The habitat of the subject: Exploring new forms of the ethical imagination

This chapter discusses ethics as a form of problematization for the urban, which is a way of approaching the urban and constituting it as an object of study. It explores why this form of problematization has emerged and what it has to offer. It also sets out how we might rethink the character of the ethical through a focus on the ethical imagination as I have developed it elsewhere. It takes African cities as the context and space of enquiry and explores how we might imagine the ethical imagination operating for residents of those cities, and how they deploy it. The chapter provides a critique of “ethics talk” or the deployment of an ethical lens in both urban studies and anthropology. Through theoretical reflection on the work of the ethical imagination it seeks to lay out a more robust understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of an ethical approach

Prosperity in crisis and the longue durée in Africa

Understanding the evolution and tenacity of particular ways of envisaging economic growth and development for Africa requires a form of analytical history that examines how conceptual structures function over the longue durée. Such an approach is more than simply empirical analysis through time or a set of abstractions based on the self-understandings of historical agents. It involves the development of a hypothetical analytic structure which through its own forms of transformation eventually comes to play a role in shaping the lived world of participants, including researchers, policymakers and ordinary citizens. This article uses research from Kenya and Zambia to demonstrate how a long-running – but temporally and spatially variable – focus on agricultural productivity has shaped the character of rural life in Africa, and why it has consistently failed to deliver enlarged forms of prosperity based on quality of life and ecological well-being

Community and prosperity beyond social capital: The case of Newham, East London

Researchers and policymakers working on prosperity, happiness and wellbeing in the UK have recently reworked GDP-centred notions of progress and identified community and belonging as major determinants of a good life. The dominant notion of community in most writing on this topic draws on Putnam’s work on social capital as measured by trust and/or civic engagement. This approach, however, captures only the social aspect of community, without addressing the symbolic dimension of political discourses and their national and local effects. Using data from Newham, London, this article argues that a narrow focus on social capital obfuscates the complexity of community dynamics, leading to misconceptions about the causes of social fragmentation. In the case of Newham, we show that while survey data on social capital suggests that diversity is detrimental to community life, a more nuanced analysis reveals that it is in fact an important part of community cohesion

Super-diversity and the prosperous society

This article asks if and under what conditions ethnic diversity could become the foundation for a prosperous society. Recent studies on ethnic diversity and social cohesion suggest that diversity has a negative effect on social cohesion and therefore is detrimental to the social prosperity of individuals and communities. This article argues that although such a negative correlation may apply to contexts with well-consolidated ethnic groups, it does not necessarily apply to ‘super-diverse’ places with multiple small ethnic groups and multiple social, legal and cultural differences that cut across ethnicity. Drawing on ethnographic material from East London, the authors contend that, in super-diverse places, ethnic diversity could become a valuable aspect of community life, while inequalities in social, cultural and symbolic capital become central points of social antagonism to the detriment of prosperity

What is prosperity?

This working paper is about why we need new theories both about what prosperity means and entails in the 21st century. To redefine prosperity is to challenge both the structural features of our economies and the value premises on which they are built. We are concerned here with how a redesigned prosperity opens the door not just to innovative ideas, but to new practices, allowing us to address inequalities in novel ways. Searching for the means and mechanisms through which these new frameworks and activities may be operationalised quickly reveals that we need fresh approaches to how systems change and knowledge is shared. We begin then with three points of reference: the value of the economic in our lives, the purpose of sharing knowledge, and the means of operationalising change

Towards prosperity: Reinvigorating local economies through Universal Basic Services

As we enter a new decade the future is increasingly uncertain. This paper focuses on interpreting existing research on localism and the foundational economy in light of recent discussions concerning Universal Basic Services (IGP, 2017; 2019a; Coote & Percy, 2020). We argue that localisation of basic services should form the basis of a new industrial strategy for the 2020’s. Investment in the infrastructure of care, health, education, transport and communication would increase people’s capacities, capabilities and opportunities for economic and social participation. These engines of investment improve people’s quality of life at the local level and regenerate local economies. By bringing localisation of basic services to the heart of a new industrial strategy control would return to places and people and help to secure livelihoods in the face of broad technological and societal change

Tilting relationalities: Exploring the world through possible futures of agriculture

Demography has driven increases in agricultural productivity and is in the limelight once again with questions about how we intend to feed 9 billion people on the planet. The scale of this challenge and the ecological threat from collapsing resources has generated a sense of impending crisis, but remarkably little action. The frames of reference tend towards climate change and the Anthropocene, but perhaps a more fruitful approach is to reflect on developments in agriculture and agroecology to examine the scale and significance of the ecological challenges we face. In this article, we use agriculture as a nodal point through which to engage with the emerging and dislocating human–planetary relations of the contemporary world, reflecting on past, current and future notions of ‘progress’, and on how ongoing developments and experiments in making a living with others (human, non-human and more-than-human others) might offer potential pathways for positive social transformation and future flourishing. As we argue throughout the article, reassessing notions of progress does not mean the mere return to traditional forms of knowledge and practice, nor embracing a form of luddite politics absent of advances in modern science and technology. Instead, we propose this is about opening spaces where diversity, pluralism and contending perspectives and agencies are engaged on their own terms, creating and sharing alternative knowledge and ways of doing and being. Here, the role for the social sciences and humanities is not to describe or pretend to represent these emerging relationalities, but instead to enable and actively engage them. Doing this responsibly and effectively will require us to inhabit the disorienting and discomforting ruins of progress, eschewing the turn towards finalised solutions and outcomes

Brexit’s identity politics and the question of subjectivity

This article is about the socially divisive consequences of the UK’s 2016 referendum on membership in the European Union. Rather than redressing the country’s long-standing class divisions, the referendum has exacerbated them by fuelling negative stereotypes and mutual accusations between Leave and Remain supporters. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, the article argues that support for Leave and Remain is structured by circulations of affect, fantasies of the good life and psychic investments in different experiences of immigration, nationalism, and social and economic inequality

Using Network Analysis to Understand Knowledge Mobilization in a Community-based Organization

Background Knowledge mobilization (KM) has been described as putting research in the hands of research users. Network analysis is an empirical approach that has potential for examining the complex process of knowledge mobilization within community-based organizations (CBOs). Yet, conducting a network analysis in a CBO presents challenges. Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the value and feasibility of using network analysis as a method for understanding knowledge mobilization within a CBO by (1) presenting challenges and solutions to conducting a network analysis in a CBO, (2) examining the feasibility of our methodology, and (3) demonstrating the utility of this methodology through an example of a network analysis conducted in a CBO engaging in knowledge mobilization activities. Method The final method used by the partnership team to conduct our network analysis of a CBO is described. Results An example of network analysis results of a CBO engaging in knowledge mobilization is presented. In total, 81 participants completed the network survey. All of the feasibility benchmarks set by the CBO were met. Results of the network analysis are highlighted and discussed as a means of identifying (1) prominent and influential individuals in the knowledge mobilization process and (2) areas for improvement in future knowledge mobilization initiatives. Conclusion Findings demonstrate that network analysis can be feasibly used to provide a rich description of a CBO engaging in knowledge mobilization activities

Incipient chemical weathering at bedrock fracture interfaces in a tropical critical zone system, Puerto Rico

The processes that control chemical weathering of bedrock in the deep critical zone at a mm-scale are still poorly understood, but may produce 100 s of meters of regolith and substantial fluxes of silicate weathering products and thus may be important for modeling long-term, global CO₂. Weathering controls are also difficult to ascertain, as laboratory determined dissolution rates tend to be 2–5 orders of magnitude faster than field determined dissolution rates. This study aims to establish (i) the incipient processes that control the chemical weathering of the Bisley bedrock and (ii) why weathering rates calculated for the watershed may differ from laboratory rates (iii) why rates may differ across different scales of measurement. We analyzed mineralogy, elemental chemistry, and porosity in thin sections of rock obtained from drilled boreholes using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive spectrometry, electron probe microanalysis, and synchrotron-based Micro X-ray Fluorescence (µXRF) and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES). Weathering ages were determined from U-series isotope analysis. Mineral specific dissolution rates were calculated from solid-state mineralogical gradients and weathering ages. Mineralogical and elemental transects across thin sections and SEM images indicate that trace pyrite is the first mineral to dissolve. Micro-XRF mapping at 2 µm resolution revealed sulfate in pore space adjacent to dissolving pyrite, indicating that the incipient reaction is oxidative. The oxidative dissolution of pyrite produces a low pH microenvironment that aids the dissolution of pyroxene and chlorite. The rate-limiting step of weathering advance, and therefore the creation of the critical zone in the Bisley watershed, is pyrite oxidation, despite the low abundance (∼0.5 vol%) of pyrite in the parent rock. The naturally determined dissolution rates presented here either approach, converge with, or in some cases exceed, rates from the literature that have been experimentally determined. The U-series weathering age data on the mm-scale integrates the weathering advance rate over the ∼4.2 ± 0.3 kyrs that the weathering rind took to form. The weathering advance rate calculated at a watershed scale (from stream chemistry data) represents a contemporary weathering advance rate, which compares well with that calculated for the weathering rind, suggesting that the Bisley watershed has been weathering at steady-state for the last ∼4 kyrs