The praxis and politics of building urban dashboards

This paper critically reflects on the building of the Dublin Dashboard – a website built by two of the authors that provides citizens, planners, policy makers and companies with an extensive set of data and interactive visualizations about Dublin City, including real-time information – from the perspective of critical data studies. The analysis draws upon participant observation, ethnography, and an archive of correspondence to unpack the building of the dashboard and the emergent politics of data and design. Our findings reveal four main observations. First, a dashboard is a complex socio-technical assemblage of actors and actants that work materially and discursively within a set of social and economic constraints, existing technologies and systems, and power geometries to assemble, produce and maintain the website. Second, the production and maintenance of a dashboard unfolds contextually, contingently and relationally through transduction. Third, the praxis and politics of creating a dashboard has wider recursive effects: just as building the dashboard was shaped by the wider institutional landscape, producing the system inflected that landscape. Fourth, the data, configuration, tools, and modes of presentation of a dashboard produce a particularised set of spatial knowledges about the city. We conclude that rather than frame dashboard development in purely technical terms, it is important to openly recognize their contested and negotiated politics and praxis.     

The politics of urban entrepreneurialism in Glasgow

North American literature on the changing role of the local state these past two decades has been dominated by the view of a transition from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. Associated with the transition has been the emergence of a New Urban Politics (NUP). Within a political economy framework. the NUP has been rooted in the material redistributive effects of the transition. This paper explores the character of this NUP, as experienced by one British city, and highlights some fundamental differences with the established political economy reading. Our argument, based upon the city of Glasgow, draws attention to two distinctive features. First, the institutional structure of urban governance in Glasgow differs from that of cities in the United States. In Glasgow, it has been the Left controlled local Council which has orchestrated the transition to entrepreneurialism, rather than the North American model of a coalition between local capital and the local state. Secondly, the transition in Glasgow has been marked not by a significant transfer of local state revenue from service provision to local economic development, but by a symbolic reorientation of the local state as marked by the central importance of large place marketing hallmark events. These events represent the city in ways which differ from traditional ‘self’ identities. Consequently, the transition has evoked a political response which has focused upon the symbolic posturing of the local state rather than the material consequences of the shift. In focusing upon local identity, the politics of urban entrepreneurialism in Glasgow points to a dimension of conflict which has received inadequate treatment in accounts of the NUP to date.     

The politics of the British inner city

The reasons for the recent revival of the debate about the inner cities and its implications for geographical thinking are analysed. Changing government policies towards inner cities since the initial declaration of intent by the Labour government in 1968 are described, and the more recent Conservative government emphasis upon privatization, enterprise, deregulation and flexibility is discussed. Academic interest currently focuses on the way in which the terms of the debate are set politically with the concept of the ‘inner city’ being defined and redefined according to the political priorities of policy-makers. Running parallel with this process is the ‘imagineering’ of place, whereby places are sold on the basis of deliberately created images. Discussion of the London Docklands highlights the mixed record of redevelopment compared with the images purveyed by government and other agencies. A ‘hidden agenda’ (of race or dismantling of local government power) is shown to underlie political rhetoric about inner cities. The inner city thus emerges as a key ideological battleground between contending political groupings.     

国内外岩芯数字化信息发布平台建设进展

岩芯数字化是以岩芯为对象,通过采用现代信息技术(表面图像扫描、物理参数扫描、化学参数扫描(高光谱矿物扫描、XRF岩芯扫描)、互联网技术等),开展岩芯信息提取、整合、研究、发布服务等,为地质工作者科学研究、找矿等开发利用提供实体和信息资源,本文通过梳理国内外岩芯数字化信息发布服务工作进展,介绍了各国岩芯数字化信息发布平台案例,总结对比了我国岩芯数字化信息建设存在的问题,提出了下一步制定岩芯数字化标准、搭建一个平台、加强岩芯多参数数字化的工作建议。     

The new politics of pastoralism: Identity,justice and global activism

Concerns with the politics and practices of resource rights and access are integral to contemporary debates over environmental justice. Struggles over identity politics, especially the strategic articulation and deployment of particular identities at diverse geographical scales, have recently emerged as important mediators of justice claims in respect of resources rights, but also of recognition and procedural justice. To date, critical, multi-scalar analyses of identity-based claims for environmental justice have focused largely on the indigenous peoples’ movement. In doing so, they have failed to embrace an emergent dimension of identity-based, trans-scalar justice, namely the fledgling global pastoralists’ movement, the empirical focus for this paper. In the early years of the 21st century mobile pastoralists have begun to carve out new global spaces, through which diverse groups have attempted to negotiate common ground and forge common identities in their struggles for justice. In particular, mobile pastoralists have become increasingly visible in conservation politics and contests over land rights as they lay claim to both discursive and material ground as ‘custodians of the commons’ in an era of global climatic change. This paper draws on empirical work amongst pastoralists, NGOs and activists from Kenya, Mongolia and Spain to explore these identities, their implications for resource rights and access and the multi-scalar chains of accountability and legitimacy between global activists and their local constituents.     

The spatial knowledge politics of crisis mapping for community development

Crisis mapping, the combination of software-as-a-service mapping and reporting aimed at large numbers of individuals, is proposed for chronic problems as well as acute issues; it is universalized for global south disasters as well as global north community development. It supposedly affords a new spatial knowledge politics (SKP) that unfolds in local communities. We tested the role of spatial knowledge politics in crisis mapping for community development by co-developing, with local organizations, four applications based on the prominent mapping-telecommunications crisis platform, Crowdmap by Ushahidi. We assessed crisis mapping’s effectiveness in North American community based activities in Francophone and Anglophone Canada. We found persistent technical challenges, consistent with the literature, although crisis mapping allowed increased opportunities for the developer to insert their knowledge. Analysis of the contributions illustrated the use of crisis mapping to report on place-based features that enabled contributors to connect, but also limited the ability to express location and place in 160 characters. It revealed tensions in conceptualization of local spatial knowledge politics as witness versus political influence. Crisis mapping could simultaneously aid and disrupt traditional place-based politics of community based organizations. Our critique serves as a test of crisis mapping’s universality for other fields and its promise of a new SKP.     

Performing democracy and violence,agonism and community,politics and not politics in Sri Lanka

The paper examines the construction of the political as a space of contestation in Sri Lanka. Empirically, the article draws on two different field projects, one locating in a Sinhala village in the south of the country in the early 1980s, the other in a Muslim town in the East in the late 2000s. The case studies concentrate on the relationship between religion and politics, and specifically the way in which religion – Buddhism, Islam – is presented as a privileged space for expressions of community, unsullied by the agonistic consequences of the political. The paper at once draws on, and critiques, certain strands of radical democracy theory which have been widely discussed in recent political geography.     

Golf and the environmental politics of modernization

In this critical review we reflect on findings from a socio-historical study of golf’s relationship with the environment. We focus especially on the golf industry’s pursuit of modernization from the early 1900s to the present. Golf’s quest to ‘be’ modern, we contend, has specifically constituted three particular ‘turns’: a first turn in the early 1900s involving the scientific rationalization of golf course development and maintenance; a second, ‘exemptionalist’ turn in the post-war years whereby science and technology fueled a perception of immense control over nature; and a third, more recent turn to ecological modernization (EM) whereby science and technology are leveraged toward environmental stewardship – or at least claims thereof. We ultimately argue that the golf industry’s recent adoption of EM principles in their environment-related work has political implications, as it ‘protects’ the industry from more radical environmental alternatives.     

The politics of identity: Ethnicity, minority and nationalism in Soviet Estonia

Identity has become one of the core concepts of political geography. This reflects the wide recognition of a post-structural conception of society and space, as well as the acknowledgement of the political character of identity. The present article focuses on the politics of identity, and discusses the politicized forms of identity as related to the Soviet state building policies and the Estonian spaces of resistance. It will be argued that neither identity nor the political demand in Soviet Estonia can be viewed in isolation from their historical and social contexts. Both Soviet state politics and the Estonian spaces of resistance reflected the prevailing conceptions of past and the contemporary political realities. This article examines those preconceptions of the political and territorial development in Soviet Estonia, and also illustrates the interdependent character of state politics and non-state activism. The first part of the article concentrates on the Soviet state building practices – the use of power, symbols, education – and the second part examines the various forms of non-state activism of Estonians.     

Jamaican tourism and the politics of enjoyment

Critical approaches to tourism, united by a refusal to conceptualize tourism as mere enjoyment, illustrate how Third World tourism typically involves labor exploitation, unequal gender relations, cultural destruction, and environmental degradation. Researchers presuppose, however, that enjoyment is an innocent and self-evident psychological phenomenon underpinned by and opposed to worthier objects of inquiry such as exploitation, domination, and discrimination by virtue of their politically serious, conceptually profound, and empirically complex properties. These critical approaches, however, are not critical insofar as they tacitly assume that the phenomenon of enjoyment is just enjoyment: easily enjoyed and unrelated to the problems of tourism. The main thesis of this paper is that a thorough theoretical conceptualization of enjoyment is necessary for any analysis of tourism to be sufficiently rigorous. The psychoanalytic concepts of Jacques Lacan and the work of Slavoj ?i?ek offer an unparalleled theoretical vocabulary with which to investigate the subjective, material, embodied, discursive, and enacted dimensions of enjoyment in tourism. The paper elaborates what I call a politics of enjoyment using key psychoanalytic ideas that include jouissance, the pleasure principle, the Other, and fantasy to critically explicate the contradictions, antagonisms, and impasses that (de)structure Jamaica's “One Love” and “No Problem” tourism product located on a Caribbean island renowned for beach bliss and civil unrest.     

Urban planning and politics in Ghana

Through an analysis of Ghana’s political and administrative structure, which established the basis of urban planning practice, this paper shows how urban planning has failed to create liveable and functional cities in Ghana. This paper uses semi-structured interviews and agency consultations to supplement document reviews and news paper articles to address the dearth of research on the subject in Ghana. Findings show that dominant political elites, with little or no urban planning background, control and dictate urban planning activities resulting in chaotic scenes and urban blight across Ghanaian cities. Analyses here reinforce the growing recognition that urban planning outcomes in Ghana, and most African countries are not shaped by professional practice and do not reflect the aspirations of the community, but instead political elites. Urban planning agencies are left vulnerable as their activities are interfered, dictated and hindered by both traditional and mainstream political elites. This paper advocates for independence of urban planning agencies in the performance of their duties.     

Labour struggles and the formation of demands: The spatial politics of Red Clydeside

This paper combines labour history and labour geography through an analysis of the making of labour demands in Glasgow during the early twentieth century. The paper asserts how revisiting histories such as Red Clydeside reveals complexities within labour movements and links to more recent debates within labour geography. Archival research provides a relational account of the place-based politics of Glasgow that emerged during the forty hours movement in 1919. This allows the paper to juxtapose the broader international linkages forged by Scottish workers alongside racialised hostilities within the city. In particular, the paper compares and contrasts the progressive internationalism of the strike newspaper with the Broomielaw race riot between local and foreign sailors during the same month as the strike. This comparison also raises the longer-term trajectories of labour grievances to foreground the ambivalent and contested nature of labour demands, identities and histories. In particular, the paper pays close attention to contrasting practices of labour internationalism emerging from the relevant archives. This historical approach makes a broader contribution to debates within labour geography by engaging with the complexities and tensions of labour organising and demand making.     

The politics of barstool biology: Environmental knowledge and power in greater Northern Yellowstone

Critical researchers of underdevelopment have established a well-known record celebrating the environmental knowledges of subsistence communities in contested wildlife conservation zones. Similar battles are being fought over science, uncertainty, and wild animals in the American west, however, with far less attention to local epistemologies. Often dismissed as “barstool biology”, the ecological knowledges of local hunters in the Northern Yellowstone ecosystem are rooted in environmental experience and situated politics. How does local hunter knowledge diverge or converge with that of state officials, environmentalists, ranchers, and other constituencies, and to what effect on wildlife management policy? This paper seeks to answer that question, reviewing recent research amongst local resource users, managers, and activists in Montana. By rendering empirical the question of local knowledge around America’s oldest national park, rather than trying to “read it off” political affiliation, education, or livelihood, a clearer picture of power, knowledge, and conservation emerges. The results suggest that emerging management policies have developed from the discursive alliance of landowners, outfitters, and environmentalists, shifting priorities towards enclosure and exclusion in wildlife at the expense of other silent constituencies.