Journals at the University of Arizona
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The Manliest Man: How Jack Johnson Changed the Relationship of White Supremacy and Masculinity in America
No full textJack Johnson was an African American boxer in America at the turn of the century. This paper will detail Johnson's accomplishments and how his time as a household name changed the relationship between white supemacy and masculinity. The complex charateristics of masculinity in the 1900s strictly excluded African Americans. Sustaining white supremacy was crucial to maintaining mainstreem masculinity. This study will focus on African Americans' and white Americans' views of Jack Johnson during his most famous years
"Grow what you eat, eat what you grow": urban agriculture as middle class intervention in India
No full textIn Bengaluru, India's "IT Capital" and one of its fastest growing cities, an increasing number of middle class residents are growing fruits and vegetables in their private spaces for home consumption. This article examines the motivations and practices of Bengaluru's organic terrace gardeners ("OTGians") in order to understand the possibilities and limitations of urban gardening as a middle class intervention into unsafe food systems and decaying urban ecologies. OTGians are driven primarily by concerns about worsening food quality and safety, and secondarily by the desire to create green spaces that counteract environmental degradation in the city. Like community gardeners in the Global North, they understand urban gardening as a way to mediate problems in the contemporary food system and the urban ecology. However, like other alternative food and environmental movements, OTGians' efforts are anchored in class-specific concerns and experiences. While they have been successful in creating a vibrant community, their efforts remain limited to the middle class. This is in large part due to the site, scale, and production practices that anchor their interventions. I briefly consider a different approach to food production in Bengaluru—that of a caste-specific farming community that has been dispossessed of much of its agricultural land in the name of urban development—to illuminate divergent histories, narratives, and practices of urban agriculture. However, I also emphasize the sites of intersection between these narratives, and suggest that OTGians can find commonalities with other food producers in the city in ways that might revolutionize Bengaluru's food future. I thus look for potential sites of collaboration and intersection in understanding the uneven power relations and politics of urban socio-natures
Looking beyond the idyllic representations of the rural: The Konkan Railway controversy and middle-class environmentalism in India
No full textPost-independence India has had its share of controversies around mega-infrastructure projects that have pitted environmental preservation against development concerns. This article studies the environmental controversy around one such megaproject, the Konkan Railway, employing a framework that integrates the environmental values, beliefs and behaviour of individuals and groups with a historical understanding of political economy and ecology (science). Essentialist and over-simplified environmental discourses, without scientific credibility and not based on historical facts, are often influential in policy making, especially when channelled by the middle classes. Better understanding our present concerns and guiding decisions and policies to deal with the problems we currently face, requires unmasking the romanticization of the countryside. We must replace the idyllic version of the past with a nuanced historical understanding of the interaction between nature and culture. This article also locates the controversy over the Konkan Railway within the frames used to study Indian environmentalism. The aim is to improve our understanding of the regional, ideological and cultural pluralities in environmental values, beliefs and behaviour of the middle class in India
Managing sandstorms through resettling pastoralists in China: how multiple forms of power govern the environment at/across scales
No full textThis study uses concepts of power and 'scaled politics' to analyze the effects of environmentalization and technocratic and market-based measures in China. Political scientists have explored the politics behind the proactive engagement of the Chinese state in governing the environment since the 2000s, also drawing on political ecology. Based on policy document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the study investigates a case of ecological resettlement in Inner Mongolia by examining how this became a new solution to desertification and rangeland degradation. The article shows how resettlement was implemented through multi-scalar practices and the reconfiguration of spatial relations, and why pastoral households responded to resettlement in certain ways. The state turned certain areas and people (associated with overgrazing) into subjects of governance. By distinguishing the different strategies used by central and local government, the analysis shows that disciplinary and neoliberal environmentality are associated with scalar practices between the state and the people, and within the state system. Neoliberal environmentality, however, counteracts the making of environmental subjects and encounters resistance. Sovereign environmentality is still deployed as a means to control local government and the obedience of herders. Pastoralists resist this, depending on their different subjectivities. The study advances our understanding of the multiple governmentality perspective, its analytics, and scalar processes.
Oil palm companies, privatization and social dissonance: towards a socially viable and ecologically sustainable land reform in Tanah Laut Regency, South Kalimantan, Indonesia
No full textThis article argues that repossession of land by community members and land reform is vital to support the rural poor and to ensure the sustainability of the commons. Repossession requires bottom-up initiatives, social mobilization and external interventions. The case is a study of oil palm plantations in Tanah Laut Regency, South Kalimantan, Indonesia. The mangroves and lowlands in Tabanio and Ujung Batu have always been governed by indigenous (adat) laws. Through local government consent and partnership, in 2007 an oil palm plantation company under the Kintap Jaya Watindo (KJW) holding group obtained the right to privatize and convert + 900 hectares of lowland into plantations, resulting in ecological devastation and a loss of livelihood. This land grab led to conflicts with community members due to deception, unfavorable incorporation of community members into their schemes, unwanted land conversion and horizontal conflicts between communities. Increased commercialization of local oil palm resources, monetary compensation, and construction of basic infrastructure such as roads and latrines led to spiraling conflicts. Intimidation by local government officials and elites worsened conflict and in 2011 community members burned the plantation, leading to the company's withdrawal. Subsequently, social institutions and local rules have played a role in protecting coastal resources on behalf of the community, recognizing collective identity and social and ecological responsibilities. Behavioral change and innovative power structures are locally sensitive and environmentally appropriate. Key Words: land grabbing, land reform, agricultural differentiation, extractive institution, exclusion, adverse incorporation, inclusion, power, common la
Food waste: a political ecology approach
No full textFood waste is the loss of perfectly edible food products. It is a wide-ranging phenomenon: a substantial part of agricultural production is never consumed. The prevalent, most widespread paradigm regarding this phenomenon holds that it is due to inadequate logistics and technology, or to poor management of food on the part of end users. However, an analysis from a political ecology standpoint allows a different interpretation: the root of the problem lies in the hegemonic agrofood system and the unequal power relationships between the actors in the agrofood chain.Key words: Food waste, agriculture, agrofood system, supermarkets, political ecolog
The Information Technology Challenge in Teaching Senior High School Geography in Ghana
No full textThe use of information technologies in the field of geography, an important discipline in social sciences, contributes to rendering abstract phenomena and concepts concrete, thereby increasing high school education students’ interest in geographic education. This study evaluated the extent to which information technologies has been diffused in high school geography lessons in a metropolitan area in Ghana, by focusing on geography teachers use of information technologies in teaching. In all, 40 geography teachers from 15 selected senior high schools in the metropolis were used for the study. Numerical analysis and descriptive analysis techniques were used in the analysis of the research data. Results indicated that the use of information technologies in teaching geography lessons in senior high schools was limited. The geography teachers attributed the inadequate use of information technologies to insufficient equipment, insufficient skills on the part of teachers, and inaccessibility to the available equipment. The research further indicated that teachers did not receive adequate training in the use of information technologies in their teacher preparation institutions and therefore, lacked the needed skills and were reluctant to use technology in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning.DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i1_antw
