“Choking without killing”: Opacity and the grey area of migration governmentality

This paper focuses on the “grey area of migration governmentality” by dealing with modes of border violence which are opaque and remain under the threshold of political visibility and that, however, highly disrupt and hamper migrants' lives and movements. It starts by conceptualising the notion of “grey area” by building on scholarship that questions the biopolitical formula “making live/letting die” highlighting modes of governing migration through choking and injuring. Building on that, the paper shows that the grey area consists of heterogenous political technologies that choke migrants and disrupt their infrastructures of liveability. In light of that, it moves on by analysing how migrants across Europe are contained and governed by being choked and cramped, with a specific focus on Calais and Ventimiglia. The third section shows that to be disrupted are not only migrants’ but also their infrastructures of liveability: migrants are hampered from building collective spaces of life. In the last part, the article comes to grips with opacity as a constitutive feature of the grey area of governmentality, analysing how this is played out both in local decrees and through police tactics.     

Chokepoint: Regulating US student mobility through biometrics

Many US public schools, struggling with perceived issues of safety and security, have installed a host of different biometric devices – vein scanners, automated fingerprint identification systems, iris scanners, GPS-enabled identification badges, and facial recognition software. Schools turn to these devices in hopes of securing school space by sorting and tracking students, visitors, and school staff based on their pre-determined risk profiles. As such, this article proposes that tracing these new forms of school security provides insight into how the politics and practices of biometric technologies are fundamentally geographical in nature. That is, biometric devices not only verify identity according to risk assessments, they also work to manage mobility by regulating where school bodies can go, when, and for what purposes. Moreover, this article analyzes how these risk profiling tactics, widely adopted by schools across the United States, necessarily borrow from the strategies used in sites of colonial occupation. Looking at schools in this way can help us plot how biometric bordering and resultant security decisions unfold at other sites of mobility beyond state (smart) borders, highways, toll booths, and ports of entry in order to formulate new “spaces of enclosure” (Amoore, Marmura, & Salter, 2008) and “dividing practices” (Nevins, 2002), thus bringing students into “closer proximity” to military relations of force through these “war-like architectures” (Amoore, 2009).     

Mineral commons: Collective claims to territory in the goldfields of Madagascar

This paper examines how artisanal miners in northern Madagascar have contested state-corporate authority and staked claims to subterranean territory through the production and maintenance of goldfields as mineral commons. Drawing on ethnographic evidence collected over 15 months of field-based research, as well as interviews and archival data, I elaborate how community members in the diggings of Betsiaka have used commoning to resist subsoil enclosure, engender local autonomy, and secure collectivized access to gold as a basis for extended social reproduction. Constructing Betsiaka's mineral commons has relied on three overlapping yet distinct components: (1) the materiality or geological character of deposits, mediated through local understandings of gold's occurrence and (in)exhaustibility; (2) the socio-historical construction of discourse around resource access; and (3) the political-economic organization and management of the goldfields via sedimented institutions of governance. The paper's arguments challenge assumptions across varying domains of commons scholarship that tend to exclude resources deemed “nonrenewable” from discussions of commons, demonstrating both that socio-natural particularities can render mineral deposits effectively “inexhaustible,” and that even subsoil resources perceived as finite can be managed by community members to facilitate collective access and broadly-shared benefit. They furthermore contribute to ongoing discussions regarding territorialization and governance in extractive landscapes, adding commons and commoning to the list of tactics and instruments used by mining communities to avoid dispossession, order activities, and sustain livelihoods. Recognizing mineral commons in Betsiaka and beyond thus has significant implications for enhancing our understanding of local mineral politics—and also for rethinking approaches to formalization and decentralization.     

Are You in This Country? How “Local” Social Relations Can Limit the “Globalisation” of Customer Services Supply Chains

Abstract: The relocation of thousands of call centre and back office jobs from the UK to subcontractors in India in the early 2000s led to extensive speculation that the “globalisation” and “jobs flight” of service work was underway. Yet as this article illustrates some call centre customer services do not easily transfer to different local, social and cultural contexts. Call centre operations are embedded in local social relations and taken for granted skills that are difficult to reproduce outside of the locality which has produced them. Nevertheless the spatial dispersal of work can be as much a political process as it is an economic one. This article, which follows the journey of 1000 call centre jobs from the UK to India, illuminates how subcontracting service work “offshore” can facilitate a transformation of the employment relation and an escape from a difficult to discipline labour force.     

The Cutting Edge of Accumulation: Neoliberal Risk Mitigation,the Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceyhan Pipeline and its Impact

Abstract: Adopting a historical materialist position, this article looks at new methods deployed to expand processes of accumulation and the impact that this has at different scales. Focusing upon the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline (traversing Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey), the article pays particular attention to the technocratic tools of “social neoliberalism” and corporate social responsibility, which variously incorporate environmental and social impact assessments, community investment programmes and voluntary codes of conduct. While such approaches seek to relegitimise the efforts of capital and its assistants and mitigate their risks, the assessment below details how these approaches actually assist in facilitating an increase in risk for many people. The article begins by looking at the accumulation drive pushing BTC and then provides an account of how new approaches to pipeline governance have both emerged and been incorporated into the project. The article then details what it is that these approaches have actually facilitated at four scales—the local, the national, the regional and the supra‐regional.     

CHOOSING RESIDENCE,COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBOURS ‐THEORIZING FAMILIES’ MOTIVES FOR MOVING1

This article takes its point of departure from an ongoing research project that examines the connection between everyday life and choice of residence. The first component of this empirical study is an investigation of reasons given by families for moving out of Copenhagen to a commune ‐ Absalons Have in Trekroner – in a new suburban area close to the city of Roskilde (located approximately 25 km west of Copenhagen). The research examines the connection between this choice of residence and the everyday lives of the families, including why this form of residence ‐ the commune ‐ is attractive to them. What kinds of needs do the families have and how can the new residence fulfil these needs? This article examines these questions, first, by outlining a theoretical discussion of how to capture the connection between everyday life and residence. Here concepts such as “sense of place”, “the social construction and use of place”, “meaningful places”, and how place experiences play a central role are examined. Second, the article presents findings from an empirical study examining families’ choice of Trekroner and the commune Absalons Have.     

Corporate gift or political sacrifice? State-sponsored CSR and electricity provision in Guinean extractive enclaves

Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement. Several authors refer to the notion of the “corporate gift” to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we focus on electricity provision as an example for such a “gift”. Extensive field research in the Guinean mining areas of Siguiri, Kamsar, and Mambia showed that in all of these areas, the mining companies not only acted as “givers” of electricity, but also handed over the bill for this electricity provision to the state. Confronted with this curious fact of state-sponsored CSR, this article questions the foundations of the arguments around the notion of the corporate gift and comes to the conclusion that these three electrification projects were, at the same time, acts of “political sacrifice”. This concept points beyond the obvious conclusion that mining companies try to maximize their legitimization efforts in an increasingly competitive environment and underlines the role of the state in “company-community” relations and the maintenance of extractive enclaves.     

Consumption of Chinese goods in southwestern Europe: a multi-relational database and the vicarious consumption theory as alternative model to the industrious revolution (eighteenth century)

This article discusses the application of new technologies, software coding and computer analysis in the social sciences and humanities, mainly in the field of economic history. In the last two decades, the use of new computer technologies among historians to develop theories and solve questions has fostered a vibrant historiographical debate. However, these new digital tools have largely been used as an end in themselves, rather than as a means to develop hypotheses and answer questions. This has prevented researchers from fully exploiting such technologies in their field. In this article, I discuss how I designed a new multi-relational database using the “Access” package and SQL language to test the “industrious revolution” hypothesis and present the “vicarious consumption” theory as an alternative model for analyzing the eighteenth-century circulation of Chinese goods in the Western Mediterranean region. It presents the cross-referencing method I used to analyze the historical information I collected, mainly from probate inventories and trade records. This method makes it possible to navigate through the data in a way that goes beyond the traditional use of “excel” tables.     

NORBERT ELIAS,THE CIVILIZING PROCESS: SOCIOGENETIC AND PSYCHOGENETIC INVESTIGATIONS—AN OVERVIEW AND ASSESSMENT

Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process, which was published in German in 1939 and first translated into English in two volumes in 1978 and 1982, is now widely regarded as one of the great works of twentieth‐century sociology. This work attempted to explain how Europeans came to think of themselves as more “civilized” than their forebears and neighboring societies. By analyzing books about manners that had been published between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, Elias observed changing conceptions of shame and embarrassment with respect to, among other things, bodily propriety and violence. To explain those developments, Elias examined the interplay among the rise of state monopolies of power, increasing levels of economic interconnectedness among people, and pressures to become attuned to others over greater distances that led to advances in identifying with others in the same society irrespective of social origins. Elias's analysis of the civilizing process was not confined, however, to explaining changing social bonds within separate societies. The investigation also focused on the division of Europe into sovereign states that were embroiled in struggles for power and security. This article provides an overview and analysis of Elias's principal claims in the light of growing interest in this seminal work in sociology. The analysis shows how Elias defended higher levels of synthesis in the social sciences to explain relations between “domestic” and “international” developments, and changes in social structure and in the emotional lives of modern people. Elias's investigation, which explained long‐term processes of development over several centuries, pointed to the limitations of inquiries that concentrate on short‐term intervals. Only by placing short‐term trends in long‐term perspective could sociologists understand contemporary developments. This article maintains that Elias's analysis of the civilizing process remains an exemplary study of long‐term developments in Western societies over the last five centuries.     

“Catching the Yellow Ghost”: A Case Study of Popular Religious Activities and Social Transformation in Rural North China

This article studies the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China from the late Qing dynasty to the People’s Republic of China period through the activity of “Zhuo huanggui” (literally, “Catching the Yellow Ghost”). “Catching the Yellow Ghost” is a ritual activity in Guyi village, Wu’an county, Hebei province. According to villagers there, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has been celebrated since the late Qing dynasty. However, due to political pressures in the 1950s, it was not until the 1980s that “Catching the Yellow Ghost” began to be revitalized. Since that time, “Catching the Yellow Ghost” has gained rapid popularity and fame in north China. Through the lens of the “Catching the Yellow Ghost” ritual, this article explores social transformation in China from the late 19th to the early 21st century. By analyzing the continuity and discontinuity of “Catching the Yellow Ghost,” this article offers a new understanding of the relationship between local society and social change in rural north China.     

NARRATORS OF THE ARCTIC: IMAGES AND MOVEMENTS IN NORTHLAND NARRATIVES

While the use of public policy to construct a Canadian identity has been established in the literature, what is less well understood is whether national identity, once established, might shape Canadians' feelings about these same public policies. This article examines the extent to which citizens' national identities influence their pride in Canada's social security system, and how this relationship may be changing over time. Using data from the International Social Science Programme's 1995 and 2003 National Identity Modules, the article argues that citizens' national identities help explain the contours of social security attitudes in Canada, and that this relationship persists despite significant policy change in the field. Additionally, the paper suggests that political actors may successfully increase public support for their social security policies by “framing” them in ways that appeal to citizens' definitions of Canada.     

The Bureaucratic Capture of Child Migrants: Effects of In/visibility on Children On the Move

This article investigates the “bureaucratic capture” of migrant children through three technologies of the state: labelling, data production and social services, illuminating the ways visibility and invisibility are constructed and managed in the context of restrictionist immigration regimes. Using the case of unaccompanied asylum‐seeking children, Roma children and undocumented children, we examine how in/visibility is produced; for what purposes, and with what consequences. We demonstrate through the simultaneous broadcasting and disappearance of migrant children, bordering is reconstituted through various performances, rationalities and technologies of immigration governance. The article argues the notion of “best interests” is drawn on when the state can define these interests in accordance with their political aims and resources. The set of cases taken together provide novel insights into how states reconcile conflicting logics and reveals how the implementation of the child rights regime prevents some children from actualising their rights.     

“Global/local” community engagement: advancing integrative learning and situated solidarity

This article illustrates how “global/local” community engagement, a particular form of experiential learning and political work that draws upon geography conceptually, pedagogically, and programmatically, is well suited to advance integrative learning and invite students into social action. Through specific examples from Mount Holyoke College, we argue that “global/local” community engagement helps students cultivate the skills and dispositions of reciprocity, reflexivity, and place-based and interdependent knowledge production. These are habits of mind and patterns of praxis necessary for enacting “situated solidarity,” a practice with great potential for grappling with the complex challenges and marked divisiveness of the twenty-first century. As our empirical examples demonstrate, the geographic concept of contour lines matched with the pedagogies of accompaniment and co-labor guide “global/local” community engagement. We conclude with a set of recommendations for implementing “global/local” community engagement in other institutions of higher education to reveal the context-specificity of our examples and the possibilities for application elsewhere.     

Philosophy as an Art of Dying

This essay proposes a close look at the tradition of martyr-philosophers in the Western world (Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Edith Stein, Jan Pato?ka) and advances the claim that the death of these people has a distinct philosophical significance. For various reasons, these philosophers place themselves in limit-situations where they cannot use words anymore to express themselves, but have to turn their own flesh into a radical means of expression. Their dying thus becomes an extension of their work, and the image of their violent deaths comes to be regarded as an inseparable part of their heritage. First, I discuss Socrates as the founder of the tradition of “philosophical deaths” in the West; his gradual “taming” of death in Plato's Apology is discussed in some detail. I then introduce a modern case of “Socratic death,” that of Jan Pato?ka (1907–77). Finally, I map out the cultural and social mechanisms, as well as some of the phenomenological preconditions, presupposed by the notion of “philosophy as an art of dying.”     

Radical Environmentalism and “Commoning”: Synergies Between Ecosystem Regeneration and Social Governance at Tamera Ecovillage,Portugal

This article explores the scope and limitations of Radical Environmentalism as a source of practices of “commoning”. The application of the radical environmental “Healing Biotope” model in Tamera, an ecovillage located in southern Portugal, further expands the understanding of “commoning” as a social process, as well as of Radical Environmentalism as a cognitive framework. This article distinguishes between the technical and political dimensions of “commoning”. It also identifies two structuring dimensions of Radical Environmentalism, hereby called integrative rationality and the experiential action research and learning methodology. These dimensions support the technical aspect of “commoning” in Tamera by promoting epistemic and methodological coherence between social and environmental technologies. Despite their contested scientific validity, they contribute to the sustainability of the project by promoting synergies between ecological regeneration and social governance. However, they have limited capacity to address the political dimension of “commoning”, related with rank and socio‐economic inequalities among members.     

Carceral Space: Prisoners and Animals

This paper develops a framework for exploring resonances across human and nonhuman carceral geographies. I illustrate the close linkages across prisoner and animal carcerality and captivity focusing on three types of sites and institutions: the prison execution chamber and the animal slaughterhouse; sites of laboratory testing of pharmaceutical and other products on incarcerated humans and captive animals; and sites and institutions of exploited prisoner and animal labor. The main themes that call for a “carceral comparison” among these sites include: the emotional and psychological strain and violence enacted on bodies that is interwoven into their day‐to‐day operations; their geographies (locations, design, and layout) and carefully regulated movements within them; relationships between carcerality and “purpose breeding” that extends across both nonhuman and human populations; the ways in which “animalization” of incarcerated bodies works to create conditions for social death and killability; and the legal and political contexts that produce certain lives as disposable “bare lives”.     

Territorially-nested urbanization in China - the case of Dongguan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the question of extended urbanization by arguing for the need to overcome dualistic views to properly address the political specificities of urbanization in China. To this end, this paper understands state-territorial relations as a process of étatization by drawing on the particular literature on the role of the party-state in urbanization. Through a brief history of Guangdong, it elaborates on the political modalities of territorialization through China’s administrative rank system. This has enabled the party-state to mediate the production of urban space. From this, I arrive at the concept of “territorially-nested urbanization”, moving beyond limited accounts of hierarchical state powers in Chinese urban studies. Next, from a short periodization of Dongguan’s urbanization, the paper exemplifies how a particular mode of territorialization has evolved into tense relationships between the city and towns in the ongoing dilemma of multi-centered versus concentrated direction of urbanization. Based on insights from in-depth fieldwork, the last part of this paper illustrates the contradictory mobilization of village collectives within extended state power through local government, and the development of villagers’ politics and activism in contested land transformations.     

Rethinking public participation in the smart city

In efforts to become “smart cities,” local governments are adopting various technologies that promise opportunities for increasing participation by expanding access to public comment and deliberation. Scholars and practitioners encounter the problem, however, of defining publics—demarcating who might participate through technology-enhanced public engagement. We explore two case studies in the city of Calgary that employ technologies to enhance public engagement. We analyzed the cases considering both the definition of publics and the level of citizen participation in areas of participatory budgeting and secondary suites. Our findings suggest that engaging the public is not a straightforward process, and that technology-enhanced public engagement can often reduce participation towards tokenism. City councillors and planners need to critically confront claims that smart cities necessarily enhance participation. Moving beyond tokenism requires understanding “public” as a plural category. Municipal governments should seek to proactively engage citizens and communities utilizing helpful resources including, but not limited to, digital tools and smart technologies. This would allow planners to keep a “finger on the pulse” of publics' concerns, better identifying and addressing issues of equity and social justice. It is also important to consider how marginalized publics can best be recognized in order to bring their concerns to the fore in decision-making processes.     

The Urban Majority and Provisional Recompositions in Yangon

Yangon is a city where the now predominant modalities of urban transformation arrived late, and after a prolonged period of political repression. As the urban system has been “set loose” to articulate itself to a broader range of inputs and dispositions, many residents attempt to remake long‐honed yet fragile mechanisms of social interchange in provisional forms. This ethos and practice of provisionality emphasizes ensemble work aimed at recomposing the character of local district life in various locations across Yangon. Most importantly, it raises questions of how an urban majority—as a confluence of heterogeneous ways of life that has long been critical to making viable urban lives in the postcolony—have endured and can continue to endure in changing circumstances. The article draws from critical black thought as a means of generating heuristic concepts to explore the ways in which residents of several Yangon districts make productive use of the simultaneity of seemingly contradictory inclinations.     

‘These new rights’: social security in the postwar Italian debate

At the end of World War II the Italian welfare system, which had taken shape under Fascism, was in need of a radical overhaul. Nevertheless, the wait for organic, structural reform dragged on for over two decades without arriving, even in the Sixties, at an efficient framework for the welfare state capable of dismantling the corporatist, familist one inherited from Fascism. This article reconstructs the debates on social security and social rights after World War II. Beginning with the interest that was sparked, even in Italy, by the Beveridge Report, I will investigate the meaning given to the expressions “social security” and “social rights” by politicians and technocrats engaged in trying to reform the Italian Welfare State.