Do we need to categorize it? Reflections on constituencies and quotas as tools for negotiating difference in the global food sovereignty convergence space

Convergence–as an objective and as a process–designates the coming together of different social actors across strategic, political, ideological, sectoral and geographic divides. In this paper, we analyze the global food sovereignty movement (GFSM) as a convergence space, with a focus on constituencies and quotas as tools to maintain diversity while facilitating convergence. We show how the use of constituencies and quotas has supported two objectives of the GFSM: alliances building and effective direct representation in global policy-making spaces. We conclude by pointing to some convergence challenges the GFSM faces as it expands beyond its agrarian origins.</p

"A country with land but no habitat": women, violent accumulation and negative-value in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins

In the work of Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera, land is shown to be a complex and contested resource to which the typically abject fates of her female protagonists are inextricably bound. As she put it in a 2001 interview shortly before the publication of her final novel, “the connection between women and land in Zimbabwe is negative”. This article situates Vera’s work in the context of debates over Zimbabwean land reform, and considers examples of how the “negative” connection between women and land is articulated in her fiction through contrasting leitmotifs of abjection and habitat, culminating in the cautiously redemptive conclusion of her last published novel, The Stone Virgins (2002). The discussion draws on Silvia Federici’s work on women, the body and primitive accumulation and on Jason Moore’s theory of negative-value in the capitalist world-ecology, to account for why, in Vera’s work, the female body is invariably positioned, abjectly, at the nexus of colonial governance and what David Moore has described as Zimbabwe’s postcolonial regime of “violent accumulation”

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Measurement of associated Z plus charm production in proton-proton collisions at root s=8TeV

A study of the associated production of a Z boson and a charm quark jet (Z + c), and a comparison to production with a b quark jet (Z + b), in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV are presented. The analysis uses a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1), collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC. The Z boson candidates are identified through their decays into pairs of electrons or muons. Jets originating from heavy flavour quarks are identified using semileptonic decays of c or b flavoured hadrons and hadronic decays of charm hadrons. The measurements are performed in the kinematic region with two leptons with pT(l) > 20 GeV, vertical bar eta(l)vertical bar 25 GeV and vertical bar eta(jet)vertical bar Z + c + X) B(Z -> l(+)l(-)) = 8.8 +/- 0.5 (stat)+/- 0.6 (syst) pb. The ratio of the Z+c and Z+b production cross sections is measured to be sigma(pp -> Z+c+X)/sigma (pp -> Z+b+X) = 2.0 +/- 0.2 (stat)+/- 0.2 (syst). The Z+c production cross section and the cross section ratio are also measured as a function of the transverse momentum of theZ boson and of the heavy flavour jet. The measurements are compared with theoretical predictions.Peer reviewe

Measurement of the underlying event activity in inclusive Z boson production in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

This paper presents a measurement of the underlying event activity in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV, performed using inclusive Z boson production events collected with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The analyzed data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 2.1 fb(-1). The underlying event activity is quantified in terms of the charged particle multiplicity, as well as of the scalar sum of the charged particles' transverse momenta in different topological regions defined with respect to the Z boson direction. The distributions are unfolded to the stable particle level and compared with predictions from various Monte Carlo event generators, as well as with similar CDF and CMS measurements at center-of-mass energies of 1.96 and 7TeV respectively.Peer reviewe

On the Moral Equivalence of Global Commodities: Placing the Production and Consumption of Organic Bananas

Rapid change and growth in certified organic food sectors has led to the development of export-orientated certified organic food production in developing economies. This lengthening of the supply chain requires the development and implementation of meaningful standards to make the production process in developing countries legible to consumers in developed economies. As an example of the globalization of organic foods and analysis of its corresponding standards, this article discusses the political, cultural and economic context for the supply of and demand for organic bananas in the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom, respectively. We focus on the role of certification schemes that have emerged in response to this global expansion, and suggest that, contrary to consumer expectations, there are political, economic and environmental outcomes that are inconsistent with organic standards

Zones of Accumulation Make Spaces of Dispossession: A New Spatial Vocabulary for Human Geography

Human geographers, scholars in other disciplines and the wider public use outdated spatial vocabulary to reference inequality and divergent geographic histories. Most spatial heuristics in wide use (1 st world, North/South, etc.) essentialize progress, homogenize entire nations, obscure inequality at multiple scales and deny the processes of creating difference via imperialism, colonialism and capitalism. In this paper we elaborate on a new spatial vocabulary using geographic theory to identify zones of accumulation and spaces of dispossession. We then address what theories inform this naming convention, what it means and critically reflect on some of its weaknesses, such as its binary nature and relative lack of geographic specificity. We conclude by encouraging wider adoption of these spatial heuristics because they take their logic from geographical theory, actual existing inequality on multiple scales and present-day processes of capitalism.</p

A feminist approach to climate change governance: Everyday and intimate politics

Neoliberal climate governance, which focuses on shifting responsibility for mitigating climate change onto individuals through their consumption of techno-scientific solutions, ignores and obscures the experience of differently situated subjects. This paper examines the consequences of both framing climate change as a problem of science, and inducing individual behavior changes as a key point of climate policy. We build on climate governance literature and emerging feminist theorizing about climate change to understand how differently situated bodies become positioned as sites of capital accumulation in climate governance. We use the feminist lens of the ‘everyday’, which directs attention to embodiment, difference and inequality. These insights provide points of leverage for feminist scholars of climate science and policy to use to resist and contest the production of neoliberal climate subjects. We argue that a focus on the ‘everyday’ reveals the mundane decision-making in climate governance that affect individuals in varying, embodied ways, and which allows for climate governance to proceed as an ongoing process of capitalist accumulation