Sustainability as Empty Signifier: Its Rise,Fall, and Radical Potential

Until recently, the concept of “sustainability” appeared to occupy a central position in the politics of many Western democracies. Following the 2008 financial crisis, however, sustainability has been relegated to a position of secondary or tertiary significance. This article considers the rise and fall of sustainability through the theoretical lens of Ernesto Laclau, considering whether it may be seen as an example of an “empty signifier”. Through detailed engagement with Laclau's work, as well as both theoretical and empirical studies of the concept of sustainability, I argue that sustainability signifies the multiple failures of dominant discourses to recognise “the future” as a meaningful category. After examining the historical conditions under which sustainability was able to operate in this way, I go on to argue that the global financial crisis and neoliberalism more broadly have interrupted our capacity to think about the future, undermining the significance of sustainability, at least temporarily.     

Crisis,Continuity and Change: Neoliberalism,the Left and the Future of Capitalism

Abstract: This essay's point of departure is the coincident economic and environmental “crises” of our time. I locate both in the dynamics of capital accumulation on a world‐scale, drawing on the ideas of Marx, Karl Polanyi and James O’Connor. I ask whether the recent profusion of “crisis talk” in the public domain presents an opportunity for progressive new ideas to take hold now that “neoliberalism” has seemingly been de‐legitimated. My answer is that a “post‐neoliberal” future is probably a long way off. I make my case in two stages and at two geographical scales. First, I examine the British social formation as currently constituted and explain why even a leading neoliberal state is failing to reform its ways. Second, I then scale‐up from the domestic level to international affairs. I examine cross‐border emissions trading—arguably the policy tool for mitigating the very real prospects of significant climate change this century. The overall conclusion is this: even though the “first” and “second” contradictions of capital have manifested themselves together and at a global level, there are currently few prospects for systemic reform (never mind revolution) led by a new, twenty‐first century “red‐green” Left.     

Voluntary regions and the case of Las Vegas

A shifting American cultural geography, stemming from clustering of like-minded people, has been much-discussed in recent years. The “voluntary region”, proposed by Wilbur Zelinsky in his path-breaking The cultural geography of the United States, is a regional construct relatively unexplored by cultural geographers that may help in their contributions to such conversations. As described by Zelinsky, voluntary regions are places that attract individual, like-minded people away from long-standing “traditional regions” based on a desire for amenity and economic opportunity. I review the concept and its sparse embrace in the literature and suggest that it has much to offer our discipline. Using Las Vegas as a paradigmatic example, I explore methods that can be used to explore the formation and character of voluntary regions. I argue that the voluntary region framework is an encompassing lens through which cultural geographers can examine the complex nature of place and regional construction at the hands of dynamic forces that lead people to resettle in new places.     

Rescaling regions in the state: The New Regionalism in California

A “new civic regionalism” – based on participatory, inclusive and partnership models of governance – has recently been rolled out in California to tackle the challenges of urban growth, planning and economic development across the State's diverse metropolitan and rural regions. Backed by non-profits and private foundations, California's New Regionalism has been packaged as a flexible and responsive grassroots governance initiative, which is designed to circumnavigate State and local government. Its proponents have been influenced by New Regionalist ideas and practices circulating nationally and internationally. Despite this, our explanation for the rise of the New Regionalism in California is not grounded in these wider theoretical and policy developments; nor do we see it as the outcome of a “new politics of scale” framed around the region. Instead, California's newest regionalism is part of a much longer-standing social movement spearheaded by large-scale business interests and directed at reorganizing local and State government powers particularly in urban regions. This regional reform movement has sought to rationalize land use and environmental planning, coordinate infrastructure, and make government more fiscally efficient and responsive to growth. Over the longer term, its efforts have been undermined by the fiscal fallout of the property tax revolt, Proposition 13. Our analysis calls into question some of the claims in the literature on state rescaling and suggests the value of collapsing the conceptual distinction made between new spaces of political regionalism and regional economic spaces.     

Areas of large enterprise and industrial districts in the development of post-war Italy: A preliminary survey

Our aim in this article is to lay some statistical and theoretical foundations for an understanding of Italian post-war economic growth, by devoting special attention to what has happened in the hundred different “Italies” that go to make up the mosaic of this country. We have concentrated our analysis on comparing “areas of large enterprise” with “industrial districts” through a distinction between district provinces (IDPs), large enterprise provinces (LEPs) and other provinces (OPs). We investigate manufacturing industry by means of in depth analyses of trends in employment and value added, as well as through breakdowns of export flows and income and prosperity levels. Since the end of World War II it appears that Italian economic growth has largely been formed by the constant, massive flow of exports of personal and household goods and light mechanically-engineered products, that a sizeable flow of exports is attributable to growth in the industrial districts, and that although the income gap between the different parts of the country has not been eliminated, growth by the industrial districts and the policy of industrialization in Southern Italy have together engineered a major territorial dispersion of both light and heavy industry. However, heavy industry and high-tech large Italian companies have found increasing difficulties and even lost many of the positions they once held. Our survey indicates that a policy for industrial development in Italy must take account of the weakness of the heavy industry sector along with the features and requirements of industrial districts.     

Institutional Arrangements and Political Mobilization in the New Italian Regionalism: The Role of Spatial Policies in the Piedmont Region

The paper focuses on the resurgence of the regions as protagonists of the process of the state rescaling in many European countries. In the EU countries this process can be seen as a result of a mix of economic and institutional factors, which have been producing an increasing competition between the central governments and the regional authorities. The rise of the multi-level governance and of the so-called Euroregionalism has reinforced the role of the regional scale in the territorial development: on one hand, with new actors like agencies and organizations engaged in the economic development (FDI attraction, place marketing, innovation and learning), on the other hand by the resurgence of “old” actors, such as the regions, in many cases empowered by processes of institutional devolution. The literature has investigated this re-composition of the political space with regard to the “hollowing out” and the “rescaling” of the state. On the base of these theoretical underpinnings, we discuss some empirical evidence from the Italian experience, in order to show whether and how the regional structures are not only “spaces for policies”, but also “spaces for politics”. Over the last decade, the changes in legal framework, the external inputs from supranational levels of government—the European Commission—and the re-territorialization processes have introduced many elements of innovation in the role of the regions. By illustrating the case of the Piedmont Region, we try to demonstrate that the transition towards the region as an active space of politics can be mediated by the sphere of the policies, especially the spatial ones.     

Refusing to be Toured: Work,Tourism, and the Productivity of “Life” in the Colombian Amazon

Starting from the contention that exercising a “right to tour” is predicated on the work of producing tourability, I examine how tourability itself is a contested process involving relations of land and labour. Examining the current “resource boom” of ecotourism in the Colombian Amazon, I use an analysis of work and capital accumulation to unravel a seemingly small act of refusal by the community of Nazaret that has barred tourists’ entry to their land. I argue that this act of refusal opens up space for critically examining the relationships of land and labour, especially through the production of “life”, in the accumulation of tourable places in contemporary global capitalism. Engaging literature on both tourism studies and land politics in the Amazon region, I contribute to the scholarship on tourism and work while examining how Indigenous landscapes are being made productive towards the ends of capitalism.     

Modern Location Factors in Dynamic Regions

Globalization has had an enormous impact on traditional industrial structures. It almost seems that everything is everywhere the same. And yet, in reality, some regions in a single industrialized country enjoy rapid economic growth while others are downsizing or stagnating. Thus there must be some remaining regional competitive advantages—even in the “Age of Globalization”. This paper engages in a quest to discover what these modern location factors might be and how and why they are necessary in creating dynamics and regional growth. In doing so, we link the driving forces behind these modern location factors with regional performance and eventually arrive at a concept of a regional lifecycle and its key dynamics. Using data that paint a comprehensive picture of industry and regional development in Germany we try to find empirical evidence for our approach.     

GERMANY IN TIMES OF CRISIS: PASSIVE REVOLUTION,STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY AND NEW NATIONALISM

Germany appears as the case in point of a country that is getting through the current crisis rather well. Central to this “success” is the passive revolution that the country has undergone in the 2000s during which a state‐led restructuring of the regime of accumulation has resulted in the creation of a new stratum of working poor and an overall lowering of wages. Following a discussion of this passive revolution and the resulting mass impoverishment, this article explores the struggle over cultural hegemony, which has surfaced in various controversies since the beginning of the current economic crisis in 2007. I argue that there is a passive consensus concerning “poverty” – which is unpopular, but regarded as inevitable – that is outweighed by an active consent concerning “Germany” – an immensely popular notion. In Germany, a new nationalism that blends classism and racism in the service of the economic competitiveness of the nation is argued to be at the core of cultural hegemony in these times of crisis.     

Controlling Forum Choice and Controlling Policy: Congress,Courts and the IRS

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to litigation and its influence on social and bureaucratic policy. One area of research has focused on interest group litigation. Another area of scholarship has shown that Congress encourages individual use of the courts to monitor and control bureaucratic behavior. In several areas of law, litigants have a choice of forum by deliberate legislative design, which is sometimes derided as “forum shopping.” Little attention has been paid to the dominant national political coalition's ability to encourage forum shopping through legislation and the appointment process. One area of law that the coalition can encourage forum shopping is in challenging tax audits. It can do so through implict legislative signals and the appointment process to influence litigants to sue the Internal Revenue Service in the forum that offers the litigant the greatest chance of success. Given the prominent role of courts in setting and determining policy and given the particular prominence of taxes and tax policy over the past three decades, whether and where tax litigants choose to sue is critically important to understanding the dynamics of both tax policy and tax enforcement, as well as public policy creation and change. To demonstrate the influence of political forces on tax forum choice, I compare tax and district court filings from 1994 through to 2000. I find that as the Tax Court and national political coalition become more conservative, more taxpayers sue in the Tax Court and this “forum shopping” choice is supported by the national political coalition.     

明代运河“水脊”的形成及其意义

明后期以降的史籍普遍认为南旺自元代起一直是会通河沿线的制高点“水脊”,元明会通河成败的关键就在于是否选择了南旺“水脊”作为分水口,这种观点不正确。南旺湖原本是梁山泊最后的余绪,地势低洼,明初宋礼引汶水到南旺济运后开始淤积,成化年间确定南旺分水核心地位后,挑出的泥沙堆积在运河和小汶河两岸形成土山地貌,构成明后期以降人们眼中的“水脊”意象。即南旺“水脊”形成于明代中叶,是汶水泥沙淤积和人工挑浚堆积的结果。据此,需重新审视元明会通河成败的原因,讨论明代中叶南旺“水脊”的形成对会通河水源从暴虐黄河水到安稳汶河水的转变的意义及其对明中叶以降治黄原则的深远影响。     

Regional Advantage of Cluster Development: A Case Study of the San Diego Biotechnology Cluster

The concept of “clusters” has become central to regional economic development strategies, especially in the high-technology and biotechnology industries. Numerous studies have examined the significance of industrial clusters and their components, but comparatively less attention has been directed towards understanding the roots and processes of industrial localization. In particular, emerging biotechnology clusters such as that in San Diego have not drawn adequate scholarly attention given their policy implications with regard to clustering and regional development. Based on in-depth interviews, historical archives and participatory observations, this paper examines how the San Diego biotechnology cluster emerged and grew into an entrepreneurial habitat that has nurtured hundreds of biotechnology companies that have produced a series of innovative products. The author suggests that the regional context of the existence of a number of small biotechnology companies rather than a group of large firms, a continuous flow of talent, and leadership that fosters collaborations have been critical in promoting knowledge creation, circulation and accumulation, which are essential to spawning startups. The regional advantage of San Diego in stimulating entrepreneurship and innovation lies in its edge in creating and exploiting knowledge and practices through its entrepreneurs' robust interactions and participation in local communities of practice.     

Fixing a Swamp of Cobras: The Clash between Capital and Water in Shaping Urban Vulnerabilities

This paper addresses how capital can refashion landscapes and patterns of risk and vulnerability. Drawing on the emblematic case of the conversion of Thailand’s Cobra Swamp into Suvarnabhumi International Airport we argue that there is a fundamental clash between the internal logic of capital accumulation and the ecology of water that occurs in places in which land is under water for much of the year. Counterintuitively investment in public infrastructure such as airports targets locations that are exposed to flood risks. While the literature on capital fixes tends to treat “land” writ large, this paper adds a dimension that has been overlooked in the theoretical work, by highlighting the significance of the ecology of the land in which such fixes occur as a means of understanding patterns of investment, land use change and vulnerability. Our analysis draws on three separate but related concepts of capital “fixes”—spatial, technological and high/low road fixes. We argue the importance of recognising the specific ecological characteristics of land that capital “fixes”. This perspective has global significance in providing critical insight into the ways in which capital creates and accommodates the kinds of vulnerabilities and risks associated with climate change.     

TIME,PRESENCE, AND HISTORICAL INJUSTICE

The relationship between history and justice traditionally has been dominated by the idea of the past as distant or absent (and with that, irreversible). This ambiguous ontological status makes it very difficult to situate the often‐felt “duty to remember” or obligation to “do justice to the past” in that past itself, and this has led philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Keith Jenkins to plead against an “obsession” with history in favor of an ethics aimed at the present. History's ability to contribute to the quest for justice, as a result, often seems very restricted or even nonexistent. The introduction of the “presence”‐paradigm in historiography can potentially alter this relation between history and justice. However, to do so it should be conceived in such a way that it offers a fundamental critique of the metaphysical dichotomy between the present and the absent and the underlying concept of time (chronosophy) that supports this dichotomy. The “presence”‐paradigm can be emancipatory and productive only if presence and absence are not perceived as absolute dichotomies. In the first part of this article I elaborate on the influence that the present/absent dichotomy has on the notion of justice by introducing a conceptual contrast between what I will call the “time of jurisdiction” and the “time of history.” The second part of the article focuses on the way certain aspects of the dominant Western chronosophy reinforce the present/absent dichotomy and thereby prevent us from thoroughly exploring the ambiguous but often very problematic presence of the past. Throughout the article I refer to the relatively recent phenomenon of truth commissions and the context of transitional justice to discuss some challenges for the “presence”‐paradigm.     

Governing the inner “periphery.” Spatial security governance of the Highlands in Papua New Guinea since the colonial period

Specific regions and places are considered particular threatening and dangerous by state authorities. There, the state regularly enacts security in harsh and violent ways. In this article, I develop a pragmatic spatial framework, inspired by and combining elements from post-statist geography and Critical Security Studies, to explain patterns of spatial security governance in regions with competing local authorities and regular violence. I particularly argue for more historical analysis on the emergence and legacies of spatial security governance to understand its persistence and consequences. I illustrate the framework with an empirical investigation of the spatial security governance of the Highland regions in Papua New Guinea, and its role as a dangerous inner “periphery” for the central state since the late colonial period. The patterns of security governance in the Highlands, like the declaration of emergency zones in case of regional warfare, the use of violent punitive expeditions by mobile forces, accompanied by a securitizing discourse, have remained remarkably similar. While the post-colonial state aimed at a break with the colonial past, the spatial security governance of the Highlands has remained an important source for the legitimization of state rule and state formation. Governing the inner “periphery” is constructed as the responsibility of the state, which has been historically entangled in the “violent geographies” in the Highlands.     

Capitalizing on Bare Life: Sovereignty,Exception, and Gender Politics

Abstract: This article examines the capital value of bare life as part of aid/development in (post)Taliban Afghanistan. I argue that the political production and spatial fixity of homo sacer “as the object of aid and protection” within specific geographic locations subsequently territorializes gendered bodies as a site for capital accumulation and exchange value through aid/development allocation. This occurs through a continual discursive reduction of “full or proper” human life to the remnants of bare life. This subjective reduction subsequently elicits capitalist‐modernity as a prime method for rescuing bare life and transferring it to an image (and imaginary) of western political and economic life. Gendered multiplicities of bare life emerge from variant forms of political and economic opportunity among aid/development workers and Afghan recipients. I argue that the discursive framing of bare life is situated as a site for (re)constructing rights through “western” frameworks infused with geopolitical and economic exchange value.     

The World Upside Down: Boas,History, Evolutionism,and Science

A new wave of neo‐Boasian anthropologists advocate retrieving Boas’s sense of historicity. In his theoretical writings, and especially his early exchange with Mason and Powell in 1887, Boas linked history to Alexander von Humboldt’s “cosmographical” method and to inductive science, accusing evolutionists of reasoning deductively on the basis of artibrary classifications. Boas, on the contrary, would not classify but would consider the “individual phenomenon”. Strangely enough, Boas’s presentation of his scientific procedure has more or less been taken at face value, and I question this Boas‐centric view of Boas. Examining Boas’s theoretical statements, his onslaught against evolutionism and his ethnographic practice, I find the accusation of deductive reasoning against evolutionists totally polemical. Furthermore, I discover neither induction nor history or cosmography in his practice, but a Linnaean‐type natural history. In brief, I uncover an inverse image of what Boas presented of himself, and no basis whatsoever for retrieving a historicity for contemporary anthropology.     

Labour Migration,Capitalist Accumulation,and Feudal Reproduction: A Historical Analysis from the Eastern Gangetic Plains

This paper engages with the long‐running debate on the transition from farm‐based livelihoods to capitalism in the context of labour migration. Tracing the historic evolution of modes of production in the peripheral Mithilanchal region of the Eastern Gangetic Plains, it notes how the economic processes which are today driving the peasantry into the labour force through migration are not directly connected to the process of capitalist accumulation in the diverse locales where labour is employed, as is somtimes implied in the research on classic situations of “accumulation by dispossession”. The entry of the peasantry into the surplus labour pool is instead linked firstly, with a complex convergence of internal changes within a non‐capitalist feudal mode of production on an economic, cultural and political level, and secondly, with the stresses brought about in the wake of expanding capitalist markets. The paper notes however that migrant labour still generates substantial profits for capitalism with a sharing of surplus between the latter, and landlord‐money lenders. It argues that the relationship between modes of production in this context, is neither functional nor coincidental, and is linked instead with larger – at times opportunistic – class alliances which have evolved to fit the current political‐economic conjuncture.     

From regional innovation systems to local innovation systems: Evidence from Italian industrial districts

The theoretical concepts of industrial district and regional innovation system though closely related, capture different aspects of regional economic development. Given the “nestedness” of a system in other systems, one regional innovation system can support several districts. However, in some cases, districts may be considered as local innovation systems with independent innovation patterns. In fact, the socio-economic characters of industrial districts can be so specific that the region's size and institutional framework may be inadequate in fully describing their innovation processes. In the case of the Italian region of Lombardy, this “autonomous” local innovation system model proliferates.