Epistemic justice and everyday nationalism: An auto‐ethnography of transnational student encounters in a post‐war memory and reconciliation project in Kosovo

This contribution introduces an exercise in epistemic justice to the study of everyday nationalism in post‐conflict, transnational (local and international) encounters. It explores how everyday nationalism, in often unexpected and hidden ways, underpinned a cocreational, educational project involving several local (Albanian) and international (British based) university students and staff collaborating on the theme of post‐war memory and reconciliation in Kosovo. The set‐up resembled a microcosm of transnational social encounters in project collaborations in which the problem of nationalism, typically, is associated with one side only: here, the Kosovars. Guided by Goffman's (1982) social interactionist framework, the study employs selected participants' paraethnographic and auto‐ethnographic reflections of their project experiences and practices after the event in order to trace the everyday workings of mutual assumptions and constructions of a national self and other for all sides involved. In this, it explores how the project participants' asymmetric positioning within a wider, global context of unequal power relations shaped their vernacular epistemologies of belonging and identity. It thereby excavated what otherwise taken‐for‐granted criteria can become relevant in such local/international social encounters as reflected upon and how the enduring power imbalances underpinning these might best be redressed.     

The Epistemological Challenge of Higher Education Student Volunteering: “Reproductive” or “Deconstructive” Volunteering?

Abstract: This paper addresses student volunteering as an important socio‐cultural trend which is generally taken for granted and un‐interrogated. We explore tensions inherent in the practice and articulation of higher education student volunteering, via biographical narratives of contrasting student volunteers and employ Rose's (1993, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press) theory of “paradoxical space” to unpick and understand these narratives, as this has proven a generative approach to re‐conceptualising students’ engagement with universities and communities. Building on this theoretical approach, we propose a new conceptual framework to analyse students’ learning and understanding of social justice through volunteering. This framework contrasts reproductive altruism, or volunteering which reproduces social inequalities, with a deconstructive form that provides students with resources to recognise and challenge power relations and inequality in society.     

Blueing business as usual in the ocean: Blue economies,oil, and climate justice

Oceans are increasingly looked toward for their contribution to addressing climate change. These so-called ocean-based climate “solutions” often fall under the umbrella of the “blue economy,” a term used to refer to new ways of organizing ocean economies to provide equitable economic and environmental benefits. Yet, thus far the literature exploring blue economies and blue economy governance has largely overlooked or downplayed its equity and justice roots and implications, including how blue economies are embedded in multiple scales of environmental injustices. This is particularly important when blue economies include offshore oil production. The purpose of this paper is to both emphasize the need and provide an approach to incorporate justice and equity—specifically climate justice—into blue economy planning and scholarship. We build on conceptualizations of blue economies as assemblages to draw attention to the global reach of climate impacts associated with oil that are often overlooked or ignored at sites of production and through regional governance. We argue that greenhouse gas emissions from the life cycle of oil should be included in policies and planning (including blue economy planning) at sites of production, but that this must also incorporate underlying power structures that lead to uneven impacts and climate injustice. We look at environmental assessments as a regional governance tool that could be used to shape opportunities and openings to organize blue economies differently. To illustrate these points, we look at how environmental assessments are playing (and could play) a role in enacting and shaping Newfoundland and Labrador's blue economy.     

Towards an Energy Politics In‐Against‐and‐Beyond the State: Berlin's Struggle for Energy Democracy

Social movements in struggle around energy are currently developing an imaginary of “energy democracy” to signify the emancipatory energy transitions they desire. Deploying a scholar‐activist perspective, this paper contributes to debates around the concretisation of the energy democracy imaginary by exploring the relationship of energy democracy movements to the state. To do so, I focus on the experiences of the Berliner Energietisch campaign, which in 2013 forced (and lost) a referendum aiming to extend—and democratise—the local state's role in Berlin's energy governance. Drawing on relational theories of the state, I argue that it is productive to read Berliner Energietisch as enacting an energy politics in‐against‐and‐beyond the state. In making this argument, I draw out implications for theoretical and strategic debates around the commons and the state.     

Community resistance and the role of justice in shale gas development in the United Kingdom

Global energy policies embracing a transition to unconventional oil and gas development are hallmarks of many developed nations. Among these, the United Kingdom has framed the development of shale gas as one means to transition from high-carbon fossil-fuel consumption to low-carbon alternatives. Yet the introduction of this industry and recent legislation associated with it have not been without controversy. Communities throughout the United Kingdom are engaged in sustained debates concerning climate change, health, the scale of extraction footprints, securitisation, and governance. Places such as Kirby Misperton, the focus of this article, are representative of many villages where questions abound about the role of justice at all stages and scales of governmental decision-making. Using a legal geographic lens, this article examines narratives among local residents who are actively resisting the arrival of unconventional gas. I consider how the relationships between and among energy transition, policy, and justice have been interpreted by communities and argue for inequity and risk to be addressed in more transparent ways. I contend that highlighting counter-narratives remains essential if powerful arguments by governments and others are to be negated. Fundamentally, true justice can only prevail when all stakeholders are considered legitimate and their opinions valid.     

Making Space for Energy: Wasteland Development,Enclosures, and Energy Dispossessions

This paper analyzes why and how wasteland development narratives persist through an evaluation of wasteland development policies in India from 1970 to present. Integrating critical scholarship on environmental narratives and enclosures, I find that narratives of wastelands as “empty” spaces available for “improvement” continue because they are metaphors for entrenched struggles between the government's shifting visions of “improvement” and communities whose land use practices contradict these logics. Since the 1970s, “improvement” has meant establishing different types of tree plantations on wastelands to ostensibly provide energy security. These projects have dispossessed land users by enclosing common property lands and by providing forms of energy incommensurate with local needs, a trend I term “energy dispossessions”. Factors enabling energy dispossessions include the government's increased attempts to establish public–private partnerships to carry out “improvement” and a “field of observation” constructed to obscure local livelihoods. Unveiling these logics will help to problematize and contest future iterations of wasteland development.     

Une histoire de résidus : à propos des facteurs généraux et locaux de croissance régionale au Canada,de 1971 à 2001

Starting from an econometric model of local employment growth, applied to Canada (1971–2001), residuals—relative to model predictions—are analyzed over time and over space, in turn allowing us to draw a distinction between general explanatory variables and factors of a more local, cyclical or accidental nature. The model's explanatory power grows over time, founded on variables such as urban size, market access and industrial structure, allowing us to conclude that local employment growth in Canada follows an increasingly geographically predictable pattern. However, an examination of the residuals reveals more localized processes. Growth volatility is most manifest in Alberta and British Columbia, home to the most erratic local economies. Emerging patterns are visible in the last period, most notably the underperformance of Northern Ontario and of non‐metropolitan communities between Windsor and Québec City, lying along the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence. The over‐performance—compared to model predictions — of small and mid‐sized towns in south‐eastern Québec can, on the other hand, be interpreted as a sign of truly local social processes, generally associated with a particularly dynamic local entrepreneurial class.     

Global policy paradigms,gender equality and everyday lives in Beijing,Hong Kong,Seoul and Taipei

Focusing on the interface between gender equality, the labour market, and everyday lives in four East Asian societies – China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan – this article seeks to articulate the spatial expression and multi-scalarity of global governance and policy paradigms. It will demonstrate that whilst regions, places and people are influenced by global processes and paradigms, these move and embed in different ways across spaces, time and scales. In this context, the article seeks to develop a more nuanced appreciation of ‘the social lives’ of global policy models, engaging with the role of ideas and institutions and the interactions of transnational, national and local dynamics in the shaping of gender equality policies and everyday experiences. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei the article draws out the perceptions of individuals from different policy, sectoral, social and cultural settings of gender equality. It highlights the tensions and disjunctures between general principles and particular situations, and in embedding gender equality policies into the social imaginaries and everyday lives of women and men. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the role of place and power relations in shaping localized responses to and experiences of gender justice.     

From Darkness into Light: Race,Population, and Environmental Advocacy

Environmentalists and environmental organizations in the USA have long identified population growth as a key threat to environmental sustainability at local and global scales. The neo‐Malthusian logics they invoke embed racialized images and categories in defining population “problems”, yet increasingly social justice language is invoked in population debates as a “solution” in the context of international development. This article explores the historical and contemporary characterizations of race as a central component of population–environment advocacy. It focuses on locations of race narratives in both the conceptualizations of population growth as an environmental problem, and family planning as a global solution. Through a critical analysis of the “population justice” framework, I argue that new discursive approaches attempt to reposition population work as socially just, while eliding critical analyses of race.     

Globalisation Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective on Control,Conflict and Response among Workers in Kerala

Abstract: Supported by the labour geography framework, I analyse how spatial practices of labour shape the economic geography of capitalism, by looking into a model not at a global but at a very local scale of organisation and showing its effectiveness while confronting social actors organised at global or extra‐local scales. Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital, empirically demonstrating the relevance of this in the globalisation literature. I deal with one region—Kerala—and processes in its labour markets, taking the case of apparel workers in an export‐promoting industrial park.     

Land,citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy in Southern Africa

This review article discusses recent books on land reform and its implications for racial reconciliation and constitutional democracy in formerly white‐ruled states in Southern Africa. It is argued that President Mugabe's opportunistic use of the land issue in his power struggle with his domestic opposition—and propaganda warfare with his international critics—should not obscure the symbolic and material importance of Zimbabwe's highly unequal land ownership. Moreover, Mugabe's militant stance is having resonance in neighbouring South Africa and Namibia, where the racially skewed ownership of land—and other resources—could also become sites of struggle that, as in Zimbabwe, threaten not only economic growth, but also the construction of a broad (non‐racial) citizenship and the consolidation of constitutional democracy. Such a chain of events is also likely to have adverse consequences for western–African relations.     

Of Other Spaces: Women's colleges at the turn of the nineteenth century in the UK

This article explores the first British university-associated women's colleges at the turn of the nineteenth century. Drawing on Foucault, the article looks into the dualistic opposition between private and public, as well as women's attempts to transcend this dichotomy. In theorising women's colleges as Foucauldian heterotopias, spaces in the interstices of power relations and dominant social structures, the author focuses on the interplay of contradicting discourses and strong power relations within these women's colleges. In this light, the author considers the ways women resisted, negotiated, but also compromised in their attempt to shape their lives and invent new ways of being in the world.     

Competition,cooperation and resistance: women in the political field in Iraq

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 many women supported the process of transition and became active in political parties and coalitions. A wide range of groups were also formed which pursued women's rights agendas and, in many cases, included a call for peace and reconciliation and charity activities for women and children. However, female political action and the field of women's rights remain divided by the same multiple boundaries of belonging which affect Iraqi society itself; women operate in specific ethnic and denominational, local and regional settings, and they support nationalist, secularist, left‐wing or Islamist agendas. Women's rights—whatever the direction—can be of major or minor concern. This article outlines female political action and draws attention to the key issues which are discussed, in particular, by secular feminists in Iraq. In so doing, the article highlights how women in Iraq have not only lost, as a wide range of observers argue, but have also benefited from the restructure of the political landscape. Female political activists are still faced with old and new social, cultural, legal and political obstacles. The article argues that when women support narratives that leave men's superiority untouched, they are not simply victims of men or ‘false consciousness'; women either compete and cooperate, or they reject ideological narratives and power relations, while pursuing agendas of individual interest. Yet, despite competition among women and women's groups, and women's loyalty to agendas controlled by men, radical overtones that resist male domination can be heard— and should be supported.     

Notes on women in the global city: Chicago

As the organizers of an event on women in the global city, we wanted to create a forum exploring the intersections of class, gender and other forms of inequality that fracture ‘global Chicago’. In the panelists' discussion of the intersections of struggles relating to housing, education and environmental justice in Chicago's particular version of the global city, we found evidence of lives disrupted by neoliberal trends, as well as possible sites to contest these disruptions. These struggles reverberate to shape a new urban vision, as the academics and activists assembled for our panel aim not just to work on the local issues of specific women, but to create a city in which work is well compensated, housing is affordable for everyone, schools educate all children well, all neighborhoods are safe both from crime and environmental pollutants, and everyone has the time to fully engage as active citizens of the city.     

Youth,Temporality, and Territorial Stigma: Finding Good in Camden,New Jersey

The concept of “territorial stigmatisation” identifies the role of symbolic denigration in the production of marginalised places. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research with a food justice organisation in Camden, New Jersey, to examine youth's responses to territorial stigma. The analysis demonstrates how Black and Latinx youth rewrite the story of Camden in a way that locates the “good” within it, using narratives of the city's prosperous history and possible futures to recuperate value within a stigmatised place. I argue that the perspectives of youth illuminate the temporal dimensions of territorial stigma, situating the blemish of place in relation to conceptions of individual and social change. The article contributes to a growing literature examining the strategic responses of those who dwell in pathologised places. Because youth are uniquely situated within the production of place, their perspectives offer important insights in this process.     

A Review of the Environmental Policy Literature from 2014 to 2017 with a Closer Look at the Energy Justice Field

This review article documents and analyzes trends within the environmental policy literature published between 2014 and 2017. We find that environmental policy scholarship has recently shifted its focus from more traditional topics, such as watershed and ecosystem management, to other modern issues, such as climate change and energy. The environmental policy literature has increased in complexity and become more interdisciplinary in nature, which we illustrate with a discussion of the energy justice literature. The methodological approaches used by environmental policy scholars have also become increasingly diverse, with a notable uptick in statistical and modeling approaches. We find that some topics, such as policy failure, gender issues, and energy welfare policies are under‐explored, and certain regions within the world, such as developing countries, are less frequently studied. We encourage scholars to consider these gaps in the literature when developing future research.     

Global multipolarity,European security and implications for UK grand strategy: back to the future,once again

The international system is returning to multipolarity—a situation of multiple Great Powers—drawing the post‐Cold War ‘unipolar moment’ of comprehensive US political, economic and military dominance to an end. The rise of new Great Powers, namely the ‘BRICs’—Brazil, Russia, India, and most importantly, China—and the return of multipolarity at the global level in turn carries security implications for western Europe. While peaceful political relations within the European Union have attained a remarkable level of strategic, institutional and normative embeddedness, there are five factors associated with a return of Great Power competition in the wider world that may negatively impact on the western European strategic environment: the resurgence of an increasingly belligerent Russia; the erosion of the US military commitment to Europe; the risk of international military crises with the potential to embroil European states; the elevated incentive for states to acquire nuclear weapons; and the vulnerability of economically vital European sea lines and supply chains. These five factors must, in turn, be reflected in European states’ strategic behaviour. In particular, for the United Kingdom—one of western Europe's two principal military powers, and its only insular (offshore) power—the return of Great Power competition at the global level suggests that a return to offshore balancing would be a more appropriate choice than an ongoing commitment to direct military interventions of the kind that have characterized post‐2001 British strategy.     

Global energy governance: do the BRICs have the energy to drive reform?

It is widely accepted that the rising power of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—has the potential to re‐shape the international system. However, little attention has been given to the BRICs’ role in a growing area of strategic importance: global energy governance. While global governance scholars now argue that the international energy architecture requires substantive reform to keep pace with the rapid transformations in global energy markets, largely driven by the BRICs, it is not clear what role these countries will play in future governance arrangements. Drawing on recent scholarship in global governance and international negotiations, interviews with G20 energy officials, and the observations of the author, a past delegate to G20 negotiations, this article examines whether the BRICs as a coalition have the capacity and willingness to drive substantive global energy governance reform. In doing so, it highlights the problems with the BRICs as a coalition on energy and considers the prospects for energy reform in light of China's increasing engagement with energy governance ahead of it hosting the G20 Summit in 2016.     

In the Nature of the Non‐City: Expanded Infrastructural Networks and the Political Ecology of Planetary Urbanisation

This paper proposes extending Urban Political Ecology's (UPE) ideas about the urbanisation of nature in order to include the geographical imprints of expanding, global metabolic flows of matter, energy and capital. It does so through the analysis of Huasco, a small agricultural village in northern Chile that has been overburdened with massive energy undertakings aimed at powering the operations of mines that supply raw materials to international markets. Like the sewage and technological networks that feed the life of cities, the paper argues that Huasco—as a metabolic vehicle of planetary urbanisation—has also been hidden from view, and thus the fetishisation of urban infrastructural networks initially theorised by UPE, has been ratcheted‐up to the global level by the mediating powers of neoliberalising capitalism. Just as the socio‐material arrangements that facilitate the smooth functioning of the modern city and household are riddled with glitches and exclusions, the paper suggests that globally up‐scaled infrastructures reveal even larger contradictions that put into jeopardy the very premises upon which the ongoing commodification of nature is grounded.     

Promoting solidarity at home and abroad: the goals and tactics of the anti-Vietnam War movement in Britain

This article explores the nature, tactics and effectiveness of the vocal anti-Vietnam war movement in Britain. It focuses on the rhetoric and actions of a range of different groups, from the far-Left Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, to the broad-Left British Council for Peace in Vietnam and the labour movement. It asks how far the anti-war opposition was able to shape both government policy and public debate on the war, and positions the British opposition within its wider global anti-war context. It explores the meanings of solidarity (with the American, or global, anti-war movement or with the North Vietnamese) for the British movement, and it highlights the ultimately domestic focus of the campaign.