Resource Warfare, Pacification and the Spectacle of ‘Green’ Development: Logics of Violence in Engineering Extraction in Southern Madagascar

Bringing political ecology's concern with the critical politics of nature and resource violence into dialogue with key debates in political geography, critical security studies and research on the geographies and phenomenology of violence and warfare, this paper explores strategies ‘from above’ in relation to the establishment and operation of the Rio Tinto QIT-Madagascar Minerals (QMM) ilmenite mine in southeast Madagascar. While QMM claims to be a responsible ‘green’ self-regulator and sustainable development actor, it has triggered serious social, environmental and legal conflicts since its inception, including allegations of a ‘double land grab’ to accommodate mining activities and compensatory biodiversity offsetting. We argue that ‘pacification’, theorised as a productive form of violence that works through the re-ordering of socio-nature, underwrites the forms of ‘security’, ‘stability’ and even ‘sustainability’ that facilitate multiple and overlapping strategies of value extraction in the territorial and extra-territorial spaces occupied by the QMM mine partnership. By situating these dynamics historically, we identify ways in which pacification draws upon sedimented and evolving logics of racialised violence to facilitate operations and silence opposition

Transforming AP programming: Stories in social justice leadership

One of the most important predictors of college success is a rigorous academic education in high school. Academic preparation in high school prepares students with the skills and habits of mind needed for success in college and beyond. The College Board’s AP program provides students with the opportunity to earn college credit and/or advanced placement while in high school. The lack of equitable participation in the AP program has not gone unnoticed by practitioners, policymakers, or researchers. This qualitative study was designed to fill a gap in the existing research through an investigation in the implementation of equity-focused AP programs in two, urban districts in the Midwest. This qualitative, multiple-case study centered the voices of 29 school leaders in two urban school districts who shared descriptions of their beliefs, actions, and reflections about their AP leadership practices. The findings show examples of community engaged social justice leadership such as school leaders’ personal commitments and experiences, situational awareness, advocacy, and critical reflection and praxis. The findings also demonstrated the importance of building capacity of leaders in several roles to engage in leadership activities in service of the equity-focused AP program

Finding Value in the Process: Student Empowerment Through Self-Assessment

Four English language arts teachers formed an inquiry group to design approaches to writing assessment that would support and foster student writers\u27 agency, empowerment, and freedom