Lunds Civila Ryttarforening, LCR, is one of Sweden’s largest equestrian clubs with its facilities located in between Norra Faladen to the north and LTH to the south. To the west of the horse facilities is “Smorlyckans Idrottsplats” with football pitches, tennis courts, a Jujutsu club and a Home Guard’s building. The club has approximately 500 weekly riders and offers a wide range of activities within the the riding school, as well as stalls for private horses. Discussions on whether the equestrian centre should be relocated or not have reached a standstill as it has been going on for about 50 years. I believe that if LCR is to stay on its current site it can not continue to be an island. Therefore this project is an investigation into how the centre could be developed meeting and integrating with its surroundings. As much as the horse is the centre of the stable and the equestrian sport it’s also the centre of this project. “When Species Meet” is a what-if scenario on what could happen if we plan for the horse and who else that could benefit from that. In addition to the architectural proposal, one major question with the project has been to develop my own method and investigate how it’s possible to keep a high rate of complexity when working with a project. This is something I have done by taking the position of the horse instead of the architect. This change of position has provided me with a possibility to see the site, with all its opportunities, from a perspective that I couldn’t have without the horse. Therefore, this project is also a try on how it could be possible to take on other projects by relocating my investigation to several other positions relevant for those projects. (Less)

When Species Meet

Concerns with growth have steadily advanced since the Limits to Growth report due particularly to human impacts on the natural environment. Since that time, neoliberal capitalism has become increas...

https://myresearchspace.uws.ac.uk/ws/files/11293102/2019_03_20_Carnicelli_et_al_Tourism.pdf

Degrowing tourism: rethinking tourism

Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean WorldsMarisol de la CadenaDurham and London:Duke University Press, 2015. 315 pp.

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Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds

The Professional Guinea Pig belongs to a social science growth area investigating the pharmaceutical industry in contemporary health care. This literature is united by a prevailing consensus that views the drug industry as the villain du jour in health policy. After focusing on unbridled professional power and the for-profit insurance industry, the critical social gaze is turned to Big Pharma. Consequently, most social scientists see it as their job to expose the scientific manipulation, the chase of profit margins, the dehumanization, the ethical transgressions, and the inequities that flow from drug industry involvement. In engaging prose, Roberto Abadie delivers the expected social science message. Abadie conducted an eighteen-month ethnography of a group of healthy people who made a living as research subjects in Phase One clinical trials in Philadelphia. Most trial participants are African-American and Latino, but Abadie spent time with a group of young, non-Hispanic white anarchists who enrolled in clinical trials. He compares these trial participants with people enrolling in HIV trials. The book examines the motivations, reflections, and practices of professionalized clinical trial participation. What does Abadie make from this data? He highlights the ‘‘commodification’’ (p. 15) of the trial subjects’ bodies in a ‘‘slow torture economy’’ (p. 46). He pays attention to the ‘‘revolt’’ (p. 54) of the professional research subjects when they felt underpaid and threatened to walk out. Instead they received an $800 bonus. He notes the ‘‘resistance of the weak’’ (p. 60), when ‘‘guinea pigs’’ (p. 21) smuggle in forbidden foods or engage in other acts of ‘‘sabotage’’ (p. 61). Abadie also examines the risk-management strategies of the trial subjects: they weigh money against potential long-term effects but tend to believe that drugs wash out of their bodies in a couple of days. He then compares the professional trial participants to those involved in HIV trials and argues that the latter are motivated by deeper existential concerns but, of course, they also have a disease and participate in different kinds of trials. In a final empirical chapter, Abadie examines the professional trial subject’s limited understanding of informed consent procedures, and argues that the drug industry deliberately uses the consent form to obfuscate the commodified relationship with research subjects. Abadie’s book has two glaring weaknesses. First, he brings much rhetorical bluster to his study but the interview quotes and observations do not bear out the core themes of ‘‘alienation’’ (p. 6) and ‘‘exploitation’’ (p. 154). The fascinating empirical puzzle of his study is that anarchists are willing to swallow their principles and vegan diet to take money from this most controversial industry. In the conclusion, Abadie pays attention to the paradox between anarchist politics and pragmatics, but throughout most of the book he tries to rationalize the anarchists’ justifications for the blood money that sustains their lifestyle of leisure. Some of his friends even minimize the trial risk because they assume that strong government oversight protects them from harm! Abadie writes: ‘‘[these] views of governmental regulation are not totally at odds with their radical [anarchist] beliefs’’ (p. 143). Really? Rather than reconcile the dissonance between what anarchists do and belief in theoretical constructs of exploitation, the explanation seems more mundane. People end up in trial after trial by choice or circumstances because it is easy money. Compared to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets, or being homeless, testing pills is extremely attractive. The job stinks, but the money is good. Abadie also wrote the wrong book. While he lived in the anarchist community, he never participated along with his research subjects in the trials. Abadie’s information comes largely from casual conversations

Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America

Tourism has been one of the industries most highly affected by COVID-19. The COVID-19 global pandemic is an ‘unprecedented crisis’ and has exposed the pitfalls of a hyper consumption model of econo...

Post COVID-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models towards tourism as Buen Vivir

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self-employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste. Resumen: Los geógrafos y antropólogos frecuentemente describen conflictos sobre los residuos urbanos en términos de una política de infraestructura. Este artículo describe tales conflictos en términos de una política de organización. En 2008, los recicladores autónomos en Managua, Nicaragua y sus alrededores bloquearon vertederos locales en un esfuerzo por asegurar los derechos de recolectar materiales revendibles. A lo largo de esta “crisis de la basura”, un enredo material y semiótico entre la organización del trabajo humano y la ecología animal se hizo políticamente significativo. En diferentes puntos, los recicladores fueron comparados con hormigas, zopilotes, y alacranes. Los funcionarios del Estado, las ONG y los recicladores utilizaron estas metáforas animales para describir la organización de la recolección de residuos. Basándonos en las teorías del valor trazada desde la ecología política y la antropología económica, así como el análisis del despliegue de estas metáforas “orgánicas”, esbozamos una “política organizativa” de los residuos urbanos.

Zopilotes, Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures, Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

Although often framed as an emerging anthropocenic socio-ecological imaginary, the Latin American paradigm of Buen Vivir has provided a broad base of support for tourism development in the region. ...

Nicaragua's Buen Vivir: a strategy for tourism development?

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In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Nicaragua in 2007 during the early phases of the building of an industrial cotton spinning cooperative called Genesis, this article recounts an implementation of the Organization Workshop (OW), a large-scale enterprise-building and employment-generation workshop based on the ideas of Brazilian scholar-activists Clodomir Santos de Morais and Paulo Freire. The story of the Genesis OW, however, is not one of success. In fact, following the 40-day “conscientization” workshop, the cooperative entered into a period of upheaval, ultimately leading to the ousting of the cooperative's leadership. As a way of explaining some of the unexpected consequences of the OW, I point to the disjuncture between the actually existing social and organizational dynamics of Genesis before the implementation of the OW and the OW's model for them.

Building Consciousness: The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative

In urban Nicaragua, garbage is a growing problem. Many Nicaraguans joke that 
the country’s national flower is the plastic bag, which dot the urban landscape in 
a rainbow of impossible hues. The commentary comes from a keen awareness of 
degraded urban environments around the country, particularly in the capital city 
of Managua, which is home to two-thirds of the country’s population, or about 
2.4 million people. Of approximately 1,500 tons of garbage produced daily in the 
city, more than 20 percent goes uncollected. That garbage clutters the streets, collects in parks, runs off into streams, and clogs drainage ditches.

Josh Fisher

Papers

Zopilotes, Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures, Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

Nicaragua's Buen Vivir: a strategy for tourism development?

In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

Building Consciousness: The Organization Workshop Comes to a Nicaraguan Cooperative

Cleaning up the streets, Sandinista-style: The aesthetics of garbage and the urban political ecology of tourism development in Nicaragua