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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Unfree Radicals: Geoscientists, The Anthropocene, And Left Politics, Noel Castree
Unfree Radicals: Geoscientists, The Anthropocene, And Left Politics, Noel Castree
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Neil Smith's writings about capitalism and what we call "nature" were insightful and influential. This paper asks what Smith would make of the "radical turn" today occurring in the world of international geoscience. If we "think with" Smith, how should we view Naomi Klein's recent statement that geoscientists can act as fifth columnists calling the capitalist way of life into question? In the first half of the essay I address these questions. I summarise and apply the insights of Smith's writings to recent developments in international geoscience. Smith wrote about science in most of his published statements about capitalist ecology …
Making A Smart City For The Smart Grid? The Urban Material Politics Of Actualising Smart Electricity Networks, Harriet Bulkeley, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling
Making A Smart City For The Smart Grid? The Urban Material Politics Of Actualising Smart Electricity Networks, Harriet Bulkeley, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
In a growing debate about the smart city, considerations of the ways in which urban infrastructures and their materialities are being reconfigured and contested remain in the shadows of analyses which have been primarily concerned with the management and flow of digitalisation and big data in pursuit of new logics for economic growth. In this paper, we examine the ways in which the 'smart city' is being put to work for different ends and through different means. We argue that the co-constitution of the urban as a site for carbon governance and a place where smart energy systems are developed …
Changing The Anthropo(S)Cene: Geographers, Global Environmental Change And The Politics Of Knowledge, Noel Castree
Changing The Anthropo(S)Cene: Geographers, Global Environmental Change And The Politics Of Knowledge, Noel Castree
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
This article explores the relationships between geographers and the 'Anthroposcene'. The latter comprises the networks, institutions and publications devoted to comprehending and responding to a fast-changing Earth departing from Holocene boundary conditions. The Anthroposcene necessarily mediates peoples' understanding of what are said to be epochal alterations to our planetary home. It is currently dominated by geoscientists and certain environmental social scientists. Some geographers are among their number. Whilst these researchers are working hard to alert decision-makers and publics to the epic scale, scope and magnitude of 'the human impact', their work currently tends to screen out the insights of both …
What Might Geohumanities Do? Possibilities, Practices, Publics, And Politics, Harriet Hawkins, Lou Cabeen, Felicity Callard, Noel Castree, Stephen Daniels, Dydia Delyser, Hugh Munro Neely, Peta Mitchell
What Might Geohumanities Do? Possibilities, Practices, Publics, And Politics, Harriet Hawkins, Lou Cabeen, Felicity Callard, Noel Castree, Stephen Daniels, Dydia Delyser, Hugh Munro Neely, Peta Mitchell
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
This article draws together seven practitioners and scholars from across the diffuse GeoHumanities community to reflect on the pasts and futures of the GeoHumanities. Far from trying to circle the intellectual wagons around orthodoxies of practice or intent, or to determine possibilities in advance, these contributions and the accompanying commentary seek to create connections across the diverse communities of knowledge and practice that constitute the GeoHumanities. Ahead of these six contributions a commentary situates these discussions within wider concerns with interdisciplinarity and identifies three common themes-possibilities practices, and publics-worthy of further discussion and reflection. The introduction concludes by identifying a …
Policies And Politics Of Changing The Food Label, Heather Yeatman, Michael Moore
Policies And Politics Of Changing The Food Label, Heather Yeatman, Michael Moore
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
This is a poster abstract from the 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Public Health hosted by the Korean Public Health Association on April 10-11, 2014.
Killing Sharks: Cultures And Politics Of Encounter And The Sea, Leah Maree Gibbs, Andrew Warren
Killing Sharks: Cultures And Politics Of Encounter And The Sea, Leah Maree Gibbs, Andrew Warren
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Australia Day 2014 began badly for sharks. The day before-25 January-lines of large baited hooks were rolled out, 1 km from the shore along some of Western Australia's most popular beaches. Within 24 hours the first shark was caught. Hauled alongside a boat, the animal was shot four times in the head with a rifle and its body dumped further offshore. It was a 3m tiger shark.
Vegetal Politics: Belonging, Practices And Places, Lesley Head, Jennifer Atchison, Catherine Phillips, Kathleen Buckingham
Vegetal Politics: Belonging, Practices And Places, Lesley Head, Jennifer Atchison, Catherine Phillips, Kathleen Buckingham
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Cultural geography has a long and proud tradition of research into human-plant relations. However, until recently, that tradition has been somewhat disconnected from conceptual advances in the social sciences, even those to which cultural geographers have made significant contributions. With a number of important exceptions, plant studies have been less explicitly part of more-than-human geographies than have animal studies. This special issue aims to redress this gap, recognising plants and their multiple engagements with and beyond humans. Plants are not only fundamental to human survival, they play a key role in many of the most important environmental political issues of …
Arts-Science Collaboration, Embodied Research Methods, And The Politics Of Belonging: 'Siteworks' And The Shoalhaven River, Australia, Leah Maree Gibbs
Arts-Science Collaboration, Embodied Research Methods, And The Politics Of Belonging: 'Siteworks' And The Shoalhaven River, Australia, Leah Maree Gibbs
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Arts-science collaboration is gaining increasing attention in geography and other disciplines, in part due to its ability to 'do' social, cultural and political work. This paper considers the work of SiteWorks, a series of projects initiated by Bundanon Trust - an Australian public company. SiteWorks involves arts practitioners, scientists, other scholars and local people creating works in response to the Bundanon site, on the Shoalhaven River, southeastern Australia. The paper draws on my experience as a SiteWorks participant, and poses two questions. What does this arts-science collaboration contribute to an understanding of the more-than-human world of this site? What are …
Separating The Science And Politics Of "Obesity", Stacy M. Carter, Helen L. Walls
Separating The Science And Politics Of "Obesity", Stacy M. Carter, Helen L. Walls
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Last month, JAMA published a systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and all-cause mortality. The researchers, led by Katherine M. Flegal, PhD, of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that people who are categorized as being mildly obese according to their BMI had no increased risk of dying prematurely, and overweight people a slightly reduced risk of dying prematurely, compared with their normal-weight counterparts-a finding supported by previous studies. In an accompanying editorial, 2 researchers said that the findings highlighted the limitations of increased BMI as an indicator of unhealthiness. Early …
Geographies Of Urban Politics: Pathways, Intersections, Interventions, Pauline M. Mcguirk
Geographies Of Urban Politics: Pathways, Intersections, Interventions, Pauline M. Mcguirk
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
This paper deals with urban political geographies and, most particularly, with political economy perspectives on urban politics. It offers an account that narrates what I see as influential pathways and intersections, theoretical debates, and methodological developments that have shaped contemporary urban political geographies in this vein since the 1970s, including: the 'new urban politics', intersections with postmodernism, and postcolonialism; urban neoliberalism and the contingency of urban politics; and, most recently, poststructural political economy and the notion of assemblage. This leads me to trace the implications of the shift in understanding from urban political geography to geographies of urban politics, and …
Critical Geographies With The State: The Problem Of Social Vulnerability And The Politics Of Engaged Research, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Phillip O'Neill
Critical Geographies With The State: The Problem Of Social Vulnerability And The Politics Of Engaged Research, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Phillip O'Neill
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
State interventions to govern social vulnerability highlight the complexity of contemporary states, marked by neoliberal agenda but also by progressive interventions and the desire for effectiveness. This paper draws on collaborative research with government agencies on social vulnerability in the Hunter region to assess the desirability of undertaking critical geographies with the state. We see states as contested terrains invested with the institutional capacity to mobilise diverse political projects. We argue that critical research in partnership with states is possible, as are mobilisations of the agency of state institutions to promote progressive policy development. The paper explores how we might …
Governing Social Reproduction In Masterplanned Estates: Urban Politics And Everyday Life In Sydney, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling
Governing Social Reproduction In Masterplanned Estates: Urban Politics And Everyday Life In Sydney, Pauline M. Mcguirk, Robyn Dowling
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Critical urban research arising from the 'new urban politics' rich heritage has conventionally privileged the politics of accumulation and the city's downtown over the politics of social reproduction and everyday, residential spaces. This paper focuses on residential spaces and the politics involved in recasting everyday practices of social reproduction through private neighbourhood governance. Focusing on the masterplanned estates increasingly prevalent across Sydney's residential landscape, it explores the material practices and subjectivities shaped by these estates' contractual governance and the contours and limits to the formation of self-governing middle-class consumer citizens. The paper highlights a granular fabric to urban politics produced …
Contrapuntal Geographies: The Politics Of Organizing Across Sociospatial Difference, Noel Castree, David Featherstone, Andrew Herod
Contrapuntal Geographies: The Politics Of Organizing Across Sociospatial Difference, Noel Castree, David Featherstone, Andrew Herod
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
This chapter is written against the background of two closely interlinked developments. The first is the increase in the number and type (or at least visibility) of transborder political movements this last decade or so, particularly during the years of what David Slater (2003: 84) calls 'the post-Seattle conjuncture'. The second is a sharp increase in geographical writing on these multifarious attempts to bridge sociospatial difference in order to challenge neo-liberal versions of 'globalization'. To oversimplify matters, we can say that this literature relates to two groups of space-spanning social actors: those associated with the labour movement (broadly conceived) and …
Regional Development Politics Along Australia's Eastern Seaboard, Phillip O'Neill, Pauline M. Mcguirk
Regional Development Politics Along Australia's Eastern Seaboard, Phillip O'Neill, Pauline M. Mcguirk
Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)
Despite its enduring nature, there is remarkably little published analysis about Australia's period of contemporary prosperity. It is clear that the post -war Keynesian-Fordist foundations for accumulation in Australia have been displaced. Prima facie evidence suggests that this displacement centres on econormc advantage within the nation's finance, property and business services sectors. Evidence also suggests that a new territorial configurations of Australia's urban and regional economies has accompanied this sectoral shift and, in turn, new spatial distributional flows have been generated. The paper examines whether a new urban-centric economic configuration has emerged. Economic reterritorialisations in Australia have necessarily produced new …