1,721,042 research outputs found
Lorimer, Jamie i Hodgetts, Timothy (2024). More-than-Human : [ressenya]
No full textObra ressenyada: Lorimer, Jamie i Hodgetts, Timothy. More-than-human. Londres: Routledge, 2024. 262 p. ISBN 978113805839
Governing disturbance regimes: rewilding and the management of large herbivores in UK nature conservation
Full text linkIn recent years, there has been a rethinking of the role of disturbance regimes in nature conservation: from exceptional and destructive events to be controlled and/or avoided, to key ecological processes to be nurtured and choreographed. These regimes concern the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecological disturbances, understood here as events that disrupt the structure of an ecology, community or population, causing profound changes in an ecosystem. The rethinking of their role precedes but resonates with current enthusiasms for proactive and experimental modes of conservation, such as rewilding.
This thesis draws on three case studies (the New Forest, Knepp Castle Estate and Dundreggan Estate) to explore the ontological, epistemic and socio-political implications of rewilding for the governance of forest disturbance regimes in the UK, particularly through the use of large herbivores. Drawing upon relational understandings of nature, space and time, it develops an understanding of disturbance regimes as process and practice. It first examines how rewilding departs from orthodox biopolitical modes of governing life and the ontological politics at the interface between these various modes. To this end, it attends to the ways in which disturbances have been historically understood and how these understandings have come to shape their governance. Second, it explores the knowledge practices through which ecologists and forest managers know and enact disturbances, comparing a traditional ‘prescriptive’ approach with rewilding. It argues that in practice rewilding is multiple, in contrast to rewilding discourse. Finally, it maps the different and sometimes conflicting social, economic and cultural values associated with working with natural processes, exploring the political ecologies of governing disturbance regimes. It argues that controversies around forest management pertain to a large extent to contrasting perceptions of different types of ‘work’ within the idea of working landscape and how they are ‘naturalised’.
In the conclusion, the thesis explores three empirical and conceptual contributions of these findings for those seeking to understand the logics of rewilding and the processes, practices and dynamics by which nonhuman forms and processes are governed in a post-Natural and uncertain future. First, by deploying a relational approach to the governance of disturbance regimes and by focusing on a long-term disturbance, I draw out the relevance of temporality for thinking through and with disturbances as social and ecological processes. Second, by drawing attention to the intertwining of bio- and socio-political regimes, I propose a reframing of (European) rewilded landscapes as working landscapes. Finally, by attending to the intricacies of practice, I argue that rewilding praxis is multiple and hybrid. It often involves compromises and is shaped by past governance histories and the broader political and social context
Light, land, and the lens: digital landscapes, fell farming, and the politics of vision in the Lake District
Full text linkThis thesis explores how the Lake District National Park is encountered as a digital landscape in the social media platform, Instagram. It aims to develop innovative digital methods, embracing both qualitative and quantitative approaches, to examine how longstanding romantic representations of the Lake District are continued through contemporary digital mediums. The thesis draws together conceptual underpinnings from studies of visuality and digital ecologies to interrogate how rural geographies of the #lakedistrict can be understood and reimagined. The thesis then focuses on the fell farming communities of Herdwick sheep farmers to explore what happens when we make interventions into dominant manifestations of the online #lakedistrict using participatory digital visual methods.
By developing methods such as digital textures and the concept of aperturing, this work examines how less visible #lakedistricts can be brought into light. The thesis deploys experimental analytical approaches such as digital textures to develop a cumulative ‘hyperscene typology’ of the #lakedistrict, moving from formal representations and influential conceptions of the #lakedistrict in the first half, to visioning farmers’ #lakedistricts as lived space and lived shade. The thesis offers new considerations about how alternative digital landscapes can challenge and enrich dominant hyperseen manifestations of the #lakedistrict
Atmosphere as a means of governing life: weather modification and ecological conservation in Sanjiangyuan, China
Full text linkProminent advocates suggest that weather modification and geoengineering are crucial in addressing environmental changes in the Anthropocene, yet their practices and politics are under-examined. To fill this gap, this research explores the weather modification policies and practices in China, and develops a conceptual framework to understand the atmospheric governance. From data collected through the fieldwork in Qinghai province, this analysis of atmospheric governance is developed through four chapters. The first analytical chapter provides an overview of weather modification drawing on literatures on ‘environmentalities’, in which life is governed by modulating the environment. Based on a historical analysis of weather modification in Qinghai, it argues that atmospheric environmentality cannot be conceptualised as a singular form, but instead as variegated modes of governance with different temporalities and subjects. The remaining three analytical chapters tackle three key characteristics of atmospheric governance: focusing on its embodied, epistemic and affective dimensions. Chapter 5 emphasises the practices through which meteorologists attune to the dynamics of the weather—with what I call a weather choreography—to make the atmosphere palpable and modifiable. In Chapter 6, I pay attention to the politics of epistemology and discuss how differences between meteorologists and hydrologists in comprehending the volume of the cloud water lead to different geopolitical implications. Chapter 7 brings together the meteorological and affective senses of the atmosphere for understanding weather modification governance. I show how the policies and practices of weather modification in China have been associated with optimistic projections that convert humanised rain into hope from the air. In conclusion, I summarise the chapters’ insights to propose a conceptual framework for atmospheric governance and discuss how my analysis contributes to debates on proactive interventions in the Anthropocene
Governing deceleration: the natures, times, and spaces of ecotourism in South Korea
Full text linkThis thesis explores the governmentalities of ecotourism in South Korea in relation to the specific historical-political experience of accelerated modernisation, focussing on three selected analytical themes of nature, time, and space. It develops a theoretical framework that combines Foucauldian governmentality analysis with concepts and insights related to nature, time and space developed in more-than-human and relational geographies and cognate social sciences. Drawing on three cases of tidal flat tourism, countryside walking, and whale tourism, it first examines the assemblages and technologies of ecotourism governance. It argues that ecotourism in South Korea is characterised by a decentralised mode of governance involving an array of political actors. This mode relies less on sovereign power and more on disciplinary and biopolitical techniques. Second, it examines the ways in which political technologies relating to nature, time, and space are engaged in the governmentalities of South Korean ecotourism. The analysis centres on: understandings of nature enacted through the discourse of saengmyeong [life] and therapeutic experiences; a discourse of slowness enacted through a paradoxical temporal organisation of accelerated slowness; and the multiple spatial relations entangled in the geographical-historical connections of South Korean modernisation. Together, these political technologies are deployed to create an ecotourism subject who cares about the self and the environment, which differs from the prevalent South Korean positions of the disciplined worker and the practical user of nature. This thesis argues that ecotourism in South Korea serves as a new biopolitical intervention to conduct the conduct of its human participants in ways that differ from those established through accelerated modernisation. By offering one of the first social science accounts of ecotourism in South Korea, it provides novel concepts and practices for the analysis of ecotourism. These differ from the mainstream approaches that deploy a political economy framework and focus largely on examples drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia
Plastic cows: purity, pollution, and polymers
Full text linkThis thesis explores the intersection of animal welfare, human identity, and plastics through a case study of urban dairy cows in Mysore, Karnataka, India. Analyzing first how cows inform and reinforce human identities within a Hindu nationalist culture, the thesis next seeks to understand how socioreligious, political, and economic forces conspire to keep cows living in Indian cities. Then follows an investigation of urban cow welfare and management, and finally, concludes with research about the impacts of plastic pollution in cities to cow and human welfare. The thesis addresses the entangled relationships between animals, humans and plastics to illuminate the deleterious impacts to both animal and human wellbeing and our shared environment.
The concept of plasticity functions as a unifying theme in this multilayered analysis of dairy cows in Mysore. There are four expressions of plasticity that guide the study: (1) The rhetorical plasticity of animals’ symbolic cultural meaning, which addresses the recognition that animals inform human identities, and that humans give animals diverse and sometimes conflicting meanings; (2) genetic plasticity, which addresses the ways humans make animal bodies plastic through direct and indirect means; (3) behavioral plasticity, which examines the ways a species (here, cows) can adapt their behaviors to a range of contexts; and (4) material plasticity, which, in the context of plastic pollution and its impact on urban dairy cattle, examines the force of plastics’ pollutants on bodies that are connected by the food chain. This concept of plasticity contributes to scholarship in more-than-human geography, which addresses processes of social and material evolution and change.
Through an analysis of the history and lives of Indian urban dairy cows, this thesis contributes the following concepts to the discipline of geography. Anthro-animal identities, which proposes that some animals are used to internalize and reproduce human cultural identities, which can also inform competing ontologies about animals as well as reinforce social conflict between humans. The urbananimal pastoral, which postulates that some urban animals evoke sentiments of bucolic environments and lifestyles to urbanites, even if these animals are divorced from the landscapes they are seen to embody. The concept of the urban-animal contact zone suggests that the city is a site of both risk and opportunity for animals that inhabit urban environments. Finally, the thesis proposes that the ubiquitous polymer products known as plastics are leaky materials (Nading, 2017) which release chemicals back into the environment. Plastic petrochemicals travel in and through bodies through environmental exposure and via the food chain and should be viewed as both a solid and a fluid waste problem.
Through an analysis of human, animal, and material entanglements, this thesis explores: how animals co-constitute human social and political worlds; how cultural identity informs understandings of animal welfare, subjectivities, and placement on the landscape; and how beliefs about animals contribute to perceptions about pollution and purity, including how we understand and relate to plastic waste in the environment
Enacting connectivity: woodland mammal conservation practices in England & Wales
Full text linkIn recent years ideas about connectivity have become increasingly influential in theories pertaining to wildlife conservation. These ideas range from concerns with spatial habitat linkages or species' movements, to the forms of connection existing between 'people' and 'nature'. This thesis is concerned with how these various forms of connectivity are enacted in wildlife conservation through varied spatial practices. Following Mol (2002), I suggest that these modes of connectivity are enacted not separately but as a multiple. Indeed, through tracing how connectivity is enacted in a series of conservation situations relating to woodland mammals in England and Wales (red squirrels, pine martens, and wild/feral boar), I suggest that these multiple spatial practices of connectivity shape the biopolitical possibilities for living with non-human life. Since the connectivity multiple is composed, following Latour (2010) I further argue that it can be recomposed. Thus, I make the normative suggestion that contemporary trends in conservation policy (towards larger-scale action, process-based objectives, and neoliberal modes of governance) might be rethought and differently articulated through a conceptual and practical approach I term revitalizing conservation. This thesis thus makes several important contributions to geographic literatures. Following a widespread (re)affirmation of nonhuman agency in social science (e.g. Latour, 2005; Callon et al, 2009; Braun & Whatmore, 2010), and particularly the agential capacities of animals (Wolch & Emel, 1998; Philo & Wilbert, 2000), it foregrounds the role of woodland mammals in enacting connectivity through developing the concept of animal mobilities. Furthermore, it engages with existing work tracing affirmative possibilities for conservation (bio)politics (Whatmore, 2002; Lulka, 2009; Hinchliffe et al, 2005; Hinchliffe, 2008; J.Lorimer, 2010, 2012, 2015), by illuminating the intersection of spatial practices of connectivity, and the potential these offer for alternative modes of 'living with' more-than-human lives
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
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