Knowledge makes the money go round: Conflicts of interest and corporate finance in London’s financial district

This paper argues that the conflicts of interest cases brought against Wall Street investment banks in the early 2000s were neither geographically nor institutionally isolated events. Rather, by combining recent work on financial knowledges in both economic geography and the social studies of finance with the growing interest in topological spatial imaginaries, I explore how London’s corporate finance industry was unable to distance itself from both the conflicts of interest allegations and the ensuing regulatory changes of the ‘Global Settlement’ in the US. Analysis of 36 semi-structured interviews conducted in London in the early 2000s is used to explore how a range of individual interests, institutional demands and structural changes within London’s financial district affected analysts’ ability to produce ‘objective’ research. As well as pointing to the problematic nature of certain aspects of knowledge rich ‘communities of practice’ [Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge], I explore how the resulting contingent and situated nature of research practice is at odds with a weakly defined notion of ‘objective’ research that underpins the Financial Services Authority’s regulatory response.     

Tales of power in biotechnology regulation: the EU ban on BST

Biotechnology regulation has been dogged by allegations of bias, usually phrased in terms of ‘conflicts of interest’. Social constructionist analyses of regulatory science have shown up serious epistemological difficulties with such ‘interest’ explanations of regulatory power, but in the process they have also destabilised the platforms such as ‘objectivity’, upon which critiques of regulatory bias are usually grounded. This paper argues that their critical impotence follows from not being constructivist enough. Building on Hajer’s notions of ‘story-lines’ and ‘discourse coalitions’, it argues that recovering the non-human, material components that construct regulation offers sufficiently firm ground for evaluating regulatory power even in the absence of the firm benchmarks assumed by interest accounts. The paper develops this approach by focusing on a single story-line, characterised as ‘scientism’, as it is deployed in the build up to a European Union (EU) ban on bovine somatotrophin, the first food-related product of the ‘new biotechnology’. The essay ends by discussing how far this retrospective analysis can help us to understand and intervene in the current and future EU regulation of biotechnology.     

From public to private to … mutual? Restructuring water supply governance in England and Wales

A little over a decade after privatization, the water supply industry in England and Wales is undergoing a period of restructuring; many water companies have withdrawn from equity markets, some have separated asset ownership from operation and maintenance, and others have made proposals to return water supply infrastructure to public control through ‘mutuals’ or ‘customer corporations’. This paper situates the restructuring of the water industry within broader debates over ‘associative self-governance’ taking place in Britain. Underpinned by a conceptual framework drawing on insights from regulation theory, in which governance models are enacted through regulatory practice, the interrelationship between restructuring and re-regulation of the water supply industry is analyzed. The paper argues that the failure of the post-privatization regulatory model to contain the contradictions between stable returns and the efficiency imperative, on the one hand, and politically acceptable rates of return and the equity imperative, on the other, led to a re-regulation of the water supply industry, which was a key factor in restructuring. Restructuring has entailed multiple strategies (diversification, internationalization, vertical de-integration, mutualization, securitization), which are briefly analyzed. In contrast to analyses which depict restructuring as a ‘retreat of the market’, the analysis presented in this paper emphasizes the continuity of the commercial governance model applied in the water supply industry in 1989. In interpreting restructuring as an industry response to re-regulation of services provision, the paper interrogates the incentive structure underpinning current proposals for a ‘mutual’ future for public services in Britain.     

Deconstructing the best case scenario: lessons from water politics in La Paz-El Alto, Bolivia

For nearly a decade the La Paz-El Alto concession in Bolivia was heralded by donor organizations, the state and the commercial water industry alike as an emblematic ‘pro-poor’ water concession under the private sector model. Managed by one of the largest water multinationals in the world (the French company Suez), the network was extended beyond the new connections required by the original ‘pro-poor’ contract, acclaimed as a pioneer of new pro-poor technologies and frequently disseminated internationally as an example of best practice. This paper analyses the La Paz-El Alto concession’s pro-poor image focusing on issues of social exclusion and network extension, contract negotiation, participation and transparency. It documents the rise of social protest about the concession and critiques the failure of neoliberal regulatory systems to promote accountability to the poor. In the context of the continued transnationalisation of the water industry the paper highlights the need for new mechanisms and delivery models to ensure greater national control over private companies and the development of a framework for international water governance.     

A polyphase glacitectonic model for ice-marginal retreat and terminal moraine development: the Middle Pleistocene British Ice Sheet,northern Norfolk,UK

Recent investigations from modern environments demonstrate that many terminal moraines do not simply record a single glacial maximum, but instead reveal a complex oscillatory pattern of ice-marginal behaviour including polyphase retreat. Within this study, we examine the geomorphology, geology and internal structure of a terminal moraine complex – the ‘Cromer Ridge’ in north Norfolk to reconstruct patterns of ice-marginal behaviour. Previously, this landform was interpreted as the limit of a southern extension of the British Ice Sheet during a Middle Pleistocene glaciation. Evidence presented here reveals a more complicated pattern of ice-marginal behaviour with the ‘Cromer Ridge’ reinterpreted as a ‘complex’ comprising several ridge elements. We propose that the maximum ice extent lay further to the south, with the size and morphology of the largest ridge element (the ‘Cromer Ridge’ as previously defined) a facet of thrust-stacking at an ice-marginal still-stand. We recognise multiple oscillations of the ice-front recorded against a twelve-stage model for the decay of the southern margins of a fast-flowing lobe of North Sea ice. Changes in ice-marginal dynamics are identified by the superimposition and lateral and vertical evolution of glacitectonic styles. Differences between these various states, and switches between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ thin-skinned glacitectonics, are strongly influenced by sub-marginal and proglacial water availability. Examination of the evidence for the morphostratigraphic proposals for the glacitectonic assemblage, within the context of the above interpretation, suggests that many of the ‘glacigenic landforms’ are erosional and a MIS 12 age of formation is favoured although several anomalies remain to be explained.     

What is a forest? Competing meanings and the politics of forest classification in Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand

Based on a case study in a Thai forest reserve, this article compares two modes of ‘reading’ the forest - official and local forest classification systems - and discusses how they imply different ideas about the forest, and how these competing knowledges interact with the politics of forest governance. Forest classification conventions are shown to slip, as ‘facts’ about the forest, from their origins in extraction-oriented forestry to the realm of conservation. Through a comparison of conventional vegetation classifications used in the state’s governance of the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand, with the classificatory systems of resident Pwo Karen communities, this paper examines the slippage of conventional classifications through various uses and the emphases placed by competing representations of the forest within the context of conservation politics in Thailand. It was found that conventional classifications continued to prioritise the silvicultural potential of trees within a conservation context, downplaying other notions of forests - such as their importance to livelihoods and as lived spaces - which are present in Karen classifications.     

Mucky carrots and other proxies: Problematising the knowledge-fix for sustainable and ethical consumption

This paper uses evidence from focus groups in England to consider how consumers think about and, more importantly, distinguish foods by both primary and secondary qualities, using both their own judgement but also advice produced by various organisations acting as ‘knowledge intermediaries’, such as independent certification bodies. We thus consider the ‘sorting out’ that consumers do with food, particularly in developing typologies of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’, and the cues on which they base these judgements, from the material immediacy of ‘mucky carrots’ to the abstract remoteness of organic certification. In particular, we problematise the ‘knowledge-fix’ that underlies attempts to provide knowledge to promote more sustainable and ethical consumption. This raises problems of how consumers give assurance schemes meaning, how ethical and sustainable schemes are subject to re-fetishization and how consumers tend towards increasing scepticism and distrust of such claims, thus making a ‘politics of reconnection’ far from easy.     

Manufacturing rural finance in Asia: Institutional assemblages, market societies, entrepreneurial subjects

This paper takes up the proposition that institutions mediate market formation, through a comparative study of rural finance in Nepal and Vietnam. It explores how microfinance, as an iconic institution of ‘roll-out neoliberalism’, articulates political-economic and cultural-political milieux—with particular emphasis given to the ways in which the Vietnamese Party-state has engaged rural finance to further the socialist transition even as it has undergone significant ‘economic renovation’. In so doing, the paper adopts a processual interpretation of institutions not as bounded structures, but as arenas of ongoing debate over culturally constructed meanings and ‘practices of assemblage’ [Li, T.M., 2007a. Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society 36 (2), 263–293] that are inextricably linked with wider-scale political-economic and cultural-political formations. A comparative approach is pursued here to emphasize spatio-temporal contingencies in the articulation of a market-led development institution with specific national regulatory frameworks and political cultures. A critical-geographical orientation helps to deepen Polanyi’s proposition that the economy is an instituted process, to challenge the prevailing binary opposition between state- and market-led development, account for the multiple scales at which power and interest reside in the formation of markets, and highlight the variable ways in which markets are embodied and enacted in particular places.     

The Commonwealth, ‘development’ and post-colonial responsibility

One important (though often neglected) part of the ‘development business’ committed to principles of partnership is the Commonwealth, a voluntary association of 54 independent countries, almost all of which were formerly under British rule. This paper focuses on the Commonwealth’s contemporary sense of ‘responsibility’ for shaping African development through ‘partnership’ and by promoting ‘good governance’ and examines the particular example of Mozambique, which joined the Commonwealth in 1995. In exploring exactly what membership of this post-colonial ‘family’ has meant for Mozambique the paper explores the neocolonial paternalism and sense of trusteeship that the Commonwealth has articulated in its often very apolitical vision of African development which seems to lock the continent into a permanent stage of tutelage and to repetitively reduce Africa to a set of core deficiencies for which externally generated ‘solutions’ must be devised. More generally, the paper also examines the wider context of the Commonwealth’s involvement in Africa by looking at the connections it has made to British industry, British charities and the British Department for International Development (DFID). The paper concludes with an assessment of the ‘showcase’ potential of Mozambique and its importance to Commonwealth and DFID narrations of an African ‘success’ story of peace, stability and growth since the end of the country’s devastating civil war in 1992.     

Security and the future: Anticipating the event of terror

This paper explores the relation between processes of security and futurity in the context of efforts to govern the complexity and contingency of events of terror. It argues that processes of securing function by generating a dangerous or promissory supplement to the present that thereafter propels the extension of forms of security. The paper develops this argument through an example of how an event of terror was anticipated: a RAND exercise into the aftermath of a ‘ground burst’ nuclear explosion in Long Beach, California on March 14th 2005. It argues that exercises (in)secure through three quasi-causal operations, each of which render events of terror actionable and result in specific relations between the present and future. First, ‘hypothetically possible’ generic events are named. The future takes place as a threatening horizon. Second, the defined phases of an event’s happening are staged (an advent, its multiplication into a crisis in the context of a milieu, and a response/recovery phase). The here and now is suspended between an ‘as if’ future and the present. Third, the consequences of the event are played. The future is both an intensified ‘practical’ presence embodied by exercise participants and an outside that exceeds attempts to definitively know it. The conclusion summarises the implications of the paper for work on futurity, security and the event.     

Unbundling Stockholm: The networks, planning and social welfare nexus beyond the unitary city

This paper focuses on the extent to which recent infrastructure-oriented urban developments in Stockholm concord with various aspects of the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis of Graham and Marvin. This contextualisation allows us to extend their work empirically and conceptually. In the first instance, we study a particular case of the decline of a unitary networked city (in an urban context largely absent from their book). In the second instance, we develop their notion of ‘unbundling’ to capture not just core changes in the organisation of infrastructure provision, but an overarching disjunction of the established nexus between networks, planning and social welfare in the city. This disjunction operates through interlinked transformations concerning, for example, privatisation and outsourcing in network services, separation of infrastructure planning from broader urban planning, contradictions between the environmental and social mandates of infrastructure, and a (prospective) curtailment of the redistributive, social role of essential network service provision. We conclude nonetheless that this ‘destructive’ moment of unbundling has not so far been pursued by more explicitly ‘creative’ urban fragmentation strategies, due largely to the vestiges of a socio-political consensus based around redistribution and equality. In this respect, the Stockholm case pleads for a conception of ‘splintering’ as a dynamic and multi-stage process which is not only always ongoing, unstable and incomplete, but also non-linear and open to resistance/regulation.     

Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control and conflict

This article argues that resource access, use, control, ownership and conflict are not only mediated through social relations of power, but also through emotional geographies where gendered subjectivities and embodied emotions constitute how nature-society relations are lived and experienced on a daily basis. By engaging the insights from feminist political ecology literatures and emotional geographies literatures, the article demonstrates that resource struggles and conflicts are not just material challenges but emotional ones, which are mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions. Such a focus fleshes out the complexities, entanglements and messy relations that constitute political ecologies of resources management, where practices and processes are negotiated through constructions of gender, embodiments, and emotions. Abstractions of ‘resource struggles’ and ‘resource conflicts’ are thereby grounded in embodied emotional geographies of places, peoples, and resources, enabling us to better understand the ways resources and emotions come to matter in everyday survival struggles. This framing can enrich feminist political ecology theorizations and texture our understandings of commonly-used terms such as access, use, control, conflict and struggles vis-à-vis natural resources in any context. In other words, we are better able to conceptualize and explain how and why people access, use, and struggle over resources the ways they do. A case study of drinking water contamination from Bangladesh is used to develop the theoretical arguments in contributing to existing debates in (feminist) political ecologies.     

‘Digging-up’ Utopia? Space, practice and land use heritage

In this paper we explore history and heritage mobilised to do service for marginalized interests. We discuss how resources, such as, place, texts, artefacts and practice are drawn upon to forward particular political interests. Touching on recent work in non-representational theory we suggest that more attention be paid to the micro-politics of doing and link more formal action to that of ‘everyday’ practice. The examples used show how particular actors draw on history and heritage to advance their positions and how their performances reinforce claims based on alternative practices. The examples used illustrate how this involves the notion of ‘reclaiming’ historical action, historical texts and historical place. In particular how this relates to land and specifically in this paper the metaphor, representation and practice of ‘digging’.     

GMOs and their contexts: A comparison of potential and actual performance of GM crops in a local agricultural setting

In this paper, I argue that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have inherent potential to contribute to socially and environmentally sustainable agriculture by virtue of their ‘biological embeddedness’. Their actual ‘performance’ and how this contributes to sustainability depends on the ‘mutual shaping’ of technology and context. While much attention has been given to the design context of GMOs, this paper considers the influence of the application context and of users. A case study investigating the use of insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant GM cotton in the cotton-growing region of New South Wales in Australia is presented. The study was based on focus groups with farmers and other stakeholders in a cotton-growing community. It demonstrated a range of direct and indirect effects of GM cotton use, both positive and negative for sustainability, and the ways in which these effects were influenced by the local social context. The influences of the biotechnology industry context, in limiting the contributions that gene technologies can make to sustainability, were also considered, and remedies suggested. I argue that the polarity of the GM debate is hindering progress on these issues, and that a more balanced approach to our analysis of GMOs is necessary in order to fully understand, and to influence, their role in the future of rural spaces.     

Bungalows, mansions and shophouses: Encounters in architourism

In architourism, tourists are attracted to places because of iconic buildings. Increasingly, non-iconic buildings of vernacular architectural styles are also appreciated by visitors as a way to authentically experience a place. This paper explores architourism in Malaysia and Singapore through the lens of historic boutique hotels. Geographical discourses in and methodologies of architectural geography are used to interrogate what these hotels mean for guests and hoteliers, and the effects on them too. Empirical findings deepen understanding of architourism through examining how ‘producers’ create culturally authentic environments in boutique hotels, and how ‘consumers’ utilise hotels to experience local cultures. The dual focus on production and consumption is in-line with critical architectural geography’s insistence on exploring the rhetoric of building design as well as the realities of their everyday uses and users.     

(Re-)Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework

This article demonstrates how a feminist political ecology (FPE) framework can be utilized to expand scholarly conceptualizations of water inequality in Delhi, India. I argue that FPE is well positioned to complement and deepen urban political ecology work through attending to everyday practices and micropolitics within communities. Specifically, I examine the embodied consequences of sanitation and ‘water compensation’ practices and how patterns of criminality are tied to the experience of water inequality. An FPE framework helps illuminate water inequalities forged on the body and within particular urban spaces, such as households, communities, streets, open spaces and places of work. Applying FPE approaches to the study of urban water is particularly useful in analyzing inequalities associated with processes of social differentiation and their consequences for everyday life and rights in the city. An examination of the ways in which water practices are productive of particular urban subjectivities and spaces complicates approaches that find differences in distribution and access to be the primary lens for viewing how water is tied to power and inequality.     

Models,validation, and applied geochemistry: Issues in science,communication, and philosophy

Models have become so fashionable that many scientists and engineers cannot imagine working without them. The predominant use of computer codes to execute model calculations has blurred the distinction between code and model. The recent controversy regarding model validation has brought into question what we mean by a ‘model’ and by ‘validation.’ It has become apparent that the usual meaning of validation may be common in engineering practice and seems useful in legal practice but it is contrary to scientific practice and brings into question our understanding of science and how it can best be applied to such problems as hazardous waste characterization, remediation, and aqueous geochemistry in general. This review summarizes arguments against using the phrase model validation and examines efforts to validate models for high-level radioactive waste management and for permitting and monitoring open-pit mines. Part of the controversy comes from a misunderstanding of ‘prediction’ and the need to distinguish logical from temporal prediction. Another problem stems from the difference in the engineering approach contrasted with the scientific approach. The reductionist influence on the way we approach environmental investigations also limits our ability to model the interconnected nature of reality. Guidelines are proposed to improve our perceptions and proper utilization of models. Use of the word ‘validation’ is strongly discouraged when discussing model reliability.     

Making Alzheimer’s disease matter. Enacting, interfering and doing politics of nature

This article contributes to recent discussions about the politics of nature by exploring how Alzheimer’s disease is being shaped as a ‘matter of concern’. Drawing on work on differences in medicine from science and technology studies, and from the geographies of naturecultures, it explores the ‘mattering’ of this disease in a number of locations including: an international Alzheimer’s patients’ movement; a medical textbook; laboratory science; daily care practice; an advertisement for anti-dementia medication; general practice; parliamentary politics; and a conference on dementia. It explores how these locations interfere and co-exist with one another and argues against the ‘science centrism’ of science and technology studies which contributes to the dominance of science and medicine by granting these analytical privilege. The same problem is posed in the recent STS turn from science to politics - the danger is that politics is similarly privileged.     

The complex mobilities of homeless people in rural England

This paper explores the interconnected issues of mobility, power and meaning in the context of rural homelessness. It explores two common assumptions relating to these interconnections: that rural homeless people move to cities thereby transposing homelessness into an urban problem; and that mobility is deeply implicated in the mapping of moral codes in rural areas. Drawing on a range of interviews with homeless people, and workers with homelessness agencies in the rural areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, the paper discusses four types of movement: ‘local’ homeless people moving out of rural areas; ‘local’ homeless people moving within rural areas; homeless ‘incomers’ moving to rural areas; and itinerant/transient homeless people moving through rural areas. The complex mobilities of rural homeless people influence common ideas about where homelessness occurs and how it is experienced. These mobilities also affect how homelessness is ‘made known’ in rural areas, as different elements of the mobility of homeless people are discursively scattered amongst identity labels and policy arenas other than homelessness. Finally, homeless mobilities problematise the adequacy and nature of policy responses to homelessness in rural areas.     

Hybridity emergent: Geo-history, learning, and land restitution in South Africa

Market-Led Agrarian Reform (MLAR), which is advocated by the World Bank and is being implemented in various contexts around the world, is a more neo-liberal approach to land reform than that we have seen implemented in the past. MLAR principles have underpinned South Africa’s land reform programme, being based on the ‘willing-seller, willing-buyer’ principle, which guarantees market-related prices to sellers. Evidence presented in this paper, however, raises serious questions about the extent to which the South African government has held on to MLAR principles. Specifically, the paper argues that South Africa’s peculiar geo-historical context has in some instances led the government to fuse market-led approaches with more authoritarian interventions that dictate to land reform beneficiaries how the land will be used. A case in point is the government’s approach to the restitution of land rights to communities dispossessed from the Levubu area of Limpopo province. As the paper illustrates, the government has imposed on the intended beneficiaries a so-called ‘strategic partnership’ between them and agribusinesses. Although the government touts the approach as a way to protect the commercial viability of the land and to transfer skills from white farmers to the beneficiaries, the terms of the Levubu solution may turn out to be less than favourable for the beneficiaries.