Technologies of agency and performance: Tasmania Together and the constitution of harmonious island identity

Baldacchino [Baldacchino, G., 2002. Jurisdictional self-reliance for small island territories: considering the partition of Cyprus, The Round Table, 365, 349-360] has argued that the ‘troika’ of smallness, insularity and peripherality may incline island peoples (rather more than mainlanders?) to question the effects of economic globalization and be especially disposed to innovative approaches to development. He views jurisdictional capacity as integral to that task. Much of the literature on such issues relates to island nations, but this work focuses on Australia’s smallest and only island state of Tasmania, and thus on a sub-national jurisdiction. In what follows I explore the effects of an attempt to enrol Tasmanians in the creation and stabilization of a ‘2020 vision’ meant to be global in its reach, to focus on the particular strengths of the island state, and be innovative in advancing sustainable development. Known as Tasmania Together, the 20-year strategic vision outlines diverse economic, social and environmental goals assembled over two years via widespread consultations with the island’s communities of place and interest. For a time Tasmania Together generated significant debate about what it means to be an island people, and whether and to what extent Tasmanians’ future will be secured through economic globalization or localized endeavours premised on sustainability principles. Important to Tasmanians as well as to island studies, these rhetorics of social and spatial engagement also have salience beyond the borders of the island state, highlighting larger questions about the technologies of governmentality, agency and the performance of identity.     

Contested hydrosocial territories and disputed water governance: Struggles and competing claims over the Ilisu Dam development in southeastern Turkey

Dam development in southeastern Turkey is a highly-disputed issue, fanned by the Turkish–Kurdish conflict, socio-environmental and historical–cultural concerns, and international geopolitical interests. This paper focuses on discussions around the Ilisu Dam and shows how different actor coalitions imagine different hydrosocial territories regarding this mega-hydraulic project currently under construction. Imaginaries, counter-imaginaries and endeavours to materialize them go far beyond technical projects, portraying the dam to (re)configure the territory physically, ecologically, socio-economically, symbolically and discursively. The paper embeds competing hydro-territorial constructs and claims within an analysis of governmentality and the multi-scalar and multi-issue politics of dam opponents.     

Counter-conducts and the green grab: Forest peoples’ resistance to industrial resource extraction in the Saracá-Taquera National Forest,Brazilian Amazonia

This paper contributes to the theory of environmentality – the ‘conduct of conduct’ with regard to the environment – by incorporating Foucault’s notion of counter-conducts to elucidate the political subjectivities emergent from the performance of dissent in relation to different forms of power – sovereign, disciplinary and biopower – through which a spatialized rational-technical governmentality of ‘green’ mining and logging is enacted in Saracá-Taquera National Forest (FLONA), Brazilian Amazonia. We analyse the counter-conductive subjectivities emergent from forest peoples’ political articulation through identity categories riberinhos and quilombolas (enshrined in the 1988 Constitution and subsequent laws), claiming of rights to delimit areas of traditional use and ancestral territories, along with direct action, critical discourse and reassertion of agroecological knowledge against industrial resource extraction. To capture the dynamic relation of the conduct of conduct to counter-conducts we draw on a late Foucauldian model of a self, wherein his earlier focus on how the Panopticon shapes self-discipline is complemented by a turn to care for and ethics of the self - practices of freedom through which subjects have the potential to transcend self-discipline. We use this lens to illuminate two case-studies, one focusing on mining, the other on timber, exploring how in this protected area - which permits the ‘sustainable’ industrial extraction of natural resources - the state, companies and an NGO try to shape forest peoples as ‘green’ subjects. Counter-conducts provide the theory of environmentality with a broader perspective on resistance foregrounding the production of political subjectivities in dissent whilst breaking with the resistance-domination binary.     

Globalising knowledge networks: Universities,diaspora strategies,and academic intermediaries

As diaspora strategies have become an integral aspect of national economic development strategies, so too have universities begun to formally identify and mobilise diasporic scientists, researchers and scholars in an effort to create global knowledge networks. This paper will identify this new role for diasporic academics. It begins by emphasising the increasing internationalisation of the academic labour market, arguing that an increasing number of researchers have multiple national affiliations and relationships. It shows how diasporic academics have become central to the creation of global knowledge networks. These knowledge networks derive from multiple sources including the institutional ambitions of universities who are seeking to expand their research remits in increasingly resource constrained environments, international and national funding bodies who are increasingly focused on research ‘grand challenges’, and the aspirations of individual researchers for whom global networks are increasingly important to successful careers.     

Migrant pathways to resource access in Lampung’s political forest: Gender, citizenship and creative conjugality

An important theme in studies of enclosure and resource access in Southeast Asian hinges on the concept of the ‘political forest’, a particular constellation of power constituted by ideas, practices and institutions that seek to regulate peoples’ access to resources, providing recognition and legitimacy to some, whilst excluding and criminalizing others. Whilst issues of class and ‘race’ underpin work in this vein, in Indonesia, much less attention has been directed towards the ways in which gender inheres in the regularisation of land and livelihood, and the ordering of upland spaces. Drawing on recent feminist and queer theorizing of the links between citizenship, recognition and hetero-normativity, and on analyses of the social relationships through which resource access is negotiated and realized, the paper presents a feminist political ecology of the gender dynamics inherent in the power plays of resource access as land-poor rural migrants negotiate a shifting landscape of enclosure in Lampung province. Through an analysis of three periods of resource governance and control in the province, the paper shows how the negotiation of resource access is simultaneously a process of self-regulation and subject-making that draws on particular ideas about family and conjugal partnership, inculcating gendered and hetero-normative ideologies of the “ideal citizen”. Through particular representational strategies - positionings - necessary to qualify for resource access, and through the material practices necessary to realize the benefits of resource access, conjugal partnership is reiterated and remade as an important social relationship through which resource access may be realised, for men as well as for women.     

Splintered networks: The colonial and contemporary waters of Jakarta

This paper queries the relevance of the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis to postcolonial cities of the South, and responds to calls for the production of a decentered theory of urbanization through a case study of Jakarta. Drawing on archival and interview data, the paper demonstrates that Jakarta has, since its inception, been characterized by a high degree of differentiation of access to water supply, and of fragmentation of water supply networks. We document the origins of this fragmentation in the colonial era, and trace the legacy of the colonial constructions within the postcolonial city. Moreover, we demonstrate that the introduction of private sector management (in 1988) has not significantly disrupted, and certainly not caused, this pattern. In short, we provide evidence to support our claim that Jakarta’s water supply system is ‘splintered’ rather than ‘splintering’, and demonstrate that this phenomenon was not caused by the rise (or fall) of the ‘modern infrastructural ideal’. In order to explain this sustained fragmentation of infrastructure and access, the paper develops a conceptual framework of postcolonial governmentality that emphasizes the interrelationship between materiality, governmentality, identity, and urbanization, in particular through demonstrating how contested and evolving process of social differentiation are linked to the differentiation of water supply infrastructures and of urban spaces. Although we are wary of any simplistic comparisons between the colonial past and present, we argue that the optic of postcolonial governmentality provides a powerful lens for dissecting the power relations that continue to structure access to water supply and urban space in cities in the South.     

Enacting things through numbers: Taking nature into account/ing

In this article I make use of a combination of actor-network-theory, governmentality studies and feminist studies of science to show how nature is done or enacted within politics and administration. In particular I show how it relates to the theories and practices of economics and accounting. I explore the process by which the ‘critical limits’ of nature under the impact of acidification was created as a part of the politics and negotiations about acid rain. I demonstrate that even though the outcome was not ‘Nature’ as such, understood as a form of moral high-ground, the effect of this process was to produce ‘a nature as a whole’, in a process of unification. This I argue can only be understood relationally: ‘Nature’ is taken into account by way of accounting. In doing this I engage with Latour’s work on the politics of Nature and argue that nature is not necessarily such a deadly tool to politics as is sometimes taken for granted. Before we throw Nature out with our empirical studies of sciences, natures and politics, in the plural, we need to look first at how Nature-wholes emerge, are enacted, and take part in politics.     

Vernacular heritage and evolving environmental policy in Australia: Lessons from the Murray–Darling Outreach Project

The interface between environmentalism and neoliberalism in industrialised nations is dynamic and evolving with each of these significant socio-political movements exerting influence on the other. In the context of Australian environmental policy, ideas of heritage, sense of place and belonging are increasingly invoked to support the current policy emphasis on the role of regional communities for realising goals for land and water conservation and environmental restoration. To explore the broader meaning and consequences of these developments, we focus on the manner in which ideas of heritage are employed and evoked within the Murray–Darling Outreach Project, a collaboration between the Murray–Darling Basin Commission, a key natural resource management agency, and the National Museum of Australia. The Murray–Darling Outreach Project has the aim of increasing community involvement in local environmental issues by promoting ideas of vernacular heritage.     

Governmentality and the climate-development nexus: The case of the EU Global Climate Change Alliance

This article uses a governmentality perspective to uncover the power effects of the external climate change adaptation assistance provided by the European Union (EU) through its flagship initiative in this regard: the Global Climate Change Alliance. By drawing upon a body of literature that conceptualizes the established international architecture in this regard as rooted in power relations, this article opens up our current perspective of the EU as an international climate actor. An analysis of policy documents and targeted semi-structured interviews reveals that the EU discursively emphasizes the responsibility of partner countries to manage risk and become ‘resilient’ to climate impacts, while downplaying the transformative potential of adaptation for development. We see this dynamic further reflected in GCCA policy techniques, which promote the production of quantified and depoliticized knowledge on adaptation. This in its turn further guides the allocation of GCCA support and is instrumentalized in order to establish a stable identity for the organization and reproduce the EU as a climate leader in this regard.     

Water reform governmentality in Ecuador: Neoliberalism,centralization, and the restraining of polycentric authority and community rule-making

In most Latin American countries, issues concerning water governance and control also reflect broader conflicts over authority and legitimacy between the state and civil society. What lies behind the diverse water policy reforms is not simply a question of governing water affairs but also a drive to control or co-opt water user groups. This paper examines the efforts by the present Ecuadorian government to ‘control water users’ through new forms of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991). We use the ‘cathedral and bazaar’ metaphor (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010) to illustrate government rationale and practices in water governance shifts in the last decades. We analyze how Rafael Correa’s government sets out to reshape the relations between state, market and society. In its ‘Twenty-first Century Socialism’ project, based on a proclaimed ‘Citizen Revolution’, actual policy reform does not reverse but rather transforms the process of neoliberalizing water governance – creating a hybrid bazaar-cathedral model. We argue that the current water govermentality project implements reforms that do not challenge established market-based water governance foundations. Rather it aims to contain and undermine communities’ autonomy and ‘unruly’ polycentric rule-making, which are the result of both historical and present-day processes of change. Interestingly, water user federations that emerged during the neoliberal wave of the last two decades now claim water control space and search for new forms of democratizing water governance. They act as agents who fiercely – yet selectively and strategically – oppose both elements of the State-centered (cathedral) and market-based (bazaar) water governance models.