Pub Date : 2022-10-03DOI: 10.1177/25148486221126619
P. Upham, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Chukwuka G. Monyei
In 2018, Norway promoted itself as a ‘Datacentre Nation’. In terms of low cost, renewably generated sources of electricity and low ambient temperatures, Nordic countries and the data centre sector are potentially mutual beneficiaries – yet, there are also negative impacts associated with the necessary electric power production. With this as a starting point, for Norway and Iceland, we explore how data centre proponents promulgate similar techno-environmental imaginaries, but achieve differing degrees of stabilisation. To this end, we use three sources of imaginaries relating to data centre development in Iceland and Norway: those implicit in promotional imagery originating within the countries concerned; those implicit in international newspapers, as indicative of external perceptions; and those implicit in focus groups with the Norwegian and Icelandic public. We show how data centre advocates deploy visual imagery to create a promotional techno-environmental imaginary that marries nature with the digital in a symbiotic form, and we observe that this is largely consistent with the more mundane international imaginary of Norwegian data centres. For Iceland, however, the external imaginary is dominated by associations of excess energy consumption by bitcoin mining. For the publics questioned, there are multiple imaginaries of data centres, with significant notes of moral and other forms of scepticism. Looking ahead, we suggest that for long-term stabilisation of positive data centre imaginaries, conducive to investment, the capacity of Iceland and Norway to equitably supply sufficient renewable power will need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
{"title":"Imaginaries on ice: Sociotechnical futures of data centre development in Norway and Iceland","authors":"P. Upham, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Chukwuka G. Monyei","doi":"10.1177/25148486221126619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221126619","url":null,"abstract":"In 2018, Norway promoted itself as a ‘Datacentre Nation’. In terms of low cost, renewably generated sources of electricity and low ambient temperatures, Nordic countries and the data centre sector are potentially mutual beneficiaries – yet, there are also negative impacts associated with the necessary electric power production. With this as a starting point, for Norway and Iceland, we explore how data centre proponents promulgate similar techno-environmental imaginaries, but achieve differing degrees of stabilisation. To this end, we use three sources of imaginaries relating to data centre development in Iceland and Norway: those implicit in promotional imagery originating within the countries concerned; those implicit in international newspapers, as indicative of external perceptions; and those implicit in focus groups with the Norwegian and Icelandic public. We show how data centre advocates deploy visual imagery to create a promotional techno-environmental imaginary that marries nature with the digital in a symbiotic form, and we observe that this is largely consistent with the more mundane international imaginary of Norwegian data centres. For Iceland, however, the external imaginary is dominated by associations of excess energy consumption by bitcoin mining. For the publics questioned, there are multiple imaginaries of data centres, with significant notes of moral and other forms of scepticism. Looking ahead, we suggest that for long-term stabilisation of positive data centre imaginaries, conducive to investment, the capacity of Iceland and Norway to equitably supply sufficient renewable power will need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"538 1","pages":"1905 - 1922"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77127481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1177/25148486221123701
E. Rap, C. D. de Bont, F. Molle, A. Bolding, Ahmed Ismail
This article investigates how people, technology, and water flows act together in using and transforming infrastructure to improve water access. Analytically, we propose to study collective action over time through the relationships between humans and non-humans as they collaborate to mediate water and other flows. Our case-study lies in Egypt. Over four decades, the Irrigation Improvement Project has introduced various sociotechnical and institutional measures to improve water management in the Nile Delta. By establishing collective pumping infrastructure and Water User Associations, water users were compelled to collaborate to reduce water extraction and over-irrigation. For heuristic purposes, we examine in detail the life history of one pumping collective facing increasing water scarcity. The article presents four life phases of the pumping collective and analyses what drives the assemblage and its transformations. Through time, we understand pumping collectives as heterogeneous and shifting assemblages of human and non-human agents that provide differentiated access to multiple resource flows. We describe the surprising stream of events that unfolds. The pumping collective radically dismantles the standard technological and organizational set-up and replaces it with a more flexible and disaggregated form of irrigation. By tracking this trajectory, the article demonstrates the remarkable agency of a pumping collective in renewing and reassembling itself. On this basis, we argue that the complex entanglement of material objects, human actors, water (and other resource flows) can explain this. Hence, it is important to look beyond the society-nature dichotomy to understand the transformational capacity of collectives.
{"title":"Radical reassemblages: The life history of a Nile Delta pumping collective","authors":"E. Rap, C. D. de Bont, F. Molle, A. Bolding, Ahmed Ismail","doi":"10.1177/25148486221123701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221123701","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how people, technology, and water flows act together in using and transforming infrastructure to improve water access. Analytically, we propose to study collective action over time through the relationships between humans and non-humans as they collaborate to mediate water and other flows. Our case-study lies in Egypt. Over four decades, the Irrigation Improvement Project has introduced various sociotechnical and institutional measures to improve water management in the Nile Delta. By establishing collective pumping infrastructure and Water User Associations, water users were compelled to collaborate to reduce water extraction and over-irrigation. For heuristic purposes, we examine in detail the life history of one pumping collective facing increasing water scarcity. The article presents four life phases of the pumping collective and analyses what drives the assemblage and its transformations. Through time, we understand pumping collectives as heterogeneous and shifting assemblages of human and non-human agents that provide differentiated access to multiple resource flows. We describe the surprising stream of events that unfolds. The pumping collective radically dismantles the standard technological and organizational set-up and replaces it with a more flexible and disaggregated form of irrigation. By tracking this trajectory, the article demonstrates the remarkable agency of a pumping collective in renewing and reassembling itself. On this basis, we argue that the complex entanglement of material objects, human actors, water (and other resource flows) can explain this. Hence, it is important to look beyond the society-nature dichotomy to understand the transformational capacity of collectives.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"138 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77386664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1177/25148486221125229
N. Luke, Matthew T. Huber
This special issue considers the relationship between energy, capitalism, and space through the lens of electricity capital. Electricity capital is the nexus of state, regulatory, and financial relationships that shape private accumulation through electricity provision. Although electricity provision is marked by immense historical and geographical diversity, the papers in this special issue work to theorize it as a core fraction of capital to draw into focus continuities and disruptions in capital flows amid the transition from fossil fuels to a diversity of clean sources. This special issue bridges debates in critical energy studies, economic geography, and political ecology on the possibilities of economic transformation through clean energy infrastructure by examining the dialectic between private accumulation through electrification and labor, environmental, and environmental justice organizing for “energy justice.” This special issue sheds light on the contradictory social relations that shape electrical power provision. We understand that electricity is seen not only as an energy source but also as an investment opportunity, a climate change mitigation strategy, an employment prospect, a component of economic development, and a site of democratic, community organizing. In so doing, we analyze the regulatory, financial, and infrastructural impediments to energy justice and international struggles to decarbonize the power sector to address climate change and to achieve universal and equitable electricity service.
{"title":"Introduction: Uneven geographies of electricity capital","authors":"N. Luke, Matthew T. Huber","doi":"10.1177/25148486221125229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221125229","url":null,"abstract":"This special issue considers the relationship between energy, capitalism, and space through the lens of electricity capital. Electricity capital is the nexus of state, regulatory, and financial relationships that shape private accumulation through electricity provision. Although electricity provision is marked by immense historical and geographical diversity, the papers in this special issue work to theorize it as a core fraction of capital to draw into focus continuities and disruptions in capital flows amid the transition from fossil fuels to a diversity of clean sources. This special issue bridges debates in critical energy studies, economic geography, and political ecology on the possibilities of economic transformation through clean energy infrastructure by examining the dialectic between private accumulation through electrification and labor, environmental, and environmental justice organizing for “energy justice.” This special issue sheds light on the contradictory social relations that shape electrical power provision. We understand that electricity is seen not only as an energy source but also as an investment opportunity, a climate change mitigation strategy, an employment prospect, a component of economic development, and a site of democratic, community organizing. In so doing, we analyze the regulatory, financial, and infrastructural impediments to energy justice and international struggles to decarbonize the power sector to address climate change and to achieve universal and equitable electricity service.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"2018 1","pages":"1699 - 1715"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74287527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1177/25148486221128154
Kauê Lopes dos Santos
E-waste generation has been increasing on a global scale in the past decades, reaching the unprecedented figure of 53.6 million tons (Mt) in 2019 and raising concerns and debates around the risks, challenges and opportunities related to its management. Collecting and recycling this type of waste – activities that are encompassed in the term ‘urban mining’ – should happen under proper environmental and social conditions, to ensure that reverse logistic system and the circular economy become a reality over the globe. Through exploratory qualitative research, this article establishes a comparative analysis among the multiple actors – operating both formal and informally – responsible for e-waste management in London Larger Urban Zone (LLUZ), Sao Paulo Macrometropolis (SPMM) and Greater Accra Region (GAR). These case studies are the most dynamic functional urban areas (FUA) of their respective national territories and integrate the world system with different roles: the United Kingdom representing the core, Brazil the semi-periphery and Ghana the periphery. Findings uncover the broad spectrum of ways in which e-waste can be recycled and confirm the relevance of political economy for understanding the regulatory and technological aspects of its management in different geographic contexts. The article also suggests a reflection on the ‘urban economy recommodization’, a process that is adding new contents to the urban space.
{"title":"Unequal geographies of urban mining: E-waste management in London, Sao Paulo and Accra","authors":"Kauê Lopes dos Santos","doi":"10.1177/25148486221128154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221128154","url":null,"abstract":"E-waste generation has been increasing on a global scale in the past decades, reaching the unprecedented figure of 53.6 million tons (Mt) in 2019 and raising concerns and debates around the risks, challenges and opportunities related to its management. Collecting and recycling this type of waste – activities that are encompassed in the term ‘urban mining’ – should happen under proper environmental and social conditions, to ensure that reverse logistic system and the circular economy become a reality over the globe. Through exploratory qualitative research, this article establishes a comparative analysis among the multiple actors – operating both formal and informally – responsible for e-waste management in London Larger Urban Zone (LLUZ), Sao Paulo Macrometropolis (SPMM) and Greater Accra Region (GAR). These case studies are the most dynamic functional urban areas (FUA) of their respective national territories and integrate the world system with different roles: the United Kingdom representing the core, Brazil the semi-periphery and Ghana the periphery. Findings uncover the broad spectrum of ways in which e-waste can be recycled and confirm the relevance of political economy for understanding the regulatory and technological aspects of its management in different geographic contexts. The article also suggests a reflection on the ‘urban economy recommodization’, a process that is adding new contents to the urban space.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"11 3","pages":"1874 - 1888"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72467077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-26DOI: 10.1177/25148486221123136
Ingrid L. Nelson, R. Hawkins, Leah Govia
This commentary proposes a research agenda for the concept of feminist digital natures (FDN). To demonstrate how we see FDN connecting existing research efforts, we review both the well-established and much-needed work in three overlapping areas of scholarship where we see the potential for productive discussions, new questions, and empirical analysis: feminist digital geographies (FDG), digital natures (DN), and feminist political ecology (FPE). We offer specific and grounded examples of topics and questions that scholars might pursue through an FDN approach. We encourage sustained, collaborative, and critical attention to the uneven consequences and political terrain of understanding natures as increasingly digitally monitored, managed, manipulated, and represented. We can and should think with digital relations, and we might benefit from new creative conversations across our areas of inquiry and action.
{"title":"Feminist digital natures","authors":"Ingrid L. Nelson, R. Hawkins, Leah Govia","doi":"10.1177/25148486221123136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221123136","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary proposes a research agenda for the concept of feminist digital natures (FDN). To demonstrate how we see FDN connecting existing research efforts, we review both the well-established and much-needed work in three overlapping areas of scholarship where we see the potential for productive discussions, new questions, and empirical analysis: feminist digital geographies (FDG), digital natures (DN), and feminist political ecology (FPE). We offer specific and grounded examples of topics and questions that scholars might pursue through an FDN approach. We encourage sustained, collaborative, and critical attention to the uneven consequences and political terrain of understanding natures as increasingly digitally monitored, managed, manipulated, and represented. We can and should think with digital relations, and we might benefit from new creative conversations across our areas of inquiry and action.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"64 1","pages":"2096 - 2109"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87206228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-22DOI: 10.1177/25148486221126617
Elisabetta Savelli, Maria Rusca, H. Cloke, T. Flügel, Abdulrazak Karriem, G. di Baldassarre
This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes – soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate – that co-produce droughts and their spatiotemporal patterning. The drought-stricken Ladismith in Western Cape, South Africa, is the instrumental case study and point of departure of our empirical analysis. To advance a materiality of drought that seriously accounts for the coevolution of biophysical and political transformations, we alter the spatiotemporal and empirical foci of drought analyses thereby retracing Ladismith’s socioecological history since colonial times. In turn, such extended framework exposes the agency of soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate and their metabolic exchanges with processes of colonisation, apartheid, capitalist and neoliberal transformations of South African economy. We argue that the narrow pursuit of profits and capital accumulation of the few has produced a fundamental disruption between nature and society which contributed to transform Ladismith’s drought into a socioecological crisis. Whilst advancing debates on materiality, we note two fundamental contributions to the study of drought. First, our approach makes hydrological accounts of droughts less politically naive and socially blind. Second, it develops a political ecology of droughts and socioecological crises more attuned to the materiality of drought. We contend that apprehending the materiality of drought and the active role of its non-human processes can further understandings of the workings of power and the production of socioecological injustices.
{"title":"All dried up: The materiality of drought in Ladismith, South Africa","authors":"Elisabetta Savelli, Maria Rusca, H. Cloke, T. Flügel, Abdulrazak Karriem, G. di Baldassarre","doi":"10.1177/25148486221126617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221126617","url":null,"abstract":"This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes – soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate – that co-produce droughts and their spatiotemporal patterning. The drought-stricken Ladismith in Western Cape, South Africa, is the instrumental case study and point of departure of our empirical analysis. To advance a materiality of drought that seriously accounts for the coevolution of biophysical and political transformations, we alter the spatiotemporal and empirical foci of drought analyses thereby retracing Ladismith’s socioecological history since colonial times. In turn, such extended framework exposes the agency of soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate and their metabolic exchanges with processes of colonisation, apartheid, capitalist and neoliberal transformations of South African economy. We argue that the narrow pursuit of profits and capital accumulation of the few has produced a fundamental disruption between nature and society which contributed to transform Ladismith’s drought into a socioecological crisis. Whilst advancing debates on materiality, we note two fundamental contributions to the study of drought. First, our approach makes hydrological accounts of droughts less politically naive and socially blind. Second, it develops a political ecology of droughts and socioecological crises more attuned to the materiality of drought. We contend that apprehending the materiality of drought and the active role of its non-human processes can further understandings of the workings of power and the production of socioecological injustices.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81451317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1177/25148486221126618
Brian Klopotek, Talon Claybrook, Joe H. Scott
This article addresses place, culture, community, and mobility in relation to Indigenous food sovereignty and TEK (traditional ecological knowledge). We start with a reflection on what it means to live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States for people from tribes that use Three Sisters agriculture. Two of the authors grew corn, beans, and squash using wintertime, indoor hydroponics and other methods in a performance art mode in Kalapuya ilihi (Western Oregon, USA). Growing these sacred companion plants out of soil, out of sun, out of season, and out of place served as a meditation on our own senses of dislocation and disjuncture as well as modes of connection as Southeastern Natives living in the Pacific Northwest. The politics and practice of growing and/or tending traditional Indigenous food plants in both traditional and non-traditional ways and places provided new language for understanding Indigenous cultural and social health in relation to Indigenous traditions, mobility, and relationality. The three authors (two from Southeastern tribes, one from a Northwestern tribe) provide a model for collaborative intercultural Indigenous ecological projects as a mode of learning, a mode of relational Indigenous mobility, a mode of community-building, and a mode of engaging in Indigenous food sovereignty. Working on community and educational projects together helped us understand companion planting as an analogy, an aesthetic, a method, and a mode for building relational futures.
{"title":"Indigenous companion planting in the great churn: Three sisters in Kalapuya ilihi","authors":"Brian Klopotek, Talon Claybrook, Joe H. Scott","doi":"10.1177/25148486221126618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221126618","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses place, culture, community, and mobility in relation to Indigenous food sovereignty and TEK (traditional ecological knowledge). We start with a reflection on what it means to live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States for people from tribes that use Three Sisters agriculture. Two of the authors grew corn, beans, and squash using wintertime, indoor hydroponics and other methods in a performance art mode in Kalapuya ilihi (Western Oregon, USA). Growing these sacred companion plants out of soil, out of sun, out of season, and out of place served as a meditation on our own senses of dislocation and disjuncture as well as modes of connection as Southeastern Natives living in the Pacific Northwest. The politics and practice of growing and/or tending traditional Indigenous food plants in both traditional and non-traditional ways and places provided new language for understanding Indigenous cultural and social health in relation to Indigenous traditions, mobility, and relationality. The three authors (two from Southeastern tribes, one from a Northwestern tribe) provide a model for collaborative intercultural Indigenous ecological projects as a mode of learning, a mode of relational Indigenous mobility, a mode of community-building, and a mode of engaging in Indigenous food sovereignty. Working on community and educational projects together helped us understand companion planting as an analogy, an aesthetic, a method, and a mode for building relational futures.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"6 1","pages":"1889 - 1904"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89268660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1177/25148486221125227
Eimear Mc Loughlin
Through ethnographic attunement to the emotionally complex relationships between zookeepers and nonhuman animals, commodification in the political economy of Copenhagen Zoo produces a form of care characterized by coercive cooperation. Amidst the coercive constraints of captivity, keepers depict relationships as ranging from those of explicit coercion, where the animals are made to work, to those of cooperation, where the animals are perceived as working with. Within this context, zoo animals can be better understood as “cooperative commodities”, lively commodities that are perceived as cooperating in their commodification. The belief in cooperation also reframes potential moments of resistance as opportunities to respond and thereby lessen the emotional toll on zookeepers when maladaptive behaviors highlight the failings of their captive environment.
{"title":"Care and its discontents: Commodification, coercive cooperation, and resistance in Copenhagen Zoo","authors":"Eimear Mc Loughlin","doi":"10.1177/25148486221125227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221125227","url":null,"abstract":"Through ethnographic attunement to the emotionally complex relationships between zookeepers and nonhuman animals, commodification in the political economy of Copenhagen Zoo produces a form of care characterized by coercive cooperation. Amidst the coercive constraints of captivity, keepers depict relationships as ranging from those of explicit coercion, where the animals are made to work, to those of cooperation, where the animals are perceived as working with. Within this context, zoo animals can be better understood as “cooperative commodities”, lively commodities that are perceived as cooperating in their commodification. The belief in cooperation also reframes potential moments of resistance as opportunities to respond and thereby lessen the emotional toll on zookeepers when maladaptive behaviors highlight the failings of their captive environment.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"66 1","pages":"1923 - 1939"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78173121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-19DOI: 10.1177/25148486221125228
J. Astaburuaga, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Michael E. Martin, J. Gaillard
In this paper, we mobilise a multiple environmentalities framework that captures overlapping rationalities of governing nature to engage and identify the role of maps and mapping practices in Patagonia-Aysén, Chile, a peripheral region where government and institutional actors have embraced (eco)tourism as a conservation strategy in protected areas. Through interviews with key stakeholders situated in conservation and tourism institutions in both the public and private sector, we identify two dominant environmentalities at play in the relationship between protected area management and tourism development in Patagonia-Aysén: a neoliberal environmentality, which seeks to promote conservation through the commodification of nature as a tourism product, and an environmentality of truth predicated on a singular, pristine and beautiful nature as an object of conservation and advantage for tourism. Through an analysis of conservation maps and mapping rationalities specific to the Cerro Castillo protected area in Patagonia-Aysén, we trace how these multiple environmentalities are consolidated, rendered real and actionable through geovisualisations and cartographic practices. We argue that conservation maps and mapping emerge as an ‘encounter point’ wherein multiple environmentality strategies and rationalities converge, producing a form of governing the spaces of conservation – what we term a spatial environmentality – rooted in neoliberal and aesthetic logics. Spatial environmentality, we contend, constitutes a form of governing conservation spaces by inscribing and assigning (in)appropiate uses to nature that operationalises institutional interests in conditioning the active engagement of ‘environment subjects’ to control, administer, and take care of the spaces of conservation while in turn making environmental stewardship profitable.
{"title":"The multiple environmentalities of conservation mapping in Patagonia-Aysén","authors":"J. Astaburuaga, Agnieszka Leszczynski, Michael E. Martin, J. Gaillard","doi":"10.1177/25148486221125228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221125228","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we mobilise a multiple environmentalities framework that captures overlapping rationalities of governing nature to engage and identify the role of maps and mapping practices in Patagonia-Aysén, Chile, a peripheral region where government and institutional actors have embraced (eco)tourism as a conservation strategy in protected areas. Through interviews with key stakeholders situated in conservation and tourism institutions in both the public and private sector, we identify two dominant environmentalities at play in the relationship between protected area management and tourism development in Patagonia-Aysén: a neoliberal environmentality, which seeks to promote conservation through the commodification of nature as a tourism product, and an environmentality of truth predicated on a singular, pristine and beautiful nature as an object of conservation and advantage for tourism. Through an analysis of conservation maps and mapping rationalities specific to the Cerro Castillo protected area in Patagonia-Aysén, we trace how these multiple environmentalities are consolidated, rendered real and actionable through geovisualisations and cartographic practices. We argue that conservation maps and mapping emerge as an ‘encounter point’ wherein multiple environmentality strategies and rationalities converge, producing a form of governing the spaces of conservation – what we term a spatial environmentality – rooted in neoliberal and aesthetic logics. Spatial environmentality, we contend, constitutes a form of governing conservation spaces by inscribing and assigning (in)appropiate uses to nature that operationalises institutional interests in conditioning the active engagement of ‘environment subjects’ to control, administer, and take care of the spaces of conservation while in turn making environmental stewardship profitable.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"13 1","pages":"1940 - 1965"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84324229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1177/25148486221125230
Cindy McCulligh
This article grapples with issues of urban wastewater sanitation in one of Mexico's most polluted river basins, through an analysis of a river restoration project centered on the construction of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Taking an ethnographic approach to the study of infrastructure, the main argument is that, beyond their possible contribution to reducing pollutant loads, in this context municipal WWTPs can best be understood through the concept of “duplication,” whereby the infrastructure works serve as a vehicle for the transfer of public resources to the private sector, through construction and operation contracts. At the same time, these plants also fulfill objectives related to their symbolic value, in this case as indicators of a commitment to resolving one of the state's main socio-environmental conflicts, while studiously avoiding its root causes, including industrial pollution sources. From an urban political ecology perspective, the paper also examines how investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure in the basin continues to reinforce social and environmental inequities, particularly for peri-urban communities along the Santiago River.
{"title":"Wastewater and wishful thinking: Treatment plants to “revive” the Santiago River in Mexico","authors":"Cindy McCulligh","doi":"10.1177/25148486221125230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221125230","url":null,"abstract":"This article grapples with issues of urban wastewater sanitation in one of Mexico's most polluted river basins, through an analysis of a river restoration project centered on the construction of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Taking an ethnographic approach to the study of infrastructure, the main argument is that, beyond their possible contribution to reducing pollutant loads, in this context municipal WWTPs can best be understood through the concept of “duplication,” whereby the infrastructure works serve as a vehicle for the transfer of public resources to the private sector, through construction and operation contracts. At the same time, these plants also fulfill objectives related to their symbolic value, in this case as indicators of a commitment to resolving one of the state's main socio-environmental conflicts, while studiously avoiding its root causes, including industrial pollution sources. From an urban political ecology perspective, the paper also examines how investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure in the basin continues to reinforce social and environmental inequities, particularly for peri-urban communities along the Santiago River.","PeriodicalId":11723,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning. E, Nature and Space","volume":"34 1","pages":"1966 - 1986"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77522739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}