scholarly journals Alienating assemblages: Working the carbonscape in times of transformation

2021 ◽  
pp. 030913252110187
Author(s):  
David Jordhus-Lier ◽  
Camilla Houeland ◽  
Tale Hammerø Ellingvåg
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Radical Innovation ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Carbon Economy

Energy geographers seem to agree that the carbon economy represents a symbiotic relationship between social and material components. There is less consensus, however, on how this symbiosis is best conceptualized. We critique the portrayal of carbonscapes as loosely associated, flexibly (re)arranged and easily enacted upon through small-scale radical innovation. Instead, we advocate for a historical materialist approach foregrounding people’s relationship to nature and to each other through the wage relation and systems of social reproduction. By assuming the vantage point of petroleum workers, we show how geographies of (de)alienation can inform a politics of reconnection in the carbon economy.

scholarly journals Scalability and Realist Climate Insights

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasmus Karlsson ◽  
Jonathan Symons
Keyword(s):  
Small Scale ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Stepping Stones ◽  
Low Carbon Economy ◽  
Realist Analysis ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Mitigation Action ◽  
Atmospheric Concentrations ◽  
Carbon Economy ◽  
International Climate Negotiations

Abstract Recent scientific findings have underscored the need for a rapid global decarbonization. Yet, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise despite vast investments in small-scale renewable energy. Meanwhile, the prolonged international climate negotiations have yet to deliver effective mitigation action. By problematizing the issue of scalability and taking into consideration a realist analysis of international relations, this article suggests 1) that national transitions to a low-carbon economy can only serve as stepping-stones to global decarbonization if they contribute to the development of scalable technologies that are significantly cheaper than existing fossil alternatives and 2) that the current diplomatic gridlock can only be broken by technological innovation that severs the link between economic prosperity and greenhouse gas emissions, and thus also severs the link between decarbonization and military power.

Debt/credit, money and social relationships in the underground credit markets of Soweto, South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-429
Author(s):  
Detlev Krige
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Credit Markets ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Wage Work ◽  
Social Fields

This article engages with contemporary debates about debt and money from the vantage point of an ethnographic study of unregulated, small-scale moneylending business who continues to operate in the township of Soweto’s poorer neighbourhoods. Following Peebles’ argument that reading poor people’s unwillingness to bank with formal institutions as a sign of ignorance is unwarranted, this article describes persistent dynamics of underground credit markets and personalized credit relationships, demonstrating how the practice of ukumashonisa (extending cash money as credit) by neighbourhood lenders are embedded in social fields shared by lenders and borrowers. This article further demonstrates how the vilification of the figure of the township moneylender ( mashonisa) by a broad coalition of civil society groups, trade unions, the state and commercial financial institutions, assisted in the financialization of poor people’s monies. This public consensus about the depravity of the neighbourhood moneylender is not shared by all Sowetans, especially poor and unemployed Sowetans who have been pushed into a greater dependency on both money and intense personalized social relationships as they try to survive. Seeking out personalized credit relationships, and turning debt transactions, contracts and relationships with local moneylenders into exchanges that take on the appearance of gifts rather than commodity exchanges, continues to remain a strategy for people who are no longer able to count on stable wage work as their primary source of income.

scholarly journals Introduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Ferguson ◽  
Genevieve LeBaron ◽  
Angela Dimitrakaki ◽  
Sara R. Farris
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
The Social

The 2011 Historical Materialism Conference in London saw the launch of a Marxist-Feminist set of panels. This issue is inspired by the success of those panels, and the remarkably sustained interest in reviving and moving beyond older debates and discussions. The special issue’s focus, Social-Reproduction Feminism, reflects and contextualises the ongoing work and engagement with that thematic that has threaded through the conferences in the 2010s. This Introduction provides a summary overview of the Social-Reproduction Feminism framework, situating it within Marxist-Feminist thinking and politics more generally, and calls on readers to consider its promise and potential as an historical-materialist approach to understanding capitalist social relations in terms of an integrated totality.

It's a Small World after All: Comparative Analyses of Community Organization in Archaeology

1997 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Kolb ◽  
James E. Snead
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Community Organization ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Small World ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
Irreducible Elements ◽  
Ideal Framework

Human social systems are constituted at different scales; the local community, while an important organizational unit cross-culturally, has received limited archaeological study. We argue that community-centric studies in archaeology have significant potential in documenting the diversity of small-scale agricultural systems and in promoting comparative study of local societies. Using comparative data from social anthropology, we put forth a definition of community useful for the archaeologist based on three irreducible elements: social reproduction, agricultural production, and self-identification. These elements provide an ideal framework for cross-cultural comparison. We also argue that using a community approach requires certain methodological refinements, such as adopting an appropriate research scale, conducting intensive surface survey, and using analytical strategies such as labor investment and boundary maintenance. We present recently collected data from two prehistoric agricultural communities, Waiohuli in Hawai'i and Tsikwaiye in northern New Mexico, in order to illustrate the strength of this mode of research.

From Zero to Hero: A Narrative Amplification of Design Thinking

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (Volume 2, Issue 2: Winter 2017) ◽  
pp. 104-114
Author(s):  
Stephan Sonnenburg
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Radical Innovation ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Hero's Journey ◽  
Puzzle Piece ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

Since the early 2000s, Design Thinking (DT) has developed into one of the most influential approaches to foster creativity and innovation (Carlgren, Elmquist, & Rauth, 2016b). However, DT’s aspiration to create radical innovation has been called into question by scholars and practitioners. This paper employs a variation of the hero’s journey to afford the DT process new perspectives and insights. The specific vantage point applied in this study helps overcome known shortcomings of DT, like a too rational step-by-step approach as well as thinking and acting in known boxes. “You can’t have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.” (Campbell & Moyers, 1991, p. 194) Adopting the hero’s journey perspective, organizations get a better understanding of the team transformation during DT processes. The article is structured as follows: First, the multi-faceted understanding of DT, which is comprised of its mind-set, process and critical reflection, is elaborated. Second, the hero’s journey with its universally transformative potential is discussed as a missing puzzle piece. Third, inspired by narrative insights from the hero’s journey, a re-conceptualized DT process called the heroic DT journey is introduced.

scholarly journals https://journals.vgtu.lt/index.php/MLA/article/view/5070

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-58
Author(s):  
Gianni Talamini
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Hypothesis ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Scale Transformations

The aim of the research is to reconstruct the spatial apparatuses that are being used in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What our analysis would like to report, is closely related to the central hypothesis from which our thesis departs: the evidence, in this case, of a symbiotic relationship between the forms of the becoming-urban of these territories (Astana, the new Kazakh capital, is the main case study) and the post-Soviet social dystopia**; the fact that this dystopia is visible and understandable in primis through the lens of urban planning. Urban transformations, living standards, and spatial welfare are the main aspects that have been considered on a small scale. Transformations of territories, infrastructure development and the border apparatuses are, instead, the ones on a bigger scale.

“They Never Did Me Any Good”: Welfare-to-Work Programs from the Vantage Point of Poor Women

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Joyce Kissane
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Welfare To Work ◽  
Labor Market Intermediaries ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
Market Opportunities ◽  
Work Programs

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with poor women living in Philadelphia, I explore welfare recipients' experiences with and assessments of welfare-to-work programs provided by labor market intermediaries. Overall, the women argued that the programs often failed to offer meaningful skills that could result in good paying jobs, complicated their already difficult lives, and forced them to interact with sometimes disrespectful, hypocritical, and indifferent staff. The women also felt they were under-compensated for the work that they did in transitional jobs programs. While the women had problems with many of the programs they entered, they especially disliked those that focused on soft skills training. These findings suggest that such programs act as mechanisms of social reproduction, as from the vantage point of poor women, they typically fail to enhance and may actually restrict their labor market opportunities.

Reasons to strike first

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Buckner ◽  
Luke Glowacki
Keyword(s):  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Small Scale

Abstract De Dreu and Gross predict that attackers will have more difficulty winning conflicts than defenders. As their analysis is presumed to capture the dynamics of decentralized conflict, we consider how their framework compares with ethnographic evidence from small-scale societies, as well as chimpanzee patterns of intergroup conflict. In these contexts, attackers have significantly more success in conflict than predicted by De Dreu and Gross's model. We discuss the possible reasons for this disparity.

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