How social and citizen science help challenge the limits of the biosecurity approach: the case of ash dieback

Protecting tree and plant health remains a concern firmly embedded in the science-based, technocratic discourse of ‘biosecurity’ with its emphasis on regulation, surveillance, and control. Here, Judith Tsouvalis argues that this makes it difficult to have a broader debate on the deeper, more complex causes of the steep rise in tree and plant disease epidemics worldwide

The post-politics of plant biosecurity: The British Government's response to ash dieback in 2012

This paper analyses the post‐political nature of the discourse of plant biosecurity in the context of the response to ash dieback in Britain. Ash dieback or Chalara is a tree disease usually fatal to ash trees. It is caused by a fungal pathogen from Asia and was first discovered in Britain in 2012 at a nursery in Buckinghamshire, England, where it had arrived in a consignment of infected tree saplings imported from the Netherlands. Global trade and the rising number of epidemics affecting plants, animals and humans worldwide are connected. Global trade accelerates the pace of disease emergence and the spread of pathogens and pests. However, to date it has remained conspicuous by its absence from discussions of plant biosecurity. This paper investigates the reasons for this. It presents findings from an analysis of the European Union's (EU) plant health regime, in place to control the circulation and spread of plant pests and diseases in the EU, to demonstrate the key role played by plant biosecurity in neoliberalism. Additionally, results from a qualitative study of the British Government's Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Expert Taskforce convened in the wake of ash dieback are presented to illustrate how the risk‐based approach to biosecurity and expert‐led governance contribute to rendering the role of global trade in epidemics apolitical. The paper builds on and broadens critiques advanced by geographers and Science and Technology Studies scholars of biosecurity thinking and practice and brings them into correspondence with literatures on post‐politics. It concludes that there is not only a need for the development of new approaches to biosecurity, as suggested in the geographical literature, but also for the construction of a new politics of biosecurity

CFRP Reinforcement and Repair of Steel Pipe Elbows Subjected to Severe Cyclic Loading

In order to ensure safe operation and structural integrity of pipelines and piping systems subjected to extreme loading conditions, it is often necessary to strengthen critical pipe components. One method to strengthen pipe components is the use of composite materials. The present study is aimed at investigating the mechanical response of pipe elbows, wrapped with carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) material, and subjected to severe cyclic loading that leads to low-cycle fatigue (LCF). In the first part of the paper, a set of LCF experiments on reinforced and nonreinforced pipe bend specimens are described focusing on the effects of CFRP reinforcement on the number of cycles to failure. The experimental work is supported by finite element analysis presented in the second part of the paper, in an attempt to elucidate the failure mechanism. For describing the material nonlinearities of the steel pipe, an efficient cyclic-plasticity material model is employed, capable of describing both the initial yield plateau of the stress–strain curve and the Bauschinger effect characterizing reverse plastic loading conditions. The results from the numerical models are compared with the experimental data, showing an overall good comparison. Furthermore, a parametric numerical analysis is conducted to examine the effect of internal pressure on the structural behavior of nonreinforced and reinforced elbows, subjected to severe cyclic loading.</jats:p

A Reply to Cook and Oreskes on Climate Science Consensus Messaging

In their replies to our paper (Pearce et al., 2017), both Cook and Oreskes agree with our central point: that deliberating and mobilizing policy responses to climate change requires thinking beyond public belief in a scientific consensus. However, they both continue to defend consensus messaging, either because of ‘the dangers of neglecting to communicate the scientific consensus’ (Cook, 2017, p. 1) or because ‘“no consensus”…remains… a contrarian talking point’ (Oreskes, 2017, p. 1). Both highlight previously conducted market research by fossil fuel companies which suggested that scientific uncertainty provided a political weapon in fighting regulation, concluding that incorrect public perceptions of the scientific consensus weaken support for policy action (Oreskes, 2017, p. 2)

Committing to place:the potential of open collaborations for trusted environmental governance

Conventional modes of environmental governance, which typically exclude those stakeholders that are most directly linked to the specific place, frequently fail to have the desired impact. Using the example of lake water management in Loweswater, a small hamlet within the English Lake District, we consider the ways in which new “collectives” for local, bottom-up governance of water bodies can reframe problems in ways which both bind lay and professional people to place, and also recast the meaning of “solutions” in thought-provoking ways

Technology and restructuring the social field of dairy farming : hybrid capitals, ‘stockmanship’ and automatic milking systems

This paper draws on research exploring robotic and information technologies in livestock agriculture. Using Automatic Milking Systems (AMS) as an example we use the work of Bourdieu to illustrate how technology can be seen as restructuring the practices of dairy farming, the nature of what it is to be a dairy farmer, and the wider field of dairy farming. Approaching technology in this way and by drawing particularly upon the ‘thinking tools’ (Grenfell, 2008) of Pierre Bourdieu, namely field, capital and habitus, the paper critically examines the relevance of Bourdieu’s thought to the study of technology. In the heterogeneous agricultural context of dairy farming, we expand on Bourdieu’s types of capital to define what we have called ‘hybrid’ capital involving human-cow-technology collectives. The concept of hybrid capital expresses how the use of a new technology can shift power relations within the dairy field, affecting human-animal relations and changing the habitus of the stock person. Hybrid capital is produced through a co-investment of stock keepers, cows and technologies, and can become economically and culturally valuable within a rapidly restructuring dairying field when invested in making dairy farming more efficient and changing farmers’ social status and work-life balance. The paper shows how AMS and this emergent hybrid capital is associated with new but contested definitions of what counts as ‘good’ dairy farming practice, and with the emergence of new modes of dairy farmer habitus, within a wider dairy farming field whose contours are being redrawn through the implementation of new robotic and information technologies