Pub Date : 2024-08-22DOI: 10.1177/23996544241276294
Michael Kimmage
This essay responds to Gerard Toal’s arguments on the possibilities for diplomacy in the war in Ukraine. I suggest that Toal is correct in identifying current debate about policy options as less open-ended and wide-ranging than it could be, and than it should be. I do, however, contend that Toal minimizes the extent to which major figures in the field of foreign-policy analysis have advocated a negotiated settlement to the war. Continuing with this point, my response to Toal is that a negotiated settlement to the conflict has been impossible to find (so far) not because of the limited debates that are being held within the governments and among experts in the West but because Russia began the war with a set of radical aims - revolving around the evisceration of Ukrainian nationhood - and that these aims are still in effect. It would in theory be possible to accommodate these aims through negotiation - and through concessions - but this would amount to something like the piecemeal surrender of Ukraine to Russian control. I conclude by endorsing the conventional wisdom among Western policy makers, which is that Ukraine should be supported militarily for the long haul.
{"title":"Debating the war in Ukraine: In defense of the conventional wisdom","authors":"Michael Kimmage","doi":"10.1177/23996544241276294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241276294","url":null,"abstract":"This essay responds to Gerard Toal’s arguments on the possibilities for diplomacy in the war in Ukraine. I suggest that Toal is correct in identifying current debate about policy options as less open-ended and wide-ranging than it could be, and than it should be. I do, however, contend that Toal minimizes the extent to which major figures in the field of foreign-policy analysis have advocated a negotiated settlement to the war. Continuing with this point, my response to Toal is that a negotiated settlement to the conflict has been impossible to find (so far) not because of the limited debates that are being held within the governments and among experts in the West but because Russia began the war with a set of radical aims - revolving around the evisceration of Ukrainian nationhood - and that these aims are still in effect. It would in theory be possible to accommodate these aims through negotiation - and through concessions - but this would amount to something like the piecemeal surrender of Ukraine to Russian control. I conclude by endorsing the conventional wisdom among Western policy makers, which is that Ukraine should be supported militarily for the long haul.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"120 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182246","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 : 2024-08-17DOI: 10.1177/23996544241276325
Luiza Bialasiewicz
How does the Russo-Ukrainian war end? On what territorial terms? Who – and where – has the right to decide on negotiations towards a settlement? These are all deeply geographical questions, and geographical storylines have been powerfully deployed in analyses of the conflict since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In this conversation forum, we bring together a provocative article by Gerard Toal identifying what he terms a ‘territorial taboo’ espoused by discursive communities in both the US and Europe: a set of geographical storylines that, Toal suggests, render impossible any negotiated end to the war. To respond to Toal’s argument, we have reached out to three expert commentators on the topic: international relations scholar Kseniya Oksamytna, historian Michael Kimmage, and political scientist Veronica Anghel.
{"title":"Geographical storylines and the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Narrative power and narrative taboos, a (difficult) conversation","authors":"Luiza Bialasiewicz","doi":"10.1177/23996544241276325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241276325","url":null,"abstract":"How does the Russo-Ukrainian war end? On what territorial terms? Who – and where – has the right to decide on negotiations towards a settlement? These are all deeply geographical questions, and geographical storylines have been powerfully deployed in analyses of the conflict since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In this conversation forum, we bring together a provocative article by Gerard Toal identifying what he terms a ‘territorial taboo’ espoused by discursive communities in both the US and Europe: a set of geographical storylines that, Toal suggests, render impossible any negotiated end to the war. To respond to Toal’s argument, we have reached out to three expert commentators on the topic: international relations scholar Kseniya Oksamytna, historian Michael Kimmage, and political scientist Veronica Anghel.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182245","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 : 2024-08-17DOI: 10.1177/23996544241276298
Veronica Anghel
Gerard Toal’s analysis of Ukraine and its allies’ hesitation to accept Russia’s peace terms, presented in ‘The Territorial Taboo: Explaining the Public Aversion to Negotiations in the Ukraine War Support Coalition’, attributes this reluctance to ‘commitment problems’ and ‘biases’. However, this explanation oversimplifies the issue. Achieving a stable post-agreement order necessitates Western resolve to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and a cohesive strategy regarding Russia’s role in the new global order. Toal’s suggestion of transferring occupied territories to end the war would enable Russia to further its goal of undermining Ukrainian sovereignty and bolster Putin’s dictatorship. This outcome contradicts NATO’s Strategic Concept, prolongs Ukrainian suffering, and perpetuates European security uncertainty. Furthermore, it would require a post-war narrative in which Ukrainians accept defeat and abandon their European aspirations. The resistance to Russia’s proposed settlement stems not from narrative taboos, but from a rational demand for a better resolution where unprovoked aggressors who want to upend international law through pre-modern lawlessness do not win the day.
{"title":"How wars don’t end: A response to Gerard Toal’s analysis of ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine","authors":"Veronica Anghel","doi":"10.1177/23996544241276298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241276298","url":null,"abstract":"Gerard Toal’s analysis of Ukraine and its allies’ hesitation to accept Russia’s peace terms, presented in ‘The Territorial Taboo: Explaining the Public Aversion to Negotiations in the Ukraine War Support Coalition’, attributes this reluctance to ‘commitment problems’ and ‘biases’. However, this explanation oversimplifies the issue. Achieving a stable post-agreement order necessitates Western resolve to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and a cohesive strategy regarding Russia’s role in the new global order. Toal’s suggestion of transferring occupied territories to end the war would enable Russia to further its goal of undermining Ukrainian sovereignty and bolster Putin’s dictatorship. This outcome contradicts NATO’s Strategic Concept, prolongs Ukrainian suffering, and perpetuates European security uncertainty. Furthermore, it would require a post-war narrative in which Ukrainians accept defeat and abandon their European aspirations. The resistance to Russia’s proposed settlement stems not from narrative taboos, but from a rational demand for a better resolution where unprovoked aggressors who want to upend international law through pre-modern lawlessness do not win the day.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182247","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 : 2024-08-16DOI: 10.1177/23996544241274065
Ander Audikana, Paolo Beria, Javier Arellano
The megaprojects paradox is still there: while large investments, infrastructures, facilities, and variegated ventures are more in demand than ever, scientific criticism and public opposition are increasingly strong, and difficulties to formulate alternative policies and development patterns are notorious. The impossibility of getting out of the paradox is due to the managerial and activist traps in which the scholarship on megaprojects is caught. This paper advocates for a more direct and conscious cross-fertilization between managerial and activist approaches on megaprojects in order to overcome their respective traps. It identifies 10 axes for further future collaboration which will serve as a basis for a shared research agenda. In this research agenda, the study of megaprojects appears as an autonomous research field in which the relationship between megaprojects and development patterns is systematically assessed and the analysis of policy alternatives to megaprojects becomes pivotal.
{"title":"Megaprojects: Beyond the managerial and activist traps","authors":"Ander Audikana, Paolo Beria, Javier Arellano","doi":"10.1177/23996544241274065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241274065","url":null,"abstract":"The megaprojects paradox is still there: while large investments, infrastructures, facilities, and variegated ventures are more in demand than ever, scientific criticism and public opposition are increasingly strong, and difficulties to formulate alternative policies and development patterns are notorious. The impossibility of getting out of the paradox is due to the managerial and activist traps in which the scholarship on megaprojects is caught. This paper advocates for a more direct and conscious cross-fertilization between managerial and activist approaches on megaprojects in order to overcome their respective traps. It identifies 10 axes for further future collaboration which will serve as a basis for a shared research agenda. In this research agenda, the study of megaprojects appears as an autonomous research field in which the relationship between megaprojects and development patterns is systematically assessed and the analysis of policy alternatives to megaprojects becomes pivotal.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"148 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182248","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 : 2024-08-14DOI: 10.1177/23996544241268118
Steven R Henderson
Local government engages in inter-government advocacy to increase functional and financial autonomy and to better respond to community needs. Adopted narratives frequently highlight the problems of centralisation and the perceived benefits of decentralisation, not least democratic proximity. This paper conceptualises local government advocacy within the context of the strategic-relational state and regionalised new state spaces, and distinguishes between advocacy as an assemblage of ambitions and practices and advocacy as a source of analytical insight. The relevance of normative perspectives in enabling critical reflection is further acknowledged. In consideration of local government association advocacy in devolved Scotland, a three-dimensional analytical perspective is embedded whereby Schumacher’s normative interpretation of decentralisation is used to analyse advocacy narratives; local government advocacy enables reflection upon inter-government relations and regionalisation; and evidence of strained inter-government relations prompts further consideration of normative interpretations. Conclusions highlight that local government must guard against scalar privileging in response to problematised relationships; that regionalisation perspectives must give considered attention to inter-government coordination and that community empowerment requires further elaboration.
{"title":"Decentralisation advocacy and inter-government coordination: A local government association perspective","authors":"Steven R Henderson","doi":"10.1177/23996544241268118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241268118","url":null,"abstract":"Local government engages in inter-government advocacy to increase functional and financial autonomy and to better respond to community needs. Adopted narratives frequently highlight the problems of centralisation and the perceived benefits of decentralisation, not least democratic proximity. This paper conceptualises local government advocacy within the context of the strategic-relational state and regionalised new state spaces, and distinguishes between advocacy as an assemblage of ambitions and practices and advocacy as a source of analytical insight. The relevance of normative perspectives in enabling critical reflection is further acknowledged. In consideration of local government association advocacy in devolved Scotland, a three-dimensional analytical perspective is embedded whereby Schumacher’s normative interpretation of decentralisation is used to analyse advocacy narratives; local government advocacy enables reflection upon inter-government relations and regionalisation; and evidence of strained inter-government relations prompts further consideration of normative interpretations. Conclusions highlight that local government must guard against scalar privileging in response to problematised relationships; that regionalisation perspectives must give considered attention to inter-government coordination and that community empowerment requires further elaboration.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182249","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 : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1177/23996544241267965
James Collie, Christopher Alcantara
Anglo settler states like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States were built through the dispossession of Indigenous lands and through the disruption of Indigenous political, social and economic systems. Over time, however, Indigenous nations have challenged the unjust foundations of these states, forcing settler states to respond with repression but also with accommodation, especially in the face of successful Indigenous mobilization. Yet even during these moments, state actors have resisted changes to state sovereignty, sometimes by creating new institutions that seem responsive, but which simply reinforce the status quo. To make sense of these moments, we introduce the concept of “decoy politics” and develop a theory for why states might turn to decoy politics, with a particular focus on Canada. Our findings suggest decoy politics may help explain why reconciliation with Indigenous nations remains difficult despite seemingly genuine attempts at meaningful institutional and policy change.
{"title":"Decoy politics: How settler states deflect Indigenous threats","authors":"James Collie, Christopher Alcantara","doi":"10.1177/23996544241267965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241267965","url":null,"abstract":"Anglo settler states like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States were built through the dispossession of Indigenous lands and through the disruption of Indigenous political, social and economic systems. Over time, however, Indigenous nations have challenged the unjust foundations of these states, forcing settler states to respond with repression but also with accommodation, especially in the face of successful Indigenous mobilization. Yet even during these moments, state actors have resisted changes to state sovereignty, sometimes by creating new institutions that seem responsive, but which simply reinforce the status quo. To make sense of these moments, we introduce the concept of “decoy politics” and develop a theory for why states might turn to decoy politics, with a particular focus on Canada. Our findings suggest decoy politics may help explain why reconciliation with Indigenous nations remains difficult despite seemingly genuine attempts at meaningful institutional and policy change.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141949423","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 : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1177/23996544241268020
Hugo Sarmiento
Climate adaptation in Latin American cities involves navigating highly contested social and cultural terrains. In cities with black and indigenous communities they are confronted with challenges such as histories of racial exclusion and informal, self-built housing in high-risk areas. This study examines Project Plan Jarillón, a flood protection infrastructure project in Santiago de Cali which involves Latin America’s largest relocation project. Cali, home to a large Afro-Colombian population, is also one of Colombia’s fastest growing cities and the second largest reciever of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. The study, based on 5 years of fieldwork including site visits and interviews, found the city’s failure to account for the segregation of black residents in high-risk areas has led to resistance, conflict and delays in the completion of the project. However, by forming an insurgent planning practice which draws from local culture and traditions of resistance, Afro-Colombian communities re-centered public debate on demands for racial and cultural recognition, and the right to decent housing. This insurgent planning is creating more democratic forms and approaches to climate adaptation in Cali at a pivotal moment in Colombia’s history as it negotiates a post-conflict process and positions itself as a global advocate for climate justice.
{"title":"Insurgent climate adaptation in Santiago de Cali: A study of Afro-Colombian resistance to project Plan Jarillon","authors":"Hugo Sarmiento","doi":"10.1177/23996544241268020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241268020","url":null,"abstract":"Climate adaptation in Latin American cities involves navigating highly contested social and cultural terrains. In cities with black and indigenous communities they are confronted with challenges such as histories of racial exclusion and informal, self-built housing in high-risk areas. This study examines Project Plan Jarillón, a flood protection infrastructure project in Santiago de Cali which involves Latin America’s largest relocation project. Cali, home to a large Afro-Colombian population, is also one of Colombia’s fastest growing cities and the second largest reciever of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. The study, based on 5 years of fieldwork including site visits and interviews, found the city’s failure to account for the segregation of black residents in high-risk areas has led to resistance, conflict and delays in the completion of the project. However, by forming an insurgent planning practice which draws from local culture and traditions of resistance, Afro-Colombian communities re-centered public debate on demands for racial and cultural recognition, and the right to decent housing. This insurgent planning is creating more democratic forms and approaches to climate adaptation in Cali at a pivotal moment in Colombia’s history as it negotiates a post-conflict process and positions itself as a global advocate for climate justice.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141949425","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 : 2024-08-02DOI: 10.1177/23996544241269225
Gustavo Dias, Bruno Nzinga Ribeiro, Isadora Lins França
This paper addresses the relations between migrants, (im)mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022). It particularly explores the extent to which his government endorsed the rise of abusive US border control policies against Brazilian immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical focus of the paper analyses how Brazilians struggled with the implementation of the US’s controversial Title 42 expulsions during the Bolsonaro administration and the Coronavirus pandemic. There has been a sharp increase in deaths, arbitrary detentions, and deportations of Brazilians from the US since the Trump administration, which was aggravated by the alignment of the Brazilian government with US border control policies towards Latin America. This combined with Bolsonaro’s closure of embassies, secretariats, and councils that had been dedicated to representing Brazilians abroad, had strong impacts, especially among those who migrated to escape the historical socioeconomic crisis in Brazil since 2015, intensified by COVID-19. The empirical data presented in this study comes from a digital and press archive we compiled using official data provided by the Confins International Airport, the US Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, news from digital media, and a critical literature review focused on migration, mobility, and border controls. In addition to not seeking solutions for the economic and social motives driving the departure of Brazilians, the Bolsonaro government endorsed the US’s anti-migration agenda and cut programs to meet the needs of Brazilians abroad.
{"title":"Detention, death, and deportation: (Re)bordering Brazilian migrants under Bolsonarism and the pandemic","authors":"Gustavo Dias, Bruno Nzinga Ribeiro, Isadora Lins França","doi":"10.1177/23996544241269225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241269225","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the relations between migrants, (im)mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Bolsonaro administration (2019–2022). It particularly explores the extent to which his government endorsed the rise of abusive US border control policies against Brazilian immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical focus of the paper analyses how Brazilians struggled with the implementation of the US’s controversial Title 42 expulsions during the Bolsonaro administration and the Coronavirus pandemic. There has been a sharp increase in deaths, arbitrary detentions, and deportations of Brazilians from the US since the Trump administration, which was aggravated by the alignment of the Brazilian government with US border control policies towards Latin America. This combined with Bolsonaro’s closure of embassies, secretariats, and councils that had been dedicated to representing Brazilians abroad, had strong impacts, especially among those who migrated to escape the historical socioeconomic crisis in Brazil since 2015, intensified by COVID-19. The empirical data presented in this study comes from a digital and press archive we compiled using official data provided by the Confins International Airport, the US Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, news from digital media, and a critical literature review focused on migration, mobility, and border controls. In addition to not seeking solutions for the economic and social motives driving the departure of Brazilians, the Bolsonaro government endorsed the US’s anti-migration agenda and cut programs to meet the needs of Brazilians abroad.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141883483","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 : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1177/23996544241269226
Kandida Purnell
This article contributes to knowledge on the politics of national commemoration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring the case of the United Kingdom (UK) and the ‘National COVID Memorial Wall’ in its material and digital manifestations. Questioning how the Wall functions socially and politically as a site of ‘national’ COVID-19 commemoration and using a combination of participatory in person and digital ethnographies, this article demonstrates how the Wall at once politicises public space while simultaneously serving to reinforce existing inequalities and patterns of (in)visibility while inadvertently overing the pandemic through its timing. While appraising the politics and space of the Wall in London and its digital version, this article highlights how inequalities exacerbated through the pandemic have (mis)informed and are reflected in the physical and virtual construction of the self-proclaimed ‘national’ COVID-19 memorial. Within a context defined by competitive victimhood and commemorative crowding which come to define ‘post’-pandemic society and make for fraught commemorative processes that ought to be approached by Governments’ with specific sensitivity, this article argues that the Wall politicises and opens up space within which previously contained grief becomes visible and felt while being limited in its capacity to make particular victims of the pandemic visible and thus to amplify marginalised and contained voices and grief.
{"title":"Politicising Space, (In)visibilising Grief: Pandemic commemoration and the UK’s “National COVID Memorial Wall”","authors":"Kandida Purnell","doi":"10.1177/23996544241269226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241269226","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to knowledge on the politics of national commemoration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring the case of the United Kingdom (UK) and the ‘National COVID Memorial Wall’ in its material and digital manifestations. Questioning how the Wall functions socially and politically as a site of ‘national’ COVID-19 commemoration and using a combination of participatory in person and digital ethnographies, this article demonstrates how the Wall at once politicises public space while simultaneously serving to reinforce existing inequalities and patterns of (in)visibility while inadvertently overing the pandemic through its timing. While appraising the politics and space of the Wall in London and its digital version, this article highlights how inequalities exacerbated through the pandemic have (mis)informed and are reflected in the physical and virtual construction of the self-proclaimed ‘national’ COVID-19 memorial. Within a context defined by competitive victimhood and commemorative crowding which come to define ‘post’-pandemic society and make for fraught commemorative processes that ought to be approached by Governments’ with specific sensitivity, this article argues that the Wall politicises and opens up space within which previously contained grief becomes visible and felt while being limited in its capacity to make particular victims of the pandemic visible and thus to amplify marginalised and contained voices and grief.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141871476","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 : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1177/23996544241268342
Michael Howcroft, Nicky Marsh, Joseph Owen
The ‘pride in place’ mission of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda has foregrounded the importance of feelings in local and national development strategies. While pride in place gestures to the emotional symptoms of geographical inequality and the so-called left behind, it does not address their structural causes. This article explores how the lens of pride, and the affective governance it demands, has been used to reimagine place in UK policy. We argue that governance has taken a therapeutic and palliative turn, and that the pride in place mission obscures ideological inconsistencies in policymaking. The article explains how the government’s narrow conception of pride as a mechanism of affective governance illustrates tensions in places at different scales: between national and local issues; between public and private spheres; and between individual and collective identities. It claims that a more meaningful understanding of pride must be predicated on people’s collective capacity for felt and emotional responses. Crucially, any metrics for pride must capture that complexity to help restore social infrastructure in places.
{"title":"Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within ‘pride in place’","authors":"Michael Howcroft, Nicky Marsh, Joseph Owen","doi":"10.1177/23996544241268342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241268342","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘pride in place’ mission of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda has foregrounded the importance of feelings in local and national development strategies. While pride in place gestures to the emotional symptoms of geographical inequality and the so-called left behind, it does not address their structural causes. This article explores how the lens of pride, and the affective governance it demands, has been used to reimagine place in UK policy. We argue that governance has taken a therapeutic and palliative turn, and that the pride in place mission obscures ideological inconsistencies in policymaking. The article explains how the government’s narrow conception of pride as a mechanism of affective governance illustrates tensions in places at different scales: between national and local issues; between public and private spheres; and between individual and collective identities. It claims that a more meaningful understanding of pride must be predicated on people’s collective capacity for felt and emotional responses. Crucially, any metrics for pride must capture that complexity to help restore social infrastructure in places.","PeriodicalId":48108,"journal":{"name":"Environment and Planning C-Politics and Space","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141871477","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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