Data,interface, security: Assembling technologies that govern the future

Over the last decade, fire governance practices in the British Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) have undergone fundamental transformation. Rather than just being responded to as and when they occur, the FRS have adopted a range of anticipatory governing strategies to govern fires in anticipation of their occurence. This turn towards anticipatory governance has been facilitated in no small part by the digital infrastructure now embedded in the FRS. Composed of data, hardware, software, fibre-optic cables along with human analysts and organisational processes, this infrastructure operates to make risk projections on fire which shape and condition strategic decision making. This paper explores the operation of this digital infrastructure through the notion of interface. Drawing on empirical material relating to processes of data sourcing and risk calculation, interfaces account for the sites, moments and experiences in which human and non-human agents relate to one another in making fire risk projections. Showing relations to exist spatially, temporally and sensually, I argue that interfaces are crucial to the operation of an anticipatory security apparatus which relies on digital devices.     

深基坑支护的信息化施工

论述了信息化施工技术;在施工过程,将监测数据结合基坑工程的实际情况进行综合分析,利用监测数据进行反馈设计和分析,对后续施工具有实践与理论意义。介绍了某深基坑工程的施工监测,说明了信息化施工的重要性。通过对信息化施工过程中数据的分析、信息归纳和实践经验的总结,对以后类似工程的施工具有一定的参考价值。     

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.     

Performing environmental governance

This essay reflects on issues of researcher positionality within participant observation and action research, and the specific methodological issues surrounding research on neoliberal governance strategies, using my experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency as case material. Although I was initially concerned about participating with the anti-progressive Bush Administration, I attempted to adopt the interests and subjectivity of an environmental bureaucrat. Doing so proved to be an extremely effective way of exploring the multi-vocality and cross-cutting interests constituting the state, which often appears from the outside to be a policy monolith. Participant research among elites in the neoliberal state is an effective way to observe such complexity. It became apparent that, because mainstream economics tends to adopt a totalizing epistemology, both its casual and dogmatic adherents usually do not conceive of a coherent external critique. This often means that researchers of any theoretical background can be quite frank concerning their purposes, background, and interests, even as participants.     

流域土地利用分区空间管制研究与初步实践——以太湖流域为例

流域空间开发和土地利用在推动经济社会发展的同时,对流域生态系统的健康和安全造成了剧烈影响,迫切需要在流域综合管理中充实完善土地利用分区与管制等研究内容,因而成为推动湖泊-流域相互作用研究的重要科学问题之一.本文在回顾相关土地利用分区与管制研究基础上,从流域自然地理单元特殊性和管理目标复杂性出发,探讨了流域水陆系统相互作用机制,分析了流域土地利用分区与空间管制的研究重点与基本思路,提出了流域土地利用分区的技术路线及关键方法,并以太湖流域为例进行了初步的实践探索,提出严格保护区、适度发展区、开发利用区和保留发展区四种类型区及其空间管制要求,符合流域资源环境与经济社会发展实际,为流域可持续开发和保护提供指导.最后,讨论了未来流域土地利用分区空间管制需要进一步研究的重点方向与关键问题.     

The fall and rise of metropolitan government in Copenhagen

In this paper it is argued that the re-establishment of a metropolitan government in the Greater Copenhagen Area in 2000 (Greater Copenhagen Authority) is not to be seen as a return to the kind of regional, coordinative authority (Greater Copenhagen Council) that was abolished in the Thatcherite climate of the 1980s. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s new forms of urban governance, entrepreneurialism and a higher national priority to the capital region were introduced, which changed the conditions under which the new metropolitan government is operating. This `contextualization' of the analysis of the two generations of metropolitan government points to the fact that typologies of metropolitan government, such as the one put forward by Sharpe (1995), often lacks analytical cogency. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Global forest conservation initiatives as spaces for participation in Colombia and Costa Rica

This paper investigates the spaces for participation that have been created by readiness preparations launched in connection with the international initiative “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (REDD+) in Colombia and Costa Rica. I analyse the emergence of these spaces and who is leading the process in each country. My findings indicate that in Costa Rica, the public sector is leading preparation activities and creating the public spaces for participation in REDD to which private actors are invited. In Colombia on the other hand, NGOs, development assistance agencies and other private actors are leading the process and the state is the invited actor. I identify four factors that determine the scope of different actors’ possibilities to participate in the REDD+ spaces. These are (a) control of key resources, (b) ideological affinity, (c) the creation and dissemination of information and knowledge, and (d) the creation of norms to validate REDD+ pilot initiatives. The separation between these factors is not clear-cut and consequently they reinforce each other at different levels. The research presented here contributes to a better understanding of the implications that national REDD+ politics may have in the future functioning of the programme.     

Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

新冠肺炎疫情对经济全球化的影响分析

新冠肺炎疫情是第二次世界大战以来世界面临的最大危机,给世界带来巨大的冲击,包括人们的心理和生活、经济增长与就业、国家治理及世界治理等。这些影响使很多学者、评论家、大众、企业家乃至政府官员产生了非常悲观的情绪,舆论中不乏经济全球化将终结、全球供应链将大规模调整、世界治理格局将彻底改变等言论。本文通过建立“全球化的三角结构”剖析了经济全球化的动力机制,并结合疫情对世界的主要影响,试图揭示后疫情时代经济全球化的走势。我们认为,资本的“空间出路”、技术的“时空压缩”和国家的开放程度是驱动经济全球化的三个基本力量,这三者的变化及其相互作用结果影响着全球化进程。从动力机制看,全球化是一个没有终点且不断变化的历史过程,它不会倒退,而是波动。过去半个世纪以来,世界各国已经被全球化紧密地联系在一起,相互脱钩的代价极其昂贵,没有国家会选择完全脱钩。所谓的逆全球化现象,是全球化发展过程中世界格局变化及各国应对策略调整的结果。新冠肺炎疫情并不能影响全球化的资本和技术驱动力,但是可能影响国家的开放程度。如果疫情持续时间不是很长,经济全球化将很快会回归原有的发展轨迹,继续进行调整。各国也将继续围绕经济全球化进行斗争、妥协、再斗争,直至形成一个相对稳定的状态。因此,经济全球化可能因为应对疫情而踩下急刹车,甚至暂退半步,但很快将继续前行,向着“包容性全球化”的方向发展。