Flows of sediment,flows of insecurity: Climate change adaptation and the social contract in the Ebro Delta,Catalonia

To avoid dominant positivist explanations of links between climate change and security, I use alternative, human security approaches to study how climate security is managed in one of Spain’s most endangered coastal ecosystems, the Ebro Delta. I find that increasing the downstream flow of sediments retained in upstream dams is a crucial measure for dealing with climate change threats (sea-level rise) in the Delta. Yet, state policies do not increase sediment flow, but instead implement incremental adaptation at the site of climate impact (coast), which, at times, requires executing small-scale land expropriations. Refraining from improving human security via increasing sediment flow benefits corporate interests upstream. At the same time, expropriation silences mild farmer protest downstream and adds insult to injury by conveying to farmers a sense of blame for their vulnerability to climate change. Meanwhile, using expropriation at the service of incremental adaptation goes against the very rationale of expropriation established by Spanish legislation and creates a fundamental contradiction between what the practice is meant to deliver, namely security and the social contract from the part of the state, and what it actually does, i.e. permit the state to evade providing human security. I conclude that, under climate change, achieving human security, the delivery of the social contract, and corporate rent-seeking at the same time may not be possible. Moreover, rather than the social contract been threatened by state incapacity to respond to the effects of climate change and breached social contract expectations of vulnerable communities, it is the actual mobilisation of the contract in order to respond to climate change that diminishes human security.     

Variegated capitalism,the Greek crisis and SYRIZA’s counter-neoliberalisation challenge

The objective of this critical review is twofold. Firstly, we intend to tackle a number of assumptions that view the Greek crisis as the result of a marked resistance to (neoliberal) structural reforms and the failure to engage constructively with the challenges of globalisation. Instead, we argue that Greece was set on a neoliberal trajectory much before the crisis erupted, and that it is precisely this sustained neoliberalisation process – rather than its absence – that lays behind much of Greece’s current troubles. Secondly, we attempt an assessment of the prospect that SYRIZA’s victory may be signalling the start of a counter-neoliberal mobilisation. Drawing on the work of Brenner and others, we identify four alternative scenarios – capitulation, divorce, compromise, transformation – and discuss their implications for Greece and the Eurozone.     

Rethinking graduated citizenship: Contemporary public housing in Singapore

The ways in which citizenship and housing are implicated in states’ global city aspirations demonstrate significant path dependency and local contingency. This paper serves to broaden the literature that has been dominated by the Western neoliberal context. First, I argue that The Pinnacle@Duxton – a one-of-a-kind public housing project in Singapore – represents the developmental state’s attempt to graduate its homogeneous public housing landscape, providing for and subsidizing the aspirations of a segment of its increasingly affluent middle class to buy into the ideology of the global city. Second, I show how the graduation of public housing coupled with the exaggerated demand for such exclusive projects validates consumer preference pricing in contemporary public housing. This results in a geographical graduation of citizenship, where the bulk of the population is relegated to lesser options on the edges on the island, unable to fulfil their aspirations for global living. In so doing, I make two contributions to extant literature on housing and citizenship in the global city. One, graduating citizenship is not always a case of states realigning their relationship with their citizens to fit the terms of the market. Two, the denial of citizenship to the global city does not always manifest in terms of substantive rights. Appreciating the unique histories and ideologies underpinning housing policies in global cities is instrumental if the variegated meanings of global cities and the citizenships within are to be elucidated.     

From “cartoneros” to “recolectores urbanos”. The changing rhetoric and urban waste management policies in neoliberal Buenos Aires

This study contributes to the existent literature on neoliberal urban governance examining the process-based character of this formation. I maintain that neoliberal governance is a fluid and evolving formation which is continuously being constructed and reconstructed beneath a rhetorical veneer of inevitable emergence and permanence. In this context, this work examines the interconnections between neoliberal urban ascendancy, changing rhetoric and urban waste management policies, and waste pickers (cartoneros), in a case study setting, Buenos Aires. Since 2002, the neoliberal urban governance in Buenos Aires (its institutions, programs and policies) has mobilized different rhetoric and policies to negotiate the waste pickers’ “disturbing” and “dirty” presence in the streets. In that process, the waste pickers, originally marginalized and stigmatized by the neoliberal discourse, have been regulated and disciplined into legal and “well behaved” workers. I would argue that, regulating this activity does not entail giving the waste pickers an opportunity to become central actors in the future of urban waste management in the city. Rather, it is compatible with the logic of the local neoliberal urban projects, focused on disciplining the city’s physical and social landscape as new opportunities for growth and development continue to emerge.     

Conservation by racialized dispossession: The making of an eco-destination on Honduras’s North Coast

Within the context of neoliberal conservation and ecotourism development, the Honduran state has prioritized the desires of foreign tourists and private investors over the needs of indigenous and black coastal inhabitants, and increasingly this is leading to state-sanctioned violence against marginalized groups. I use Peluso’s analytic of coercive conservation (1993) to show how conservation practice furthers the expansionist policies of the state and elite investors while simultaneously dehumanizing the indigenous peoples that depend on natural resources for their livelihoods. While Garífuna culture is central to Honduras’s ecotourism ambitions, their livelihoods, in the eyes of many developers and conservation NGOs, are a potential threat to the viability of the emerging tourism imaginary. Black and indigenous coastal inhabitants are valued for the cultural cache they add to regional tourism plans, yet denigrated for their inherent “backwardness” and presumed inability to respect the delicate ecosystems they inhabit. This imaginary authorizes material practices of racialized dispossession, which were set in motion by neoliberal conservation regimes designed to exploit the natural and cultural resources upon which tourism development is premised.     

After a decade of critique: neoliberal environmentalism,discourse analysis and the promotion of climate-protecting behaviour in the workplace

In a 2004 special issue of Geoforum, McCarthy and Prudham argued that the connections between neoliberalism and the environment had been underexplored in critical scholarship. In an attempt to address this gap, the special issue reflected on a number of different case studies and set the stage for a decade of analysis and critique. This paper aims to contribute to the increasing body of literature by presenting a detailed theoretical analysis of neoliberal environmentalism and its role in modern society. Specifically, the paper focuses on one particular environmental issue – climate change – and uses it to categorise six discourses that either conform to the principles of neoliberalism (reformist) or reject neoliberal ideas (revolutionary). Drawing on interviews with designated ‘climate champions’ (individuals who are given responsibility for promoting climate protecting behaviour) in large corporations, the paper then demonstrates how this kind of typological framework might be applied to the analysis of neoliberal environmentalism in the ‘real world’. The paper finds that neoliberalism played a very influential role in the promotion of climate protecting behaviour in the workplace. However, there was also some limited evidence of resistance in the form of revolutionary discourses and ideas. Going forwards, the typological framework may provide a valuable analytical tool to assess the dominance and resistance of neoliberal environmentalism in the modern world.     

From feeding the locals to selling the locale: Adapting local sustainable food projects in Niagara to neocommunitarianism and neoliberalism

This paper traces attempts to foster local, sustainable food projects in Niagara, Canada as part of community economic development (CED) projects during two distinct periods of provincial governance. In the first period (1990-1995), social democratic government support for local sustainable food projects through CED can be understood as neocommunitarian in nature. During this time there was a concerted attempt to link local people with access to local food and also to support a relationship between local food projects and agri-tourism. I argue that this neocommunitarian policy was an accommodation to a wider and more global neoliberal hegemony and was underlain by a romanticism of petty commodity production and a tenuous link to social and ecological sustainability. In the second period of governance (beginning in 1995) the progressive conservative government led by Mike Harris pursued particularly virulent, revanchist forms of neoliberal governance. With many of their state supports slashed, Niagara NGOs and activists turned, and were pushed, to more market-led, elitist forms of local food projects and agri-tourism. In these latter food projects, the practices of ecological and social sustainability were significantly hollowed out and their local and light green nature was harnessed as accumulation strategies. The paper is based on interviews conducted in the year 2003 with people involved in various urban and rural food projects (including community gardening, community supported agriculture, local/seasonal cuisine, organic/ecological farming and food box programs).     

Old Chico’s new tricks: Neoliberalization and water sector reform in Brazil’s São Francisco River Basin

This article examines changing water governance modalities in the context of the neoliberalization of nature. Specifically, it focuses on Brazilian water sector reforms passed in 1997 that mandate decentralized and participatory decision-making at the river basin scale. Critics have suggested that rescaling, decentralization, and participatory governance mechanisms – supposedly intended to render decision-making more equitable, accessible, and relevant – can serve to legitimate, facilitate, and thus further embed processes of neoliberalization. Examining the impact of Brazil’s water sector reforms on the state–society relationship, this article presents a case study of water governance in the São Francisco River Basin and finds that the reforms – despite their neoliberalizing potential – have not significantly contributed to the neoliberalization of governance therein. Instead, water governance continues to be characterized by longstanding patterns of traditional elite control. Through an institutional and socio-natural analysis, this article describes and accounts for the continued dominance of these patterns relative to neoliberalization and explores activists’ efforts to use water sector reforms to pursue more progressive possibilities. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for variegation and contestation in ongoing debates over neoliberal natures.     

What local people? Examining the Gállok mining conflict and the rights of the Sámi population in terms of justice and power

The global extraction of minerals is commonly located in areas populated by indigenous people; and while conflicts between multinational corporations and local activists and indigenous people are widespread today, the understanding of their dynamics are lacking. The Swedish government’s encouragement to an expanding mining industry has caused resistance due to environmental and social implications, particularly its effect on Sámi reindeer husbandry. The resistance to a mine in Gállok is based on the belief that the right to decide about land use historically falls on the Sámi people, and the right to affect land use is detrimental for the survival of Sámi culture and reindeer husbandry. Although the conflict may be perceived as concerning access to natural resources, we argue that the perceived environmental conflict can be viewed as part of a larger struggle over social status and recognition. Data have been collected using qualitative methods such as observations, interviews and documents. The subsequent analysis relies on a meta-theoretical framework of justice as recognition using a typology of relations of power. Our findings suggest that relations of power constitute different categories of social actors. Stakeholders like the Sámi population are subordinated to more dominant stakeholders such as the government, the company and media, who have ‘more’ power or ‘different’ kinds of power ‘over’ others. Through these asymmetric power relations, historical state-Sámi relations are continuously reproduced within prevailing institutions, and also in this mining conflict. Interviewees from business and the municipality testified to the discourses driven by a neoliberal and profit-focused worldview. Challenging the neoliberal discourse, other stakeholders, namely civil society and Sámi, expressed an alternative discourse based on a local, traditional, cultural, environmental and anti-neoliberal worldview.     

Campaigning culinary documentaries and the responsibilization of food crises

This paper explores the campaigning culinary documentary (CCD) as an emerging format within food television. CCDs bring together elements of the lifestyle genre with an explicit focus on a food ‘crisis’ – such as obesity or animal welfare – and explore how this crisis is to be resolved, usually through the intervention of a food celebrity. Focussing largely on shows made by the UK’s Channel 4 network, we explore the ways in which CCDs narrate issues of responsibilization, whether these target consumers/viewers, the food industry, or the state. Through a reading of selected CCDs from Channel 4’s roster, we consider how the shows attempt to fuse elements of lifestyle/reality TV with a social or political agenda, but one which deploys the governmental strategy of responsibilization and so could be read as an enactment of neoliberal logic. While there is some truth to this claim, our analysis and discussion seeks to complicate this reading, showing how CCDs open up other narrative and political possibilities while also consolidating the brand image of the cookery TV stars who front them.     

Neighborhood revitalization through `collaboration': Assessing the implications of neoliberal urban policy at the grassroots

With the increasing involvement of local citizens and community organizations in carrying out urban planning and service delivery functions formerly handled by state institutions, questions have emerged about their implications for the urban political role and influence of community level actors. Some scholars identify these purportedly collaborative neighborhood revitalization initiatives as part of a neoliberal policy program of downsizing the state, while others argue that the new roles assumed by civic institutions offer new opportunities for citizen involvement in urban policy making and priority setting for revitalization. Drawing evidence from the case of a collaborative revitalization program in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this paper suggests that collaborative revitalization efforts may simultaneously foster both tendencies. By way of the new roles they are assuming in urban governance, grassroots organizations may become engaged in reproducing neoliberal priorities and policies at a highly localized level. At the same time, this involvement does not necessarily eliminate possibilities for community organizations to challenge and revise a neoliberal revitalization agenda.     

Pudrición del Cogollo and the (post-)neoliberal ecological fix in Ecuador's palm oil industry

This paper examines the variegated natures of (post-)neoliberal environmental governance in Latin America using environmental crisis as an entry point. It examines the institutional measures put forth by Ecuador’s government, in concert with other actors, to contain and manage the damaging effects of an insidious palm oil plant disease known as Pudrición del Cogollo (PC). Using empirical data collected through qualitative means, my analysis demonstrates that nature’s biophysical processes – in particular, disease ecologies – can play a crucial role in the pursuit and achievement of national accumulation goals. Specifically, I argue that the ecologies of the PC crisis have been rendered functional to the Ecuadorian government’s current political and economic strategies of intensified accumulation and market competitiveness. By making environmental crisis the basis of key accumulation strategies, the state is able to convert negative environmental outcomes into opportunities for profit-generation. Utilizing the notion of the ‘ecological fix’, this paper reveals two major conclusions: (1) plant health emergencies and the actions used to mitigate environmental crises are not only challenges but opportunities that can be mobilized to support further accumulation strategies and (2) the study of PC and Ecuador’s palm oil industry provides new fruitful terrain to examine the connections between the deepening variegated effects of neoliberalism through nature and environmental crisis solutions in Latin America.     

Disaster resilience in a flood-impacted rural Australian town

This paper reports exploratory research conducted in a flood-impacted rural Australian town to identify the factors which residents perceived as supporting community resilience to disaster. There is a gap in this research area centred in the Australian disaster context. Since Australia is predicted to be highly impacted by the effects of climate change in the form of an increased incidence of flooding, an urgent need exists to examine the factors that confer resilience to disaster-impacted localities to inform suitable disaster mitigation and adaptation policies for the future. Because of the complexity of community resilience and its interrelationship with individual resilience, a multi-method approach was used: a demographic study to assess community stability and functioning before and after the flood disaster, focus group interviews to obtain from community members their views on what supported them and their community resilience and a survey to generalise the interview findings. Our operating hypothesis was that individuals remaining in the town post-flood were likely to be resilient to the flood disaster. The demographic study results pointed to a resilient community after the floods as they reflected stability in population numbers and socio-economic indicators. The interviews and survey showed that individual resilience was promoted by social connectedness and a sense of place, a factor that was also negatively linked to the desire to relocate from the community. The use of structural equation modelling of our results provided verification of prior research findings about the role of sense of place in supporting individuals’ resilience. Results are discussed in the context of future climate change adaptation policy.     

Towards a moral socio-environmental economy: A reconsideration of values

In this intervention article I contribute to discussions of moral economy by arguing that scholars should reconsider the nature of value. Neoliberalism considers only exchange value. As a consequence neoliberal policies try to manage problems such as climate change with economic systems and instruments that are mis-calibrated to the material realities they are meant to represent. Value has spatial and temporal characteristics. Recognizing the spatial and temporal dynamics of value leads to new means of resource valuation, such as extending the time-frame of instruments and changing the nature of privatization. In conclusion, I argue for the need for new theories of use value.     

Source inversion and numerical simulation of 2017 <Emphasis Type="Italic">M</Emphasis><Subscript>w</Subscript> 8.1 Mexico earthquake tsunami

Post-disaster social recovery remains the least understood of the disaster phases despite increased risks of extreme events leading to disasters due to climate change. This paper contributes to advance this knowledge by focusing on the disaster recovery process of the Australian coastal town of Cardwell which was affected by category 4/5 Tropical Cyclone Yasi in 2011. Drawing on empirical data collected through semi-structured interviews with Cardwell residents post-Yasi, it examines issues related to social recovery in the first year of the disaster and 2 years later. Key findings discuss the role played by community members, volunteers and state actors in Cardwell’s post-disaster social recovery, especially with respect to how current disaster risk management trends based on self-reliance and shared responsibility unfolded in the recovery phase. Lessons learnt concerning disaster recovery governance are then extracted to inform policy implementation for disaster risk management to support social recovery and enhance disaster resilience in the light of climate change.     

Anti-poverty politics in Toronto and Mexico City

In recent years, governments at different scales in both North and South have been experimenting with alternative methods of alleviating poverty, and redesigning social welfare regimes. While these changes are not entirely congruent across regimes in North and South, there are interesting points of overlap and intersection. The article lays out three broad alternatives to “roll-back” neoliberalism: intrusive liberalism; inclusive liberalism, and a renewed version of social citizenship. It then lays out how these alternatives have played out in anti-poverty politics in Toronto and Mexico City, two sites where creative strategies contesting neoliberalism have been pursued. While both cities occupy a critical place within their respective political economies, they are not usually compared because of their very different positions in the North American division of labour. Yet, as we argue, they face similar challenges in the form of poverty reduction strategies at the national scale that are based on neoliberal principles that do little to meet the needs of their inhabitants. In response, both cities have provided a site for mobilising resources behind alternative anti-poverty policies, inspired by the principles of social citizenship.     

Communicating earthquake risk to the public: the trial of the “L’Aquila Seven”

The trial and conviction of seven public officials in L’Aquila, central Italy, for having allegedly given out misleading and incorrect information to the public before the 6 April 2009 earthquake has proved to be one of the most momentous developments of recent times in science and disaster risk reduction—and also one of the most misunderstood. It highlights the difficulty in transforming the findings of the earth sciences, which are often characterised by uncertainty, into information that can be used to protect ordinary citizens. This paper describes those elements of the disaster at L’Aquila which are pertinent to the trial and the legal proceedings that followed them. It analyses the political, social and scientific context of the trial, and the reaction of scientists and their institutions in Italy and other countries. I conclude that the defendants were tried as responsible public officials, not as scientists. The mass media in Italy and abroad tended to insist that what was on trial was the ability to predict earthquakes, and this had an enormous influence on the opinion of scientists in many different places. However, the trial was actually about the apparently fatal consequences of misleading the public with “incomplete, imprecise and contradictory information”, as the prosecutors put it. I believe that much of the international reaction to the trial was misguided because it was based on incomplete, second-hand information about the proceedings. If scientists were to make judgements on their own work in such a superficial manner, the results would be highly unreliable and public faith in science would plummet.     

A multi-hazard historical catalogue for the city-island-state of Malta (Central Mediterranean)

The city-island-state of Malta is traditionally viewed as a low-hazard country with the lack of a long historical catalogue of extreme events and their impacts acting as an obstacle to formulating evidence-based policies of disaster risk reduction. In this paper, we present the first multi-hazard historical catalogue for Malta which extends from the Miocene to 2019 CE. Drawing on over 3500 documents and points of reference, including historical documentary data, official records and social media posts, we identify at least 1550 hazard events which collectively have caused the loss of at least 662 lives. Recognising that historical materials relating to Malta are complicated by the presence of a strong temporal bias, we establish a four-point reliability indicator and apply this to each of the 1065 recordings, with the result that some 79% show a high degree of reliability. For an island state where there are significant gaps in the knowledge and understanding of the environmental extremes and their impacts over time, this paper addresses and fills these gaps in order to inform the development of public-facing and evidence-based policies of disaster risk reduction in Malta.

     

Drivers of social media use among African Americans in the event of a crisis

Research has examined the role of social media during the time of a crisis in various fields; however, there is a paucity of research in this area as it relates to tourism. Moreover, few studies have examined at-risk populations, such as tourists, in times of crisis. To assess the drivers of turning to social media during a crisis, a national survey of 1,018 African American travelers was conducted. Respondents were asked to indicate on a 5-point scale the likelihood of turning to social media for information “if they were currently in the middle of their trip and heard that a crisis has just occurred within the immediate vicinity of their current location.” Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine drivers on African American travelers’ decisions to use social media during a crisis. These drivers were age, perceptions of risk during their trip, and frequency and type of social media use engaged in on a regular basis. Overall, findings suggested that when controlling for age only, crime, financial, and physical perceptions of risk drove social media use during a crisis, while controlling for age and perception of risk, use of social media in one's daily life showed no influence.     

It’s not what you eat but how and that you eat: Social media,counter-discourses and disciplined ingestion among amateur competitive eaters

This article interrogates how social media can provide a platform for contesting dominant discourses. It does so through the lens of competitive eating, demonstrating that amateur competitive eaters use social media sites to challenge and subvert mass media representations of their sport while concomitantly upholding normative notions of healthy eating and bodies. Competitors consider themselves to be skilful athletes that discipline and train their bodies to eat. They regard their eating practices, which are often depicted in the mass media as uncontrolled and gluttonous, as controlled ingestion, and present an alternative perspective of their ‘sport’ – a perspective that stresses health, physical expertise and a fit, trained body over voracity and insatiability. Social media acts as a ‘precipitating agency’ for the creation of these alternative definitions of disciplined eating, as well as the construction of new digital eating identities. Instead of focusing on the food being ingested and the ‘Carnivalesque’ practice of competitive eating, we draw attention to the performers’ voices and the ways they attend to the mechanics of gurgitation, including methods of chewing, swallowing and stomach stretching, and their ability to manage, regulate and operate ingestivity. As hegemonic discourses align the notion of ‘good eating’ to discipline, order and restraint, competitive eating is thus revealed to be a practice that mirrors and appropriates, yet also ultimately reproduces, conventional narratives. Social media is, in turn, shown to be a political tool for counter-discursive practices that are produced in dialogue with, and concomitantly uphold and contest, normative discourses of mass media.