Capitalist Formations of Enclosure: Space and the Extinction of the Commons

Despite their theoretical and political potential, recent debates on enclosure usually lack an effective consideration of how space is mobilized in the process of dispossession. This article connects the analysis of enclosure's general spatial rationality to a range of illustrations of its particular formations and procedures. Enclosure is understood as one of capitalism's “universal territorial equivalents”, a polymorphous technique with variegated expressions in time but also with a consistent logic that uses the spatial erosion of the commons to subsume non‐commodified, self‐managed social spaces. In response to the ever‐changing nature of commoning, successive regimes of enclosure reshape the morphologies of deprivation and their articulation to other state and market apparatuses in order to meet shifting strategies of capital accumulation and social reproduction. Through a spatially nuanced account of these phenomena, I outline a tentative genealogy of enclosure formations that allows tracking diverse geographies of dispossession across different scales and regulatory contexts in various historical stages of capitalist development.     

Turning International: Foundations of Modern International Thought and New Paradigms for Intellectual History

Summary

This essay provides an overview of the disciplinary and analytical significance of David Armitage's Foundations of Modern International Thought in the context of the new international history, and the so-called ‘international turn’. It then goes on to discuss the significance of the absence of women in this new sub-field of intellectual history.     

Neighbourhood food environments revisited: When food deserts meet food swamps

This study uses service area–based coverage and various count regression methods to assess neighbourhood-level healthy and unhealthy food environments, and food access associated with different socio-economic groups in Edmonton, Canada. We identify three types of vulnerable neighbourhoods according to different food environments: food deserts (i.e., neighbourhoods lack sufficient access to healthy foods); food swamps (i.e., neighbourhoods have excess access to unhealthy foods); and those with overlaps of food swamps and food deserts. We also identify neighbourhoods with superior access to healthy foods (i.e., food oases). Additionally, our results from regression analyses indicate: (1) child population is negatively associated with both healthy and unhealthy food resources; (2) good access to public transportation is associated with good coverage of all healthy food outlets and convenience stores; and (3) deprived neighbourhoods with higher percentages of minority populations have better coverage of both healthy and unhealthy foods in general. The results from this study can help the City of Edmonton identify the key neighbourhoods with high potential for local business and the hotspot neighbourhoods that require particular support. Tailored strategies are proposed to effectively and efficiently improve food environments with limited resources.     

Sharpening Advocacy Coalitions

The concept of “advocacy coalitions” is the bedrock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), one of the most established and successful approaches for understanding policy processes across the globe. This article revisits and sharpens the conceptual definition of advocacy coalitions. We summarize the lessons from its theoretical emphases under the ACF and specify its five attributes (policy actors, shared beliefs, coordination, resources, and stability). Through this specification, we identify the ideal coalition type and several coalition subtypes. We then clarify and make a distinction between how we think about coalitions as a concept and how we approach coalitions empirically. This article sharpens the lens for describing and explaining coalitions toward better observations, theorizing, and measurements. It ends with next steps for further deepening and broadening knowledge about advocacy coalitions.     

The Second Coming of Rail: The Spanish High-Speed Rail-Finance Complex

This article offers a critical account of Spanish high-speed rail (HSR) through the lens of the spatial fix. I designate the integration of Spanish HSR into a European-wide process of circulation of finance capital as the HSR-finance complex. The analysis of the inner workings of the HSR-finance complex reveals the way in which European finance has laid the conditions of possibility for the development of the project and offers a forewarning about the dangers of leveraging finance capital toward green infrastructure. The analysis of the Spanish HSR-finance complex shows that the particular form of capital circulation that has made it possible has not brought about new productive combinations but has instead deepened traditional relations of economic dependency and magnified their socioenvironmental consequences.     

Revuelta plebeya,conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza en la Historia del Reino de Quito,de Juan de Velasco

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional (1789), de Juan de Velasco, a partir de las ideas políticas y jurídicas de su autor. Sugiere abordar el tomo tercero de la Historia no solamente como un relato del declive social y económico que aqueja a la Audiencia de Quito, sino como un comentario a la crisis de gobernanza que, según Velasco, inicia con el ascenso de los Borbones al trono. La incapacidad jurídica de controlar la mestización de la sociedad y las desacertadas políticas de las autoridades peninsulares, resultan en la Rebelión de los Barrios de Quito, episodio que representa el clímax de las penurias que atraviesa el Reino y que le permite a Velasco cuestionar el modelo de gobierno establecido por los reformistas ilustrados, abogar por la necesidad de un gobierno criollo y restaurar la desgastada imagen de la Compañía de Jesús.     

Empires for Peace: Denis Veiras’s Borrowings from Garcilaso de la Vega

Writing The History of the Sevarambians in the 1670s, the Huguenot Denis Veiras borrowed many ideas from Garcilaso de la Vega, also known as El Inca, whose Royal Commentaries of the Incas was published in 1609. Both works describe the history of an empire and justify it on the ground that it brought peace and unity. While Garcilaso’s book purported to be a history, his selection of facts reflected his goal of improving the treatment of the Incas by the Spanish. Veiras’s story also claimed to be a history, but it was transparently a fiction, even to the point of lifting many elements from Garcilaso’s book. What both works equally emphasized was that empires could aim at, and could be justified by, the benefits they provided their subjects. Both tell stories of benevolent and paternalistic rulers who founded nearly ideal societies in the countries they conquered. These were models of empire for peace and unity rather than merely promoting toleration of differences or concord among differing parties. Veiras’s utopia thus offers an instructive case study of the effects of cross-cultural borrowings of literary and political ideas.