Science and security expertise: Authority,knowledge, subjectivity

What role does science play in shaping the political? This themed issue brings together scholars from political science, human geography, natural science and related fields with the common aim of exploring links between science/expertise and politics with a specific focus on security implications. The increasing attention to threats and risks related to issues such as climate change, migration, energy security, or emerging technologies creates a demand for new types of experts and expertise relevant for security politics. By looking at the actors who operate at the boundary between science, bureaucracy and security politics, this themed issue seeks to destabilize the notion of an apolitical sphere of science and expertise, while at the same time demonstrating how the politics of expertise shapes the authority and subjectivity of scientists and reconfigures the meanings and roles of scientific knowledge. In this editorial, we connect relevant literatures and introduce the individual articles that compose the themed issue.     

Bio(in)security,scientific expertise,and the politics of post-disarmament in the biological weapons regime

The increasing focus on new biological risks and threats together with unsatisfactory progress in international negotiations about biological disarmament have opened up new questions about the further development of the biological weapons regime. The present paper focuses on the politics of biological (post-)disarmament from the perspective of critical security studies and scrutinizes the changing role of scientific experts in relation to the shifting understanding of the threat of bioweapons. Specifically, it argues that the move toward a networked approach to biosecurity governance relying on an increasing role of experts and nonstate actors may be read in the context of a broader insecuritization of biological risks and threats and the evolution of new techniques of government. Drawing on sociological approaches in security studies, the paper unfolds the connections between the construction of biosecurity and the politics of expertise and explores the changing role of scientific experts in biological disarmament. The paper also finds that the attempts to manage bio-insecurity create demand for new types of expertise and empower actors with a specific form of knowledge who can navigate in the changed structural environment, and enable new forms of governing security.     

Contesting expertise: The politics of environmental knowledge in northern Indian groundwater practices

The world is facing a severe water crisis. According to the UN, by 2025 50% of the world’s population will face water scarcity. In India, where 70% of irrigation and 80% of domestic needs are met with groundwater, demand for this resource is expected to exceed supply by 2020. This has led to recent calls for groundwater governance reforms within India, and specifically within the state of Rajasthan, where no regulation exists today. The success of these reforms hinges on the interaction of the state and its agents with local users and managers of groundwater resources. Underpinning these encounters, though, are tensions between local and state forms of groundwater knowledges. The question analyzed here is in what ways do conflicting environmental knowledges adversely affect the management of overexploited groundwater resources in water-scarce India? To address this question, I examine the coevolution of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence groundwater and irrigation knowledges and technologies in Rajasthan, India to expose the ways that they are produced, contested, legitimated, and hybridized. The paper argues the following three claims. First, the relationship between the state and local producers of groundwater knowledge practices is non-linear and porous. For instance, the way that state subjects experience the state is uneven because within and in-between historical moments the state may attempt to assimilate, reorganize, plagiarize, or disparage local knowledge. Second, these attempts produce or exacerbate existing historically rooted tensions between farmers and state groundwater engineers. But in response, farmers often seek out non-state avenues of expertise, such as tubewell drilling firms. This results in the further hybridization of knowledge practices and also in the present-day marginalization of the state. Third, the relationship between farmers and the state is further strained because of a current lack of state visibility in the study area and also because the state continues to “see like a state”. These shifting meanings and power relations around groundwater and irrigation knowledges produce tensions that will undoubtedly negatively impact future groundwater governance strategies.     

Unfolding scientific expertise and security in the changing governance of Ecosystem Services

Within the past few decades, the idea of global Ecosystem Services (ES) has moved center stage in environmental and sustainability debates. The academic and policy discourse behind Ecosystem Service protection appears to have changed from a more ecological focus on habitat restoration to a predominantly economic one revolving around human well-being. The aim of this paper is to unfold the coupling between scientific expertise and security in the changing governance of ES. We employ a ‘securitization’ lens to advance our understanding of the recent change in the governance of ecosystems, as we reflect on the role of scientific expertise at the boundary between science and security. Empirically, we analyze how scientific experts, as securitizing actors, frame the degradation and loss of ES as an existential threat to human security thereby justifying measures to reverse these trends. In order to trace how the voices of scientific experts shape policies to govern ES we apply bibliometric analysis and an opinion-based survey to first identify who produces the scientific knowledge published, and then follow how key scientific experts link to policy-making arenas and use security framings. Lastly, we discuss the implications of the shifting discourse surrounding ES, and we reflect on our own positionality and approach, as we string together our findings to contribute to the debate about environmental expertise and governance, and the authority of scientific knowledge.     

The university as a local source of expertise

The relationship between the university and the city is expressed, amongst others, by the transfer of knowledge from the university to local actors. The universitys role as a local source of knowledge is studied by analyzing the outflow of the two main knowledge assets to the local area: graduates and research results. By comparing the results from universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom comparative evidence is discussed.     

Epistemology and conceptions of people and nature in geography

The paper attempts to integrate two major issues of debate in geography which are conventionally discussed separately: epistemology and conceptions of the relationship between people and Nature. Whichever issue we start with, two concepts are essential: intersubjectivity and labour. Knowledge of natural objects is tied to labour, which both subjects ideas to a kind of test and changes our position within Nature. All knowledge depends upon intersubjective understanding between people, but this implies that in social science, and hence in human geography, the traditional subject-object relationship should be recast as a form of communication between ‘knowing-subjects’. These relationships are not limited to some separate sphere of epistemology but are constitutive of society in Nature itself. Labour, though traditionally overlooked in geography, is the most active and transformative process in changing Nature and society, and intersubjectivity is an essential element of the irreducibly social character of human life. In this attempt, the paper outlines and justifies a historical materialist perspective through critical engagement with positivist and humanist approaches. It is then argued that false conceptions of people and Nature in geography are grounded in the structure and selfunderstanding of our own society such that a critique of these ideas becomes a critique of our society.     

Teaching GIS in the Gulf Co-operation Council Universities – With a case study of the geography department, University of the United Arab Emirates

Within universities there has developed a clear theoretical convergence between Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and geography (Antenuccl, 1991). Studies have revealed that one of the qualified departments to teach GIS within universities is the geography department. This study focuses on: the importance of establishing GIS as a major curriculum element within universities. In geography departments, economic geography students require a strong statistical/mathematical background to allow them to work with major databases. They should know how to design a specific database for economic activities, such as agriculture and manufacturing, and tertiary industry and how to relate this database to a map, so that changes can be monitored more accurately. In any aspect of geography spatial location is a key factor and GIS allows spatial patterns to be interpreted with great facility. Therefore it is important that students have a good knowledge not only of computers and related software on economic geography, but also on GIS systems (Burrough, 1993). The work of geography students from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) geography departments is examined to evaluate the importance of training in GIS technology. This paper evaluates the effects of implementing GIS as a tool in teaching economic geography. At present there are 15 geography departments in the GCC which offer economic geography. Of those 15 departments, only 3 provide GIS courses within their curriculum, and 4 have basic equipment, although 6 additional departments are to introduce GIS in the near future. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Fleshing out expertise: The making of creative industries experts in the United Kingdom

The place of expertise in modern systems of government continues to be of concern to critical social scientists. Recent years have seen something of a shift away from conceptions of expertise that tended to see it as distant, overly technical and aligned with the needs of the state and capital. Expertise is increasingly recognised as having a more complex relation with the subjects of government than just as a means for shoring up authority, offering them a space for engagement, critique and counter-expertise. This paper argues that focusing on particular experts and their changing roles in governmental assemblages can flesh out one-dimensional conceptions of expertise and provide insights into governmental change. Drawing on a variety of literature, it is argued that expertise can usefully be conceived as; first, a social relation based on one party having access to knowledge which gives them authority over another; second, as distributed across a governmental assemblage in a particular way, with some expert relations being positioned to have more influence, understood here as expert power, across the assemblage; and third, as a matter of strategic engagement on the part of experts located in particular epistemic communities seeking to gain expert power. The potential of this perspective is explored through an analysis of an emergent expert system for the creative industries in the UK where a small community of actors have realigned their practices and cast themselves as creative industries experts. This has allowed then to reshape the governmental assemblage forming around this economic sector in a direction favourable to their own ideas. It is concluded that efforts to convert expertise into greater expert power is a key dynamic transforming governmental assemblages.     

From regime protection to urban resilience? Assessing continuity and change in transnational security governance rationales in Guatemala

This article analyzes changing forms of transnational security governance and security expertise in Guatemala. It is argued that the dynamics of transnational security governance in Guatemala are directly related to the local appropriation of knowledge promoted by external security experts. As an expertise-based form of “intervention by invitation,” local political and economic elites engage in securitization strategies in order to invite external experts to intervene. In turn, through their intervention these experts provide resources that are “captured” and exploited by local actors to pursue their own interests. As a consequence, transnational security governance fails as it deviates from the original plans and programs experts try to implement. The analysis of these processes sheds light on how and why failure in the context of transnational security governance is productive. Failure, we argue, triggers a self-reinforcing interventionary feedback loop that aims at “fixing” the shortcomings of previous interventions by mobilizing new forms of external security expertise. In tracing the dynamics of this interventionary feedback loop over time, this article contributes to understanding of the role of experts and policy failure in the (re)making of transnational security governance.     

Illuminating the practice of Knowledge Exchange as a ‘pathway to impact’ within an Arts and Humanities Research Council ‘Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange’ project

This article is concerned with the practice of Knowledge Exchange (KE) within the creative economy. Drawing on material collected as part of an ethnographic study of a small creative business support agency – Cultural Enterprise Office – based in Glasgow, Scotland, the article argues for a nuanced consideration of the complexities of doing KE in the creative economy. The study in question was titled ‘Supporting Creative Business’ and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its Creative Economy Knowledge Exchange programme. This article describes the practice of KE, and the role that it might play as a ‘pathway to impact’. I explore the often-mundane activities that constitute KE ‘on the ground’, and argue for further attention to be paid to what I call ‘informal KE’. This article contributes directly to ongoing debates in geography about the effect that the impact agenda is having on academic practice. More specifically, the article examines the role of academics vis-à-vis consultants and other knowledge producers within the creative economy.     

Strategies and tactics for local market making in the Temporary Staffing Industry

This paper examines the increasing complexity of interactions between temporary staffing agencies and their client firms within the local labour market of Birmingham, UK. Temporary Staffing Agencies have been identified as active and influential agents in local, national and international labour markets. Their influence on local labour market functioning, national labour regulation and international regulatory frameworks is growing. Existing literature demonstrates the power of large multinational temporary staffing agencies in both established and emerging temporary staffing markets. Such analyses also contend that multinational agencies operate in very different ways to smaller independent ‘back-street’ temporary staffing agencies, with different types of clients and at different ends of the market. However, the research conducted in Birmingham, UK suggests that the reality is more complex. It is argued that there can be more subtle and intricate nuances of relevance to the temporary staffing industry in respect of the relationships that exist between large and small temporary staffing agencies, as well as between such agencies and their clients. We highlight how smaller agencies in Birmingham are utilising a variety of strategies and tactics to creatively ‘bolt-on’ to more formalised national agreements established by multinational agencies with their clients. Moreover, smaller agencies – in some instances – are able to exploit their knowledge of local labour markets to subvert, sabotage and/or infiltrate the activities of multinational agencies in increasingly astute ways. In turn, this generates a series of questions for understanding the nature of ‘market making’ associated with the temporary staffing industry more broadly.     

Creating ecotourism territories: Environmentalities in Tanzania’s community-based conservation

This paper explores territorial struggles around ecotourism in community-based conservation in wildlife rich Northern Tanzania. At the centre of analysis are two emblematic and distinctly different ecotourism business models that rely on a particular territorialization of property relations and resource control: one model is based on land sharing with local communities and villages, while the other relies on the appropriation of large parts of village land for exclusive access and control. Conceptually engaging critical geography debates on internal territorialization with a poststructuralist political ecology inspired by the framework of multiple environmentalities, the paper shows how ecotourism companies employ different techniques of government to secure business-friendly environments and territories in neoliberal conservation. Different business models underpin different processes of territorialization that in turn produce different modes of engagements and regimes of rule and authority. While the case of ecotourism through land sharing reinforces village land rights through a neoliberal environmentality, ecotourism through land appropriation illustrates how neoliberal, sovereign and truth environmentalities are put to work to facilitate the re-territorialization of property relations and resource control to undermine land rights of an entire village or an ethnic minority.     

Leveraging locational insights within retail store development? Assessing the use of location planners’ knowledge in retail marketing

The retail geography literature has long recognised the importance of spatial and catchment analysis to inform decision-making relating to store development. However, less attention has been directed to store development “in practice” and, more specifically, how location research and geographical knowledge is leveraged across the wider retail business – in particular informing the marketing function. Through the use of a semi-structured interview and focus group methodology involving approximately 40 location planning, property and marketing analysts, we find that while some larger retailers have established close links between store development and marketing functions in the exchange of catchment, customer, competitor and loyalty card data to inform local marketing, product ranging, promotional mailings and post-opening store performance reviews, this tends to be the exception rather than the rule. We suggest there is a need for location planners to develop their intra-organisational legitimacy to engender a culture of knowledge-sharing and challenge the departmentalised, silo cultures that exist within some retailers in order to better leverage geographical insights and assist in the realisation of appropriate customer propositions and marketing strategies.     

Geography's role in general education in the United States

In the United States, geography is taught most frequently in the junior secondary schools, is somewhat more limited as a regular course in the senior secondary schools, and is a prominent discipline within many college and university programs of instruction. At the secondary school level, geography is usually integrated within the broader based social studies, while at the college and university level it has an important function both within general education as well as specialized training. At the pre-collegiate and collegiate levels geography has developed quite independently at times, and at other times there has been a close relationship that has benefitted both levels of education. At the end of the 1980s decade, considerable cooperation was underway in the United States between teachers of secondary school and tertiary level geography in order to upgrade and enhance the discipline. In the first part of this paper, a general history of geography within American education is presented. The second part of the paper discusses geography's role within general education at the secondary and tertiary levels, including the academic backgrounds for teachers. The way in which geographic education in the United States provides students with the opportunity to study holistic relationships between people and the environment and its importance to informed citizenship are discussed in the final section of the paper.     

Transnational elites in global cities: British expatriates in Singapore's financial district

Skilled international migration is as an important process of both contemporary globalization and the global city. The establishment of a transnational elite of expatriate labour in international finance plays a vital part in the accumulation of capital within international financial centres (IFCs). Expatriate labour has become a major determinant of the IFC, creating financial capital through complex social relations, knowledge networks, practices and discourses. The principal argument being made in this paper is that expatriates are major agents in the accumulation and transfer of financial knowledge in the IFC, and that such processes are undertaken through expatriate global–local knowledge networks and other social practices. The paper is divided into three major parts. Following a discussion of transnational elites as expatriates in global cities, which also conceptualises their contribution to the spatialization of financial knowledge networks, the empirical study investigates the working, social and cultural knowledge networks and practices of British expatriates in Singapore. Finally, the paper revisits the conceptual work on transnational elites and suggests that expatriates were deeply embedded in global–local relations in the workplace and the business/social sphere through interaction with local ‘western educated/experienced' Singaporeans, but were disembedded from the local in the home and other household social spaces due to the invisibility of the local population in their interactions. Both the theoretical and empirical analyses suggests that expatriates are flow in the Castellian spatial logic of the network society.     

Knowledge,influence, and firm-level change: A geographic analysis of board membership associated with Canada’s growing and declining businesses

Clarification of the factors that drive business expansion and contraction is among the most important topics that can be addressed by research in economic geography and related disciplines. This study analyzes the development of Canadian business by examining the connection between firm-level growth and decline and elite knowledge and influence connections that Canadian businesses use to link themselves to other corporations and cities nationally and globally. The research focuses on the inter-firm and inter-city linkages embodied in the boards of directors of Canada’s leading corporations. Corporate directorships have an important geographic dimension, as firms invite people from a variety of places and backgrounds to serve on their boards. This study finds that board member selection practices among Canadian firms can be linked directly to business growth and decline. Benchmarking board composition against firm expansion and decline in terms of inflation-adjusted annual revenue change over the 1991–2006 period, this study shows that growing Canadian firms are associated with directors from a much broader range of national and international cities than firms that experienced decline over the same period. Firm growth in Canada thus appears to be related to boards encompassing diverse members from national and international locations, while firm decline appears to be associated with boards including more local and regional members. The conclusion interprets the implications of board member diversity and suggests that broadly-based boards can play a role in encouraging firm growth through access to elite knowledge and influence networks.     

The indigenous ecotourism and social development in Taroko National Park area and San-Chan tribe, Taiwan

This paper explores the socio-cultural influence of the newly established ecotourism, which integrates cultural revitalization, ecological conservation and social development, in both Taroko National Park area and San-Chan aboriginal community. Many cases in different parts of the world indicate that the Indigenous peoples have developed patterns of resource use and management practices that reflect detailed knowledge of local geography and ecosystem, and contribute to the natural conservation through their living practices. The guidelines of Indigenous knowledge and culture lay the base for the development of ecotourism. A critical evaluation of the conceptualization of Indigenous knowledge is therefore, essential to the success of an alternative strategy to development for aboriginal communities. Participatory observation in the field of ecotourism activities and brief interviews are the major study methods, with several workshops conducted to supplement data collection for the two case studies. The Taroko area came into contact with tourists in a relative early era due to its famous natural features and national park. Its growing ecotourism is the result of cooperation among local residents, environmentalists, and academics, each with very different concepts of ecotourism operation. The national park and public sectors have also played significant role in shaping the content of ecotourism. In San-Chan community, due to the negative impacts generated by the unregulated mass tourism expansion, the local Indigenous people decide to close the public access to the attractive creek for 3?years, while at the same time promote ecotourism for poverty alleviation. These two cases embrace the ??Nature?? as an important element in their construction of new place identity and community development. However, their spatial location in- or outside the national park produces significant differences and sociopolitical implications on the operations of ecotourism.     

Policy mobilities,territorial knowledge dynamics and the role of KIBS: Exploring conceptual synergies of formerly discrete approaches

Although contemporary policy making is substantially affected by consultants, little is known about the interconnection of their role inside policy making networks and their key product – knowledge. This paper matches the approaches on Policy Mobilities (PM) and Territorial Knowledge Dynamics (TKD) to fill this theoretical gap. By exploring the synergies of both concepts, a research agenda is suggested that enables to investigate the multi-facetted entanglements of knowledge and policy making dynamics as well as what stake consultants have in this complex assemblage. Accordingly, this paper claims appreciation of ‘variegated consultocracies’ rather than global homogeneity of consultants’ engagement in policy making processes by explicating better integration of ‘scale, ‘time’, and actors’ embeddedness into PM. The paper thus primarily aims to provide a solid theoretical and methodological basis for exploring the complex dynamics consultants take part in, and how they in turn impact policy making processes.     

Shifting portfolios of international labour mobility among UK-based business consultancies

MNEs have traditionally employed various combinations of international exchange to deploy their staff expertise to where it is needed. Such ‘portfolios of mobility’ need to be adapted to diverse market and project requirements, the operation of numerous production and market locations, and the training of international staff. This paper builds on a recent cross-sector comparison of these strategies among UK-based MNEs by focusing on one sector, business consultancy. Expert staff deployment to serve international clients is a core function for these firms. Its management, however, also reflects other corporate priorities. These include supporting the internationalisation policies of parent companies; responding to new regional markets and client relations; effective project management; and exploiting modern communications developments. International business consultancies appear to be leading the move towards shorter term, but higher quality international staff mobility, more virtual exchange of expertise, and significant recruitment localisation, often involving mergers and joint ventures.     

Network configurations and R&D activities of the ICT industry in Suzhou municipality, China

This paper analyzes the network structure and R&D activities of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou municipality, known previously for its local state-directed Sunan model of development. Suzhou, however, has been undergoing dramatic restructuring to remake itself into a globalizing production center. We highlight the significance of the Chinese state and local/regional assets in shaping the trajectories of globalization and regional development, and the increasing importance of domestic markets and regional clusters/agglomeration for foreign ventures. We have found that Suzhou’s development path, heavily dependent on external forces, has made Suzhou a TNC (transnational corporation) satellite district. We also find that the ICT industry in Suzhou has a dual-structure, segmented between foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and domestic firms. TNCs tend to network among themselves and their interfirm networks are increasingly domestic and regionally embedded in the Yangtze River Delta, while the linkages between TNCs and local firms are weak. We argue that there is a series of technological, structural, spatial, and institutional “mismatches” that limits the establishment of “global pipelines” of knowledge exchange. We hold that the nature of global-local networks is contingent upon regional endogenous capacities and the specific ways in which global capital interacts with local institutions. Therefore, perspectives on TNCs’ local embeddedness must be positioned in their regional/external networks. We also analyze the constraints placed on Suzhou’s development into an innovative city and promote the integration of global and local/regional assets through development of indigenous capacities.