The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

There is a wealth of information, hype around, and research into blockchain’s ‘disruptive’ and ‘transformative’ potential concerning every industry. However, there is an absence of scholarly attention given to identifying and analyzing the political premises and consequences of blockchain projects. Through digital ethnography and participatory action research, this article shows how blockchain experiments personify ‘prefigurative politics’ by design: they embody the politics and power structures which they want to enable in society. By showing how these prefigurative embodiments are informed and determined by the underlying political imaginaries, the article proposes a basic typology of blockchain projects. Furthermore, it outlines a frame to question, cluster, and analyze the expressions of political imaginaries intrinsic to the design and operationalization of blockchain projects on three analytic levels: users, intermediaries, and institutions.</p

Prefigurative Post-Politics as Strategy:The Case of Government-Led Blockchain Projects

Critically engaging with literature on post-politics, blockchain and algorithmic governance, and drawing also on knowledge gained from undertaking a three-year empirical study, the purpose of this article is to better understand the transformative capacity of government-led blockchain projects. Analysis of a diversity of empirical material, which was guided by a digital ethnography approach, is used to support the furthering of the existing debate on the nature of the post-political as a condition and/or strategy. Through these theoretical and empirical explorations, the article concludes that while the post-political represents a contingent political strategy by governmental actors, it could potentially impose an algorithmically enforced post-political ‘condition’ for the citizen. It is argued that the design, features and mechanisms of government-led projects are deliberately and strategically used to delimit a citizens’ political agency. In order to address this scenario, we argue that there is a need not only to analyse and contribute to the algorithmic design of blockchain projects (i.e. the affordances and constraints they set), but also to the metapolitical narrative underpinning them (i.e. the political imaginaries underlying the various government-led projects)

Vision of breeding for organic agriculture

This report describes the results of research into the vision of breeding systems within organic agriculture in the Netherlands. The purpose of the research was to arrive at a vision for breeding in organic agriculture by means of interviews and discussions with organic livestock farmers and social organisations. The research was prompted by the fact that, as things stand, organic livestock farmers generally have to rely on the conventional breeding supply. Neither the breeding method not the animal type produced meet the requirements of organic agriculture. Interest in breeding has increased because organic agriculture is expanding, and as yet too little attention has been paid to the development of specific organic breeding programmes and associated legislation. In recent decades conventional agriculture and breeding have tended more and more towards industrialisation and uniformity with breeding becoming a multinational concern. The breeding organisations have no incentive at present to provide special services for organic agriculture as the market is too small and the costs are too high. Taking the current breeding situation as the starting point, a number of scenarios are described for each animal sector which could gradually lead to a system of breeding which is more organic both in its aims and in the chain-based approach. The naturalness of the breeding techniques is an important factor in considering the available options. The different scenarios served as a basis for the interviews and discussions with livestock farmers and social organisations. We have established that the farmers and organisations consider it important for organic agriculture to work on developing a breeding system which follows the principles of organic agriculture. The most important reasons for this are that: (1) consumers expect all production factors in the chain to be of organic origin, (2) most livestock farmers currently use conventional breeding techniques which fall short of the organic requirements on a number of points, such as the use of artificial reproduction techniques and mono-functional breeding for production. For the development of organic breeding, livestock farmers feel that in the first instance the use of artificial reproduction techniques, including cloning and transgenic techniques, should be restricted. Next the livestock farmers and social organisations want breeding to be adapted to or based on the organic environment. There is a suspicion that owing to genotype-environment interaction (G x E) conventionally-bred animals cannot adapt well to the organic environment, and this leads to health and welfare problems. The farmers would like to see this development taking place within 5 to 10 years. It must however proceed one step at a time since the farmers cannot yet form a complete picture of the impact of all the different factors. Most of the people involved see the ideal form of breeding, with natural reproduction and regional or farm-specific selection, as a standard to be achieved in the distant future. At the moment most livestock farmers have neither the knowledge nor the socio-economic means to set up such breeding programmes. The development of breeding and the associated legislation require an international approach, for which suitable contacts must be sought in other countries. The final chapter of this report looks in more detail at the steps to be taken in each sector. Ideally developments should probably be initiated and supervised by a central body, such as an organic breeding foundation, which could be set up to govern the breeding of all farm animals

Animal breeding in organic farming:Discussion paper

It is uncertain whether animals which have been bred for conventional production are capable of optimum performance in organic conditions. In conventional agriculture there is a movement towards maximum control of production conditions in order to optimise animals' yield in intensive production systems. By contrast, organic agriculture is based on natural processes and closed cycles, and takes into account the underlying connections between production factors. Following organic ideology, production capacity should be curtailed by acting in accordance with guiding principles such as naturalness, animal welfare, efficient use of fossil fuels in the farm cycle, and agri-biodiversity (IFOAM, 1994). Organic production should be tied to the land, with farms preferably being self-sufficient mixed farms with closed cycles. An additional point of concern are the reproduction techniques used in conventional breeding. Artificial insemination (AI) and embryo transfer (ET) are commonplace in conventional animal breeding. But these techniques are 'artificial' and they deprive animals of natural mating behaviour and negatively affect the animals' welfare and integrity. By bringing in animals from conventional agriculture, organic farmers are indirectly making use of these techniques. These and other concerns have led to the project 'Organic breeding: a long way to go', which aims to lay down clear visions and an action plan for an organic breeding system

Decentralizing Geographies of Political Action:Civic tech and Place-Based Municipalism

This article introduces the concept of ‘place-based civic tech’ — citizen engagement technology codesigned by local government, civil society and global volunteers. It investigates to what extent creating such a digital space for autonomous self-organization allows for the emergence of a parallel, self-determining and more place-based geography of politics and political action. It finds that combining online tools with offline collaborative practices presents a unique opportunity for decentralization of power and decision-making in a manner which both politically motivates civil society and begins to update the infrastructure of democracy. The discussion is supported by a combination of primary and secondary data, with research methods including ethnographic and participatory observation techniques. Research data is drawn from a range of empirical sources, including an in-depth case study of the radical municipalist movement in Spain. The article concludes that there is a clear and compelling narrative of cities taking power back, in the form of a plural and globally networked movement. As such, this study contributes to both the theory and practice of civic tech, collective impact, municipalism and place-based urban politics while emphasizing the need for further research on experiments and movements currently existing below the academic radar

Caring in, for, and with nature: An integrative framework to understand Green Care practices

Green Care practices have received increasing scholarly attention in the last decade. Yet most studies are concerned with the aspect of human well-being, with less attention given to other caring dimensions and their relation to sustainability. This paper aims to contribute to an integrative understanding of Green Care by proposing an analytical framework inspired by the ethics of care literature and, in particular, Tronto’s five stages of caring (about, for, with, giving, and receiving). The goal is to use a relational lens to appreciate the diverse caring practices and their potential in three Finnish cases studies—a care farm, a biodynamic farm, and a nature-tourism company. We apply the framework on data gathered during three years through an in-depth participatory action-oriented research. Findings show that: (a) Green Care practitioners share sustainability concerns that go beyond human well-being and that translate into practices with benefits for the target users, wider community, and ecosystems; (b) caring is a relational achievement attained through iterative processes of learning. Two concluding insights can be inferred: a care lens sheds light on practitioners’ moral agency and its sustainability potential; in-depth creative methods are needed for a thorough and grounded investigation of human and non-human caring relations in Green Care practices

A care-based approach to transformative change:Ethically-informed practices, relational response-ability &amp; emotional awareness

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Regenerative city-regions: a new conceptual framework.

The city-regional scale is increasingly being considered the most suitable level for planning and development, yet city-regions have often been established for purely economic reasons in the UK. This paper argues that city-regions are not mere socioeconomic units through which competitiveness can be achieved, but also rich, socioecological spaces. Although the progressive regionalist literature has taken significant steps in this direction, concerns remain that critical contemporary issues such as environmental sustainability, cultural viability, social exclusion or political (dis)empowerment have not been addressed in a holistic way. We attempt to advance the debate and overcome some of the shortcomings by connecting progressive regionalism with two other literature strands: collaborative governance and regenerative development. Based on the synergies found, we design a conceptual framework that can be used to study, understand and improve policy processes and practice, paving pathways towards regenerative city-regions