As Basket and Papu: Making Manus Social Fabric

Between 2012 and 2019, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, hosted Australia's offshore detention centre for asylum seekers and refugees, known as the Regional Processing Centre (RPC). This paper analyses some of the social impacts of the RPC on Lorengau town, the urban centre of Manus, through the analytical lens of the Manus idiom, as basket (Tok Pisin). Materially this refers to the everyday Manus basket whilst metaphorically, it refers to an individual's or community's social, cultural, political and economic base. First, I examine asylum seekers and refugees as a social category that emerged during this period when they were referred to as papu by locals. Papu is an honorific kinship term for grandfather or elder man; for men who are symbols for family identity, social belonging, and rights to land. Second, I examine the changing materiality of Lorengau's markets as indicative of wider societal transformations and dissonance brought about by the RPC. My ethnographic data are based on long term involvement in Manus, including three recent visits to Lorengau in 2017, 2018, and 2019 where I studied the social impacts and the changing social practices of Manus people in response to the RPC.     

An oasis in a watery desert? Discourses on an industrial ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico Rigs‐to‐Reefs program

This article explores how in the years after 1980 a spectrum of historical actors came to see petroleum platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as a necessary part of the Gulf ecosystem and how such views affected platform removal policies. Through a discourse analysis of the Rigs‐to‐Reefs program, in which old offshore petroleum facilities were converted into artificial reefs, this article examines how actors presented to the public their notions of the relationship of the Gulf ecosystem with technological offshore structures. Through this case we see how ideas of technology and nature were mutually constructed via discourses and what affect that had on policies.     

The Resurgent Conflict Between Offshore Wind Farms and Tourism: Underlying Storylines

Abstract

Efforts to put offshore wind farms in place have demonstrated that these are far from being conflict-free, evoking confrontations with a number of stakeholders' interests. One of the most persistent conflict lines refers to the feared adverse externalities on coastal tourism, although tourist surveys and initial empirical evidence seem to reflect the opposite. This paper explicitly addresses this gap and explores how and why certain stakeholders rationalise potential impacts on the tourism economy of coastal communities and, thus constitute the conflict between offshore wind farms and tourism. Based on two cases studies in Scotland and Germany, five storylines are identified that are invoked by local opponents to substantiate impacts on tourism. The paper will show that a particular meaningful construction of the coastal landscape is inherent in tourism and pervades all storylines. It is concluded that arguments of both opponents and decision-makers are embedded in epistemic uncertainty which necessitates a thorough consideration of oppositional arguments in the planning process for offshore wind farms.     

The Impact and Compensation of Offshore Wind Farm Development: Analysing the Institutional Discourse from a French Case Study

Abstract

In France, the public acceptability of marine renewable energies and their impacts on ecosystem services (ES) involves questions about compensation for stakeholders, who may perceive some of their activities and interests to be modified. This paper seeks to understand how impacts on ES are perceived by institutional stakeholders and what is expected in terms of compensation. It also seeks to identify the communities of practice affected. We focus our study on the planned offshore wind farm in the bay of Saint-Brieuc. Our results show that institutional discourse is heterogeneous, depending on sensitivities, interests, and who or what the stakeholders surveyed represent or defend. Stakeholders' discourse can be interpreted on various gradients of perception. Six distinct communities of practice have been identified, based on the impacts perceived by institutional stakeholders. Lastly, we show that the community of practice seems to be a proper level at which to study perceptions and assess the no-net-loss goal.     

Zones of Exclusion: Offshore Extraction, the Contestation of Space and Physical Displacement in the Nigerian Delta and the Mexican Gulf

Abstract:  This article examines two aid interventions that manifest the merging of community development/relief and industrial security policy in the petroleum offshore of the Nigerian Niger Delta and the Mexican Gulf. In the Nigerian case, the article considers the crisis in the Warri region of Delta State in 2003, the subsequent evacuation of local residents, and the surrounding context of oil-related violence. Simmering since the 1990s, the 2003 Warri conflict displaced thousands due to competing community claims to territory that "hosts" oil installations, Shell and Chevron primarily. In Mexico, the analysis centers on the implementation of 2003 Mexican security legislation, prompted by International Maritime Organization post 9/11 security policy, that amplifies the "Zone of Exclusion" around offshore installations. To offset the loss of livelihoods resulting from the "exclusion zone", Mexican state agencies offered financing to support the conversion of the displaced small-scale fishers to fish farming. The varying forms of displacement prompted by these two "liberating" interventions reflect the socio-historical specificity of territorial relations in the Nigerian and Mexican extractive regimes. These relations constitute divergent extractive settings which have come to play contrasting roles in the global political economy of oil, one highly volatile, the other relatively stable.     

Firm agency and global production network dynamics

The Global production networks (GPN) framework has been influential in the analysis of globally coordinated economic arrangements. However, research on GPNs tend to focus on a well-established industries and their existing governance structures with a very little attention to the temporality and changes in these networks and their governance structures. Specifically, despite the central role of ‘lead-firms’ in GPNs, the literature lacks a clear depiction of their competitive and evolutionary trajectory. In response, this paper is concerned with (re)opening the ‘black-box’ of firms and showing how lead-firms’ strategies and practices shape the evolutionary dynamics of GPNs. The paper argues that changing lead firm strategies play a crucial role in shaping the evolution of GPNs, reflecting changes in the industrial and/or business and institutional environments. The paper investigates the Danish, multinational energy company, Ørsted, and discusses the importance of accounting for firm dynamic capabilities, i.e. intra-firm practices and extra-firm (evolutionary) dynamic drivers, in analytical frameworks that analyse GPN dynamics and industries. Lead-firm strategies are shaped by firm-specific capabilities, industry-specific competitive dynamics, and institutions. Accordingly, GPNs’ evolutionary process can be understood as an adapting and/or response mechanism by lead-firms to changes in local and international business as well as multi-scalar institutional environments.     

The Regional Dimension of Russian Oil Production: Is a Sustained Recovery in Prospect?

An American geographer and prominent authority on oil and natural gas industries and resources of Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union presents a region-byregion account of Russia's oil production, tracing in considerable detail developments up to September 2006. The account, based on systematic and frequent field investigations since the early 1990s as well as interviews with key industry executives, covers reserves, output trends, ownership, investments, pipelines, and a variety of economic factors including exports to China. Addressing the question of whether sustained production recovery is possible, the author presents American and Russian scenarios projecting oil output through the year 2020. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: L71, O13, Q40, Q48. 8 figures, 7 tables, 64 references.     

Depositional Context as the Foundation to Determining the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Archaeological Potential of Offshore Wind Farm Areas in the Southern North Sea

Abstract

There is currently limited evidence on which to assess the submerged prehistoric potential in areas of renewable energy development. This paper presents a geomorphological approach to examine the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeological potential in relation to the Round 3 offshore wind farm (OWF) areas of the southern North Sea. The depositional context and major stratigraphic correlations between the terrestrial sequence on east coast of Britain and offshore marine sequence of the southern North Sea are used to provide a first-order assessment for identifying horizons of archaeological interest in OWF zones. Using the examples Triton Knoll and East Anglia One OWF, the nature of renewable energy development on identified archaeological horizons is discussed, noting that any impact needs to be considered on a site-by-site basis. Studies are not only needed on the practical assessment of any development impact but also on the impacts of natural processes in OWF zones.     

“Where every breeze speaks of courage and liberty”: Offshore Humanism and Marine Xenology,or, Racism and the Problem of Critique at Sea Level

The 2015 Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture was delivered by Prof. Paul Gilroy on 2 September at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Annual International Conference. Prof. Gilroy's lecture interrogates the contemporary attractions of post‐humanism and asks questions about what a “reparative humanism” might alternatively entail. He uses a brief engagement with the conference theme—“geographies of the Anthropocene”—to frame his remarks and try to explain why antiracist politics and ethics not only require consideration of nature and time but also promote a timely obligation to roam into humanism's forbidden zones.     

Reconsidering path creation in economic geography: aspects of agency,temporality and methods

The emergence of new industrial development paths is an important topic in economic geography. However, current perspectives emphasizing the constraining forces of historical trajectories on innovation and change have shortcomings in accounting for how and where new industries arise. This article argues that more attention needs to be paid to agency, and that agency must be seen as inter-temporal in the sense that actors’ activities and strategies are framed by combinations of experiences and expectations. As such, the article combines insights from economic geography, transitions studies and the sociology of expectations (SoE) literature to expand extant theory on path creation. A brief analysis of the emerging Norwegian offshore wind power (OWP) sector serves to illustrate how experience (the past) and different types of expectations (the future) have tangible effects on agency, and in effect on path creation processes. These insights have methodological implications, essentially favouring qualitative approaches over quantitative ones to understand formative phases in industrial development.