scholarly journals Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Behavioral Science ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Disciplinary Diversity

Situating Sustainability reframes our understanding of sustainability through related concepts, practices, and case studies. The point of departure is the continual need to be conscious of how environmental knowledge and sustainability are issues constituted by long-standing inequalities. This book addresses the necessity in sustainability science to recognize how diverse cultural histories define environmental politics today. The differing geographic scope of this volume is joined by the disciplinary diversity of the contributors and their wide-ranging areas of specialization, bringing together researchers from cultural studies, anthropology, literature, law, behavioral science, urban studies, design, and development. As a truly transdisciplinary work, Situating Sustainability calls for research guided by the humanities and social sciences in collaboration with local actors informed by histories of place. The authors of this volume believe that situating sustainability cannot limit itself to the geographic borders of nations, epistemic standpoints, or to unmasking perspectives that falsely present themselves as objective or universal. The approach includes not only material practices like extraction or disaster recovery, but extends into the domains of human rights, education, and academic interdisciplinarity. Researchers are joined by artists whose work provides a platform to conduct research at the edges of performance, knowledge production, and critical commentary on socio-ecological infrastructures. All this will enable readers to better understand what sustainability means (or might yet mean) in their own locations, and how work in one place might support the efforts of others in other places. Designed for students, scholars, and interested readers, Situating Sustainability introduces the conceptual practices that inform the leading edge of engaged research in sustainability.

scholarly journals Reflections on five years of the Summer Institute in Urban Studies

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802091010
Author(s):  
Kevin Ward ◽  
Timothy Bunnell
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Summer Institute ◽  
Current State ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Of The Field

This critical commentary introduces the Summer Institute in Urban Studies (SIUS) in the context of the wider inter-disciplinary discussions over the future of urban studies. It outlines the context out of which the institute first took place in Manchester in 2014 and how it has evolved across four subsequent iterations, the most recent of which was held in Singapore in July 2018. We document and discuss the profile of those who have participated in the four institutes and reflect upon some of the challenges that have emerged through discussions on the current state of the field of urban studies and its various possible futures. In conclusion, this critical commentary reflects on what we have learnt from the four institutes to date as we plan for #SIUS2020.

scholarly journals Whose Knowledge?

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guro Parr Klyve
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Epistemic Injustice ◽  
Feminist Standpoint ◽  
Research With Children ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology ◽  
Point Of Departure

In this essay, I will discuss the importance of having an awareness about epistemic justice, epistemic ignorance and epistemic injustice, and why this awareness is important in connection to children and patients in mental health care. I also suggest ways to avoid epistemic injustice when working with, and doing research with, children in mental health care. In doing so, I tie this to feminist epistemology where conceptions such as knowledge, knowers and objectivity are questioned, and dominant conceptions and practices of knowledge production are perceived as a systematic disadvantage of women and other subordinated groups (Anderson, 2017). I am as well linking this to queer epistemology which differs from feminist standpoint epistemology in the idea of the identity being “a point of departure for shared consciousness” (Hall, 2017, p. 163).

scholarly journals Tävlandet inom idrotten

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny Hjelm
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Science ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Competitive Sport ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Behavioral Science Research ◽  
Point Of Departure

The article describes and analyses the behavioral science research on sport in Sweden and how “competitive sport” was treated between 1970 and 2010, as “modern sport” came to be called in Sweden. The point of departure is that sports researchers have not only analyzed but also influenced how sport in associations and schools has developed. In modern society men and women in science have a legitimacy and authority that give them good opportunities to influence opinions and concrete policies. The article describes the fundamental criticism that Swedish sports researchers for 40 years have directed at competition in sport. It is also shown that this criticism has been accompanied by a very positive description of other forms of sport, including games. The article concludes, with a critical examination of the sports researchers’ analysis of “competitive sport”, among other things their superficial understanding of “competition” and the lack of analyses and problematisations of informal competitions.

The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Williams ◽  
Mark Riley
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Environmental Practices ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Colonial Archives ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Key Interventions

Oral history has much to offer environmental history, yet the possibilities and promises of oral history remain underutilised in environmental history and environmental studies more broadly. Through a reflection on work in environmental history and associated disciplines, this paper presents a case for the strength and versatility of oral history as a key source for environmental history, while reflecting on questions of its reliability and scope. We identify three major insights provided by environmental oral history: into environmental knowledge, practices and power. We argue that, rather than being a weakness, the (inter)subjective and experiential dimensions of oral accounts provide a rich source for situating and interrogating environmental practices, meanings, and power relations. Oral history, moreover, provides a counterweight to a reliance on colonial archives and top-down environmental accounts, and can facilitate a renewal - and deepening - of the radical roots of environmental history. Furthermore, as a research practice, oral history is a promising means of expanding the participatory and grassroots engagement of environmental history. By decentring environmental expertise and eroding the boundaries (both fictive and real) of environmental knowledge production, oral environmental histories can provide key interventions in pursuit of a more just, sustainable world.

Middle Mass and the Pitt: A Critical Review of Peter Saunders's Sociology of Consumption

1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Burrows ◽  
Tim Butler
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Sociology Of Consumption ◽  
Mode Of Consumption

This review provides critical commentary on the sociology of consumption recently developed by Peter Saunders in the new edition of his Social Theory and the Urban Question and elsewhere. Comment is made on the politics of socialized consumption, the sociology of consumption sector cleavages and the concept of a privatized mode of consumption. Note is also made of the methodological critique of realism and the assertion of a Weberian alternative which underpins the contribution. It is argued that although the approach provides some insights it tends to get locked into a series of unproducive conceptual and methodological polarities in its attempt to undermine the supposed hegemonic position of Marxism within contemporary urban studies.

scholarly journals “Not all spaces are territories”: creating other possible urban worlds in and from Latin America – an interview with Raúl Zibechi

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Streule ◽  
Anke Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Urban Territories ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract. In light of his most prominent book “Territories in Resistance” (Zibechi, 2008), we conducted an interview with the researcher, journalist, and activist Raúl Zibechi. A well-known Uruguayan columnist with various Latin American newspapers, Zibechi was introduced to an English-speaking audience when translations of two of his books were published in 2010 and 2012 (Zibechi, 2010, 2012a). Combining activism and research, he has been working with social movements throughout Latin America since the 1980s. Socioterritorial movements, the key concept around which much of Zibechi's work revolves, are of particular interest for our theme issue “Contested Urban Territories: Decolonized Perspectives”. Our interview revisits Zibechi's idea of the emergence of new or other subjects through socioterritorial practices, and in consequence, of socioterritorial movements as harbingers of possible urban futures. In this context, the interview also explores links to the writings of Carlos Walter Porto Gonçalves on “territory”, Henri Lefebvre on “space”, and Frantz Fanon on “zones of being and non-being”. We understand a conversation along these lines as a contribution to the ongoing debate on a decolonialization of knowledge and knowledge production in the field of urban studies.

scholarly journals A feminist ethos for caring knowledge production in transdisciplinary sustainability science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel K. Staffa ◽  
Maraja Riechers ◽  
Berta Martín-López
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Cultures ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Epistemic Violence ◽  
Collaborative Knowledge ◽  
Taking Care

AbstractTransdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the ‘other than human’, (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.

Doing mobile ethnography: Grounded, situated and comparative

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Streule
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Urban Territories ◽  
Complementary Set ◽  
Urban Conditions ◽  
Qualitative Mapping

This paper explores and discusses the experimental, critical and self-reflective use of differing methods in urban studies. In the context of frequent calls to investigate urban processes in a planetary and comparative perspective, the empirical groundedness of research is among the particularly complex challenges urban scholars are confronted with. The key question is: how can qualitative-empirical methods, such as ethnography or qualitative mapping, be adapted to explore contemporary urban conditions? This paper seeks to contribute to current debates by introducing a specific methodological design of a mobile ethnography that enables an analysis of large and heterogeneous urban territories, in three main ways: first, by offering a theoretically informed and empirically grounded transductive research design; second, by proposing a complementary set of cartographic, historiographic and comparative methods of which mobile ethnography is a part; and third, by suggesting post- and decolonial methodological perspectives, both conceptually by engaging with Latin American urbanisms, as well as empirically by furthering collaborative ways of knowledge production. To conclude, the paper stresses the need to continually develop new inventive methods for comparative urban research, for two main reasons: (1) to enable scholars to question established geographical representations and parochial imaginaries of urban space, and (2) to problematise methodological and theoretical dogmas with situated knowledge. By suggesting different representations of the urban, the paper thus emphasises how important it is to transductively entangle empirical and theoretical conceptualisations to further decentre and pluralize urban knowledge production.

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