(Counter)mapping renewables: Space, justice, and politics of wind and solar power in Mexico

The ongoing expansion of renewable energies entails major spatial reconfigurations with social, environmental, and political dimensions. These emerging geographies are, however, in the process of taking shape, as their early configurations are still open to democratic intervention and contestation. While a recent line of research highlights the prominent role that maps are playing in directing such processes, the potential effects of countermapping on these evolving geographies have not yet been explored. In this article, we present a countermapping initiative promoting a dialogue between critical geography, political ecology, and environmental justice. Our work is the result of an alliance between Geocomunes—a collective of activist cartographers based in Mexico—and the EjAtlas—a global collaborative project tracking cases of grassroots mobilizations against environmental injustices. We take the case of Mexico's low-carbon development strategy to dissect the spatial expansion of wind and solar mega-projects at both national and regional scales. Our project consists of a series of databases and maps aimed to “fill” the spaces and relations otherwise “emptied” by the state's cartographic tools designed to promote investments in the sector. When presenting our results, we highlight how renewable energy projects in Mexico have so far juxtaposed with local territories, peoples, and resources, in ways that trigger instances of environmental injustice on the ground. We close this article by discussing the role of critical cartography and countermapping in building alternative political–economic projects for the energy transition.

Weeds in action: Vegetal political ecology of unwanted plants

This paper presents a vegetal political ecology of weeds. Weeds have barely been analysed in the burgeoning field of ‘more-than-human’ scholarship, this despite their ubiquity and considerable impact on human social life. We review how geographical scholarship has represented weeds’ material and political status: mostly as invasive plants, annoying species in private gardens and spontaneous vegetation in urbanized landscapes. Then, bringing together weed science, agronomic science and the critical geography of agriculture, we show how weeds ecology, weeds management and the environmental problems which weeds are entangled have critically shaped the industrial agriculture paradigm. Three main arguments emerging from our analysis open up new research avenues: weeds’ disruptive character might shape our understanding of human-plant relationships; human-weeds relation in agriculture have non-trivial socio-economic and political implications; and more-than-human approaches, such as vegetal political ecology, might challenge dominant modes of considering and practicing agriculture.

‘Strengthening community from the inside out’: Transformative possibility for climate change resilience and adaptation in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City

<p>How do we organise society and adjust our human relationships with the natural environment to adapt to a changing climate? How do we decide to make these adjustments? These questions shape Aotearoa-New Zealand climate change discourse across adaptation research and central and local government policy. A resilience approach to adaptation is one conceptual response that has gained popularity over the past decade. However, some critical geographers argue that the dominant typologies of resilience have been normalised as neoliberal capitalist strategies and positioned as ‘neutral processes’, and that these strategies can perpetuate inequity and unsustainability. Critical geographers therefore suggest focusing on addressing the root causes of inequity and unsustainability through transformative resilience and adaptation. This research builds on critical geography work by exploring how Common Unity Project Aotearoa (CUPA), a charitable trust located in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City, is fostering a community that understands and performs transformative possibilities for resilience and adaptation. For community members of CUPA, ethical actions of a community economy, a process of collective learning and an ability to make sustainability accessible contribute to transformative adaptation and resilience. Exploration of these themes provides a grounded example of how communities can adapt to climate change in ways that also seek to transform inequitable and unsustainable capitalist relations with one another and with the natural environment. CUPA’s transformative work poses implications for councils and decision-makers seeking to build resilience and the capacity to adapt in community, offering alternate possibility for discourse, decision-making, participation and engagement. I approach this project as a scholar-activist in recognition that research is a performative, political act. Through a scholar-activist methodology I use participant observation and interviews to gather insight and information. I ground my critical geography lens in care in order to contribute to a knowledge-making around climate change based in possibility and multiplicity, rather than of authority and judgement.</p>

‘Strengthening community from the inside out’: Transformative possibility for climate change resilience and adaptation in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City

<p>How do we organise society and adjust our human relationships with the natural environment to adapt to a changing climate? How do we decide to make these adjustments? These questions shape Aotearoa-New Zealand climate change discourse across adaptation research and central and local government policy. A resilience approach to adaptation is one conceptual response that has gained popularity over the past decade. However, some critical geographers argue that the dominant typologies of resilience have been normalised as neoliberal capitalist strategies and positioned as ‘neutral processes’, and that these strategies can perpetuate inequity and unsustainability. Critical geographers therefore suggest focusing on addressing the root causes of inequity and unsustainability through transformative resilience and adaptation. This research builds on critical geography work by exploring how Common Unity Project Aotearoa (CUPA), a charitable trust located in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City, is fostering a community that understands and performs transformative possibilities for resilience and adaptation. For community members of CUPA, ethical actions of a community economy, a process of collective learning and an ability to make sustainability accessible contribute to transformative adaptation and resilience. Exploration of these themes provides a grounded example of how communities can adapt to climate change in ways that also seek to transform inequitable and unsustainable capitalist relations with one another and with the natural environment. CUPA’s transformative work poses implications for councils and decision-makers seeking to build resilience and the capacity to adapt in community, offering alternate possibility for discourse, decision-making, participation and engagement. I approach this project as a scholar-activist in recognition that research is a performative, political act. Through a scholar-activist methodology I use participant observation and interviews to gather insight and information. I ground my critical geography lens in care in order to contribute to a knowledge-making around climate change based in possibility and multiplicity, rather than of authority and judgement.</p>

“They say this is a home”: the challenge of “home” in residential care settings for old and young

In this article, we want to bolster a critical discussion of how the “home” is used in research on residential care, and additionally make sense of young and old residents’ feelings of resistance, through the lens of a critical geography of home. We illustrate how the home ideal might be provocative and frustrating for the residents, although previous studies point out that the ideal is used by staff and in policy to reassure residents of a sense of belonging and mastery. Examples from interviews with young unaccompanied boys as well as older residents living in residential care have been used and the analysis resulted in two themes: “Residents’ conflicting experiences of space” (shared space, restricted space and regulated space, and “Residents’ feelings of homelessness” (transitional space and encroached space). How the residents themselves understand the space that is called their home and why their home can stir ambivalent or negative feelings of isolation, exclusion, and homelessness, is relevant in order to avoid romanticizing home. Residents’ understanding of home can be different from the staff, a reminder that home is a much more complex notion than the rosy ideal.

CONCEPÇÕES E ABORDAGENS DO ENSINO DA GEOGRAFIA: a importância do saber cartográfico nos anos iniciais da Educação Básica

Este artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar a importância do ensino de Geografia nos anos inicias da educação básica e suas principais abordagens, tradicional e crítica para o processo de ensino-aprendizagem. Tal processo com base nas abordagens teórico-metodológicas da ciência geográfica visa contribuir na formação de sujeitos críticos, analíticos e interativos, a partir da realidade social a qual estão inseridos. O estudo primou em realizar uma pesquisa bibliográfica, apresentando as diferentes concepções da Geografia para o ensino da disciplina nos anos iniciais. A pesquisa deteve-se também em compreender de que forma o livro didático pode contribuir na formação do sujeito com base nos pressupostos teórico-metodológicos que este recurso apresenta. Por fim, as reflexões apontam que existe uma intervenção pedagógica dos educadores ao ministrar aulas da disciplina nos anos iniciais, com base na abordagem geográfica presente no livro didático adotado. Nesse processo de formação inicial do conhecimento, o letramento geográfico e a alfabetização cartográfica auxiliam no melhor entendimento dos conteúdos ministrados, buscando romper com uma disciplina tradicional e enfadonha ao surgir a Geografia Crítica como nova proposta metodológica de ensino. Esta apresenta-se com maior potencial integrador diante das dimensões da realidade do cotidiano do aluno. Palavras-chave Ensino, Alfabetização cartográfica, Geografia. CONCEPTIONS AND APPROACHES WITH REGARD TO TEACHING GEOGRAPHY: the importance of Cartographic knowledge in the elementary school Abstract This article aims to present the importance of geography teaching in the initial years and the main traditional and critical approaches to the teaching-learning process. This process is based on the theoretical-methodological approaches of the science of geography science and aims to contribute to the formation of critical, analytical and interactive subjects, from the social reality into which they are inserted. The study focused on a bibliographical research, presenting the different conceptions of geography for the teaching of the discipline in the first years of the elementary school. The research also focused on understanding how the textbook can contribute to the formation of the subject based on the theoretical-methodological assumptions that this resource presents. Finally, the reflections indicate that there is a pedagogical intervention of teachers and educators in teaching the discipline in the initial years and develop the classes based on the geographical approach present in the textbook adopted. In this process of initial knowledge formation, geographic literacy and cartographic literacy aid in the best understanding of the contents taught. Seeking to break with a traditional and boring discipline, the emergence of Critical Geography presents a new methodological approach to teaching. This offers greater integrative potential in the face of the dimensions of student´s daily realities. Keywords Teaching, Cartographic literacy, Geography.

Carte blanche to Travel Narrative

The “spatial turn” in the humanities has pointed out how space is produced and how it is affected by power relations, while critical geography has identified the impact of these relations on cartographic representation of space. The presence of maps in travel narratives thus carries certain ideologies and influences the narratives. In Un livre blanc: récit avec cartes [ A Blank Book: Narrative with Maps ] (2007), contemporary French author Philippe Vasset attempts to describe the fifty blank spaces that he has noticed on the topographic map of Paris and its suburbs and visited over a one-year period. This article analyzes the major impact of maps on this narrative and the representation of space that it creates. Despite a direct experience of these “blank spaces”, the narrator is affected by a “cartographic performativity” that prompts him to treat space as a map, and he aims to write as a disembodied cartographer.