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Geographies of Production I: Relationality revisited and the âpractice shiftâ in economic geography
This report considers recent developments and ongoing debates around relational economic geography, and a growing body work that has focused on economic practices as a means to better understand production processes and economic development. In particular it examines the critical reaction to relational thinking within the sub-discipline, and the nature of the debate about the degree to which relational work is - and needs to be - regarded as distinct from more traditional approaches to economic geography. It then considers how relational economic geography has become inflected towards an epistemological and methodological focus on practice. It argues that this engagement with economic practices provides the basis to respond to some of the limitations identified with earlier work, and opens up fruitful new potential for theorizing the nature of agency in the space economy
Editorial : environmental governance of urban and regional development â scales and sectors, conflict and cooperation
Recent years have continued to see a concern for the detrimental environmental impacts of human economic activities particularly in the form of enhanced global warming, sea level rise, land degradation and deforestation. Although it can be argued that economic development and growth remain the priority for governments at a variety of spatial scales or levels, these same governments also express a desire through a growing number of policy initiatives to make such development more sustainable and environmentally-friendly. A growing interest amongst policy makers has been in identifying the ways in which environmental protection measures can be made complementary to economic development aims. Rather than seeing the environment and the economy in opposition, there has been a focus on the growth potential from developing a green or low-carbon economy (OECD, 2011). At the urban and regional scale governments have increasingly begun to try and position themselves as destinations for new forms of green economy investments as a source of a new round of capital accumulation (GIBBS and OâNEILL, 2014). In total then, questions around the environment, climate change and sustainability look set to grow in importance for decision makers in cities and regions
Rethinking urban adaptation as a scalar geopolitics of climate governance: climate policy in the devolved territories of the United Kingdom
This paper exposes missing interconnections between the urban, national
and international scales in the analysis of climate adaptation policy and
territorial governance in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing upon the
results of interviews with adaptation stakeholders in seven UK cityregions,
it examines: (i) the increasing discursive alignment of the
âurbanâ and the ânationalâ in international climate adaptation policy and
decision-making processes; and (ii) the contradictions between urban
and national climate policy discourses across the UK devolved territories.
The paper identifies and accounts for an emergent scalar geopolitics of
climate adaptation governance as urban climate actions and knowledges
are enrolled in the UK stateâs efforts to respond to broader international
climate governance and policy imperatives. We call for further research
on how adaptation knowledge is geopolitically mobilized at different
scales of climate governance
A Decolonial Critique of the Racialized âLocalwashingâ of Extraction in Central Africa
Responding to calls for increased attention to actions and reactions âfrom aboveâ within the
extractive industry, we offer a decolonial critique of the ways in which corporate entities and multinational institutions propagate racialized rhetoric of âlocalâ suffering, âlocalâ consultation, and âlocalâ fault for failure in extractive zones. Such rhetoric functions to legitimize extractive intervention within a set of practices that we call localwashing. Drawing from a decade of research on and along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline, we show how multi-scalar actors converged to assert knowledge of, responsibility for, and collaborations with âlocalâ people within a racialized politics of scale. These corporate representations of the racialized âlocalâ are coded through long-standing colonial tropes. We identify three interrelated and overlapping flexian elite rhetoric(s) and practices of racialized localwashing: (a) anguishing, (b) arrogating, and (c) admonishing. These elite representations of a racialized âlocalâ reveal diversionary efforts âfrom aboveâ to manage public opinion, displace blame for project failures, and domesticate dissent in a context of persistent scrutiny and criticism from international and regional advocates and activists
Politicizing vulnerability and adaptation: on the need to democratize local responses to climate impacts in developing countries
Politicizing food security governance through participation: opportunities and opposition
Since the 2007/08 food price crisis there has been a proliferation of multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) devoted to bringing diverse perspectives together to inform and improve food security policy. While much of the literature highlights the positive contributions to be gained from an opening-up of traditionally state-led processes, there is a strong critique emerging to show that, in many instances, MSPs have de-politicizing effects. In this paper, we scrutinize MSPs in relation to de-politicization. We argue that re-building sustainable and just food systems requires alternative visions that can best be made visible through politicized policy processes. Focusing on three key conditions of politicization, we examine the UN Committee on World Food Security as a MSP where we see a process of politicization playing out through the endorsement of the âmost-affectedâ principle, which is in turn being actively contested by traditionally powerful actors. We conclude that there is a need to implement and reinforce mechanisms that deliberately politicize participation in MSPs, notably by clearly distinguishing between states and other stakeholders, as well as between categories of non-state actors.</p
Scale in education research: towards a multi-scale methodology
This article explores some theoretical and methodological problems concerned with scale in education research through a critique of a recent mixed-method project. The project was framed by scale metaphors drawn from the physical and earth sciences and I consider how recent thinking around scale, for example in ecosystems and human geography might offer helpful points and angles of view on the challenges of thinking spatially in education research. Working between the spatial metaphors of ecology scholars and the critiques of the human geographers, for example the hypercomplex social space in Lefebvreâs political-economic thinking and the fluid, simultaneous, multiple spatialities of Masseyâs post-structuralism, I problematize space and scale in education research. Interweaving these geographical ideas with Giddensâ structuration and Bourdieuâs theory of practice, both of which employed what might be termed scale-bridging to challenge social scienceâs entrenched paradigms, leads me to reconsider what is possible and desirable in the study of education systems. Following the spatial turn in the social sciences generally, there is an outstanding need to theorise multi-scale methodology for education research
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