Can the commons be temporary? The role of transitional commoning in post-quake Christchurch

In recent work on commons and commoning, scholars have argued that we might delink the practice of commoning from property ownership, while paying attention to modes of governance that enable long-term commons to emerge and be sustained. Yet commoning can also occur as a temporary practice, in between and around other forms of use. In this article we reflect on the transitional commoning practices and projects enabled by the Christchurch post-earthquake organisation Life in Vacant Spaces, which emerged to connect and mediate between landowners of vacant inner city demolition sites and temporary creative or entrepreneurial users. While these commons are often framed as transitional or temporary, we argue they have ongoing reverberations changing how people and local government in Christchurch approach common use. Using the cases of the physical space of the Victoria Street site “The Commons” and the virtual space of the Life in Vacant Spaces website, we show how temporary commoning projects can create and sustain the conditions of possibility required for nurturing commoner subjectivities. Thus despite their impermanence, temporary commoning projects provide a useful counter to more dominant forms of urban development and planning premised on property ownership and “permanent” timeframes, in that just as the physical space of the city being opened to commoning possibilities, so too are the expectations and dispositions of the city’s inhabitants, planners, and developers

Delivering Urban Wellbeing through Transformative Community Enterprise

(c) The Author/sChristchurch, New Zealan

Urban climate change, livelihood vulnerability and narratives of generational responsibility in Jinja, Uganda

There is an urgent need to understand lived experiences of climate change in the context of African cities, where even small climate shocks can have significant implications for the livelihoods of the urban poor. This article examines narratives of climate and livelihood changes within Jinja Municipality, Uganda, emphasizing how Jinja's residents make sense of climate change through their own narrative frames rather than through the lens of global climate change discourses. We demonstrate how the onset of climate change in Jinja is widely attributed to perceived moral and environmental failings on the part of a present generation that is viewed as both more destructive than previous generations and unable to preserve land, trees and other resources for future generations. A focus on local ontologies of climate change highlights how the multiple, intersecting vulnerabilities of contemporary urban life in Jinja serve to obfuscate not only the conditions of possibility of an immediate future, but the longer-term horizons for future generations, as changing weather patterns exacerbate existing challenges people face in adapting to wider socio-economic changes and rising livelihood vulnerability. This form of analysis situates changing climate and environments within the context of everyday urban struggles and emphasizes the need for civic participation in developing climate change strategies that avoid the pitfalls of climate reductionism. The article draws on more than 150 qualitative interviews, generational dialogue groups, and creative methods based on research-led community theatre

Rural–urban inequality and the practice of promoting sustainability in contemporary China

This article focuses on the rural–urban inequality and its impacts on the meanings and practices of sustainability in Chinese context, based on a qualitative analysis of 30 semi-structure interviews with key practitioners. This research understands sustainability to be ‘simultaneously an ideological stance, a point of convergence for political struggles, and a measure of performance for development activities’ (Sneddon in Progr Hum Geogr 24(4):521–549, 2000). The main argument suggests that an appreciation of the need to reduce the rural–urban inequality can add new meanings to the Chinese interpretation and practice of sustainability. In Chinese context, a sustainable future is not about maintaining the current social and environmental status for future generations, but rather, it refers to improving environmental quality and promoting social and environmental justice in the future. That is, creating a better future through transforming the Chinese society from a polluted and rural–urban divided society with low-level suzhi population into a green, civilised and thriving one is the core of its sustainable development. Theoretically, this work indicates that the ways of building links between rural and urban can be multiple and dynamic. And more broadly, this research uses a Chinese case study to indicate that complex spatial relationships and interactions should be taken into considerations in sustainability studies

Caring for the future : climate change and intergenerational responsibility in China and the UK

Debates about intergenerational fairness and resource-use are prominent in diverse international contexts, with a large number of social policy and environmental concerns characterised as having intergenerational dimensions. This includes concerns relating to synchronic equity (how resources are distributed between living generations) and diachronic equity (saving resources for future generations), with climate change being a high-profile example of an issue characterised in this way. In this paper we explore how urban residents perceive their responsibilities towards future generations in two cities based in countries that are major greenhouse gas emitters. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a cross-generational sample of 190 people living in Nanjing, China, and Sheffield, UK, we consider whose future and what aspects of the future people feel responsible for and at what scale. This discussion is situated within an emerging critique of generational discourses that conflate caring for the family and one’s own children with caring for the wider society and for the future. We argue that this has far-reaching implications for how people think about intergenerational responsibility and imagine appropriate courses of action, shaping a particular ‘timescape’ that privileges living generations in close proximity. We find that people in Sheffield tend to be more concerned about social and economic aspects of sustainable development than environmental degradation. People in Nanjing more readily discuss responsibility for environmental stewardship, in the wider political context of state-led and nationalist discourses of collective responsibility, but still appear to struggle with thinking about the future beyond their lifetimes and immediate descendants. We discuss these findings and their implications through the analytical framework of geographies of responsibility, exploring possibilities for a more spatially and temporally extensive scope of care

More than monitoring: Developing impact measures for transformative social enterprise

Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 involves transformational change in the business of business, and social enterprises can lead the way in such change. We studied Cultivate, one such social enterprise in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city still recovering from the 2010/11 Canterbury earthquakes. Cultivate works with vulnerable youth to transform donated compost into garden vegetables for local restaurants and businesses. Cultivate’s objectives align with SDG concerns with poverty and hunger (1 & 2), social protection (3 & 4), and sustainable human settlements (6 & 11). Like many grant-supported organisations, Cultivate is required to track and measure its progress. Given the organisation’s holistic objectives, however, adequately accounting for its impact reporting is not straightforward. Our action research project engaged Cultivate staff and youth-workers to generate meaningful ways of measuring impact. Elaborating the Community Economy Return on Investment tool (CEROI), we explore how participatory audit processes can capture impacts on individuals, organisations, and the wider community in ways that extend capacities to act collectively. We conclude that Cultivate and social enterprises like it offer insights regarding how to align values and practices, commercial activity and wellbeing in ways that accrue to individuals, organisations and the broader civic-community

Corporations, consumerism and culpability: sustainability in the British press

Sustainability and sustainable development are prominent themes in international policy-making, corporate PR, news-media and academic scholarship. Its definitions are contested, however sustainability is associated with a three-pillar focus on economic development, environmental conservation and social justice, most recently espoused in the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. In spite of its common usage, there is little research about how sustainability is represented and refracted in public discourse in different national contexts. We examine British national press coverage of sustainability and sustainable development in 2015 in a cross-market sample of national newspapers. Our findings show that key international policy events and environmental and social justice frames are peripheral, while neoliberalism and neoliberal environmentalism vis-à-vis the promotion of technocratic solutions, corporate social responsibility and “sustainable” consumerism are the predominant frames through which the British news-media reports sustainability. This holds regardless of newspaper quality and ideological orientation

The employee as 'Dish of the Day’:human resource management and the ethics of consumption

This article examines the ethical implications of the growing integration of consumption into the heart of the employment relationship. Human resource management (HRM) practices increasingly draw upon the values and practices of consumption, constructing employees as the ‘consumers’ of ‘cafeteria-style’ benefits and development opportunities. However, at the same time employees are expected to market themselves as items to be consumed on a corporate menu. In relation to this simultaneous position of consumer/consumed, the employee is expected to actively engage in the commodification of themselves, performing an appropriate organizational identity as a necessary part of being a successful employee. This article argues that the relationship between HRM and the simultaneously consuming/consumed employee affects the conditions of possibility for ethical relations within organizational life. It is argued that the underlying ‘ethos’ for the integration of consumption values into HRM practices encourages a self-reflecting, self-absorbed subject, drawing upon a narrow view of individualised autonomy and choice. Referring to Levinas’ perspective that the primary ethical relation is that of responsibility and openness to the Other, it is concluded that these HRM practices affect the possibility for ethical being