1,721,006 research outputs found
Experiments in governance and citizenship in Kenya’s resource frontier
No full textOver the past four years, natural resource exploration and development have rapidly expanded across northern Kenya and, as a result, the region is in the midst of a frontier-making project that may have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. In this dissertation, I use the concept of frontier as an analytical framework to examine processes that are transforming society, the economy, and landscape in northern Kenya. This dissertation contributes to scholarship on resource frontiers by analysing the specific governmental technologies used by both powerful and less powerful actors to produce, negotiate and contest the rules that govern landscapes and people in frontiers.
In Article #1, I examine the use of novel technologies of governance in frontier spaces. I show how transnational corporations use voluntary standards — designed to regulate their social and environmental conduct — to legitimize and consolidate control over land and resources. In constructing my argument, I engage with two examples from Kenya’s northern resource frontier. I trace the specific technologies used by two corporations to secure access to land for the purpose of resource development, focusing specifically on their use of voluntary standards. I frame my analysis using Hall et al.’s (2011) ‘powers of exclusion,’ arguing that voluntary standards serve as one legitimising discourse that corporations can deploy to justify excluding other land users.
In Article #2, I shift my focus to how frontiers are governed ‘from below’. This article focuses on the spectrum of different, sometimes competing, reactions to mega-infrastructure development in northern Kenya among rural land users. The central aim of this article is to examine how rural groups draw upon different forms of expertise — ranging from ecological science to international legal frameworks — to frame and legitimize their reactions to frontier-making projects. The analysis in this article contributes to wider debates about rural agency in frontier spaces, by demonstrating how rural land users can strategically deploy different forms of expertise to negotiate the rules that govern access to land and resources.
In Article #3, my co-author and I analyse changing social and political relationships in northern Kenya in light of oil exploration and development. This article demonstrates how some northern Kenyans are seeking protection of their rights from oil companies, in light of the Kenyan government’s hands-off approach to governing northwestern Kenya. We argue that new expectations around corporate social responsibility are drawing oil companies and rural communities into an uneasy citizen-state-like relationship, altering the experiences and practices of citizenship in the region. This article contributes to discussions about new political spaces and new forms of political subjectivity in frontier spaces.
Combined, these articles use northern Kenya as a case study to illustrate how the rules that govern access to land in resource frontiers are shaped through experiments in governance and innovative acts of citizenship. I frame my conclusions using recent literature on post-frontiers
Enclave oil development and the rearticulation of citizenship in Turkana, Kenya:Exploring 'crude citizenship'
No full textTurkana County, located in the arid region of northwestern Kenya, has long been imagined as backwards and unproductive. As a result, successive governments have neglected to provide adequate social services and investments in the county, leaving Turkanas to rely on humanitarian organisations for access to rights and protections traditionally associated with citizenship. Yet when oil was discovered in Turkana in 2012, the county was thrust into the international spotlight. The oil exploration and development activities that followed the oil discovery have already begun to impact life in Turkana. Accordingly, this paper focuses on changing social and political relationships in light of emergent spaces of enclave oil development in Turkana. Our analysis draws from key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and field observations carried out in Kenya between October 2014 and May 2015. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Kenyan state’s historically hands-off approach to governing this region has led some Turkanas to seek recognition, legitimization, and fulfillment for their rights from oil companies, rather than the state. We argue that this is drawing oil companies and rural communities into an uneasy citizen-state-like relationship, altering the experiences and practices of citizenship in Turkana. We conclude that while the presence of oil companies in Turkana may benefit some, it also works to the detriment of others, introducing new forms of inequality and marginalization – a process we refer to as ‘crude citizenship’
Infrastructure projects and rural politics in northern Kenya: the use of divergent expertise to negotiate the terms of land deals for transport infrastructure
No full textIn 2012, construction began on the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor in northern Kenya. Once complete, LAPSSET will connect Kenya, South Sudan and Ethiopia with a new transport infrastructure, including a highway, railway and pipeline. Authorities promise that LAPSSET will drive economic growth by improving trade and attracting investors while also stimulating development in rural areas surrounding transport routes. Despite this promise, many rural land users remain concerned about how LAPSSET stands to alter their access to and control over land. This contribution reflects on how these rural groups are attempting to negotiate proposed land-use changes for LAPSSET by creating and deploying expertise that challenges authorities’ claims about the costs and benefits of the corridor for rural landscapes and communities. The analysis shows that just as expertise can be constructed and circulated ‘from above’ to legitimise land deals for transport infrastructure, counter-claims can be produced and mobilised by rural land users to unsettle these land deals. This paper contributes to recent research that examines the specific strategies used by rural actors to influence proposed land-use changes, as well as research that considers how power inequalities shape and constrain the ability of different rural groups to negotiate the terms of land deals to their own advantage
Infrastructuring zoonoses:Zoonoses, infrastructures, and the life giving and taking politics of pandemic prevention
Get PDFThis article critically reviews geographical scholarship to develop five categories for conceptualising the plurality of zoonotic disease situations configured through infrastructure. These are infrastructures that (1) unmoor zoonoses, (2) mobilise zoonoses, (3) immobilise zoonoses, (4) leak zoonoses, and (5) surveil zoonoses. Our analysis of these categories complicates notions that infrastructure either spreads or stops zoonoses and reveals the varied bio- and necro-politics associated with zoonotic disease situations configured through infrastructure. Before concluding, we review principles of infrastructuring zoonoses otherwise to help mobilise geographical scholarship in support of anti-anthropocentric, care-full, and probiotic approaches to modulating zoonoses in the (post)pandemic era
Pastoralism in the time of oil: Youth perspectives on the oil industry and the future of pastoralism in Turkana, Kenya
No full textThe central aim of this paper is to discuss how oil exploration and development is creating disjunctures in the livelihood desires and strategies of youth from pastoralist households in Turkana, northern Kenya. It specifically considers how the newfound presence of oil exploration companies is altering the nature and type of livelihoods that youth desire in Turkana. While pastoralism remains the dominant livelihood strategy in the region – practiced by over 70% of the population – the presence of an emerging oil industry is leading many Turkana youth to imagine futures involving livelihoods other than pastoralism. These futures are characterized by a move away from subsistence livelihoods towards wage-labour and market-driven production. Drawing from key informant interviews, focus group discussions and field observations, our findings contribute to current debates about the interplay between extractive industries and pastoralist livelihoods in Turkana. Ultimately, we argue that while youth in Turkana are trying to take advantage of new opportunities being created by the oil industry, theses opportunities could also exacerbate existing inequalities and foster new forms of vulnerability
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Experiments in governance and citizenship in Kenya’s resource frontier
No full textOver the past four years, natural resource exploration and development have rapidly expanded across northern Kenya and, as a result, the region is in the midst of a frontier-making project that may have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. In this dissertation, I use the concept of frontier as an analytical framework to examine processes that are transforming society, the economy, and landscape in northern Kenya. This dissertation contributes to scholarship on resource frontiers by analysing the specific governmental technologies used by both powerful and less powerful actors to produce, negotiate and contest the rules that govern landscapes and people in frontiers. In Article #1, I examine the use of novel technologies of governance in frontier spaces. I show how transnational corporations use voluntary standards — designed to regulate their social and environmental conduct — to legitimize and consolidate control over land and resources. In constructing my argument, I engage with two examples from Kenya’s northern resource frontier. I trace the specific technologies used by two corporations to secure access to land for the purpose of resource development, focusing specifically on their use of voluntary standards. I frame my analysis using Hall et al.’s (2011) ‘powers of exclusion,’ arguing that voluntary standards serve as one legitimising discourse that corporations can deploy to justify excluding other land users. In Article #2, I shift my focus to how frontiers are governed ‘from below’. This article focuses on the spectrum of different, sometimes competing, reactions to mega-infrastructure development in northern Kenya among rural land users. The central aim of this article is to examine how rural groups draw upon different forms of expertise — ranging from ecological science to international legal frameworks — to frame and legitimize their reactions to frontier-making projects. The analysis in this article contributes to wider debates about rural agency in frontier spaces, by demonstrating how rural land users can strategically deploy different forms of expertise to negotiate the rules that govern access to land and resources. In Article #3, my co-author and I analyse changing social and political relationships in northern Kenya in light of oil exploration and development. This article demonstrates how some northern Kenyans are seeking protection of their rights from oil companies, in light of the Kenyan government’s hands-off approach to governing northwestern Kenya. We argue that new expectations around corporate social responsibility are drawing oil companies and rural communities into an uneasy citizen-state-like relationship, altering the experiences and practices of citizenship in the region. This article contributes to discussions about new political spaces and new forms of political subjectivity in frontier spaces. Combined, these articles use northern Kenya as a case study to illustrate how the rules that govern access to land in resource frontiers are shaped through experiments in governance and innovative acts of citizenship. I frame my conclusions using recent literature on post-frontiers
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