“Everyone wants this market to grow”: The affective post-politics of municipal green bonds

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862097370
Author(s):  
Melissa García-Lamarca ◽  
Sara Ullström

As more cities seek to address environmental and climate change woes, the issuance of municipal green bonds to finance such initiatives is growing. But how do issuers and investors conceptualise and enact green bonds in relation to building a more sustainable society? What socionatures are produced with these bonds, and for whom? Based on fieldwork in Gothenburg, the first municipality in the world to issue green bonds, we bring together the literature on green finance, post-politics and affect through an urban political ecology lens to unpack the processes, practices and discourses underlying green bonds. We argue that green bonds ultimately serve as a new path to attract and circulate capital within the consensual, non-antagonistic sustainable order, where claims of doing good and building a good conscience are affective mechanisms that play an important, yet underexplored, role. In the conclusion, we reflect on the broader role of green finance and the possibility of harnessing affect and the political towards building more transformative and emancipatory urban socio-environments.

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Colin Ray Anderson ◽  
Janneke Bruil ◽  
M. Jahi Chappell ◽  
Csilla Kiss ◽  
Michel Patrick Pimbert

AbstractIn this chapter, we introduce the origins and history of agroecology, outlining its emergence as a science and its longstanding history as a traditional practice throughout the world. We provide a brief review of the evidence of the benefits of agroecology in relation to productivity, livelihoods, biodiversity, nutrition, climate change and enhancing social relations. We then outline our approach to agroecology which is rooted in the tradition of political ecology that posits power and governance have always been the decisive factors in shaping agricultural and other ‘human’ systems.


2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862090238
Author(s):  
Nicholas Beuret

The only existing plans to arrest dangerous climate change depend on either yet to be invented technologies to keep us below 2°C or on crashing the world economy for decades to come. The political choice appears to be between doing what is scientifically necessary or what is politically realistic; between shifting to an entirely different kind of global socio-economic system or suffering catastrophe. We are thus in a moment of governmental impasse, caught between old and still-emerging political rationalities. Working through the liminal governmental role of environmental non-governmental organisations, this paper explores the shift from governmental regimes centred on biopower to ones that work through the register of geopower, from governing life to governing the conditions of life. Confronted with climate change as an irresolvable problem, what we find emerging are techniques that aim to contain the worst effects of climate change without fundamentally transforming the global economy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Bruna Pérez ◽  
Àngels Viladomiu Canela

Theories about the collapse of contemporary societies have aroused increasing interest in recent years. Similarly, the environmental discourse has entered strongly into contemporary art, not from the naturalist or ecological approach of aforetime, but from the political ecology. Art, like other areas of knowledge, questions possible alternatives to collapse in terms of sustainability. However, given that there are two interpretations of the term sustainability, a weak one (the institutional one) and a strong one (the one defended by political ecology), it is relevant to clarify the implication of artistic projects in this sense. In the first part of this article, the scenario of the collapse of contemporary western society is presented and a parallelism with geological instability processes is established, in the context of an artistic research. Next, the types of responses to collapse are analyzed, based on ecological economy and political ecology concepts, and examples of artistic proposals are presented for each type of response. This analysis concludes on the role of contemporary art in the transition towards a sustainable society, as well as the convenience and urgency to promote artistic proposals that are framed in the concepts of strong sustainability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


2021 ◽  

The current political debates about climate change or the coronavirus pandemic reveal the fundamental controversial nature of expertise in politics and society. The contributions in this volume analyse various facets, actors and dynamics of the current conflicts about knowledge and expertise. In addition to examining the contradictions of expertise in politics, the book discusses the political consequences of its controversial nature, the forms and extent of policy advice, expert conflicts in civil society and culture, and the global dimension of expertise. This special issue also contains a forum including reflections on the role of expertise during the coronavirus pandemic. The volume includes perspectives from sociology, political theory, political science and law.


2021 ◽  

Historians of political thought and international lawyers have both expanded their interest in the formation of the present global order. History, Politics, Law is the first express encounter between the two disciplines, juxtaposing their perspectives on questions of method and substance. The essays throw light on their approaches to the role of politics and the political in the history of the world beyond the single polity. They discuss the contrast between practice and theory as well as the role of conceptual and contextual analyses in both fields. Specific themes raised for both disciplines include statehood, empires and the role of international institutions, as well as the roles of economics, innovation and gender. The result is a vibrant cross-section of contrasts and parallels between the methods and practices of the two disciplines, demonstrating the many ways in which both can learn from each other.


PMLA ◽  
1926 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 462-487
Author(s):  
Frederic D. Cheydleur

During the last two and a half years France has lost three great writers, Pierre Loti, Anatole France, and Maurice Barrès. Loti, because of his impressionistic novels of the most artistic kind which record his tireless quest of sensations in all countries of the world, France, because of his epicurean philosophy and Voltairean wit expressed in two-score works of the most finished style, and Barrès, because of his triple rôle of author, politician, and leader of traditionalism in France,—all three have left a profound influence on the contemporary literature of their country. Of these three, Barrès, in spite of the conceit of his early egotism, the narrowness of his nationalism, and the occasional arrogance of his confidence in the superiority of French culture, is by far the most highly endowed and representative; and on this account his work will receive more and more attention from serious students of the political, social, and literary movements of the last thirty years in France. He was one of the first to make his voice heard against the extreme naturalism of Zola and his school; he founded a group of enthusiastic young writers striving toward a new order of things; and, after a period of hesitation, he stood forth as the champion of the best traditions of his country. The purpose of this paper is not, however, to make a comparative study of the relative greatness of these three writers, but rather to trace the struggle between the classical and romantic elements in Barrès' composition, and to show that the latter were not only predominant in his first writings but continued to the end of his life as a strong undercurrent in his novels and books of travel.


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