress and success. In part, this paper will offer a review of the literature within disability studies. The work of scholars such as Baker (2002, 2015), Nirmala Erevelles (2000, 2011, 2013) and Roger Slee (2008, 2013), who offer insights into the systemic pervasiveness of exclusionary practices in schools, will be examined as a method of exploring the tactics of the hegemonic narrative of normalcy. This paper will also offer a literature review of the work of disability studies scholars such as Annamma (2014), Hodge and Runswick-Cole (2013) and Connor (2009), who offer insights into the harm that maintaining normalcy continues to perpetuate through narratives from the perspective of disabled youth and children. In examining how hierarchies of exclusion manage to be continually reformed from the varying perspectives of these scholars, my hope is to discuss how, despite appearances to the contrary, possibilities remain for undoing the grip of normal by considering the ways in which disability studies contributes to our understanding of teaching and learning with and through differences.Keywords: inclusion, normalcy, disability, narrative, educationDécentrer le mythe de la normalité dans l'éducation: Une critique des politiques d'inclusion dans l'éducation à travers les études sur le handicap RésuméL'intention de cet article est d'habiter un mode d'exploration qui met en avant la possibilité d'espoir que l'enseignement et l'apprentissage pourraient être autrement que la perpétuation des hiérarchies d'exclusion. En mettant l'accent sur cette possibilité d'espoir, ce document se concentre sur deux questions connexes. Premièrement, comment l'histoire de la normalité continue-t-elle à maintenir et à soutenir son emprise sur l'éducation à travers des politiques et des pratiques d'inclusion? Deuxièmement, quels sont les effets de ce récit dominateur sur la vie des enfants handicapés dans nos écoles publiques.  De nombreux chercheurs dans le domaine des études sur le handicap avec un large éventail des milieux et d'intérêts de recherche ont offert un aperçu considérable de la façon dont le travail de chercheurs comme Baker (2002, 2015), Nirmala Erevelles (2000, 2011, 2013) et Roger Slee (2008, 2013), qui offre un aperçu de l'omniprésence systémique des pratiques d'exclusion dans les écoles, sera examiné comme une méthode d'explorer la tactique du récit hégémonique de la normalité.  Cet article offrira également une revue de la littérature sur le travail des spécialistes des études sur le handicap comme Annamma (2014), Hodge et Runswick-Cole (2013) et Connor (2009), qui donnent un aperçu du mal que le maintien de la normalité continue de perpétuer du point de vue des enfants et des jeunes handicapés. En examinant comment les hiérarchies de l'exclusion peuvent être continuellement réformées à partir des perspectives variées de ces chercheurs, mon espoir est de discuter comment, malgré les apparences du contraire, des possibilités demeurent pour défaire l'emprise du normal en considérant comment les études sur le handicap contribuent à notre compréhension de l'enseignement et de l'apprentissage avec et à travers les différences.Mots clefsInclusion; normalité; handicap; récit; éducatio

Constructing Meaningful Lives: Biographical Methods in Research on Migrant Women

The article argues that biographical methods are particularly suited to shift the methodological and theoretical premises of migration research to foreground the agency and subjectivity of migrant women. It is argued that structural and cultural readings can usefully be applied to the self-representations of migrant women. The context of migrant women's self-representations is explored through looking at the story-telling communities they develop and through the expert knowledges of institutions regulating migration. The dichotomisation of unique versus collective modes of life-stories is questioned. Applying the Foucauldian concept of subjugated knowledges, it is argued that migrant women's life-stories hold transformative potential for producing knowledges critical of gendered and ethnocised power relations that research should pay attention to.Migration, Gender, Ethnicity, Life-Story, Methodology, Britain, Germany, Structural and Cultural Readings, Subjugated Knowledges

Toward a Crip Provenance: Centering disability in archives through its absence

Using the records that document the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition as a case study, this article discusses the messiness and unknowability of provenance. Drawing attention to how the concept of provenance can emphasize the reconstruction of a fonds when records have been moved, rearranged, and dispersed, this article draws attention to the ‘curative’ and ‘rehabilitative’ orientations of established notions of provenance. Put in conversation with disability studies scholarship, which critiques rehabilitating, curing, and restoring, this article outlines the theoretical scaffolding of a crip provenance: a disability-centered framework of resisting the desire to restore and instead meets records where they are at. By acknowledging archival realities (where provenance is messy, partial, rumored, or nonexistent), this article emphasizes relationships that exist precisely because records are always already dispersed, duplicated, and partial. A crip provenance highlights four central facets of archival and crip relationships—people, systems, materials, and spaces—as a way to grapple with archival realities and tell disability history when there is little or no evidence of disabled people. Together these facets demonstrate how a crip provenance opens up multiple avenues for addressing disability in history: from highlighting moments of living disabled people experiencing archival material to expansive tangential histories that connect language and materials to politics and ableism within the colonial history of the Exposition

Participation in Transition(s):Reconceiving Public Engagements in Energy Transitions as Co-Produced, Emergent and Diverse

This paper brings the transitions literature into conversation with constructivist Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspectives on participation for the first time. In doing so we put forward a conception of public and civil society engagement in sustainability transitions as co-produced, relational, and emergent. Through paying close attention to the ways in which the subjects, objects, and procedural formats of public engagement are constructed through the performance of participatory collectives, our approach offers a framework to open up to and symmetrically compare diverse and interconnected forms of participation that make up wider socio-technical systems. We apply this framework in a comparative analysis of four diverse cases of civil society involvement in UK low carbon energy transitions. This highlights similarities and differences in how these distinct participatory collectives are orchestrated, mediated, and subject to exclusions, as well as their effects in producing particular visions of the issue at stake and implicit models of participation and ‘the public’. In conclusion we reflect on the value of this approach for opening up the politics of societal engagement in transitions, building systemic perspectives of interconnected ‘ecologies of participation’, and better accounting for the emergence, inherent uncertainties, and indeterminacies of all forms of participation in transitions

The performances are politicized: a poetic hermeneutical phenomenology examining mothering and self-care

Due in large part to paradigms and standards established by intensive mothering ideology, maternal self-care is under-explored. Using a gender performance framework, I developed an analysis of secondary data, which included 26 total participants. I developed a poetic hermeneutical phenomenology to examine self-care via mothers' lived-experiences. I used verbatim transcripts to create analytic poems, seeking to both illuminate and trouble essential meanings around mothering performance and self-care. Mothers articulated a variety of definitions of and stances towards self-care that both converged and diverged with intensive mothering norms. Domains that affected selfcare as experienced within mothering performances for study participants included: experiences of exhaustion; work demands; self-sacrifice, sources of / experiences with support; contrasting motherhood and womanhood; need for personal time/space; articulations around personal health; and rewards of mothering. In addition I explore how my own personal and scholarly experiences and social locations informed this research. I discuss ways that researcher positionalities not only affect but also become an inextricable part of research. This project melded the practical, the personal, and the political. In it I argue not only for possible changes in how public health engages with mothers, but also for deeper examination and inclusion of maternal health within public health, and for deeper interrogation of and intentionality around how researcher positionalities inform research projects

Knowledge, Discourse and Text: Critical Reading in Academic Contexts

In this paper I wish to present a framework for the critical analysis of texts in the university classroom. The framework combines elements of critical and poststructuralist theory in providing a rationale for this type of textual analysis. The critical theory dimension draws upon the immanent criticism of the Frankfurt School and upon Habermas’s understanding of the public sphere as a site of discursivity. The poststructuralist dimension is influenced by some elements of Derridean deconstruction, as well as postmodern perspectives developed by Jameson, Rorty, Harvey and others. The paper has two main objectives. First, to demonstrate that the discourses of modernity and of postmodernity are not necessarily incompatible, especially when they are brought together over texts in the classroom, and second, to argue against a perceived closure of the university as a public sphere due to the increasing focus on transferable skills in the delivery of subject-based knowledge

Documentary film and ethical foodscapes : three takes on Caribbean sugar

This article demonstrates how certain stories, voices and values around agro-food networks can be made powerful by documentary film. Our central argument is that documentaries mobilize ethics by presenting a partial and affective account of their subject matter, which makes their audience feel differently about the social relations that underpin the production of food and acts as a focal point for media scrutiny and political interventions. We focus attention on three documentaries about Caribbean sugar to explore multiple and disparate ethical claims made about the farmers, workers and communities that embody Caribbean sugar industries. Through a comparison of the three documentaries, we chart how the production and distribution of these films have entailed quite different ethical narratives, encounters and interventions. A key finding is that the context in which films are received is just as important as the content they deliver. The paper concludes with a guarded endorsement for using documentary film to transform the unequal life conditions experienced in the global food system, stressing the need for empirically-grounded critique of the context of documentaries and suggesting the important role that geographers might play as interlocutors in their reception