Suchergebnisse

There is growing interest in assessing the effects of changing environmental conditions and management actions on human wellbeing. A challenge is to translate social science expertise regarding these relationships into terms usable by environmental scientists, policymakers, and managers. Here, we present a comprehensive, structured, and transparent conceptual framework of human wellbeing designed to guide the development of indicators and a complementary social science research agenda for ecosystem-based management. Our framework grew out of an effort to develop social indicators for an integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA) of the California Current large marine ecosystem. Drawing from scholarship in international development, anthropology, geography, and political science, we define human wellbeing as a state of being with others and the environment, which arises when human needs are met, when individuals and communities can act meaningfully to pursue their goals, and when individuals and communities enjoy a satisfactory quality of life. We propose four major social science-based constituents of wellbeing: connections, capabilities, conditions, and cross-cutting domains. The latter includes the domains of equity and justice, security, resilience, and sustainability, which may be assessed through cross-cutting analyses of other constituents. We outline a process for identifying policy-relevant attributes of wellbeing that can guide ecosystem assessments. To operationalize the framework, we provide a detailed table of attributes and a large database of available indicators, which may be used to develop measures suited to a variety of management needs and social goals. Finally, we discuss four guidelines for operationalizing human wellbeing measures in ecosystem assessments, including considerations for context, feasibility, indicators and research, and social difference. Developed for the U.S. west coast, the framework may be adapted for other regions, management needs, and scales with appropriate modifications.

Sen's entitlement thesis rooted in social contract theory has been used to explain access to food, and is used by states to design social protection programs as transfer entitlements to diffuse food insecurities. Social protection programs have now burgeoned in several countries as a strategy to enable the poor to overcome risks, vulnerabilities and poverty. These social protection programs have inclusion and exclusion errors, which current theorization attributes mainly to political clientalism, social vulnerability, elite capture, targeting inefficiency, leakages and corruption, lack of information transparency and improper designing of social protection programs. This paper argues that the errors are due to a more fundamental assumption made in application of social contract and entitlement-based approach to social protection programing. It identifies an uncritical application of Sen's entitlement thesis to social protection programs, as leading to inclusion and exclusion errors. The main problematic, the paper shows is that the social contract-led entitlement thesis works within the domain of formal rights situated within the state-citizen relations, and as such, misses out on the non-formal entitlements and non-state influences that impact materialization of social protection programs in practice. Evidences from flood prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India indicate that non-state rules linked with clientele and patronage relations, moral and local political economies trump over formal rights to mediate social protection entitlement outcomes. Rather than abstract state-citizen social contract, it is the moral contracts of reciprocal exchanges with influential patrons embedded in the moral economy of the villages that ultimately ground the social protection entitlement claims of poor villagers. Conceptualizing this process of access as cultures of entitlement, the paper builds a framework for reinterpretation of entitlements and their outcomes, suggesting a recalibration of application of Sen's entitlement thesis to social protection programs. In conclusion it argues that Sen's entitlement thesis which is pitched at transfer of economic resources through social protection from the state to the poor is inadequate. Learning from social movements currently leading the transparency and accountability struggles in India, it calls for an instituting and recognition of accountability as new cultural resource and entitlement. In conclusion it argues that information, and accountability as new cultural entitlements, when mobilized through collective agency of the poor can potentially challenge the current cultures of entitlements evidenced in this paper that presently underlie social protection outcomes.

Geographers explore geographical connections in their imagination and through research as well as citizens across time, space, with an interest in flows in particular, at different scales - here through the lenses of economic, political and historical geography. I try and offer an example of weaving together different geographical connections not ordinarily done so prominently in regional geography approaches.

Historicising riots is a challenging process. Balancing the characterisation of violent trauma alongside the longer trajectories of associated grievances, and acts of contestation, poses representational tensions for associated scholars. Emphasis, both in contemporary sources and recent scholarship, upon exceptional episodes of violence potentially overplays the particularity of the of event, and perhaps detracts from the recognition of smaller, less visible, and everyday acts of exclusion and contestation. In this paper, we propose to revisit the 1919 British seaport riots through a political geography lens, considering continuities and variations in the experiences, trajectories and contexts of the events in South Shields and Glasgow. Theoretically, we draw upon intersecting work within cultural studies, history and geography to reflect upon critical space-time geographies in relation to the political atmospheres of violent events. This facilitates an engagement with a variety of sources to characterise the 1919 riots, including trade union records, Colonial Office documents, newspaper reports and police records. We argue that bringing together these archival materials allows a recognition of the heterogeneity of experience associated with seemingly exceptional episodes of racialised violence.

This paper will consider the enduring acts of care, support and activism associated with unemployment in the North East and Midlands regions of England. It will draw upon literature relating to unemployment, labour geography and feminist economic geography to illuminate different forms of agency and resourcefulness found within the examples considered. The paper engages with Unemployed Workers' Centres in Newcastle and Chesterfield, focusing mostly upon their activities in response to UK austerity policies. These centres provide advice and support for unemployed people, particularly those who may be facing difficulties, such as work capability assessments, tribunals and debt. This supporting role is complimented by the campaigning activities of volunteers within these groups that actively contest related issues, including campaigns relating to zero-hour contracts, organising against austerity policies and wider educational projects as part of a relationship with Unite Community. The paper suggests that the associated organising practices indicate a varied and nuanced form of unemployed political agency that articulates and contests multiple unemployed grievances. This engagement with a wider political realm, alongside the intimate acts of support and care found within the centres, suggests a more nuanced and agentic understanding of unemployed resistance within an austerity context.

In the Anthropocene, humans are changing and harming the planet in significant and possibly irreversible ways. Biodiversity loss is one of the main elements of these human-caused harms. Wildlife and conservation policies, such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (the Bern Convention) are attempts to stop the loss of wildlife albeit in different ways (i.e., control of trade versus habitat protection). This article explores the implementation of both of these conventions in the UK through a mixed-methods study including content analysis of convention documentation and eight semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that whilst the UK has a reputation for actively engaging in wildlife conservation and being a nation of animal lovers, management of its own wildlife is under resourced and could be improved. Both conventions are complex, with different parties focusing on different aspects. Stakeholders need to engage in dialogue about the core ethical issues regarding trade and consumption. Trying to expect the inclusion of or to add on species justice and welfare to the existing structures appears to be a step too far for the stakeholders as well as the legislative structures.

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) has been styled as a natural region drawn together by the Mekong River. However, the literature on regional identity has argued that regions are socially constructed phenomena. River basins in particular are historically evolved constructs of specific political and social relations. Drawing on concepts of regional identity and on the literature examining the links between culture and water, the article argues that the actors driving the GMS have failed to establish social coherence by exacerbating social tensions through the hydropower programmes. These programmes focus on energy production for national economic growth and economic integration between GMS countries, but they ignore the need to govern water resources for the benefit of local communities, many of who are ethnic minorities with specific cultural attachments to the river. This produces tensions around the type of development that takes place in the GMS, leading to value fragmentation rather than value convergence. The article explores these issues by focussing on the Chinese-built Lower Sesan 2 dam in Cambodia.

This paper presents an informal process inspired by a public practice of conflict mediation used until a few decades ago in Gallura (NE Sardinia, Italy), named La Rasgioni (The Reason). The aim is twofold: (i) to introduce an innovative method that translates the complexity of water-related conflicts into a "dialogical tool", aimed at enhancing social learning by adopting theatrical techniques; and (ii) to report the outcomes that emerged from the application of this method in Arborea, the main dairy cattle district and the only nitrate-vulnerable zone in Sardinia, to mediate contrasting positions between local entrepreneurs and representatives of the relevant institutions. We discuss our results in the light of four pillars, adopted as research lenses in the International research Project CADWAGO (Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance), which consider the specific "social–ecological" components of the Arborea system, climate change adaptability in water governance institutions and organizations, systemic governance (relational) practices, and governance learning. The combination of the four CADWAGO pillars and La Rasgioni created an innovative dialogical space that enabled stakeholders and researchers to collectively identify barriers and opportunities for effective governance practices. Potential wider implications and applications of La Rasgioni process are also discussed in the paper.

The increasing ethnic diversity of the UK has been mirrored by growing public awareness of multicultural issues, alongside developments in academic and government thinking. This paper explores the contested meanings around ethnic identity/ies in community settings, drawing on semi-structured interviews with staff from Children's Centres and allied agencies conducted for a research project that examined the relationship between identity and the participation of parents/carers in services in northeast England. The research found that respondents were unclear about, especially, white ethnic identities, and commonly referred to other social categorizations, such as age, nationality, and circumstances such as mobility, when discussing service users. While in some cases this may have reflected legitimate attempts to resist overethnicizing non-ethnic phenomena, such constructions coexisted with assumptions about ethnic difference and how it might translate into service needs. These findings raise important considerations for policy and practice.

This article provides a reflexive overview of developments in Feminist Political Ecology, a field of research and praxis that offers diverse theorisations of social relations of power associated with natures, culture and economies, underpinned by a shared commitment to feminist epistemology, methods and values. With reference to a small, illustrative selection of research papers, I present a situated and consciously partial commentary on Anglophone contributions that I have found resonant in my own research practice, teaching and everyday life. The development of feminist political ecology is considered across four related areas: first, the gender dynamics of resource access and dispossession; secondly, debates around post-humanism, bodies and matter; thirdly, activist and academic considerations of sufficiency, practices of commoning and a feminist ethics of care; and finally, recent efforts to develop a decolonial feminist political ecology. My aim is to show the kinds of questions and concerns that each of these threads raises, as platforms for continuing critical debate.

There is a gap in research that considers, and spatializes, the everyday geographies of far-right encounters, socialization, recreation and leisure. While much research considers the end-stages of right-wing radicalisation and focuses on the extreme right (e.g., hate groups, fringe political parties, despotic leaders, specific eruptions and episodes of violence or terror, online rhetoric), the daily processes, moments and spatial configurations in-between the mainstream and extreme are sometimes overlooked. These are crucial to understand, in order to develop a more nuanced and effective language in recognizing, responding to, and combatting right-wing radicalisation. This paper thus addresses the geographical blind spot by spatializing the everyday life of the far-right, through a three-pronged taxonomy. Drawing from ethnographic observations and social media and socio-demographic analyses, the paper argues that three geographies in particular emerge as nodes of far-right formation (attached to specific sites and online/offline): a) spaces of recreation and leisure ("Celebrations"); b) spaces of faith and spirituality ("Exaltations"); and c) spaces of the corporeal ("Alpha Lands"). These spaces intersect, extend across urban, peri-urban and rural terrains, and do not necessarily adhere to established political or territorial borders and boundaries, but rather, can be envisioned as multi-scalar spatial fixes, laden with political possibilities.

This article utilizes a Lefebvrian framework – specifically, his notions of "implosion and explosion", the triad of the production of space, and his conceptions of "everyday life" and "oeuvre" – to comparatively engage two case studies alongside each other: urban South Chicago, and exurban North Carolina. Drawing from ethnographic (in-person and digital) observations and anecdotes, we suggest that these concepts are dynamically and flexibly applicable to the shifting terrains of urban and exurban relations and offer ontological pathways for productive comparison across difference. Conceptually, the article is also undergirded by Hochschild's (2016) notion of the "empathy wall", a sociological barrier which divides polarized and socio-spatially- segregated geographies, within the context of recent urban and anti-urban insurrections and demonizations of one and other. These divides are viscerally evident in post-Trumpian America, but extend to many global contexts; thus, our comparison speaks to wider relevance. We argue that oppositional geographies like urban and exurban are inextricably linked and mutually constitutive, despite representing different sides of the "empathy wall" (in a political and cultural sense), and inhabiting distinct urban morphologies, geographical settings, historical lineages and political borders and boundaries. Furthermore, we suggest that such a relational pairing of urban alongside exurban is vital to overcome the seemingly insurmountable ontological, cultural and political borders between them. By reflecting on everyday life and social formations around ephemeral centers and sites such as cafés, backyard barbeques, lake parties and gyms, we offer some areas where dialogue and political solidarities might emerge across, and despite, the "empathy wall's" steadfast insurmountability.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced coastal communities around the world to re-evaluate their approaches to marine conservation and marine protected area (MPA) management. Initial studies have called for the need for improved socio-ecological resilience of MPAs in order to improve the adaptive capacity of communities and ecosystems to respond to future crises. However, as posed by Armitage and Johnson (2006), it is critical that MPA managers ask the question 'for what and for whom are we trying to promote resilience?' in designing more resilient MPAs for a post-pandemic world. Based on a systematic literature review of marine reserve impacts supported by fieldwork conducted in the Wakatobi National Park in Indonesia over the course of the COVID-19 crisis, this study examines what opportunities for transformations in MPA management and governance have emerged. Our findings demonstrate how top-down approaches to resilience-based management fail to synchronize with local realities, ultimately subverting potential for system transformation and a reimagining of MPA capacity to better serve local communities. Ultimately, this paper concludes that planning for resilience in MPAs must explicitly acknowledge local politics and power dynamics in order to understand how trade-offs impact stakeholders, and who gains and who loses from a more resilient system.

In this article we discuss the precarities induced by the threat of home demolitions in occupied Palestine. Drawing on fieldwork from four separate sites, the discussion begins by showing how the threat of demolition exposes Palestinians to a powerfully affective future of a violence that will arrive at an uncertain time. From this we develop the notion of 'affectual demolition' to describe how the anticipatory affective dimensions of demolition structure the present and the ways that precarities are embodied in Palestinian communities living under the threat of demolition. The discussion then moves on to further consider how anticipatory affects relate to different practices, including ways of acting on and against induced vulnerabilities and insecurities. We thus argue that the continued threat of home demolitions evokes precarities that are (politically) induced and (ontologically) productive and that they hold significant world-making and -annulling capacities. We thus argue that the continued threat of home demolitions evokes precarities that are (politically) produced and (ontologically) productive and that they hold significant world-making and -annulling capacities.

Life history methods are gaining popularity in Development research, linked to attempts to capture narratives marginalised by dominant accounts of Development. In this paper, we reflect on using life history methods with NGO activists in India. We explore how this approach led us to develop particular understandings of the participants as 'vulnerable', and the implications of this for the research process and the knowledges it produced. We explore how activists' individual biographies were interwoven with institutional narratives, complicating but also enriching our understanding of activists' experiences of Development. Secondly, we analyse the relationality of our subjects' vulnerability and our own positionality as global North Development scholars. We reflect on how our engagement with Development actors we consider as vulnerable takes place through and against the relational histories and presents that brought us together. We explore the implications of this for the ways the research created both discursive and physical spaces for meeting and talking, and what this means for our approach to vulnerability. This requires an uncomfortable acknowledgement that Development research may reproduce vulnerabilities, even as it seeks to challenge them. The paper contributes to broader theorising of vulnerability, recognising vulnerability as embedded in the relationalities of the research moment.