Showing papers in "Environment and Planning D-society & Space in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, the atmospheric qualities of illuminated space, grounding notions of affect in investigating the longstanding autumnal event of Blackpool Illuminations, are explored, highlighting the flow of affect and emotion in place, and demonstrating that affective atmospheres are coproduced by visitors as part of a reiterative, festive, convivial, and playful social practice in familiar space.
Abstract: This paper considers the atmospheric qualities of illuminated space, grounding notions of affect in investigating the longstanding autumnal event of Blackpool Illuminations. I consider the affective qualities of lighting before discussing the ‘atmosphere’ of the Illuminations. I critically explore the division between affect and emotion, the insistence on affect's precognitive qualities, and the notion that affective atmospheres produce a ‘mute attunement’ to place. In foregrounding the dense social production of atmosphere at Blackpool Illuminations, I highlight the flow of affect and emotion in place, show how lighting is ideally constituted to blur divisions between the representational and nonrepresentational, identify the anticipation of affect, and demonstrate that affective atmospheres are coproduced by visitors as part of a reiterative, festive, convivial, and playful social practice in familiar space.
217 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reconstitute their own approach to the notions of space, territory, and territoriality, and propose a descriptive model utilizable in the production of territory as well as in producing representations of this territory in making available 'images' or landscapes.
Abstract: In this paper I reconstitute my own approach to the notions of space, territory, and territoriality. Developing from the early 1970s, my thoughts resided in the effort devoted to deriving from space the idea of territory qua production by the projection of labor, a Janus-faced category composed of energy and information. The construction of territory is the consequence of territoriality—defined as the ensemble of relations that a society maintains with exteriority and alterity for the satisfaction of its needs, towards the end of attaining the greatest possible autonomy compatible with the resources of the system. I also propose a descriptive model utilizable in the production of territory as well as in the production of representations of this territory in making available ‘images’ or landscapes. In the conclusion I draw attention to the fact that if labor is always a mediator, it is not thereby any less subordinated to the money whose possessors are in a position to alienate labor by subjecting it to or...
184 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how state formation in Uraba is produced through the convergence of narco-paramilitary strategies, counterinsurgency, and government reforms aimed at territorial restructuring through decentralization.
Abstract: Since the 1980s rural Colombia has been torn asunder by the deadly conflation of political violence and the cocaine boom, fueling the displacement of four million campesinos. The northwest frontier region surrounding the Gulf of Uraba has been an unruly epicenter for this mass of dispossessed humanity, mainly displaced by paramilitaries. As an outgrowth of a complex alliance between narcos (drug traffickers) and agrarian elites, paramilitary groups simultaneously act as drug-trafficking private militias and counterinsurgent battalions, while using land appropriation and agribusiness as favored conduits for money laundering and illicit profit. Drawing on investigative ethnographic fieldwork into these dynamics in Uraba, this paper shows how state formation in Uraba is produced through the convergence of narco-paramilitary strategies, counterinsurgency, and government reforms aimed at territorial restructuring through decentralization. Relying on the conceptual cues offered by Lefebvre and Gramsci on state,...
162 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of space is explored as it stands in connection with time and place, making particular use of the notions of boundedness, extendedness, and emergence while also shedding light on the idea of relationality.
Abstract: Space is a concept that is central to geographical thinking. Yet, relatively little attention has been given to exploration of the concept of space as such, and this is so outside of geography no less than within it. Beginning with an examination of the ‘relational’ view of space that now seems dominant in geography as well as many other areas of the social sciences (and which is often presented as an elucidation of space itself), this paper explores the concept of space as it stands in connection with time and place, making particular use of the notions of boundedness, extendedness, and emergence while also shedding light on the idea of relationality. The aim is to outline a different mode of theorizing space than is to be found in much of contemporary geography and social theory—one that also draws geographical thinking into the domain of ‘philosophical topography’.
144 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored how cougars and humans live together on Vancouver Island, Canada, a region home to what scientists estimate is the densest cougar population in North America and to one quarter of the continent's lethal and non-lethal cougar attacks in the last century.
Abstract: This paper explores how cougars and humans live together on Vancouver Island, Canada, a region home to what scientists estimate is the densest cougar population in North America and to one quarter of the continent's lethal and nonlethal cougar attacks in the last century. Drawing on biopolitical and spatial theory, I trace how safe space is made, maintained, and unmade and ask what the role of cougars has been in production of spaces and their imagined security. Discussion is informed foremost by stories of cougar - human encounters on Vancouver Island and then retold based on newspaper and archival research and semistructured interviews with island residents. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how nonhumans matter to the material - semiotic construction of safety and space. In particular, I examine attempts to discipline cougars in the name of biosecurity, how cougars discipline humans, and how cougars' bodies and behaviors have resisted and shaped spatial configurations. I argue that these contest...
121 citations
TL;DR: This paper explore the shifting contours and gradients that reduce the possibilities for disposing of food through conduits in which it can be handed down, handed around, or otherwise saved from wastage.
Abstract: This paper explores the movements and placings that work to configure food as waste. At issue here—following the work of Nicky Gregson, Kevin Hetherington, and Rolland Munro—are the multiple conduits that exist for ‘moving things along’ and the idea that consumption research needs to move beyond the unfortunate conjunction of disposal and waste. I suggest that the disposal of surplus food is enacted via a graduated process in which it first enters a ‘gap’ where ambiguities and anxieties surrounding its residual value and onward trajectory are addressed. Drawing on ethnographic examples, I explore the shifting contours and gradients that reduce the possibilities for disposing of food through conduits in which it can be handed down, handed around, or otherwise saved from wastage. I also unpack the overwhelming tendency for surplus food to be cast as ‘excess’ and placed in conduits—typically the bin—that connect it to the waste stream. Crucially, it is suggested that food is a specific genre of material cult...
115 citations
TL;DR: Grosz argues that art is not tied to the reproduction of the known, but to the possibility of the new, overcoming the containment of the present to elaborate on future yet to come as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Rather than understand art as cultural accomplishment, Elizabeth Grosz argues that it is born from the intensities of chaos and disruptive forms of sexual selection—a corporeality that vibrates to the hum of the universe. Grosz contends that it is precisely this excessive, nonproductive expenditure of sexual attraction that is the condition for art’s work. This intimate corporeality, composed of nonhuman forces, is what draws and transforms the cosmos, prompting experimentation with materiality, sensation, and life. In the book Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (2008, Duke University Press, Durham, NC), that is the subject of this panel discussion, Grosz sets out an ontology of art, looking at its forms of emergence as territorialising force, sexual selection, and nonhuman power. In Grosz’s terms, art is an art of existence. This is not a narrow understanding of art as a practice that is about taste, cultural accomplishment, or a reflection of society, but an art that is—at its most provocative—an extraction from the universe and an elaboration on it. This ‘geoaesthetics’, that is both biospheric and biopolitical, presents a formable challenge to geographers interested in art, sexuality, time, and the territorialisation of the earth. How might we understand this distinctly different kind of biopolitics? And what might Grosz’s concept of ‘geopower’ offer in terms of a renegotiation of a more active ‘geo’ in geopolitics? Grosz argues that art is not tied to the reproduction of the known, but to the possibility of the new, overcoming the containment of the present to elaborate on futures yet to come. In this rethinking of sexual selection Grosz suggests an intensely political role for art as a bioaesthetics that is charged with the creation of new worlds and forms of life. Grosz makes a radical argument for a feminist philosophy of the biosphere and for our thinking the world otherwise.
106 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the interdisciplinary terrain of "queer ecology" by using the example of an urban cemetery in North London as an empirical and conceptual starting point, and concluded that queer ecology may enrich our understanding of both urban materiality and the role of metaphors in urban theory.
Abstract: This paper explores the interdisciplinary terrain of ‘queer ecology’ by using the example of an urban cemetery in North London as an empirical and conceptual starting point. Though the term ‘queer ecology’ has cropped up a few times it has yet to be addressed directly in order to consider how the seemingly disparate fields of queer theory and urban ecology might benefit from closer interaction. It will be suggested that the theoretical synthesis represented by queer ecology serves to expand the conceptual and material scope of both fields: queer theory is revealed to have only a partially developed engagement with urban nature whilst critical strands of urban ecology such as urban political ecology have yet to connect in a systematic way with queer theory, posthumanism, or new conceptions of complexity emerging from within the science of ecology itself. It is concluded that queer ecology may enrich our understanding of both urban materiality and the role of metaphors in urban theory. In particular, the id...
101 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Anderson and Jones introduce how the "surfed wave" can be understood as a relational place and demonstrate how the relational turn can encourage us not only to consider traditional places in new ways but also to consider new (watery) 'coming togethers' as 'places'.
Abstract: Taking the lead from social science moves to frame places as “open-ended, mobile, networked, and actor-centred geographic becoming[s]” (M Jones, 2009, “Phase space” Progress in Human Geography 33, page 5), this paper introduces how the ‘surfed wave’ can be understood as a relational place. Drawing on commentaries from surfers on the practice of wave riding, the paper will show that the surfed wave can be usefully understood in two ways: as an ‘assemblage’ (see Delanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity 2006, Continuum Books, London), and as a ‘convergence’ (see J Anderson, 2009, “Transient convergence and relational sensibility” Emotion, Space and Society 2 120–127). Whilst the notion of assemblage suggests that surfers, boards, and waves are ‘connected’ together to form one coherent unit for the lifetime of the ride the notion of convergence suggests that the surfed wave becomes a place whose constituent parts are not simply connected together; rather, their thresholds are blurred into a converged entity/process. Theorising from the sea in this way is an important move. It demonstrates how the relational turn can encourage us not only to consider traditional places in new ways but also to consider new (watery) ‘coming togethers’ as ‘places’. I argue that these theorisations from the sea offer new perspectives on more traditional (terrestrial) places and human relationships with them.
98 citations
TL;DR: Focusing on the use of nonrepresentational theory as a research methodology, the paper points to the limits of this approach for children's political formation as well as for sustained scholarly collaboration.
Abstract: Reflecting wider debates in the discipline, recent scholarship in children's geographies has focused attention on the meanings of the political. While supportive of work that opens up new avenues for conceptualizing politics beyond the liberal rational subject, we provide a critique of research methods which delink politics from historical context and relations of power. Focusing on the use of nonrepresentational theory as a research methodology, the paper points to the limits of this approach for children's political formation as well as for sustained scholarly collaboration. We argue instead for a politics of articulation, in the double sense of communication and connection. An empirical case study is used as an illustrative example.
98 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a performative approach to food consumption practices, termed foodsensing, is proposed, and it is argued that every act of sensing food is always an act of making sense of food.
Abstract: Contemporary European consumers find themselves at an interesting point in history with regards to their relationships with animals. On the one hand there has been a growth in the acknowledgement of animal sentience, yet on the other hand, largely unabated, we continue to farm, kill, and eat animals for food. In this paper we contend that these ambiguities are played out within everyday embodied practices of preparing, eating, and shopping for food. We begin our account by outlining a novel performative approach to food consumption practices, which we have termed ‘foodsensing’, and we contend that every act of sensing food is always already an act of making sense of food. This approach allows us to examine the complex interplay between material and symbolic dimensions of food consumption practices. Throughout the paper we draw on this notion of foodsensing, in conjunction with empirical material taken from forty-eight focus group discussions conducted across seven European countries, to shed new light on the ways in which farm animals are made to matter (and not matter) within food consumption practices.
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of hybrid sovereignties is proposed to go beyond traditional views of legitimate state power and irregular non-state disassociation as dwelling in distinct regions.
Abstract: Depictions of Lebanon in international politics have historically represented it as a ‘weak state’ whose domestic sovereignty is eroded by nonstate actors viewed as anomalies to extirpate. The War on Terror has been no exception. Since at least 2002 international efforts have aimed at reinforcing Lebanon's ‘weak’ domestic sovereignty against ‘extremist elements’. These approaches adopt a classic understanding of sovereignty as the achievable, exclusive, and measurable control by a state over a bounded territory. Such an understanding is misleading and even obstructive of peace for Lebanon. The accepted view of Lebanon as a ‘weak state’ suffering from chronic conflict and the myth of its capital Beirut as cyclically destroyed and reconstructed actually normalise imaginative geographies that ultimately impact on international action. Through the concept of ‘hybrid sovereignties’, this article goes beyond traditional views of legitimate state power and irregular nonstate ‘dissidence’ as dwelling in distinct ...
TL;DR: Two of the most prolific contributors to the theoretical literature on territoriality, Robert Sack and Claude Raffestin, treat territoriality in fundamentally different ways as discussed by the authors, and they differ significantly from each other.
Abstract: Two of the most prolific contributors to the theoretical literature on territoriality—Robert Sack and Claude Raffestin—treat territoriality in fundamentally different ways. Sack conceives of territ...
TL;DR: Taking Place as discussed by the authors is a collection of edited collections that emerged as cultural geography interfaced with Marxism, feminism, and poststructuralism, and was one of the most important texts for the emergence of a new set of questions, methods, and approaches to doing human geography.
Abstract: This is a wonderful, important, and occasionally infuriating book, at least parts of which should be read by anyone with an interest in theory in human (and some physical) geography. As an `old school' cultural geographer (ie, once `new') I have fond memories of edited collections that emerged as cultural geography interfaced with Marxism, feminism, and poststructuralism. They were some of the most important texts for the emergence of a new set of questions, methods, and approaches to doing human geography. The edited collection is out of favour among many publishers, so hats off to Ashgate for publishing thisöin paperback! I have no doubt that this book will be just as treasured a resource now and in years to come as my well-worn copies of WritingWorlds (Barnes and Duncan, 1992) and Place/Culture/Representation (Duncan and Ley, 1993). Edited collections like Taking Place are one sign of a particular set of ideas or theoretical approaches reaching a critical mass. I am reminded, for instance, of the publication of Humanistic Geography: Prospects and Problems (Ley and Samuels, 1978)öan event that signaled the maturity of a set of theoretical approaches in human geography. Nonrepresentational theory (NRT) has become an important focus of debate in human geography and is one of the few theoretical approaches that attracts the kinds of heated debate that were once more familiar. In this review essay I do three entangled things: I provide a review of the book, I provide an account of one sceptic's journey through NRT, and I summarize seven key questions that have been asked (by many geographers including me) of NRTöall of which are addressed in the pages of Taking Place. The book consists of four sections headed `̀ Life'', ``Representation'', `̀ Ethics'', and `̀ Politics'', each with four short chapters. There is also an exceptionally clear introduction and an interlude which provides a revealing interview with Nigel Thrift, the leading figure in NRT. Of the authors fifteen are men and three are women, fifteen are based in the UK and three elsewhere, and eight studied at Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences. Others were supervised or examined by people who had been at Bristol. One day an account will be written of the role of Bristol in this particular episode of the history of geographic thought. I list these figures because, as things stand, NRT appears to have a limited hinterland and audience. It is very British and very male. Its impact in North America, for instance, appears to be limited to a (very) few scholars and, I imagine, to a host of PhD students who will find further inspiration in this book. It is fair to say that the way NRT has been taken up in North America (and the chapters by Keith Woodward and Arun Saldanha are indicative of this) has a slightly more hesitant and less evangelical flavour. The fact that the vast majority of NRT practitioners are male does not necessarily make it masculinist, but the fact that so few women have rallied to the flag does suggest a limited appeal, particularly to feminist scholars who would want to hear more about both gender and power than Review essay Nonrepresentational theory and me: notes of an interested scepticÀ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2012, volume 30, pages 96 ^ 105
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors put forward a conception of dwelling as a practice of marking and claiming, and argued that dwelling does not designate a passive condition but a mode of human practice.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to put forth a conception of dwelling as a practice of marking and claiming. By this I mean that dwelling does not designate a passive condition but a mode of human practice. By suggesting that dwelling is marking I am highlighting the intimate relationship between dwelling and building. While in “Building dwelling thinking” (in Poetry, Language, Thought 1971, Harper and Row, New York) Heidegger encourages the reader to look beyond building in order to see how it is grounded in dwelling, his emphasis on techne in other work illustrates that he sees building and dwelling as two sides of the same coin. Not only must we dwell in order to build, but we must build in order to dwell. To dwell means to build and building is how we constitute our dwelling. At the same time, I argue that dwelling is only ever a claim. While Heidegger always understands human action as limited by our temporal situation (beings that are thrown and that face death), his later work elaborates this context thro...
TL;DR: It is suggested that such speculative bioethical formulations may contribute to renarrating modes of ethical engagement when sociotechnical assemblages are complex, objects and ontological forms are multiple and mutable, data are simultaneously abundant and inadequate, and formal ethical review procedures are incapable of either containing controversy or enabling critique.
Abstract: This paper constitutes a speculative bioethical intervention into the challenge of developing cultures of care and assembling enriched environments for genetically-altered mice in laboratory environments. The principles of the 3Rs–to reduce, replace and refine the use of laboratory animals–established in the late 1950s, are still the institutional and international starting point for humane animal experimentation. However, the proliferating diversity and numbers of genetically-altered animals used in biomedical research is a challenge to the application of these universal principles. The different capacities of the many mice brought into being through scientific practices constitute biomedical experimentation as a multiple, challenging the identification of universal refinements. In this paper, I argue they constitute a multitude: their indefinite number and irreducible multiplicity is both a threat to these principles and an opening to the possibility of new bioethical formulations. Drawing on ethnographic research with scientists and policymakers involved in animal welfare and biomedical research, this paper explores emerging strategies for reassembling animal welfare in the face of the multitude and the multiple. Using insights from Žižek, Haraway and Hinchliffe it seeks to demonstrate the value of a speculative ethics, which, instead of the seeking new universal principles to protect animals from harm, starts from the inevitable and particular entanglements of animal and human suffering, as a way of connecting affective capacities across space and time. This is illustrated through the experimental conjunctures of barbering mice. In conclusion, I suggest such speculative bioethical formulations may contribute to renarrating modes of ethical engagement when sociotechnical assemblages are complex, objects and ontological forms are multiple and mutable, data is simultaneously abundant and inadequate, and formal ethical review procedures are incapable of either containing controversy or enabling critique.
TL;DR: This paper argued that urban political subjectivity is constituted by an ineluctable exposure to alterity that arises through sharing of that which is 'between us' in the city: the material fabric of the urban environment.
Abstract: In this paper I consider the conceptual challenges for subjectivity and community in an era of global urbanisation. The urban environment comprises a complex assemblage of human and nonhuman entities. Urban political subjectivity is thus constituted by a distinctive relation with materiality. This reconceptualisation of the subject comprises a challenge to the classical morphology that has underpinned conceptions of citizenship and community. This morphology has rested on notions of autonomy that are predicated on a separability of the agent from context and community. Global urbanisation challenges the traditional conception of the urban subject as an autonomous citizen. In contrast to classical political morphologies I contend, via Nancy's account of the reticulated multiplicity of being singular plural, that urban political subjectivity is constituted by an ineluctable exposure to alterity that arises through our sharing of that which is 'between us' in the city: the material fabric of the urban environment.
TL;DR: The authors discusses genealogies of citizenship as membership that binds an individual to the community of birth (of the self or a parent) that blurs the boundary between citizenship and nationality.
Abstract: To broach the question of whether citizenship could exist without (or beyond) community, this paper discusses genealogies of citizenship as membership that binds an individual to the community of birth (of the self or a parent). It is birthright as fraternity that blurs the boundary between citizenship and nationality. After briefly discussing recent critical studies on birthright citizenship (whether it is civic or ethnic or blood or soil) by Ayelet Shachar and Jacqueline Stevens, the paper discusses three critical genealogies of the relationship between birthright and citizenship by Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault. Although each provides a critical perspective into the question, Weber reduces citizenship to fraternity with nation and Arendt reduces citizenship to fraternity with the state. It is Foucault who illustrates racialization of fraternity as the connection between citizenship and nationality. Yet, since Foucault limits his genealogical investigations to the 18th and 19th centuries...
TL;DR: This paper explored the global urban imagination in works by Jean-Luc Nancy and Henri Lefebvre, arguing that globalization is a fundamentally violent and unequal process that unfolds through the uneven expansion of a particular sort of urban space.
Abstract: It is part of the self-conception of the contemporary era that the world is becoming increasingly global and urban. This paper explores the global—urban imagination in works by Jean-Luc Nancy and Henri Lefebvre. Both Nancy and Lefebvre understand globalization as a fundamentally violent and unequal process that unfolds through the uneven expansion of a particular sort of urban space. They both strive to articulate a critical stance towards this process by opposing globalization to the idea of mondialisation or world forming. While their respective approaches differ in important ways, they both provide indispensible critical tools for conceptualizing the urban planet and its political possibilities. Their positions are briefly contrasted to the conservative imagery of the urban planet as techno utopia that was produced at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, China.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors integrate spatial analysis with dynamic discourse analysis to look at the interplay among discourse, agency, and spatial practices in the social production of space, and examine the dual process of place making and discursive formation with regard to the campaigns over the Star Ferry pier and the Queen's pier in Hong Kong in 2006-07.
Abstract: The paper integrates spatial analysis with dynamic discourse analysis to look at the interplay among discourse, agency, and spatial practices in the social production of space. It examines the dual process of place making and discursive formation with regard to the campaigns over the Star Ferry pier and the Queen's pier in Hong Kong in 2006–07. Drawing on and extending Lefebvre's theory, which asserts the priority of space over language, I argue that social movement presents a case of reappropriation of space that is intended to be read and lived interactively. The two case studies show that the events became vehicles for oppositional ideas and practices that gradually crystallised into a counterdiscourse of people's space in the process of remaking places from below. The dynamic discourse analysis focuses on the contestatory process of multivocal claims and interpretations among the activists, the media, and the government regarding memory, history, living space, and agency. The spatial analysis sheds li...
TL;DR: This paper examined the emotions highlighted by interactions between British migrants and Gulf nationals in the emerging global city of Dubai and demonstrated that attention to the emotions framing such interactions, in both geographical and temporal terms, can help us to better understand migrant encounters.
Abstract: This paper examines some of the emotions highlighted by interactions between British migrants and Gulf nationals in the emerging global city of Dubai. Tracing the emotions that emerge in ‘expatriate’ handbooks, field notes, and interview narratives, I contribute to an emerging body of work that focuses on the embodied migrant and troubles the notion of privileged migrants as being detached from place. I demonstrate that attention to the emotions framing such interactions, in both geographical and temporal terms, can help us to better understand migrant encounters.
TL;DR: A more sustained discussion of Raffestin's understanding of human territoriality in its contribution to contemporary geographical debates can be found in this paper, where the authors highlight the broad, and fundamentally interrelated, philosophical, epistemological, and political ambitions of his work, before elucidating some of the key conceptual pillars of his relational thinking through territoriality.
Abstract: This introductory paper establishes the grounds for a more sustained discussion of Claude Raffestin's understanding of human territoriality in its contribution to contemporary geographical debates The purpose is to highlight the broad, and fundamentally interrelated, philosophical, epistemological, and political ambitions of Raffestin's work, before elucidating some of the key conceptual pillars of his relational thinking through territoriality In this, particular emphasis will be placed on the concept of mediation The proposed engagement with Raffestin's work offers an opportunity not only for revisiting territoriality in its value for contemporary political geography and sociospatial theory, and for rethinking the positioning and contribution of Raffestin's oeuvre itself, but also for critically reflecting upon the spaces and power relationships of geographical knowledge production today and in the past
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of the introduction of genetic techniques in UK livestock breeding are examined, focusing on the diffuse and capillary nature of resistance within relations of biopower.
Abstract: Cattle and sheep breeders in the UK and elsewhere increasingly draw on genetic techniques in order to make breeding decisions. Many breeders support such techniques, while others argue against them for a variety of reasons, including their preference for the ‘traditions’ of visual-based and pedigree-based selections. Meanwhile, even for those institutions and breeders who promote genetic techniques, the outcomes are not always as predicted. We build on our recent use of Foucault's discussions of biopower to examine the effects of the introduction of genetic techniques in UK livestock breeding in order to begin to explore the diffuse and capillary nature of resistance within relations of biopower. We focus specifically on how resistance and contestation can be understood through the joint lenses of biopower and an understanding of livestock breeding as knowledge-practices enacted within heterogeneous biosocial collectivities. In some instances these collectivities coalesce around shared endeavour, such as ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the neighbour is a neglected figure in public debate and political theory, and they explore the nature of the neighbour relation and of the ethics and politics of neighbours and neighbouring.
Abstract: This paper argues that the neighbour is a neglected figure in public debate and political theory. Whereas the spatial concept of ‘neighbourhood’ has long been the focus of geographical research, its underpinning concept of the ‘neighbour’ has received less scrutiny. This paper seeks to address that gap. It takes its cue from recent British policy debates about neighbourhood renewal and the ‘Big Society’. However, it is not concerned with urban policy in a conventional sense, but with the nature of the neighbour relation and of the ethics and politics of neighbours and neighbouring. These themes are explored through a discussion of debates in political theology about the meaning of the Biblical injunction to ‘love thy neighbour’, the etymological significance of proximity to the idea of neighbour, and the importance of radical ambiguity, unknowability, and fragility in neighbourly relations. These issues are thrown into relief by The Neighbour, a short story by Naim Kattan, that records the fleeting encoun...
TL;DR: Empathy is invoked by President Barack Obama throughout his political memoirs and speeches as both central to his politics and vital to the creation of a more unified, just and socially responsible America as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Empathy is invoked by President Barack Obama throughout his political memoirs and speeches as both central to his politics and vital to the creation of a more unified, just and socially responsible America. As Obama tells readers of The Audacity of Hope, ‘I find myself returning again and again to my mother’s simple principle — “How would that make you feel?” … It’s not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit’ (2006a: 67). Cultivating ‘a stronger sense of empathy’, Obama argues, would ‘tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of those people who are struggling in this society’, both inside and outside the nation (67–8). This link between empathy and social justice has been long discussed within feminist and anti-racist social theory. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty argue, for example, that in a contemporary world order structured by transnational capital, ‘engagement based on empathy’ is integral to processes of fostering ‘social justice’ and ‘building solidarity across otherwise debilitating social, economic and psychic boundaries’ (1997: xlii). Writing more recently, Breda Gray contends that critical empathetic engagement ‘can bring emotion, ethics and politics together to facilitate contextually-sensitive, contingent and, hopefully, politically effective feminist solidarities’ (2011: 207).
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the sex workers' mobilisation challenges the conception of active European Union (EU) citizenship by enacting mobilities that exceed the instituted forms of free movement and that bring to bear a mode of sociality that is enacted through exchange relations between strangers.
Abstract: In October 2005 200 delegates from twenty-eight countries in Europe gathered in Brussels to take part in an event for sex workers' rights, which involved a three-day conference, the presentation of a Declaration on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe in the European Parliament, the drafting of a Manifesto, recommendations for policy makers, a party, and a demonstration. The sex workers' mobilisation appears, at first sight, to be an exemplary form of active citizenship. Nevertheless, despite engaging European institutions, being active participants, and making use of the language of rights, we argue that the sex workers' mobilisation challenges the conception of active European Union (EU) citizenship. In particular, we show how sex workers activists question territorially and culturally bounded practices of EU citizenship by enacting mobilities that exceed the instituted forms of free movement and that bring to bear a mode of sociality that is enacted through exchange relations between strangers. Specific...
TL;DR: The advisories are not merely a rational response to an environmental health dilemma but, rather, a form of gendered biopolitics of responsibility for population security as mentioned in this paper, which encourages individuals to self-manage risk by altering their lifestyles, they are exemplary of contemporary neoliberal public health approaches that make individuals responsible not only for their own wellbeing but also for the well-being of the population.
Abstract: ‘Seafood consumption advisories’ that tell childbearing women which fish they should and should not eat are the dominant public health response to the accumulation, in otherwise healthful fish, of environmental pollutants that are harmful to developing fetuses. These advisories are not merely a rational response to an environmental health dilemma but, rather, a form of gendered biopolitics of responsibility for population security. First, because advisories encourage individuals to self-manage risk by altering their lifestyles, they are exemplary of contemporary neoliberal public health approaches that make individuals responsible not only for their own well-being but also for the well-being of the population. Second, advisories also combine elements of reproductive politics, including the medicalization of pregnancy, the production of fetal personhood, and enduring notions about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers. As such, advisories are a gendered technology of biopolitics that intensifies the self-disciplining o...
TL;DR: The first local government in the US to pass an "Illegal Immigration Relief Act" (IIRA) was Hazleton, PA, which subsequently became a model for other cities across the country seeking to implement their own immigration regulations.
Abstract: Over the past five years an aggressive movement has emerged to return immigration enforcement powers to the local level in the US, and to some extent in Europe as well. Hazleton, PA, was home to the first local government in the US to pass an ‘Illegal Immigration Relief Act’ (IIRA), which subsequently became a model for other cities across the country seeking to implement their own immigration regulations. We argue that Hazleton's IIRA was as much productive of tensions over migration as it was the product of them. Neoliberal economic restructuring left Hazleton residents feeling a sense of ‘class downgrading’ but the ordinance itself was central in creating divisions between the native-born white population and recent Latino arrivals. As much as the ordinance served to exclude undocumented immigrants, it simultaneously served to unify native-born white residents by repositioning Hazleton as ‘small-town USA’, no longer marginal but, instead, central to the defense of American ‘quality of life’. Control ov...
TL;DR: A set-theoretical account of databases might point towards some vertiginous elements that elude regulation, norms, and representation, as well as suggest some explanations of how multiples expand, ramify, and split in databases.
Abstract: Databases organise, configure, and perform thing-and-people multiples in sets. Belonging, inclusion, participation, and membership: many of the relations that make up the material-social life of people and things can be formally apprehended in terms of set-like multiples stored in databases. Mid-20th century database design derived different ways of gathering, sorting, ordering, and searching data from mathematical set theory. The dominant database architecture, the relational database management system, can be seen as a specific technological enactment of the mathematics of set theory. More recent developments such as grids, clouds, and other data-intensive architectures apprehend ever greater quantities of data. Arguably, in emerging data architectures databases themselves are subsumed by even more intensive set-like operations. Whole databases undergo set-like transformations as they are aggregated, divided, filtered, and sorted. At least at a theoretical level, the mathematics of set theory, as philos...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider how a refusal of the nation and the state to be the inevitable starting points from which politics is defined, and consider how such a refusal affects the nature of the political process.
Abstract: What happens to citizenship when the nation and the state are no longer assumed to be the inevitable starting points from which politics is defined? This paper considers how a refusal of the nation...