DIE ERDE – Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin
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Knowledge transfer, power and empowerment: MNCs’ transfer of vocational education and training to their international subsidiaries
Full text linkInternational knowledge transfer in multinational companies (MNCs) is a key issue in economic geography. However, until now the debate has largely neglected the question if knowledge transfer empowers the international partners and thus enables and encourages them in self-determined acting and thinking within their social contexts. This contribution focusses on empowering strategies of those who transfer the knowledge. The empirical study concentrates on training managers and trainers in German MNCs, who transfer vocational education and training to locations in China and India. The study follows a qualitative methodological approach and is based on comprehensive expert interviews. The results show that the training managers and trainers of vocational education and training ambitiously engage in empowering the apprentices in the subsidiaries. However, there are local frictions. Thus, the training managers and trainers generate ‘power to empower’ the apprentices. Their success is limited, as the paper illustrates
Anthropocene – humankind as global actor: Insights into historic and current perspectives
Full text linkBy proclaiming a new geological epoch in which humankind has become a dominant global driver and force of Earth system processes, Crutzen and Stoermer have triggered heated and unexpected debates among the scientific community in 2000. Yet, limiting the Anthropocene to a geological-stratigraphically defined time unit is highly questionable – if not absurd – as already in the 19th century scientists have dealt with the interaction of mind and matter with respect to the actions of humans and their impacts on the environment. Against this background, the article firstly provides an overview of historical concepts addressing humankind as global actor, whereby the differentiation and interplay between mind and matter is explicitly considered. Secondly, several characteristics of the Anthropocene are outlined but without claiming completeness. These considerations lead us to questions regarding the consequences of the Anthropocene as a “diagnosis of present times [Gegenwartsdiagnose]” (Horn and Bergthaller 2019: 12) for science itself, which are discussed in more detail in our second contribution in this Special Issue
Lack of transparency and social participation undermine the fight against deforestation in Brazil
Full text linkThe Brazilian government wrapped up 2021 with a masquerade at COP26 (26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties): hiding PRODES (the annual Amazon deforestation report). After three years of denying and dismantling the public apparatus to fight Amazon deforestation, this is emblematic of how transparency and social participation have been neglected. Transparency of PRODES has been crucial to all initiatives against deforestation. Notwithstanding, the Brazilian government has not only worked to discredit PRODES, but limited access to other environmental data and decreed a ‘gag law’. Responses to requests of public data are largely unsatisfactory and information on deforestation permits (key to understanding the extent of legal and illegal deforestation) is either missing or incomplete. Social participation has been strongly limited after one-fifth of 22 national boards monitoring the public administration was extinct and almost half restructured. As an outcome, the Amazon Fund, the most important source of financial support against deforestation, was frozen. These systemic problems compromise the political struggle to combat Amazon deforestation and worsen the living conditions of those peoples protecting forests. Increasing transparency of environmental data through robust and reliable mechanisms, and ensuring social participation in the decision-making processes are crucial to halt deforestation and support Brazil’s role as an international player
Loosening of environmental licensing threatens Brazilian biodiversity and sustainability
Full text linkEnvironmental licensing is one of Brazil’s main environmental-policy instruments and is intended to regulate anthropogenic activities and to avoid their impacts on the environment. This licensing is now at risk to being annihilated. Bill 3729/2004 was recently approved by Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, and if approved by the Senate (as is likely) it would create the so-called ‘general law of environmental licensing’ and a series of changes weakening environmental impact assessments, public participation and supervision by environmental agencies. The changes include creation of a self-declared license in which licenses would be issued automatically without any analysis by technical staff in the environmental agencies. Various types of small and medium-sized projects would be completely exempted from licensing. If approved, the bill would cause irreversible environmental losses to megadiverse Brazilian ecosystems and allow installation of projects with high environmental impact without any impact analysis or measures to minimize or recover from impacts or to provide environmental compensation for them
The Imperial Mode of Living in a semi-peripheral social formation: notes on the case of Brazil
Full text linkContrasting images, arising from disparate, if not opposed, diagnoses disseminated over the last two centuries by representatives of different sectors of Brazilian society, raise the question of how the “imperial mode of living” manifests itself in Brazil. The imperial mode of living approach can be considered a construct that proposes to explain everyday life as being conditioned by the social relations prevailing under the dominance of neoliberal globalization, including the relations between society and environment. The main purpose of this article is to mobilize evidence and offer a plausible answer to that question. The analysis of the historical process of formation and of the socio-spatial contradictions of Brazilian development suggests that, from the perspective of the ruling classes, and of a considerable part of the intelligentsia and even of the progressive political forces, the vision of the future of Brazil seems to converge with the premises of the “imperial mode of living”. From the perspective of the subalternized classes, the options indicate autonomy, social self-regulation and social self-determination – which point to the authentic Novum
What makes Tanzanian smallholder farmers satisfied with their life? It’s not farming!
Full text linkIt is widely assumed that farmers want to farm and that successful farming is positively associated with a farmer’s life satisfaction. Accordingly, especially development interventions in the Global South are focussed on upgrading and transforming rural farming landscapes under the general premise of raising productivity. However, growing evidence suggests that the assumed centrality of farming for life satisfaction is in question. The rise of trans-local and diversified livelihoods is permeating rural landscapes and new rural hopes, aspirations and livelihoods include more than “ just farming”. This study responds to a simple question: What makes smallholder farmers satisfied with their life? In doing so, it uses the case study of two agricultural clusters in Tanzania which have recently received massive financial and donor support to upgrade and transform smallholder agriculture. Based on survey data with 865 farming households, we use a multivariate logistic regression model to test for the effects of different agricultural and non-agricultural livelihood assets on the life satisfaction of smallholders. Our results suggest that just improving productivity-enhancing agricultural assets (agricultural capital, output, knowledge) is not significantly raising smallholders’ life satisfaction. Rather, more fundamental livelihood assets such as positionality (gender and age), savings and housing conditions have the strongest effect
Spatialising the Imperial Mode of Living - rethinking a concept
Full text linkIn the introduction to this special section, we present the core idea of the concept “imperial mode of living” (IML) which attempts to explain why and how the reproduction of capitalist societal relations continues to be hegemonic despite the widespread recognition of its destructive tendencies. It is argued that the IML itself can be understood as a spatial category: the imperial mode of living creates asymmetric interdependencies between various places and territories in the global North and the global South, it structures the relationship between different parts of the globe in a way that the mechanisms of reproduction in one part affect societies in others. Along four dimensions – valorisation, accumula- tion and reproduction; hegemony and subjectivation; hierarchization; externalization – we present a conceptual and research heuristic on how the working of the imperial mode of living and its socio-spatial implications can be under- stood. Moreover, it is argued that, given deepening crisis tendencies, the paradigm of a “Green Economy” or “Green Deal“ might serve as dominant imaginary that is able to orientate and unite liberal progressive forces to provide for a sufficient degree of economic coherence and to create new terrains of compromising and ways to deal with conflicts that are favourable to the operation of a green-capitalist regime of accumulation. Such an eco-capitalist modernisation of the imperial mode of living in the global North has also severe socio-spatial implications. At the end of the article, we draw a few conclusions, present some criticisms that were made and give a brief outlook of the prospects of a “green capitalism”
What drives the creation of nested markets? A qualitative case study of food markets in West Bengal, India
Full text linkThe ethics of ecological production, egalitarianism, and democratic control underpinning recent research directions in agri-environmental governance are common to many of the issues explored in the alternative economies literature. One way in which these ethics are put into practice in agri-environmental governance is through the concept of ‘nested markets’. Using qualitative methods of interviews and a focus group discussion, we examine newly constructed markets for food at different spatial scales in West Bengal, India. We find that multifunctional farmers and other actors along the supply chain started to construct and/or strengthen their own outlets and channels to reach consumers and to sell their products. Some of these markets build on long, historically deeply-rooted experiences, such as local periodic markets; others are relatively new constructions, making use of internet marketing platforms or messaging services and direct home delivery. Although they are market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different nature, different dynamics, a different redistribution of value added, and different relations between producers and consumers. Surprisingly, environmental issues were considered to be less important motivations than the creation of solidarity between producers and consumers. A deeper examination of these markets suggests new possible answers to the question of how to improve the sustainability of agricultural systems within an alternative economies framework
