scholarly journals Europe without Borders: Environmental and Global History in a World after Continents

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Alison Frank Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Global History ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Boundary Making

In 2012 the historian Julia Adeney Thomas restrained her temper but unleashed a warning. The occasion was a forum in the American Historical Review on ‘historiographic “turns” in critical perspective’. The perspectives offered were critical enough, Thomas wrote in praise of the other authors, but the forum had a blind spot: ‘alongside the turns analyzed here, a world-altering force has been emerging, one larger, more devastating, and more definitive even than “contemporary flexible forms of capitalism”: I speak of climate change – or climate collapse – and all of its related global transformations’. Since then, some intersectional scholars have gone beyond that to argue that climate collapse and racial capitalism are not separate topics at all, but are bound together by white supremacy and lingering forms of European imperialism. Over the past decade some environmental historians have grappled with these connections and deployed new frameworks for thinking about scale, the interdependence of the local and the global, the implications of a Euro-centric analytical framework for our understanding of the world and the relationship between economic systems and environmental change. Although they have developed separately, both environmental history and global history have called upon historians of Europe to rethink boundary making in their methodologies and in their categories of analysis. In an era of global climate catastrophe, global pandemic and global economic crisis, where does the ‘European’ environment end?

scholarly journals Legitimating power: Solar energy rollout, sustainability metrics and transition politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110249
Author(s):  
Siddharth Sareen
Keyword(s):  
Solar Energy ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Sustainability Metrics ◽  
Energy Transitions

Increasing recognition of the irrefutable urgency to address the global climate challenge is driving mitigation efforts to decarbonise. Countries are setting targets, technological innovation is making renewable energy sources competitive and fossil fuel actors are leveraging their incumbent privilege and political reach to modulate energy transitions. As techno-economic competitiveness is rapidly reconfigured in favour of sources such as solar energy, governance puzzles dominate the research frontier. Who makes key decisions about decarbonisation based on what metrics, and how are consequent benefits and burdens allocated? This article takes its point of departure in ambitious sustainability metrics for solar rollout that Portugal embraced in the late 2010s. This southwestern European country leads on hydro and wind power, and recently emerged from austerity politics after the 2008–2015 recession. Despite Europe’s best solar irradiation, its big solar push only kicked off in late 2018. In explaining how this arose and unfolded until mid-2020 and why, the article investigates what key issues ambitious rapid decarbonisation plans must address to enhance social equity. It combines attention to accountability and legitimacy to offer an analytical framework geared at generating actionable knowledge to advance an accountable energy transition. Drawing on empirical study of the contingencies that determine the implementation of sustainability metrics, the article traces how discrete acts legitimate specific trajectories of territorialisation by solar photovoltaics through discursive, bureaucratic, technocratic and financial practices. Combining empirics and perspectives from political ecology and energy geographies, it probes the politics of just energy transitions to more low-carbon and equitable societal futures.

Amidst pandemic and racial upheaval: Where Asian Americans Fit

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Whitney Hua ◽  
Jane Junn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Racial History ◽  
History Of

Abstract As racial tensions flare amidst a global pandemic and national social justice upheaval, the centrality of structural racism has renewed old questions and raised new ones about where Asian Americans fit in U.S. politics. This paper provides an overview of the unique racial history of Asians in the United States and analyzes the implications of dynamic racialization and status for Asian Americans. In particular, we examine the dynamism of Asian Americans' racial positionality relative to historical shifts in economic-based conceptions of their desirability as workers in American capitalism. Taking history, power, and institutions of white supremacy into account, we analyze where Asian Americans fit in contemporary U.S. politics, presenting a better understanding of the persistent structures underlying racial inequality and developing a foundation from which Asian Americans can work to enhance equality.

scholarly journals When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flore Lafaye de Micheaux ◽  
Jenia Mukherjee ◽  
Christian A Kull
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
River Sediments ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Ganges River ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Ganges Basin ◽  
Active Channels ◽  
State Interventions ◽  
Land Water

The hydrosocial cycle is a central analytical framework in political ecological approaches to water. It helps foreground multiple and subtle interactions between water and society, culture and politics. However, to date it has dealt little with matters other than water flows. In river contexts, biotic and abiotic components play critical roles in the way people engage with and make a living out of rivers, beyond water. This article aims to advance the hydrosocial framework with a deeper consideration of the materiality of rivers. To initiate this approach, the focus is here on sediments. Lives and livelihoods connected to river sediments remain both officially and academically under-explored. This certainly applies to the context of the Lower Ganges basin whose active channels transport huge loads of sediments mainly originating from the Himalayan slopes. Building upon an environmental history perspective and drawing on three spatially nested cases in West Bengal, India, the paper analyses instances of water-sediment-society interactions. The general case study presents colonial state interventions in the Lower Ganges basin waterscapes. The second case study zooms the focus on the 2 km long Farakka Barrage. These explorations reveal how an ‘imported’ conceptual land-water divide infused those interventions, leading to unforeseen effects on riverine lives and livelihoods. Focusing on Hamidpur char, situated few kilometres upstream of the barrage, the third case study recounts the contemporary efforts of local communities to obtain revision of administrative decisions unable to deal with ‘muddyscapes’. Finally, the paper engages with recent debates on the concept of hybridity in land-water nexus to reflect on the specific meaning and role of sediments.

scholarly journals “We’re all in this together”? The search for collective belonging in a globalised single industry town

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 106-122
Author(s):  
Fiona Hurd ◽  
Suzette Dyer
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Workforce Reduction ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Managerial Practices ◽  
Instrumental Case Study ◽  
Single Industry ◽  
Boundary Making

Purpose Communities of work are a phenomenon closely associated with government social and industrial policy, and can be tracked in contemporary examples globally alongside industrial development. The purpose of this paper is to explore community identity within a town which was previously single industry, but has since experienced workforce reduction and to a large degree, industry withdrawal. Design/methodology/approach Using an inductive approach, the researchers interviewed 32 participants who had resided (past or present) within the instrumental case study town. A thematic analytical framework, drawing on the work of Boje (2007) was employed. Findings A significant theme to emerge from the participants was the public assertion of social cohesion and belonging. However, what was interesting, was that beneath this unified exterior, lay accounts of multiple forms of demarcation. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s (1983) notion of the imagined community, and Bauman’s (2001) identity in globalisation, this contradiction is conceptualised as boundary-making moments of identification and disidentification. Research limitations/implications This research is specific to the New Zealand context, although holds many points of interest for the wider international audience. The research provides a broad example of the layering of the collective and individual levels of identity. Social implications This research provides a voice to the wider individual, community and societal implications of managerial practices entwined with political decisions. This research encourages managers and educators in our business schools to seek to understand the relationship between the political, corporate, community and individual realms. Originality/value This research makes a significant contribution to understandings of the interconnectedness of social policy, industry, and the lived experiences of individuals. Moreover, it contributes to the broader single industry town literature, which previously has focussed on stories of decline from a North American context.

Book Reviews

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 1032-1034
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Global History ◽  
Financial Bubbles ◽  
University Of Vienna ◽  
The Future ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
History Of

Maria Stella Chiaruttini of Department of Economic and Social History University of Vienna of reviews “Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles” by William Branch and John D. Turner. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the history of financial bubbles, proposing a new metaphor and analytical framework that describes their causes, explains what determines their consequences, and may help predict them in the future.”

Reaching and Grasping

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-371
Author(s):  
Harriet Ritvo
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Global History

Radkau's ambitious volume illustrates both the opportunities and the risks offered by expansive chronological overviews. His environmental approach to global history confronts some of the challenges common to all such projects, such as the inevitable need for heavy selection. Environmental history adds both special benefits and special costs that are derived from its connection to current politics and from its distinctive subject matter.

scholarly journals Overcoming Inaction through Collective Institutional Entrepreneurship: Insights from Regime Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 1079-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Wijen ◽  
Shahzad Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Kyoto Protocol ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurship ◽  
Institutional Entrepreneurs

Studies on institutional change generally pertain to the agency-structure paradox or the ability of institutional entrepreneurs to spearhead change despite constraints. In many complex fields, however, change also needs cooperation from numerous dispersed actors with divergent interests. This presents the additional paradox of ensuring that these actors engage in collective action when individual interests favor lack of cooperation. We draw on complementary insights from institutional and regime theories to identify drivers of collective institutional entrepreneurship and develop an analytical framework. This is applied to the field of global climate policy to illustrate how collective inaction was overcome to realize a global regulatory institution, the Kyoto Protocol.

Southern skies: Australian atmospheric research and global climate change

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth A. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Leading Role

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Australian climate scientists in advancing the state of knowledge about the causes and mechanisms of climatic change and variability in the Southern Hemisphere during the 1970 and 1980s.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses the methods and insights of environmental history and the history of science to analyse archival and published data pertaining to research on atmospheric pollution, the Southern Oscillation and the regional impacts of climate change.FindingsAustralia's geopolitical position, political interests and environmental sensitivities encouraged Australian scientists and policymakers to take a leading role in the Southern Hemisphere in the study of global environmental change.Originality/valueThis article builds on critiques of the ways in which planetary and global knowledge and governance disguise the local and situated scientific and material processes that construct, sustain and configure them.

scholarly journals Combination of Tree Configuration with Street Configuration for Thermal Comfort Optimization under Extreme Summer Conditions in the Urban Center of Shantou City, China

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bohong Zheng ◽  
Komi Bernard BEDRA ◽  
Jian Zheng ◽  
Guoguang Wang
Keyword(s):  
Aspect Ratio ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Tree Species ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Mangifera Indica ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Urban Streets ◽  
Crown Width ◽  
Street Tree

Along with global climate change and the worldwide heat island phenomenon, developing climatic methods and planning practices for the benefit of thermal comfort is of increasing interest. Studies have focused on urban streets, studying the aspect ratio, the orientation, street vegetation patterns, etc. and how they affect thermal comfort. While the role of vegetation is undeniable, this paper asks the question whether the effects of a tree configuration does not vary under different street configurations, and if yes, how to select tree species and determine their appropriate layout. Here, an analytical framework is proposed to test the different tree configurations (changing one variable at a time) with the least favorable street configuration. It is confirmed that the east–west oriented streets are the least favorable cases and denser tree canopies are better for cooling. The interval between the trees are observed to have an optimal effect when it is equal to the crown width at maturity. Furthermore, the results show that the heat mitigation rate of a tree configuration is not linearly improved by the Aspect Ratio (AR). In the case of Shantou city, the improvement of thermal comfort slows down when the AR reaches 1.5 while Mangifera indica planted with 10 m intervals is recommended among the common street-tree species. Other species could be used also, but should meet the requirements of the canopy density and the interval of layout. The paper does not consider other configuration options such as asymmetrical cases of street geometry and one-side or axial tree planting, etc., but the framework allows for adding such options and simulating thermal comfort for a greater number of scenarios.

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