Pub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2026-02-12DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104575
Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland , Marry-Anne Karlsen
This article provides insights into the mobility implications of the new contingency in the European governance of refugees. In doing so, it contributes to and advances debates on the increased conditionality of refugees’ inclusion by mobilizing an im/mobility lens. So far, the literature on refugees’ conditional inclusion has mainly explored the introduction of integration requirements and their implications for refugees’ incorporation in their countries of asylum. By mobilizing an im/mobility lens, we push the thinking of conditional inclusion beyond the nation-state frame that has characterized scholarly engagements so far. We also broaden the understanding of conditional inclusion by including a focus on revocation/cessation practices. While integration requirements and revocation/cessation practices are mostly addressed separately in literature, the article shows the ways in which they entangle and immobilize refugees. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Germany and Norway, the article explores how refugees’ spatial mobility is constrained through the interplay between legal frameworks that impose conditionality, entangled practices of state bureaucracies that execute conditionality, and refugees’ affective, ethical, and political navigations of their conditional inclusion.
{"title":"‘For two years I have been in this large prison’: Conditional inclusion and refugee mobility in Norway and Germany","authors":"Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland , Marry-Anne Karlsen","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104575","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104575","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article provides insights into the mobility implications of the new contingency in the European governance of refugees. In doing so, it contributes to and advances debates on the increased conditionality of refugees’ inclusion by mobilizing an im/mobility lens. So far, the literature on refugees’ conditional inclusion has mainly explored the introduction of integration requirements and their implications for refugees’ incorporation in their countries of asylum. By mobilizing an im/mobility lens, we push the thinking of conditional inclusion beyond the nation-state frame that has characterized scholarly engagements so far. We also broaden the understanding of conditional inclusion by including a focus on revocation/cessation practices. While integration requirements and revocation/cessation practices are mostly addressed separately in literature, the article shows the ways in which they entangle and immobilize refugees. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Germany and Norway, the article explores how refugees’ spatial mobility is constrained through the interplay between legal frameworks that impose conditionality, entangled practices of state bureaucracies that execute conditionality, and refugees’ affective, ethical, and political navigations of their conditional inclusion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"171 ","pages":"Article 104575"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146154251","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-30DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104560
Emília Malcata Rebelo , Denise Lacerda Aquino
Urban crises often render visible the socio-spatial inequalities and governance arrangements that structure everyday urban life. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a critical lens through which to examine how resilience is not merely an emergent capacity but a politically mediated and spatially differentiated outcome. This article analyses how urban governance, spatial infrastructures, and digital inequalities shaped the resilience of the gastronomic sector during the pandemic in Porto (Portugal) and João Pessoa (Brazil).
Drawing on a mixed-methods comparative design – including surveys with workers and consumers, semi-structured interviews, spatial analysis, and policy review – the study examines how governance responses interacted with urban morphology, public-space accessibility, informality, and digital readiness to produce divergent adaptive trajectories. The findings show that Porto’s coordinated cross-sector governance, compact urban form, and higher institutional and digital capacity enabled rapid spatial reconfiguration, flexible licensing, and the retention of adaptive practices. In contrast, João Pessoa’s fragmented governance arrangements, infrastructural deficits in peripheral areas, and high levels of informality constrained adaptation, limiting access to institutional support and reducing the effectiveness of digital strategies.
The article advances a relational comparative perspective by identifying three interdependent mechanisms shaping resilience outcomes: governance agility, understood as the capacity to coordinate and adapt across sectors and scales; spatial justice, reflected in the unequal distribution of adaptable public-space infrastructures; and institutional visibility, mediated by informality and digital divides. By conceptualising resilience as the product of interacting institutional, spatial, and socio-technical conditions, the study contributes to critical debates on urban governance, inequality, and crisis management beyond the specific context of the pandemic.
城市危机往往暴露出构成城市日常生活的社会空间不平等和治理安排。2019冠状病毒病大流行提供了一个重要视角，通过这个视角，我们可以审视韧性如何不仅是一种应急能力，而且是一种政治调解和空间差异化的结果。本文分析了城市治理、空间基础设施和数字不平等如何影响葡萄牙波尔图和巴西若奥佩索阿（jo o Pessoa）大流行期间美食部门的复原力。利用混合方法的比较设计——包括对工人和消费者的调查、半结构化访谈、空间分析和政策审查——该研究考察了治理响应如何与城市形态、公共空间可达性、非正式性和数字化准备相互作用，从而产生不同的适应轨迹。研究结果表明，波尔图协调的跨部门治理、紧凑的城市形态以及更高的制度和数字能力，使其能够实现快速的空间重构、灵活的许可和适应性实践的保留。相比之下，jo奥佩索阿的治理安排分散，外围地区基础设施不足，以及高度的非正式性制约了适应，限制了获得机构支持的机会，降低了数字战略的有效性。本文通过确定形成弹性结果的三种相互依赖的机制，提出了一种关系比较的视角：治理敏捷性，被理解为跨部门和规模协调和适应的能力；空间公正，体现在适应性强的公共空间基础设施分布不均；以及以非正式性和数字鸿沟为中介的机构可见性。通过将复原力概念化为制度、空间和社会技术条件相互作用的产物，该研究有助于在大流行的特定背景之外就城市治理、不平等和危机管理进行批判性辩论。
{"title":"Crisis, cities, and cuisine: urban governance for gastronomic sector recovery in Porto and João Pessoa","authors":"Emília Malcata Rebelo , Denise Lacerda Aquino","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104560","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104560","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Urban crises often render visible the socio-spatial inequalities and governance arrangements that structure everyday urban life. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a critical lens through which to examine how resilience is not merely an emergent capacity but a politically mediated and spatially differentiated outcome. This article analyses how urban governance, spatial infrastructures, and digital inequalities shaped the resilience of the gastronomic sector during the pandemic in Porto (Portugal) and João Pessoa (Brazil).</div><div>Drawing on a mixed-methods comparative design – including surveys with workers and consumers, semi-structured interviews, spatial analysis, and policy review – the study examines how governance responses interacted with urban morphology, public-space accessibility, informality, and digital readiness to produce divergent adaptive trajectories. The findings show that Porto’s coordinated cross-sector governance, compact urban form, and higher institutional and digital capacity enabled rapid spatial reconfiguration, flexible licensing, and the retention of adaptive practices. In contrast, João Pessoa’s fragmented governance arrangements, infrastructural deficits in peripheral areas, and high levels of informality constrained adaptation, limiting access to institutional support and reducing the effectiveness of digital strategies.</div><div>The article advances a relational comparative perspective by identifying three interdependent mechanisms shaping resilience outcomes: governance agility, understood as the capacity to coordinate and adapt across sectors and scales; spatial justice, reflected in the unequal distribution of adaptable public-space infrastructures; and institutional visibility, mediated by informality and digital divides. By conceptualising resilience as the product of interacting institutional, spatial, and socio-technical conditions, the study contributes to critical debates on urban governance, inequality, and crisis management beyond the specific context of the pandemic.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104560"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146074989","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}
Indigenous peoples play a central role in Australian national biodiversity conservation, even as they continue to resist marginalization and dispossession by the settler colonial state. Foucauldian discourse analysis of national strategic documents on biodiversity conservation from 1999 to 2024 reveals changes in government discourses, ambitions, and mechanisms for inclusion. Our analysis identifies an emergent process within biodiversity strategy of enrolling Indigenous peoples into a collective citizenry tasked with conserving biodiversity within shared and standardized epistemological and managerial frameworks. At the intersection of scientific, managerialist, capitalist and nationalist discourses, such strategy recognizes Indigenous peoples as distinct and essential custodians of nature. However, the price of such recognition is subtle reordering of Indigenous identities, knowledge systems, and relations to Country. Thus, biodiversity strategies claim to honour and continue Indigenous peoples’ historical conservation roles but simultaneously reposition Indigenous knowledges and territories as assets of the settler colonial state. In the process, these strategies reframe Indigenous knowledges as integral to a distinctively and authentically Australian national identity. This study shows how new forms of Indigenous empowerment and recognition are entangled with contemporary forms of settler colonial extraction and state-led ordering, with ambivalent results for Indigenous peoples and Country.
{"title":"Indigenous peoples and nature conservation: Lessons from 25 years of Australian biodiversity strategy","authors":"Lydia Schofield , Elaine Stratford , Aidan Davison","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104518","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2025.104518","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Indigenous peoples play a central role in Australian national biodiversity conservation, even as they continue to resist marginalization and dispossession by the settler colonial state. Foucauldian discourse analysis of national strategic documents on biodiversity conservation from 1999 to 2024 reveals changes in government discourses, ambitions, and mechanisms for inclusion. Our analysis identifies an emergent process within biodiversity strategy of enrolling Indigenous peoples into a collective citizenry tasked with conserving biodiversity within shared and standardized epistemological and managerial frameworks. At the intersection of scientific, managerialist, capitalist and nationalist discourses, such strategy recognizes Indigenous peoples as distinct and essential custodians of nature. However, the price of such recognition is subtle reordering of Indigenous identities, knowledge systems, and relations to Country. Thus, biodiversity strategies claim to honour and continue Indigenous peoples’ historical conservation roles but simultaneously reposition Indigenous knowledges and territories as assets of the settler colonial state. In the process, these strategies reframe Indigenous knowledges as integral to a distinctively and authentically Australian national identity. This study shows how new forms of Indigenous empowerment and recognition are entangled with contemporary forms of settler colonial extraction and state-led ordering, with ambivalent results for Indigenous peoples and Country.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104518"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146074994","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-28DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104542
Jacob Fairless Nicholson
In March 1979, the New Jewel Movement formed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada after ousting former Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Reawakening a long history of anti-colonial struggle on the island, Grenada’s Revolution initiated reforms to education, healthcare and employment, and launched new forms of democratic participation and civic engagement. To date, important stories from this geopolitical event – including those of its radical education provision – remain overlooked by geographers. Drawing on the recent accession of archival material including a tranche of Free West Indian newspapers dedicated to Jacqueline Creft (Minister for Education in Grenada 1980–1983) at the Black Cultural Archives, London, this paper analyses the Grenada Revolution’s cradle-to-grave programme of education that precipitated curriculum reform and improvements in teacher-training, and literacy – or ‘popular’ – education. Conceptually, the paper employs a multi-scalar feminist geopolitical analysis that is attentive to the ways shifting geopolitical terrains and agendas are imbricated within fixed, local, and familial experiences alongside those of nation and region. The paper’s central contribution is thus to illustrate the multi-scalar lived experiences and intimacies produced in education amid emerging geopolitical agendas of imperialism and resistance. Detailing the Revolution’s reimagining of schools, community centres, homes, and relationships, the paper argues that this ostensibly national project was also laced through with a politics of internationalism.
{"title":"‘Each One Teach One’: revolutionary education and training in Grenada, 1979–1983","authors":"Jacob Fairless Nicholson","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104542","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104542","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In March 1979, the New Jewel Movement formed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada after ousting former Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Reawakening a long history of anti-colonial struggle on the island, Grenada’s Revolution initiated reforms to education, healthcare and employment, and launched new forms of democratic participation and civic engagement. To date, important stories from this geopolitical event – including those of its radical education provision – remain overlooked by geographers. Drawing on the recent accession of archival material including a tranche of Free West Indian newspapers dedicated to Jacqueline Creft (Minister for Education in Grenada 1980–1983) at the Black Cultural Archives, London, this paper analyses the Grenada Revolution’s cradle-to-grave programme of education that precipitated curriculum reform and improvements in teacher-training, and literacy – or ‘popular’ – education. Conceptually, the paper employs a multi-scalar feminist geopolitical analysis that is attentive to the ways shifting geopolitical terrains and agendas are imbricated within fixed, local, and familial experiences alongside those of nation and region. The paper’s central contribution is thus to illustrate the multi-scalar lived experiences and intimacies produced in education amid emerging geopolitical agendas of imperialism and resistance. Detailing the Revolution’s reimagining of schools, community centres, homes, and relationships, the paper argues that this ostensibly national project was also laced through with a politics of internationalism.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104542"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146074990","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-20DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104537
Ioanna Chatzikonstantinou , Elia Apostolopoulou
Amid the global proliferation of wildfires, in this article we explore post-disaster fire governance in Greece. Drawing on empirical research into the aftermath of the 2021 North Evia wildfires and engaging with scholarship on the political ecology of fires and disaster capitalism, we examine how the wildfire was framed as an opportunity for spatial restructuring. Our analysis unpacks the mechanisms through which state and non-state actors reconfigured planning and environmental governance to bypass democratic processes, undermine local environmental claims and marginalize resin cultivators, beekeepers, shepherds and farmers in favor of touristification and urban expansion. We argue that, under the guise of the climate emergency, recovery strategies not only displace rural livelihoods but also erode socio-environmental resilience, facilitating processes of wildland gentrification that reproduce and intensify vulnerabilities to climate change-induced catastrophes in fire-prone areas. Elite actors hold a key role in these processes as they attempt to capitalize upon their involvement in climate change adaptation strategies and gear recovery policy towards their interests.
{"title":"Disaster capitalism and the political ecology of wildfire recovery in North Evia, Greece","authors":"Ioanna Chatzikonstantinou , Elia Apostolopoulou","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104537","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104537","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amid the global proliferation of wildfires, in this article we explore post-disaster fire governance in Greece. Drawing on empirical research into the aftermath of the 2021 North Evia wildfires and engaging with scholarship on the political ecology of fires and disaster capitalism, we examine how the wildfire was framed as an opportunity for spatial restructuring. Our analysis unpacks the mechanisms through which state and non-state actors reconfigured planning and environmental governance to bypass democratic processes, undermine local environmental claims and marginalize resin cultivators, beekeepers, shepherds and farmers in favor of touristification and urban expansion. We argue that, under the guise of the climate emergency, recovery strategies not only displace rural livelihoods but also erode socio-environmental resilience, facilitating processes of wildland gentrification that reproduce and intensify vulnerabilities to climate change-induced catastrophes in fire-prone areas. Elite actors hold a key role in these processes as they attempt to capitalize upon their involvement in climate change adaptation strategies and gear recovery policy towards their interests.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104537"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146036187","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-19DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104541
Ngabiyanto , Danang Puji Atmojo
Neoliberal reforms in Indonesian higher education are reshaping urban landscapes through studentification, a phenomenon still underexplored in the Global South. Using the case of Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES) after its 2022 transformation into a legal-entity state university (PTN-BH), this article shows how policy pushes students into a stratified rental market. It finds a clash between local residents’ informal kos-kosan economy and speculative investment from external actors, a dynamic distinct from Global North contexts. Digital platforms intensify this divide by structuring access and pricing while marginalizing affordable options. The study argues that studentification in the Global South is structurally driven by neoliberal university policy and positions students simultaneously as consumers, sites of value extraction, and potential political actors.
{"title":"Studentification in the Global South: Neoliberal University Reform and Speculative Housing in Semarang, Indonesia","authors":"Ngabiyanto , Danang Puji Atmojo","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104541","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104541","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Neoliberal reforms in Indonesian higher education are reshaping urban landscapes through studentification, a phenomenon still underexplored in the Global South. Using the case of Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES) after its 2022 transformation into a legal-entity state university (PTN-BH), this article shows how policy pushes students into a stratified rental market. It finds a clash between local residents’ informal <em>kos-kosan</em> economy and speculative investment from external actors, a dynamic distinct from Global North contexts. Digital platforms intensify this divide by structuring access and pricing while marginalizing affordable options. The study argues that studentification in the Global South is structurally driven by neoliberal university policy and positions students simultaneously as consumers, sites of value extraction, and potential political actors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104541"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146036680","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}
Social cash transfer schemes that provide small regular payments to poor people have become a key social protection tool in many African countries. Such schemes often employ household targeting, ostensibly to maximise poverty alleviation, based on assumptions about households and their functioning. Building on geographical work on both cash transfers and the household, we demonstrate how three starkly different versions of the household – imagined, documented and lived – are entailed in the design, implementation and outcomes of targeting.
We draw on datasets from a project that explored how social cash transfers intervene in household and community relations in two household targeted schemes: Malawi’s Social Cash Transfer Programme and Lesotho’s Child Grant. First, 109 interviews with key national and international stakeholders explored how the two household targeting designs reflect transnational political, technocratic and ideological considerations. Second, ethnographic research in two rural communities, focused around 20 recipient households, examined how the schemes play out in people’s lives.
Going beyond analyses that see cash transfer schemes as products of multi-scalar relations, with households as the most local end of a global–local spectrum, we identify three mismatched versions of the household, each intersecting across multiple spatial scales. The imagined household of the scheme blueprint (stable and easily defined) is a product of transnational relations between a range of actors. This is translated into a documented household, inscribed in national beneficiary registers that direct funding to specific constellations of individuals. The lived household, distinct from both, is fluid and porous and responds reflexively to the payments. Ultimately, the mismatch between these three households breeds resentment and undermines the legitimacy of the schemes, leading to their local subversion or reinterpretation. Finally, we propose that this three-fold conceptualisation of the household may be useful to geographers seeking to understand the effects of a diversity of social policy interventions that target households.
{"title":"Household targeting of social cash transfer programmes: transnational poverty alleviation and community subversion in Malawi and Lesotho","authors":"Nicola Ansell , Roeland Hemsteede , Flora Hajdu , Thandie Hlabana , Lorraine van Blerk , Evance Mwathunga , Elsbeth Robson","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social cash transfer schemes that provide small regular payments to poor people have become a key social protection tool in many African countries. Such schemes often employ household targeting, ostensibly to maximise poverty alleviation, based on assumptions about households and their functioning. Building on geographical work on both cash transfers and the household, we demonstrate how three starkly different versions of the household – imagined, documented and lived – are entailed in the design, implementation and outcomes of targeting.</div><div>We draw on datasets from a project that explored how social cash transfers intervene in household and community relations in two household targeted schemes: Malawi’s Social Cash Transfer Programme and Lesotho’s Child Grant. First, 109 interviews with key national and international stakeholders explored how the two household targeting designs reflect transnational political, technocratic and ideological considerations. Second, ethnographic research in two rural communities, focused around 20 recipient households, examined how the schemes play out in people’s lives.</div><div>Going beyond analyses that see cash transfer schemes as products of multi-scalar relations, with households as the most local end of a global–local spectrum, we identify three mismatched versions of the household, each intersecting across multiple spatial scales. The <em>imagined</em> household of the scheme blueprint (stable and easily defined) is a product of transnational relations between a range of actors. This is translated into a <em>documented</em> household, inscribed in national beneficiary registers that direct funding to specific constellations of individuals. The <em>lived</em> household, distinct from both, is fluid and porous and responds reflexively to the payments. Ultimately, the mismatch between these three households breeds resentment and undermines the legitimacy of the schemes, leading to their local subversion or reinterpretation. Finally, we propose that this three-fold conceptualisation of the household may be useful to geographers seeking to understand the effects of a diversity of social policy interventions that target households.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104538"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146036189","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-30DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104562
Apollonya Maria Porcelli , Hernán Manrique López , José Carlos Orihuela , Sergio Serrano Caballero
In this paper, we examine the two largest oil spills in Peru’s history: the Cuninico inland disaster of 2014 and the Ventanilla offshore spill of 2022. At face value these two cases seem distinct: one characterized by very little environmental data and governmental accountability bound with domestic courts, and another with significant scientific documentation and tremendous international legal pressure. However, we show that in both cases, states respond with a four-fold process designed to assert their legitimacy amid severe environmental crises: denial, delegation, data collection, and deliberation. Through this process, states quell public discontent and dilute their responsibility. In explaining how nation-states respond to environmental crises, the existing political economy of development literature argues that weak state capacity is often to blame for poor disaster response. However, attributing environmental failures solely to state weakness offers an incomplete explanation. Ironically, developing countries such as Peru, demonstrate strength to promote extractive industries, yet not as much to regulate or halt them. Thus, the resulting weak environmental institutions can be seen not a cause of poor environmental outcomes, but rather a consequence of extractive development in Peru. By integrating the strategic ignorance literature, we show that “non-knowledge” is deployed by weak states in the aftermath of a disaster, when significant environmental data is both present and not present. Thus, we argue that strategic ignorance is a form of statecraft that enables extractive corporations to continue with business-as-usual, perpetuating cycles of resource exploitation and social inequality without true accountability.
{"title":"From denial to dilution: state response to environmental disaster in Peru","authors":"Apollonya Maria Porcelli , Hernán Manrique López , José Carlos Orihuela , Sergio Serrano Caballero","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104562","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104562","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we examine the two largest oil spills in Peru’s history: the Cuninico inland disaster of 2014 and the Ventanilla offshore spill of 2022. At face value these two cases seem distinct: one characterized by very little environmental data and governmental accountability bound with domestic courts, and another with significant scientific documentation and tremendous international legal pressure. However, we show that in both cases, states respond with a four-fold process designed to assert their legitimacy amid severe environmental crises: denial, delegation, data collection, and deliberation. Through this process, states quell public discontent and dilute their responsibility. In explaining how nation-states respond to environmental crises, the existing political economy of development literature argues that<!--> <!-->weak<!--> <!-->state capacity<!--> <!-->is<!--> <!-->often to blame for poor disaster response.<!--> <!-->However, attributing environmental failures solely to state weakness offers an incomplete explanation. Ironically, developing countries such as Peru, demonstrate strength to promote extractive industries, yet not as much to regulate or halt them.<!--> <!-->Thus, the resulting weak environmental institutions can be seen not a<!--> <!-->cause<!--> <!-->of poor environmental outcomes, but rather a<!--> <!-->consequence<!--> <!-->of extractive development in Peru.<!--> <!-->By integrating<!--> <!-->the strategic ignorance literature, we<!--> <!-->show that “non-knowledge” is deployed by weak states in the aftermath of a disaster, when significant environmental data is both present and not present. Thus, we argue that strategic ignorance is a form of statecraft that enables extractive corporations to continue with business-as-usual, perpetuating cycles of resource exploitation and social inequality without true accountability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104562"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146074986","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 : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-30DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104563
Lianne Oosterbaan, Aleksandra Peeroo
This paper explores the role of colonial legacies on contemporary water resource allocations in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and current experiences with decolonisation processes. Drawing on three case studies − Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, and Cabo Verde − the article provides a typology of SIDS’ experiences in decolonising their water resources – maintenance of the status quo, de jure but no de facto change, and de facto change. The paper argues that differences in decolonisation outcomes can be partly explained by the existence of Indigenous populations prior to colonisation, as well as the relative abundance of water resources. The findings highlight the context-specific nature of decolonising water resources and caution against one-size-fits-all approaches pushed by international institutions. The paper calls for further research on how global financial and aid agencies influence water governance in postcolonial SIDS contexts, where fiscal constraints and dependence on external actors pose additional challenges to equitable water allocations.
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Pub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2026-01-27DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104540
Helena Cotler , Jose María león Villalobos , Fernanda Figueroa
Soil erosion threatens soil’s ecological processes and functions that sustain life and provide ecosystem benefits. In the Global South, dominant narratives and the policies they inform often frame soil erosion as a purely technical issue requiring techno-scientific and supposedly objective interventions. However, these narratives are themselves social constructs rooted in neo-Malthusian and colonial assumptions and reproduced through asymmetrical social relations embedded in institutions that legitimize certain forms of knowledge. This study analyzes the construction of soil erosion as a socio-environmental problem in Mexico. We examine how it has been conceived, measured, and narrated in official documents, policy discourses, and scientific studies produced since the mid-twentieth century. Dominant discourses, aligned with the interests of powerful actors, have tended to “blame the victims,” targeting poor peasants and indigenous communities whose knowledge systems and land-use practices have been historically dismissed. The persistent association between poverty, ignorance, and soil erosion has reinforced an image of an inevitable “downward spiral of soil erosion, poverty, and environmental degradation.” We deconstruct this imaginary and argue that strategies aimed at mitigating soil erosion have largely failed because they rely on flawed assumptions and overlook the problem’s political, economic, and historical dimensions. Counter-narratives and empirical evidence contest dominant discourses and offer pathways toward a more comprehensive and effective understanding of soil management. Integrating alternative environmental narratives, local knowledge and practices, and rigorous science in the co-production of solutions is crucial to addressing soil erosion more justly and sustainably.
{"title":"Contesting dominant narratives on soil erosion: A view from Mexico","authors":"Helena Cotler , Jose María león Villalobos , Fernanda Figueroa","doi":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104540","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.geoforum.2026.104540","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Soil erosion threatens soil’s ecological processes and functions that sustain life and provide ecosystem benefits. In the Global South, dominant narratives and the policies they inform often frame soil erosion as a purely technical issue requiring techno-scientific and supposedly objective interventions. However, these narratives are themselves social constructs rooted in neo-Malthusian and colonial assumptions and reproduced through asymmetrical social relations embedded in institutions that legitimize certain forms of knowledge. This study analyzes the construction of soil erosion as a socio-environmental problem in Mexico. We examine how it has been conceived, measured, and narrated in official documents, policy discourses, and scientific studies produced since the mid-twentieth century. Dominant discourses, aligned with the interests of powerful actors, have tended to “blame the victims,” targeting poor peasants and indigenous communities whose knowledge systems and land-use practices have been historically dismissed. The persistent association between poverty, ignorance, and soil erosion has reinforced an image of an inevitable “downward spiral of soil erosion, poverty, and environmental degradation.” We deconstruct this imaginary and argue that strategies aimed at mitigating soil erosion have largely failed because they rely on flawed assumptions and overlook the problem’s political, economic, and historical dimensions. Counter-narratives and empirical evidence contest dominant discourses and offer pathways toward a more comprehensive and effective understanding of soil management. Integrating alternative environmental narratives, local knowledge and practices, and rigorous science in the co-production of solutions is crucial to addressing soil erosion more justly and sustainably.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":12497,"journal":{"name":"Geoforum","volume":"170 ","pages":"Article 104540"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146074995","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}
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