37 research outputs found
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Beyond the Romance of Resistance in Post-Development Alternatives: Nature and culture in Afro-Colombian movements
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Thinking Fragments: Adisciplinary Reflections on Feminisms and Environmental Justic
Feminisms and environmental justice are some of the names of struggles to understand nature-culture linkages and conceptualize just worlds for non-humans and their human kin. In this paper, I revisit my journey of doing environmental justice research, i.e. of my feminist scientific practice in Asia and Latin America. In this retrospective telling I highlight how gender, political economy, and race were and remain fundamental in producing the subjects and objects of my research and analysis. I discuss how an implicit feminism helped me grapply with the complex nature-culture linkages I observed in the field. Postcolonial and marxist insights supplement and complement feminisms in the questions I pose as we attempt to imagine new nature-cultures
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A Retrospective Look at the Winding Paths to Legalizing Afro-Colombian Rights in Law 70 of 1993
August 2013 marked twenty years since the passing of Law 70, which legally recognizes the ethnic, territorial, and socioeconomic rights of black communities in Colombia. In the past two decades its implementation has been mixed at best, and the actual political and economic status of most Afro-Colombians remains grim. Yet this flawed law remains an important icon and political instrument of Afro-Colombian struggles. A retrospective look at the processes and peoples that led up to Law 70 may be useful in the context of ongoing Afro-Latin(o) struggles to obtain real and sustained cultural, political, and economic rights
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When we cannot compare. A commentary on Tariq Jazeel\u27s \u27Singularity. A manifesto for incomparable geographies\u27
Tariq Jazeel\u27s remarks at the 2017 RGS/IBG annual conference and the paper in this issue are set against the backdrop of an âAnglophonic and allegoricalâ library (Jazeel, this issue, p. 6). For those of us educated in former British colonies as for Mustafa Sa\u27eedâthe protagonist of Tayeb Salih\u27s novelâthe English study is a familiar space. Though never having seen or been in any such study, in my mind\u27s eye I settle myself comfortably in the armchair in front of the fireplace with a book in hand. Jazeel firmly shakes me awake to notice that the book in my hand like the ones on Sa\u27eed\u27s shelves is in English. Why is this so? To grapple with this question I remove my shoes (to this day I cannot really think with shoes on) and sit up. Of course, bare toes do not belong in a Victorian chair. But surely I may slide down to sit crossâlegged on the rug on the library floor (almost certainly woven in Turkey, North Africa, Central Asia or the Middle East)? Jazeel flags one of the key conundrums of the decolonial imperative: we can neither inhabit a Eurocentric library (comfortably?) nor leave it (uncomfortably?). And by us he means all of usâthose who are considered marginal in some way (gendered female, queer, raced, formerly colonized, and more), but also whose subjectivities are dominant or âmainstreamâ (former colonizers, gendered males, white, ableâbodied, committed to disciplines, etc.)
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Beyond Green Cars and Goddesses: Gender, the Global Environment, and Sustainability
Gender, the environment and sustainability are key terms in debates about economic globalization and social justice. While not new, they are reemerging as part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. This course will introduce students to the perceived and existing links between women, gender, and the global environment as they appear in 21st century discussions about sustainable development. Through readings, lectures and discussions will explore the following questions: When did the environment and sustainability emerge as key biological and social issues on global agendas? What are their connections to economic globalization? To colonialism and capitalism? How did women and gender become part of these discussions? How did governments, multilateral institutions (e.g. the United Nations, the World Bank), and development policies target third world women? Was it to meet their needs and address gender equality? Or was it for more efficient and effective environmental and sustainability outcomes? What were the results and implications of these interventions? In what guise are these interventions reemerging in the context of the âclean technology,â âgreen economyâ, food security, and population and reproductive rights? How have women across the world organized to address concerns about the environment and sustainability? How have feminists engaged with issues of gender, the global environment and sustainability? Discussions and assignments will enable students to familiarize themselves with gender and sustainability concerns around the world in a way that will enable them to participate in 21st century discussions in informed, critical and self-reflexive ways
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The risky streets of ontologically redesigned cities: Some comments on Arturo Escobar\u27s rurbanization research program
In Habitability and Design:Radical Interdependence and the Remaking of Cities, Escobarexpandson his remarks at the 2018 GeoForum lecture at the AAG (Escobar2018a, 2018b). He contends that cities are governed by a Western, patriarchal, logic thatdisconnects them from the Earth and makes them unconducive to life. In order to makecities habitableagain, he notes, we must redesign them along the lines of communities whose political ontologies are groundedin their relationship with the Earthas a living system
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Fragmented Forests, Fractured Lives: Ethno-territorial Struggles and Development in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia
The culturally and ecologically diverse Pacific lowlands of Colombia are both the locus and product of key political economic and cultural political conjunctures. Twentyâfive years after they emerged in their current form, AfroâColombian ethnic and territorial struggles have become important icons of resistance to development and struggles for social change. But in Colombia as in other parts of the world, the rapid and violent expansion of capitalist accumulation and state power have had devastating consequences for the region\u27s forests and communitiesâliterally and epistemically fragmenting both. Based on longâterm fieldwork, this paper examines the ongoing and contentious coâproduction of the Colombian Pacific region amidst the increasingly violent forces of neoliberal governmentality in the 21st century. It shows that the Pacific lowlands are an example of âpolitical forestsâ in the sense that they are a contested site and product of AfroâColombian cultural politics and state territorialisation
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After Post-Development: On Capitalism, Difference, and Representation
The postâdevelopment school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalised by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Postâdevelopment has been criticised vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the postâdevelopment critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue that those committed to struggles for social justice must critically reassess the premises of postâdevelopment and especially wrestle with the problem of representation. We contend that Gayatri Spivak\u27s work is particularly important to this project. We review some of Spivak\u27s key texts on capitalism, difference, and development to clarify the virtues of her approach
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Gender in the Jungle: A Critical Assessment of Women and Gender in Current (2014-2016) Forestry Research
Fields and forests are gendered spaces. Women\u27s crucial contributions to productive and reproductive work within and beyond the household have been made visible since the 1970s. There has also been a persistent call for mainstreaming gender in sustainable development and environmental concerns. Prior work discusses the importance of women and gender for forests, and provides guidelines and methods to integrate them in forestry research. This paper assesses the uptake of women and gender issues in recent (2014â2016) forestry research. We found that women and gender concerns are still largely absent or inadequately addressed in forestry research published in scientific journals. Despite the call for greater gender integration in forestry, much needs to be done in quantitative and qualitative terms to meet this goal