Still their backyard? The US and post-Mitch development strategies in Nicaragua

During the Reagan and Bush presidencies the goals and impacts of US interventions in Nicaragua (and the Central American isthmus more generally) were painfully obvious to most critical observers. The 1990s, in contrast, have seen the Clinton administration adopt a much lower profile, although the US has remained a key influence on political events within the region. This paper explores the twists and turns of the continuing US involvement in Nicaragua over the course of the past decade and its relationship to the processes of neoliberal restructuring which have occurred under the Chamorro and Aleman governments. Finally, it considers the extent to which the tragic impacts of Hurricane Mitch in October 1998 might (through their demonstration of the social and ecological costs of current neoliberal development strategies) provide an opportunity for a shift in the priorities underlying the formulation of US policy towards Nicaragua.     

Visibly Mute: Ethical Sociality and the Everyday Exurban

In this paper, we argue for an ethical understanding of exurban environments, which we propose as symptomatic spaces of neoliberalization. We outline the idea that civility within public places is a mode of moral communication grounded in everyday encounters and embedded in the ordinary places in which they are enacted. We also advance the argument that exurban environments, as properties of neoliberal capital, employ distinct strategies to monopolize the use of space and encourage its inattentive occupation. We illustrate this through our case study in the North of England, a business and retail park which we suggest as typical of spaces produced through wider processes of neoliberalization. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the writers and theories explored throughout the piece for a critical understanding of place, one that is premised on the importance of a quotidian understanding of the social, an everyday morality.     

Corridors of Power: Assembling US Environmental Foreign Aid

Using the US Agency for International Development's environmental program in Madagascar as a lens, I offer a historically grounded, relational, and multi-sited methodology for understanding the transnational processes that constitute political forests in the contemporary era. I argue that neoliberal reforms conditioned the emergence of a public–private–non-profit alliance, which promoted biodiversity conservation as a US foreign aid priority. As these reforms weakened state capacity and liberalised economies, the downsized Madagascar and US governments became reliant on conservation actors to mobilise political support for their programs. This reinforced the need to maintain strategic relationships with capital-city actors, undermining prior efforts to devolve forest management to local communities. By isolating deforestation as a peasant problem “over there” and by expanding protected areas to meet global biodiversity targets, the conservation alliance created an avenue to be green that did not threaten extractive industries or key constituents. In this manner, saving the environment via protected areas expansion offered politicians a pathway through the inherent contradictions of green neoliberalism.     

“Vote with your feet”: Neoliberalism,the democratic nation-state,and utopian enclave libertarianism

This paper examines a series of emerging utopian discourses that call for the creation of autonomous libertarian enclaves on land ceded by or claimed against existing states. These discourses have emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and can be seen as a response to the crisis on the part of free-market advocates who critique previous waves of neoliberal reform for failing to radically transform the existing structures of the state. Enclave libertarianism seeks to overcome neoliberal capitalism's contradictory relationship to the liberal democratic state by rethinking the state as a “private government service provider” and rethinking citizens as mobile consumers of government services. Citizens are thus called to “vote with their feet” by opting-in to the jurisdiction that best fits their needs and beliefs. The paper argues that these utopian imaginaries are key to understanding specific new manifestations of post-crisis neoliberalism, and calls for more research into the diversity of discourses and imaginaries that circulate through networks of neoliberal actors beyond specific policy initiatives.     

Globalised dreams,local constraints: migration and youth aspirations in an Indian regional town

Youth in India’s regional towns face a paradox: they are exposed to discourses of neoliberal globalisation through education and media, yet are unable to seize the benefits of globalisation, due to regional isolation. In this paper, we explore how aspirations of youth in India’s regional towns are influenced by their geographic marginalisation. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling, a regional town in West Bengal, we demonstrate that regional youth feel disadvantaged in their access to middle-class jobs, modern education and lifestyles associated with neoliberal globalisation. Consequently, they express strong desires for ‘exposure,’ which can only be met through migration, particularly to India’s metropolitan cities. They are frustrated in their aspiration to migrate, however, as they feel constrained by the traditional family structure, discrimination in the larger cities and the uneven temporalities between regional towns and ‘global India.’ Their experiences highlight the geographically uneven effects of neoliberal globalisation.     

Land Reform in the Time of Neoliberalism: A Many‐Splendored Thing

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, land reform – defined here as the redistribution of land from large to small properties – has emerged as an important political issue in the Global South. Actors with widely differing ideological perspectives have claimed land reform as central to their political, social and economic platforms. In this paper, I compare reforms championed under the neoliberal auspices of the World Bank (the so‐called Market Led Agrarian Reforms) with those supported by popular grassroots actors such as the Movement of Landless Workers (the MST) in Brazil. I argue that although these two approaches to land reform are often considered antithetical to one another, they share a common theoretical foundation. Both are rooted in a labor theory of property that attributes the fruits of one's labor to the laborer. Where the two differ is in their interpretation of the “original sin” through which land and labor came to be misaligned: neoliberal actors see the state as the key source of land‐related inefficiency while popular grassroots actors identify the market as the key source. I analyze case material from northeastern Brazil and suggest that the institutionalization of the labor theory of property (across civil society, state and market in the region) has generated insecurities for new land reform beneficiaries who must protect their property rights with visible evidence of their productivity.     

Drivers for Policy Agreement in Nascent Subsystems: An Application of the Advocacy Coalition Framework to Fracking Policy in Switzerland and the UK

The study of public policy deals with subsystems in which actors cooperate or compete to turn their beliefs into policy solutions. Yet, most studies concern mature subsystems in which the main actors and their allies and enemies can easily be identified. This paper tackles the challenge of studying nascent subsystems, in which actors have begun to engage in politics but are uncertain about other actors’ beliefs. Actors therefore find it relatively difficult to identify their allies and opponents. Focusing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we examine three main ways in which actors might agree to support the same policy design before they decide whether or not to form long‐term relationships within advocacy coalitions: they see the issue through the same lenses, they follow leaders, or they know each other from earlier cooperation. We use the case of fracking policy in Switzerland and the UK as a key example, in which actors have begun to agree with each other, but where final policy outputs were not yet defined, and long‐term relationships not yet observable. We find that, when dealing with new issues, actors strongly rely on former contacts rather than shared ideologies or leadership.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 1. February 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 1 Front cover CHINESE DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE The front cover shows a Chinese foreman, a migrant worker from Anhui province, and two Ethiopian labourers, working on a ditch along a road under construction in southeastern Tigray, northern Ethiopia, 2 December 2011. China's engagement with Africa is based on ‘win‐win cooperation’, Chinese diplomats claim, and is therefore fundamentally different from Western initiatives on the African continent. However, the situation on the ground tells another story. In this issue, Miriam Driessen offers a glance at daily life on Chinese road building sites in Ethiopia, revealing the striking parallels between Chinese development activities in Ethiopia and Western aid. Central to these parallels is the profound discrepancy between the expectations of Chinese workers prior to migration and the much less rosy realities faced on the construction site. Convinced of the goodwill nature of their activities, Chinese migrants were puzzled by the apparent ingratitude of local Ethiopians, their lack of cooperation, and, worse, repeated attempts to sabotage the building work. In this regard, Chinese struggles with development assistance in Ethiopia strike a familiar chord when we consider the reception of Western aid projects in Africa and elsewhere. Not new is the hiatus between optimistic and sometimes presumptuous development narratives and the frustration that follows in the face of the realities on the ground. Chinese struggles with development assistance in Ethiopia prove, once again, that development aid projects often do not work out as anticipated, because abstract and simplistic development policies may fail to fit complex realities. Back cover UNDOCUMENTED, UNACCOMPANIED MINORS IN US CUSTODY A rescue from the Rio Grande River: US Customs and Border Protection provide assistance to unaccompanied children after they have crossed the border into the United States. Until recently, news stories on immigration have exposed the appalling conditions of adult immigration detention facilities and chronicled the massive enforcement machinery that has resulted in record numbers of deportations since 2008. However, they have largely ignored the plight of unaccompanied Mexican and Central American children who cross the border alone, are apprehended by immigration authorities, and land in federal custody. The frenzied media coverage of desperate young migrants crossing the border in the summer of 2014 has galvanized the public but also created powerful myths about who these children are, why they are coming to ‘El Norte’, and what we need to do with them after their apprehension. In this issue, Susan Terrio tells the story of the Central American and Mexican migrants who are driven from home by violence and deprivation and embark alone, risking their lives on the perilous journey north. They suffer coercive arrests at the US border, land in detention, and wage an uphill battle to obtain legal status. It sheds light on a shadowy juvenile detention system run by the US government that has escaped public scrutiny for years. It shows how the government got into the business of detaining children and what we can learn from this troubled history.     

Scales and networks of neoliberal climate governance: the regulatory and territorial logics of European Union emissions trading

The growing influence of neoliberal approaches to environmental governance has significantly increased the involvement of industry non-state actors in international and national climate governance. However, the implications of this neoliberalisation and hybridisation of climate governance, and particularly state–industry relations during these processes, remain under-integrated with wider geographical debates on the scalar and network politics of environmental governance. In this paper, we probe these issues by examining the regulatory and territorial logics underpinning the negotiation and implementation of the European Union emissions trading scheme (EU ETS). We argue that overlapping interpretations of the regulatory logic of emissions trading (as a cost-effective means of meeting climate objectives) by EU, state and industry actors provided the driving force for the creation of a Europeanised climate governance space and the consolidation of the EU's governing authority in respect of the formal rule-making elements of the EU ETS. However, alliances between state and industry actors, based around intersecting interpretations of their territorial interests in relation to emissions trading, strongly influenced the scheme's design. Moreover, speculative behaviour within the EU ETS market indicates the continued ability of market networks to disrupt territorially-based climate governance regimes. We argue that critical exploration of the territorial logics and practices of EU emissions trading from regime creation to operation provides new insights into the emerging spatial politics of neoliberal environmental governance and its implications for climate protection.     

THE ART OF NEOLIBERALIZING PARK MANAGEMENT: COMMODIFICATION,POLITICS AND HOTEL CONSTRUCTION IN PALLASYLLÄSTUNTURI NATIONAL PARK,FINLAND

Following the growth of nature‐based tourism, national parks and other protected areas have become important tourist attractions. This article examines the legislative process of revising the Act on Pallas‐Yllästunturi National Park, located in northern Finland, to enable the renovation and enlargement of the old hotel. The first draft of the government bill published in 2008 led to widespread public opposition, and thus, construction rights were reduced substantially before the new Act was passed in 2010. The main question of this article is why the Finnish government changed its policy on national park governance that had existed for decades. We assess the extent to which the changes in park governance can be interpreted as part of the worldwide neoliberalization of nature, as well as what kind of forces and values work against neoliberal management ideologies. We examine how the process of revising the Act proceeded in the Parliament and analyse on what grounds the hotel construction was defended and opposed in the discussions. Finally we ponder how the political disagreements are explained by neoliberal frames. We conclude that the neoliberal element was one part of the process, but it intertwined with local political reality creating results hardly resembling textbook definitions of neoliberal or classic liberal ideals. Mixed ideological principles, contextual economic conditions, and complex dependencies between individual actors create cases which must be analysed carefully to find out if neoliberal elements really exist and how they are transformed. Close relations between economic and political actors and creation of economic monopolies should raise doubts if vocabulary of liberalization is just a disguise of actions supporting hidden political and economic interests.     

The Devil is in the (Bio)diversity: Private Sector “Engagement” and the Restructuring of Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract: Intensified relations between biodiversity conservation organizations and private‐sector actors are analyzed through a historical perspective that positions biodiversity conservation as an organized political project. Within this view the organizational dimensions of conservation exist as coordinated agreement and action among a variety of actors that take shape within radically asymmetrical power relations. This paper traces the privileged position of “business” in aligning concepts of sustainable development and ecological modernization within the emerging institutional context of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Global Environment Facility in ways that help to secure continued access to “nature as capital”, and create the institutional conditions to shape the work of conservation organizations. The contemporary emergence of business as a major actor in shaping contemporary biodiversity conservation is explained in part by the organizational characteristics of modernist conservation that subordinates it to larger societal and political projects such as neoliberal capitalism.     

Immigrant "Illegality" as Neoliberal Governmentality in Leadville, Colorado

Abstract:  In this paper, I frame immigrant "illegality" as a local-scale technique of neoliberal governmentality. Drawing on recent work of anthropologists, I present illegality as a racialized, spatialized social condition which operates as governmentality by marginalizing and criminalizing immigrants, loosening the US border and forcing it into local spaces, and impacting immigrants' everyday lives and mobility. The paper then draws on a case study of Leadville, Colorado, to illustrate the utility of this framework. In Leadville, we see how through illegality neoliberalism seeps through scales. Illegality disciplines immigrant labor in service of the neoliberal order, turns all residents into surveillers of immigrants' subordinate sociospatial position, and masks contradictions within neoliberalism that arise particularly at the local scale. I argue that conceptualizing illegality as a governmentality technique provides a powerful tool for understanding changing state spatiality, especially ways in which neoliberalism is diffused and embedded into local economic, political, and social processes.     

Creating Spaces of Resistance: Development NGOs and their Clients in Ghana, India and Mexico

Development NGOs have been accused by some of being new instruments of control, domesticated by the neoliberal project. For others, they elaborate and pursue alternative dreams. In this paper, we argue that, although the majority of NGOs have been co‐opted to serve hegemonic development agendas, they nevertheless present a fluid, contradictory web of relations, within which a significant minority seeks to make spaces of resistance, and where even the most neoliberal NGOs are used by some clients to create new associational spaces. Drawing on work with NGOs in Ghana, India, Mexico and Europe, we explore various strategies deployed by this minority of "independent thinking NGOs". We argue that there is an important production of Melucci's submerged networks or latent social movements, however limited their political impact to date.     

Securing the Return: How Enhanced US Border Enforcement Fuels Cycles of Debt Migration

Expanded border enforcement has made unauthorised migration to the US more risky, costly, and prone to failure. Research on the material consequences of border enforcement for migrant‐sending households in Central America reveals that the economic hardships enforcement exacts on migrants at times diminishes enforcement's desired deterrent power. Heightened risks have driven up the cost of migration and pushed many to fund their trips through loans. Consequently, migrant detention, deportation, or death can result in poverty and privation for indebted households and the seizure of loan collateral, typically homes and land, in turn prompting crises in household reproduction. With a US wage the most viable means to ameliorate economic hardships, enforcement outcomes push some to return migration. Our findings suggest that US border enforcement efforts at times perpetuate the very unauthorised migration they seek to impede, while also helping to reproduce the border itself by deepening the marginalisation that drives migration decisions.     

Homespun manhood and the war against masculinity: community leisure on the US home front, 1917–19

Between the Civil War and World War I, America saw a return to militarised, heroic, warrior forms of masculinity. When the United States entered the war in 1917, however, the demands for belligerent forms of military manhood subsided, and were replaced by a desire to reattach manhood to the domestic realm. In this article, I examine a set of government programmes designed to manage soldiers' leisure time while they were stationed in training camps across the US. I argue that these home front activities betray an anxiety about sending American soldiers to fight in an overseas war for the first time in national history. The US was a young nation state fighting its first international war against other equally statist nations. In this context, it was no longer strategically useful for military manhood to be severed from the idea of home. Rather, as soldiers would be fighting for long periods in an alien territory, it behoved the military and government to temper traditional configurations of warrior manhood, and focus instead on exposing soldiers to as much home and family as they could safely arrange.     

Trafficking in US Agriculture

Based on a qualitative methodology that includes in‐depth interviews with 90 Mexican migrant smugglers and 45 Central American farmworkers, this article analyzes the three separate elements of trafficking in US agriculture, namely acts, means, and purposes. We conclude that some US employers participate in human trafficking by financing or helping to recruit and transport Mexican and Central American migrants to the US by means of “abuse of a position of vulnerability” for the purposes of involuntary servitude, debt bondage, and sex exploitation.     

Tracing the future of migrants’ labour relations. Experiences of institutionalised migrant precarity in Denmark and Greece

Restrictive migration laws, fracturing of citizenship and neoliberal labour markets intertwine with persistent migration flows to produce migrant precarity in the European context. This article examines the institutionalisation of precarious and unfree labour conditions for migrants in Denmark and Greece, through the enactment of laws and policy initiatives. The article situates itself in a literature regarding migrant precarity and its institutionalisation, unfree and informal labour and the production of immobility, which points to their interrelation as a constitutive element of modern European economies. In both cases, we can identify a retrenchment of rights and likewise the cases indicate that a fractured citizenship is instrumentalised in producing various types of immobility. The article concludes that despite differences between the European North and South we can identify a situation of unfree labour characterised by a lack of real or acceptable alternatives, within a setting of coercive geographies.     

The ‘superman’ solution: ‘Super soldiers’ and ‘superheroes’ in the United States military

Current US military research focused on the development of pharmacological ‘super soldiers’ – soldiers enhanced through a variety of pharmaceuticals and biomedical technologies to perform far beyond what unenhanced soldiers can do – draws from and often mimics popular or pop-cultural conceptions of the superhero. These biomedical and pharmacological interventions pose profound ethical problems and possibilities that are solved – in part – by imagining the new US super soldier as a superhero. Drugging soldiers to enhance their ability to fight and survive is a frightening proposition, and one that makes people uncomfortable; the solution is to imagine them as superheroes – as positive representations of the enhanced soldier on the side of good, somehow contained and controllable and fundamentally safe and unfrightening.     

Beyond the Brotherhood: Reassessing US Army Combat Relationships in the Second World War

Abstract

The conventional wisdom that portrays US combat soldiers in World War II as a 'band of brothers' owes much to Hollywood and popular history, and distorts serious understanding of the relationships within combat units of the US Army. This article examines this idea in the context of theories of unit cohesion and combat motivation and suggests a more complex understanding of these issues.     

Participation,consultation, confusion: professionals' understandings of children's participation in physical planning

This article discusses how professionals understand the theory and practice of children's participation in physical planning processes. Drawing on group discussions between Swedish professionals we analyse how children's participation is understood and negotiated, and why it is problematic to implement. The participants had difficulties in understanding the difference between participation and consultation, as well as recognising children as social actors with competences. We argue that while Swedish children have a strong position in society, they are excluded from planning processes due to the rigidity of the planning process, neoliberal influences and planners' lack of competence.