Suchergebnisse

This thesis offers a critical analysis of the scaling of water governance in South Africa and its implications for water access and allocation. As the complexity and severity of environmental problems increases, there is a growing tendency to look to environmental governance to offer solutions. I contend that water governance, as with all forms of environmental governance, is never an apolitical endeavour yet the antagonistic and collective decision-making aspect of environmental politics is often subsumed in a drive to foster sustainability. One of the ways that this de-politicisation occurs is through the uncritical application of scalar concepts. Scalar configurations are an outcome of the perpetual flux of socio-spatial and environmental dynamics and scales are therefore transformed through social conflict and political-economic struggle. Four mechanisms of scaling can be identified as follows: scale framing, scale jumping, scale bending and scale fixing. My research focuses on how the processes of scaling embedded in water governance affect prioritization in water access and allocations and ultimately, justice and fairness. The research examines how the production of scale and politics of scaling can be used to manipulate water access and allocation to the benefit and cost of different actor groups. The intertwined nature of society with water means that ecological, economic and political forces are constantly shaping the hydrosocial landscape. Three formal decisions by the government are examined to uncover how the politics of scaling has affected water goverrnance. These decisions are the approval of the construction of the De Hoop Dam, water service delivery mechanisms employed in the city of Johannesburg and the decision to explore hydraulic fracturing in the Karoo. In analysing these decisions, I show how cross-scalar dynamics; production of scale; and four processes of scaling are used in governance processes as means of empowerment and disempowerment. The findings from the case show that historical patterns of privilege and disadvantage are perpetuated through processes of scaling. Three main findings arise out of the research. Firstly, scaling processes are actively used by actors in water governance to empower some and disempower others – thus scaling processes are political processes. Secondly, politics of scaling influences and is influenced by social relations and material practices in South Africa. Thirdly, the theoretical development of scale can benefit from an interdisciplinary approach drawing from the different disciplines such as political science and human geography, working on scaling and governance.

This article explores the paradox of corporations using social and environmental justice concerns to market products that are themselves made in conditions of environmental and social injustice, most often in the Global South. The effects of the fashion industry on people is two-pronged: 1) the unsafe and exploitative conditions under which many garment workers operate, and 2) the severe and harmful water and air pollution caused by fashion industry factories. There are thus contradictions inherent in the manner in which corporations, through their marketing, seek to foster feminism and environmentalism, whilst sourcing their garments from factories that operate in problematic ways. Using case studies of advertising campaigns from three Swedish companies, HM, Monki and Gina Tricot, we conducted a discourse analysis to understand the messages to consumers as well as the image of the company that is portrayed. Through our political ecology analysis, we suggest that the promotion of feminism and environmentalism is not consistently applied by companies in their own practices and could at worst be labeled green and 'fem washing.' These approaches can also be deeply problematic when they lead to the exotification of others, and cultural appropriation. We further find that the marketing strategies in fashion serve not only to promote the sale of products but also have the effect of placing environmental responsibility onto individual consumers. Ultimately, fashion marketing serves to obfuscate ecologically unequal exchange and the true costs of fashion.Key words: gender, marketing, consumption, feminism, fashion, textiles, advertising, ecologically unequal exchange, sustainability

This article explores the paradox of corporations using social and environmental justice concerns to market products that are themselves made in conditions of environmental and social injustice, most often in the Global South. The effects of the fashion industry on people is two-pronged: 1) the unsafe and exploitative conditions under which many garment workers operate, and 2) the severe and harmful water and air pollution caused by fashion industry factories. There are thus contradictions inherent in the manner in which corporations, through their marketing, seek to foster feminism and environmentalism, whilst sourcing their garments from factories that operate in problematic ways. Using case studies of advertising campaigns from three Swedish companies, HM, Monki and Gina Tricot, we conducted a discourse analysis to understand the messages to consumers as well as the image of the company that is portrayed. Through our political ecology analysis, we suggest that the promotion of feminism and environmentalism is not consistently applied by companies in their own practices and could at worst be labeled green and 'fem washing.' These approaches can also be deeply problematic when they lead to the exotification of others, and cultural appropriation. We further find that the marketing strategies in fashion serve not only to promote the sale of products but also have the effect of placing environmental responsibility onto individual consumers. Ultimately, fashion marketing serves to obfuscate ecologically unequal exchange and the true costs of fashion.Key words: gender, marketing, consumption, feminism, fashion, textiles, advertising, ecologically unequal exchange, sustainability

In the world we live in today, the presence and claims of crisis abound – from climate change, financial and political crisis to depression, livelihoods and personal security crisis. There is a challenge to studying crisis due to the ways in which crisis as a notion, condition and experience refers to and operates at various societal levels. Further, different kinds of crisis can overlap and intersect with each other, and act as precursors or consequences of other crises, in what can be thought of as inter-crisis relations or chains of crises. This article makes an enquiry into how to develop more adequate analytical tools for understanding crisis as a multidimensional phenomenon. We ask how crisis can be conceptualised and what the analytical potentials of a distinct crisis perspective might be? In this article we suggest a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to bridge between traditionally separated realms. Our ambition is to present a case for the development of Interdisciplinary Crisis Studies as a field of scholarly enquiry, which allows for new perspectives on data collection and analysis. Using the cases of, first, crisis and security and, second, crisis and climate, conflict and migration, we illustrate how studying and intervening in crises requires non-linear approaches which connect across disciplines to develop more comprehensive, interdisciplinary understandings of societal problems and better solutions. In concluding the paper, we assert that key features of Interdisciplinary Crisis Studies must include (1) temporality, spatiality and scale; (2) multi-layeredness, processuality and contradictions; and (3) gender, intersectionality and social inequalities.

Alarming reports on crises are appearing and being published on a daily basis in different expressions from climate change, to people's movement and displacement, to armed conflict. Claims to crisis may involve tangible displays of desperate refugees, civilian casualties or persisting, if not, permanent poverty. Moreover, crisis relates to more abstract concepts such as failing democracy, instability in the liberal world order or national and global economic inequality. Crisis, in a sense, seemingly weaves the contemporary world together (Latour 1993), and this trend is reinforced by the frequent occurrence of mediatized or media-tuned global crisis narratives, many of which are currently shaped by populist apocalyptic ideology (Judis 2016). At the same time, crisis refers to social forces that can disrupt life and frame realities in ways, which go beyond prevalent discursive narratives (Jaques 2009; Smith and Vivekananda 2009). Crisis can also serve as a turning point and an opportunity for transformational change in a system (e.g. Polanyi 1944; Walby 2015). In particular, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to crisis as both concept and event, and thus to crisis studies, that moves away from some tendencies to see crisis as ahistorical, but rather emphasises uncertainty and contingency.

The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant and relevant research community. This framework is composed of contextual conditions (transformations, inequality, Anthropocene and diversity), which capture what is being observed empirically, and five sets of research lenses (architecture and agency, democracy and power, justice and allocation, anticipation and imagination, and adaptiveness and reflexivity). Ultimately the goal is to guide and inspire the systematic study of how societies prepare for accelerated climate change and wider earth system change, as well as policy responses.

The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant and relevant research community. This framework is composed of contextual conditions (transformations, inequality, Anthropocene and diversity), which capture what is being observed empirically, and five sets of research lenses (architecture and agency, democracy and power, justice and allocation, anticipation and imagination, and adaptiveness and reflexivity). Ultimately the goal is to guide and inspire the systematic study of how societies prepare for accelerated climate change and wider earth system change, as well as policy responses.