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The Political Economy of Global Manufacturing, Business and Finance (International Political Economy Series)
by George Kararach Michael TribeThis book is written as a tribute to Frederick Nixson’s extensive work on industrial development in the Global South, while seeking to actively engage with the latest arguments concerning development economics, together with changes in manufacturing and industrial policy that continue to shape the role of the Global South in the international economy, the impact of the increased concentration of global multinational corporations in that space, along with the rise of new financing tools and debt traps. The chapters pay homage to Fred’s broad view of the international development process and reflect his breadth of perception both theoretically and geographically. The book targets both the scholarly and policymaking audience.
The Political Economy of Global Warming: The Terminal Crisis (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by Del WestonHumanity is facing an unprecedented global catastrophe as a result of global warming. This book examines the reasons why international agencies, together with national governments, are seemingly unable to provide real and binding solutions to the problems. The reasons presented relate to the existing dominant global economic structure of capitalism as well as the fact that global warming is too often seen as an isolated problem rather than one of a suite of exceptional, converging and accelerating crises arising from the global capitalist political economy. <P><P> This book adopts a political economy framework to address these issues. It accepts the science of global warming but challenges the predominant politics and economics of global warming. To illustrate the key issues involved, the book draws on South Africa – building on Samir Amin’s thesis that the country represents a microcosm of the global political economy. By taking a political economy approach, the book provides a clear explanation of the deep and pervasive problem of the denial which fails to acknowledge global warming as a systemic rather than a market problem. The book should be of interest to students and scholars researching climate change, environmental politics, environmental and ecological economics, development studies and political economics.
The Political Economy of Land: Rent, Financialization and Resistance (Routledge Studies in Urbanism and the City)
by Robert Beauregard Mika HyötyläinenRecent years have seen a gathering interest in the importance of real estate development to the growth and development of cities. This has included theoretical work on such topics as land rent and property rights as well as empirical studies on property investments, assetization, securitization, and the effects of changing property values on economic growth and the global status of cities. In the field of urban political economy, attention has turned particularly to the financialization of land and the built environment and to the globalization of property ownership, real estate development, and architectural design. This edited volume brings together a collection of original investigations of the current thinking on three broad themes: the assetization of land and buildings, the relationship of land rent to valuation and speculation in the markets for private and public properties, and the different ways in which land functions as a social relation. In order to ground the discussion, each chapter combines a theoretical perspective with empirical evidence. And, to convey a sense of the global nature of these phenomena, the book includes cases from Finland, India, Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, China, and the United States. Although its prime goal is to solidify and extend the political economy of land, the book is also a celebration of the Finnish scholar Anne Haila who was a major contributor to this literature and, specifically, to the work of the book’s authors. Prior to her sudden death in 2019, she was a key figure in the discussions that are at the core of the political economy of land: the book, in part, is a public acknowledgement of her contributions.
The Political Economy of Low Carbon Resilient Development: Planning and implementation (Routledge Studies in Low Carbon Development)
by Susannah Fisher Neha RaiOver the last decade, policies and financing decisions aiming to support low carbon resilient development within the least developed countries have been implemented across several regions. Some governments are steered by international frameworks, such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), while others take their own approach to planning and implementing climate resilient actions. Within these diverse approaches however, there are unspoken assumptions and normative assessments of what the solutions to climate change are, who the most appropriate actors are and who should benefit from these actions. This book examines the political economy dynamics or the underlying values, knowledge, discourses, resources and power relationships behind decisions that support low carbon resilient development in the least developed countries. While much has been written on the politics of climate change, this book will focus on the political economy of national planning and the ways in which the least developed countries are moving from climate resilient planning to implementation. The book will use empirical evidence of low carbon resilient development planning in four countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Nepal. Different approaches to low carbon resilience are critically analysed based on detailed analysis of key policy areas. This book will be of great interest to policy makers, practitioners’ students and scholars of climate change and sustainable development.
The Political Economy of Low Carbon Transformation: Breaking the habits of capitalism (Routledge Studies in Low Carbon Development)
by Harold WilhiteDeep reductions in energy use and carbon emissions will not be possible within political economies that are driven by the capitalist imperatives of growth, commodification and individualization. As such, it has now become necessary to understand the relationship between capitalism and the emergence of high energy habits. Using the examples of home energy, transport and food, The Political Economy of Low Carbon Transformation articulates the relationship between the politics of economic expansion and the formation of high-energy habits at the level of family and household. The book elaborates a theory of habit and how it can contribute to this relationship. It critiques mainstream green economy and green energy prescriptions for low carbon transformation that take economic growth for granted and ignore habits formed in a material world designed and built for high energy use. The book explores the growing number of communities around the world that are engaged in collaborative efforts to reform their community and household habits in ways that are less environmentally intrusive. It assesses their potential to make an impact on national and urban low carbon political agendas. The book is aimed at a large and growing interdisciplinary audience interested in the relationship between political economy, consumption and sustainability.
The Political Economy of Smog in Southern California (Routledge Library Editions: Environmental and Natural Resource Economics)
by Jeffry FawcettThis study, first published in 1990, explores the ways in which institutions can succeed or fail at environmental improvement. The author first takes a look at the nature of environmental politics and the history of air pollution control in Southern California. He then develops a political economic model that asks the question: what effect have the dramatic changes that have occurred throughout the history of air pollution control in Southern California had on air quality? Jeffry Fawcett uses the information gathered to both evaluate the relationship between air quality and institutional change; and to evaluate how political economists explain how state environmental institutions work. This title will be of interest to students of environmental economics and policy.
The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries
by Piers BlaikieFirst published in 1985. This book examines wide variety of ways in which environmental deterioration, in particular soil erosion, can be viewed and the implicit political judgements that often inform them. Using the context of developing countries, where the effects tend to be more acute due to underdevelopment and climatic factors, this work aims to examine this source of uncertainty and make explicit the underlying assumptions in the debate about soil erosion. It also rejects the notion that soil erosion is a politically neutral issue and argues that conservation requires fundamental social change. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and developmental studies.
The Political Economy of Sustainable Development: Valuation, Distribution, Governance
by Dirk Jacob WolfsonThe author shows how sustainable development may be organized, valued and distributed by introducing situational contracting as an interactive and contextual mode of governance. Situational contracting provides a road map for where we want to go, serving the prevailing ideology in implementing the trade between efficiency and fairness.
The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation (Routledge Studies in Development and Society #Vol. 20)
by Matthias KrauseAccording to recent estimates, around 6,000 people – mostly children under five – die every day from diseases caused by inappropriate water and sanitation (WS) services. Much of the academic and political debate surrounding this issue has focused on private sector participation. By shifting the attention towards the influence of governance, Krause examines the political and sectoral institutions that are essential for the provision of WS services. Utilizing data from sixty-nine developing countries, Matthias Krause demonstrates that the level of democracy has a statistically significant positive impact on access to WS services and that low-quality governance of sub-national governments compromises the internal efficiency of providers and the widespread access to services. This book makes a critical contribution to the water and sanitation research and will help academics and policy-makers to rethink the way in which they deal with water issues.
The Political Economy of the Low-Carbon Transition
by Peadar Kirby Tadhg O’mahonyThis book addresses the global need to transition to a low-carbon society and economy by 2050. The authors interrogate the dominant frames used for understanding this challenge and the predominant policy approaches for achieving it. Highlighting the techno-optimism that informs our current understanding and policy options, Kirby and O'Mahony draw on the lessons of international development to situate the transition within a political economy framework. Assisted by thinking on future scenarios, they critically examine the range of pathways being implemented by both developed and developing countries, identifying the prevailing forms of climate capitalism led by technology. Based on evidence that this is inadequate to achieve a low-carbon and sustainable society, the authors identify an alternative approach. This advance emerges from community initiatives, discussions on postcapitalism and debates about wellbeing and degrowth. The re-positioning of society and environment at the core of development can be labelled "ecosocialism" - a concept which must be tempered against the conditions created by Trumpism and Brexit.
The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities
by Adam T. SmithHow do landscapes--defined in the broadest sense to incorporate the physical contours of the built environment, the aesthetics of form, and the imaginative reflections of spatial representations--contribute to the making of politics? Shifting through the archaeological, epigraphic, and artistic remains of early complex societies, this provocative and far-reaching book is the first systematic attempt to explain the links between spatial organization and politics from an anthropological point of view. The Classic-period Maya, the kingdom of Urartu, and the cities of early southern Mesopotamia provide the focal points for this multidimensional account of human polities. Are the cities and villages in which we live and work, the lands that are woven into our senses of cultural and personal identity, and the national territories we occupy merely stages on which historical processes and political rituals are enacted? Or do the forms of buildings and streets, the evocative sensibilities of architecture and vista, the aesthetics of place conjured in art and media constitute political landscapes--broad sets of spatial practices critical to the formation, operation, and overthrow of polities, regimes, and institutions? Smith brings together contemporary theoretical developments from geography and social theory with anthropological perspectives and archaeological data to pursue these questions.
The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place
by Maoz Azaryahu Reuben Rose-Redwood Derek AldermanStreetscapes are part of the taken-for-granted spaces of everyday urban life, yet they are also contested arenas in which struggles over identity, memory, and place shape the social production of urban space. This book examines the role that street naming has played in the political life of urban streetscapes in both historical and contemporary cities. The renaming of streets and remaking of urban commemorative landscapes have long been key strategies that different political regimes have employed to legitimize spatial assertions of sovereign authority, ideological hegemony, and symbolic power. Over the past few decades, a rich body of critical scholarship has explored the politics of urban toponymy, and the present collection brings together the works of geographers, anthropologists, historians, linguists, planners, and political scientists to examine the power of street naming as an urban place-making practice. Covering a wide range of case studies from cities in Europe, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, the contributions to this volume illustrate how the naming of streets has been instrumental to the reshaping of urban spatial imaginaries and the cultural politics of place.
The Political Origins of Inequality
by Simon Reid-HenryInequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem for the rich world. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the world's wealth--the true measure of our age of inequality. In this historical tour de force, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the usual story of globalization and development as a story of the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century and around the globe, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrounds the political turning points and decisions behind the making of today's uneven societies. As it weaves together insights from the Victorian city to the Cold War, from US economic policy to Europe's present migration crisis, a true picture emerges of the structure of inequality itself. The problem of inequality, Reid-Henry argues, is a problem that manifests between places as well as over time. This is one reason why it cannot be resolved by the usual arguments of left versus right, bound as they are to the national scale alone. Most of all, however, it is why the level of inequality that confronts us today is indicative of a more general crisis in political thought. Modern political discourse has no place for public reason or the common good. Equality is yesterday's dream. Yet the fact that we now accept such a world--a world that values security over freedom, special treatment over universal opportunity, and efficiency over fairness--is ultimately because we have stopped even trying in recent decades to build the political architecture the world actually requires. Our politics has fallen out of step with the world, then, and at the every moment it is needed more than ever. Yet it is within our power to address this. Doing so involves identifying and then meeting our political responsibilities to others, not just offering them the selective charity of the rich. It means looking beyond issues of economics and outside our national borders. But above all it demands of us that we reinvent the language of equality for a modern, global world: and then institute this. The world is not falling apart. Different worlds, we all can see, are colliding together. It is our capacity to act in concert that is falling apart. It is this that needs restoring most of all.
The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a More Equal World Is Better for Us All
by Simon Reid-HenryInequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem for the rich world. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the world’s wealth—the true measure of our age of inequality. In this historical tour de force, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the usual story of globalization and development as a story of the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century and around the globe, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrounds the political turning points and decisions behind the making of today’s uneven societies. As it weaves together insights from the Victorian city to the Cold War, from US economic policy to Europe’s present migration crisis, a true picture emerges of the structure of inequality itself. The problem of inequality, Reid-Henry argues, is a problem that manifests between places as well as over time. This is one reason why it cannot be resolved by the usual arguments of left versus right, bound as they are to the national scale alone. Most of all, however, it is why the level of inequality that confronts us today is indicative of a more general crisis in political thought. Modern political discourse has no place for public reason or the common good. Equality is yesterday’s dream. Yet the fact that we now accept such a world—a world that values security over freedom, special treatment over universal opportunity, and efficiency over fairness—is ultimately because we have stopped even trying in recent decades to build the political architecture the world actually requires. Our politics has fallen out of step with the world, then, and at the every moment it is needed more than ever. Yet it is within our power to address this. Doing so involves identifying and then meeting our political responsibilities to others, not just offering them the selective charity of the rich. It means looking beyond issues of economics and outside our national borders. But above all it demands of us that we reinvent the language of equality for a modern, global world: and then institute this. The world is not falling apart. Different worlds, we all can see, are colliding together. It is our capacity to act in concert that is falling apart. It is this that needs restoring most of all.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change (The\politically Incorrect Guides)
by Marc MoranoLess freedom. More regulation. Higher costs. Make no mistake: those are the surefire consequences of the modern global warming campaign waged by political and cultural elites, who have long ago abandoned fact-based science for dramatic fearmongering in order to push increased central planning. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change gives a voice -- backed by statistics, real-life stories, and incontrovertible evidence -- to the millions of "deplorable" Americans skeptical about the multibillion dollar "climate change" complex, whose claims have time and time again been proven wrong.
The Politics Of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization And The Policy Process
by Maarten A. HajerDr Hajer's path-breaking study opens the way for a better understanding of the environmental conflict, showing how language can be seen to shape our view of what environmental politics is really about and how those perceptions can differ between countries. The author identifies the emergence and increasing political importance of 'ecological modernization' as a new concept in the language of environmental politics. This concept, which has come to replace the antagonistic debates of the 1970s, stresses the opportunities of environmental policy for modernizing the economy and stimulating the technological innovation. Combining abstract social theory with detailed empirical analysis, Martin Hajer illustrates the social and political dynamics of ecological modernization in a detailed analysis of the acid rain controversies in Great Britain and the Netherlands. He concludes by reflecting on the institutional challenge of the environmental politics in the years to come.
The Politics and Economics of Britain's Foreign Aid: The Pergau Dam Affair (Routledge Explorations in Development Studies)
by Tim LankesterThe Pergau dam in Malaysia was the most controversial project in the history of British aid. Because of its high cost, it was a poor candidate for aid funding. It was provided in part to honour a highly irregular promise of civil aid in connection with a major arms deal. After two parliamentary inquiries and intense media coverage, in a landmark judgement the aid for Pergau was declared unlawful. Tim Lankester offers a detailed case study of this major aid project and of government decision-making in Britain and Malaysia. Exposing the roles played by key politicians and other stakeholders on both sides, he analyses the background to the aid/arms linkage, and the reasons why the British and Malaysian governments were so committed to the project, before exploring the response of Britain’s Parliament, and its media and NGOs, and the resultant legal case. The main causes of the Pergau debacle are carefully drawn out, from conflicting policy agendas within the British government to the power of the business lobby and the inability of Parliament to provide any serious challenge. Finally, Lankester asks whether, given what was known at the time and what we know now, he and his colleagues in Britain’s aid ministry were correct in their objections to the project. Pergau is still talked about as a prime example of how not to do aid. Tim Lankester, a key figure in the affair, is perfectly placed to provide the definitive account. At a time when aid budgets are under particular scrutiny, it provides a cautionary tale.
The Politics of Adapting to Climate Change
by Mikael Granberg Leigh GloverThis book examines the political themes and policy perspectives related to, and influencing, climate change adaptation. It provides an informed primer on the politics of adaptation, a topic largely overlooked in the current scholarship and literature, and addresses questions such as why these politics are so important, what they mean, and what their implications are. The book also reviews various political texts on adaptation.
The Politics of Bioeconomy and Sustainability: Lessons from Biofuel Governance, Policies and Production Strategies in the Emerging World
by Mairon G. Bastos LimaThis book addresses the underexposed political dimensions of bioeconomy promotion. Who wins and who loses? How are institutions being shaped, and by whom? Drawing from experiences since the earlier days of biofuels promotion, it explores in unprecedented detail the global drive away from fossil fuels and towards a biomass-based economy.Multipurpose agriculture gains ever more traction as countries create new bio-based value chains – or, rather, value webs. Governance, in this regard, proves to be key for steering developments towards inclusive agri-food-biomass systems instead of fueling just a handful of “flex crops” ridden with social equity and other environmental issues.Based on a rich global-level analysis of bioeconomy promotion and three in-depth case studies of key emerging economies (Brazil, India and Indonesia), the book also innovatively examines sustainability politics in Global South democracies.Ultimately, this book is about finding the politics for a fairer bioeconomy in the years and decades to come.
The Politics of Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change (Critical Agrarian Studies)
by Ian Scoones Philip McMichael Saturnino M. BorrasThis book addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The book starts with four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex and, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, engages with questions about people-environment interactions. At the same time, the book is concerned with the politics of representation, that is, what are the discursive frames through which biofuels are promoted and/or opposed?The book analyses the institutional structures, and cultures of energy consumption on which a biofuels complex depends, and the alternative political and ecological visions emerging that call the biofuels complex into question. Across sixteen chapters presenting material from five regions across the North-South divide and focusing on fourteen countries including Brazil, Indonesia, India, USA and Germany, these topics are addressed within the following themes: global (re)configurations; agro-ecological visions; conflicts, resistances and diverse outcomes; state, capital and society relations; mobilising opposition, creating alternatives; and change and continuity.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.
The Politics of Carbon Markets (Routledge Studies in Environmental Policy)
by Richard Lane Benjamin StephanThe carbon markets are in the middle of a fundamental crisis - a crisis marked by collapsing prices, fleeing actors, and ever increasing greenhouse gas levels. Yet carbon trading remains at the heart of global attempts to respond to climate change. Not only this, but markets continue to proliferate - particularly in the Global South. The Politics of Carbon Markets helps to make sense of this paradox and brings two urgently needed insights to the analysis of carbon markets. First, the markets must be understood in relation to the politics involved in their development, maintenance and opposition. Second, this politics is multiform and pervasive. Implementation of new techniques and measuring tools, policy development and contestation, and the structuring context of institutional settings and macro-social forces all involve a variety of political actors and create new forms of political agency. The contributions study the total extent of the carbon markets, from their prehistory to their contemporary expansion and wider impacts. This wide-ranging political perspective on the carbon markets is invaluable to those studying and interested in ecological markets, climate change governance and environmental politics.
The Politics of Chinese Medicine Under Mongol Rule (Needham Research Institute Series)
by Reiko ShinnoUnder the rule of the descendants of Chinggis Khan (1167-1227), China saw the development of a new culture in which medical practice came to be considered a highly respected occupation for elite men. During this period, further major steps were also taken towards the codification of medical knowledge and promotion of physicians’ social status. This book traces the history of the politics, institutions, and culture of medicine of China under Mongol rule, through the eyes of a successful South Chinese official Yuan Jue (1266-1327). As the first comprehensive monograph on history of medicine in China under the Mongols, it argues that this period was a separate moment in Chinese history, when a configuration of power different from that of previous and succeeding periods created its own medical culture. The Politics of Chinese Medicine under Mongol Rule emphasizes the impact of the political and institutional changes caused by the Mongols and their collaborators on the social and cultural history of medicine, which culminated in the medical theory of Zhu Zhenheng (1282–1358), still influential in East Asian medicine. Using a variety of Chinese-language sources including gazetteers, legal texts, biographies, poems, and medical texts, it analyses the roles of the Mongols and West and Central Asians as cultural brokers and also as unifiers of China. Further, it views North and South Chinese elites as agents of historical change rather than as victims of Mongol oppression. Underlining the complexity of the history of China under the Mongols and the significance of time and geography for the study of this history, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese medical history, Chinese social and cultural history, and medieval global history.
The Politics of Climate Change Metaphors in the U.S. Discourse: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Analysis from an Ecolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective
by Othman Khalid Al-ShboulThis book uses critical metaphor analysis to show from a cognitive perspective how climate change is conceptualized in the USA. The author enriches his linguistic analysis with cognitive aspects such as source-target domain mapping and metaphor opposition to explain how metaphor works in terms of framing this issue, drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis-informed framework to demonstrate how politicians represent the climate crisis in their attempts to trigger social change. Using a data set of speeches given by US-based politicians, governors and mayors speaking in the context of the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, the book categorizes metaphors on different conceptions such as war, construction, unfairness, journey, and cleanliness to bridge the gap between ecolinguistics and critical metaphor analysis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in fields including applied linguistics, political communication, ecolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics and psychology.
The Politics of Climate Change and Uncertainty in India (Pathways to Sustainability)
by Lyla MehtaThis book brings together diverse perspectives concerning uncertainty and climate change in India. Uncertainty is a key factor shaping climate and environmental policy at international, national and local levels. Climate change and events such as cyclones, floods, droughts and changing rainfall patterns create uncertainties that planners, resource managers and local populations are regularly confronted with. In this context, uncertainty has emerged as a "wicked problem" for scientists and policymakers, resulting in highly debated and disputed decision-making. The book focuses on India, one of the most climatically vulnerable countries in the world, where there are stark socio-economic inequalities in addition to diverse geographic and climatic settings. Based on empirical research, it covers case studies from coastal Mumbai to dryland Kutch and the Sundarbans delta in West Bengal. These localities offer ecological contrasts, rural–urban diversity, varied exposure to different climate events, and diverse state and official responses. The book unpacks the diverse discourses, practices and politics of uncertainty and demonstrates profound differences through which the "above", "middle" and "below" understand and experience climate change and uncertainty. It also makes a case for bringing together diverse knowledges and approaches to understand and embrace climate-related uncertainties in order to facilitate transformative change. Appealing to a broad professional and student audience, the book draws on wide-ranging theoretical and conceptual approaches from climate science, historical analysis, science, technology and society studies, development studies and environmental studies. By looking at the intersection between local and diverse understandings of climate change and uncertainty with politics, culture, history and ecology, the book argues for plural and socially just ways to tackle climate change in India and beyond.
The Politics of Contaminated Sites Management
by Johann Dupuis Peter KnoepfelBy the end of the 1970s, contaminated sites had emerged as one of the most complex and urgent environmental issues affecting industrialized countries. The authors show that small and prosperous Switzerland is no exception to the pervasive problem of sites contamination, the legacy of past practices in waste management having left some 38,000 contaminated sites throughout the country. This book outlines the problem, offering evidence that open and polycentric environmental decision-making that includes civil society actors is valuable. They propose an understanding of environmental management of contaminated sites as a political process in which institutions frame interactions between strategic actors pursuing sometimes conflicting interests. In the opening chapter, the authors describe the influences of politics and the power relationships between actors involved in decision-making in contaminated sites management, which they term a "wicked problem. " Chapter Two offers a theoretical framework for understanding institutions and the environmental management of contaminated sites. The next five chapters present a detailed case study on environmental management and contaminated sites in Switzerland, focused on the Bonfol Chemical Landfill. The study and analysis covers the establishment of the landfill under the first generation of environmental regulations, its closure and early remediation efforts, and the gambling on the remediation objectives, methods and funding in the first decade of the 21st Century. The concluding chapter discusses the question of whether the strength of environmental regulations, and the type of interactions between public, private, and civil society actors can explain the environmental choices in contaminated sites management. Drawing lessons from research, the authors debate the value of institutional flexibility for dealing with environmental issues such as contaminated sites.