Growing hope: Island agriculture and refusing catastrophe in climate change adaptation in Fiji

In both media and policy, climate change is broadly framed as the promise of catastrophe for small island states such as Fiji. This framing is often used to attract adaptation investment in islands, the targets and directives of which are frequently market-based and oriented toward economic-growth development models. In Fiji, this takes the form of land tenure policy and efforts to attract investment to support agricultural modernization. Such a pattern is the source of scholarly and activist critique that climate change adaptation is nothing more than a repackaging of neoliberal development. This paper seeks to situate such critique alongside parallel attention to climate change adaptation practices emerging from alternative, hopeful frames and aimed at less national development driven efforts. In doing so, it centers adaptation as a space of unsettled struggle and asks, in what ways do climate change adaptation practices in Fiji align and conflict with dominant framing of island vulnerability and climate catastrophe, and how might they suggest alternative adaptive interventions that renegotiate these frames? Specifically, this paper focuses on efforts to promote ‘traditional’ agriculture throughout Fiji as an endogenous and hopeful form of adaptation, and one consistently opposed to efforts at agricultural modernization as an adaptation strategy.

The social life of mangroves: Neoliberal development and mangrove conservation in the changing landscape of Kutch

This article explores the convergence of neoliberal development and mangrove conservation in marginal environments, which are becoming the new resource frontiers. We focus on Kutch, a border district in western India and highlight how the contested trajectories of accelerated and aggressive industrialisation and its convergence with state and corporate-led conservation programmes are shaping the social life of mangroves on the Kutchi coast. We focus on the discourses, practices and politics of value-making and un-making that constitute the multiple modalities of repair as mangroves are depleted and securitised simultaneously. Although these trends are augmenting capitalist accumulation on the coast, they are also giving rise to new kinds of alliances that seek to challenge the logic and practice of repair by highlighting the synergistic relationship of coastal communities with their mangrove habitats.

Intimacy as Inquiry: Collaborative Reading and Writing With Deleuze and Guattari

This article performs the becoming intimacy of a reading (and, later, writing) group who met once a month for 2 years to discuss Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Through this collaborative piece, we explore the question of intimacy as both a form of activism and a mode of inquiry. We ask, “Where is activism as we subvert the hierarchy of academia by meeting as an assemblage of differing perspectives and positions in the university?” Furthermore, we ask, “What does the intimacy that occurred, that is occurring, do for both inquiry and activism?.” This article contains two sets of writing from our monthly meetings that we offered as performative conference texts. We contend that it is affect that brings our theorizing to life, and transfers it meaningfully between each other. We are affected by Deleuze and Guattari, by A Thousand Plateaus, and by how we form linkages with our lives to these bodies. Intimacy is what sustains and gives life to our collective inquiry, without which our affect might be more constrained. The complexity of the becoming of “intimacy as inquiry” becomes twofold, as it is not only a becoming of intimacy, love, and care for those in our assemblage but also a reterritorialization of the act of inquiry. Through the act of disrupting power structures in the group of “We 5,” the act of writing and presenting this work in an academic context pushes against the striated spaces that exist in the academy, that course through the milieu we occupy, and provides the means and necessity for reterritorializing the epistemic space. “Epistemic intimacy,” then, becomes a manifestation of engaging with the inquiry process and embodies an active resistance to the business transaction that the act of inquiry has become in the neoliberal development of the academy.

The Politics of Accountability and Participation: A Case study of Samoa's Land Reform

<p>The objective of this study is to advance understanding of the politics of accountability and participation in a development context. Both the accounting and development literature have highlighted the limitations of the ‘neoliberal development’ paradigm’s methods for accountability and participatory practices which often neglect and exclude less powerful voices. This study addresses this shortcoming by reconceptualising accountability and participatory initiatives through a critical dialogic accounting lens and providing a framework for evaluating these practices in the context of Samoa’s land reform. To achieve this, the study draws on the work of critical dialogic accounting scholars (Brown, 2009; Dillard & Vinnari, 2019) and of development scholars (Cornwall, 2008; Goetz & Jenkins, 2005; McGee & Gaventa, 2013; Newell & Wheeler, 2006) working within the ‘deepening democracy’ paradigm. In a case study of Samoa’s land reform project, the study employs both semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis of media reports and policy documents to critically examine accountability and participatory practices, examining the political contestation between dominant powerholders and marginalised voices. It also considers the potential of critical dialogic accounting to contribute to the ‘deepening democracy’ paradigm in fostering more democratic and participatory governance in the Pacific context. The findings indicate that current approaches to accountability and participation are shaped by the ‘neoliberal development’ paradigm, favouring more powerful actors over other interested groups and consensus-based methods that stifle debate. These findings extend current accounting research that highlights the possibilities of critical dialogic accounting to critique neoliberal approaches and to facilitate democratic participation within the context of developing countries (Alawattage & Azure, 2019; Tanima, Brown & Dillard, 2020). In surfacing the political contestations surrounding Samoa’s land reform and drawing on Dillard and Vinnari’s (2019) proposals for responsibility networks, the study also provides a basis for developing more effective ways of ensuring accountability to, and participation of, less powerful groups.</p>

The Politics of Accountability and Participation: A Case study of Samoa's Land Reform

<p>The objective of this study is to advance understanding of the politics of accountability and participation in a development context. Both the accounting and development literature have highlighted the limitations of the ‘neoliberal development’ paradigm’s methods for accountability and participatory practices which often neglect and exclude less powerful voices. This study addresses this shortcoming by reconceptualising accountability and participatory initiatives through a critical dialogic accounting lens and providing a framework for evaluating these practices in the context of Samoa’s land reform. To achieve this, the study draws on the work of critical dialogic accounting scholars (Brown, 2009; Dillard & Vinnari, 2019) and of development scholars (Cornwall, 2008; Goetz & Jenkins, 2005; McGee & Gaventa, 2013; Newell & Wheeler, 2006) working within the ‘deepening democracy’ paradigm. In a case study of Samoa’s land reform project, the study employs both semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis of media reports and policy documents to critically examine accountability and participatory practices, examining the political contestation between dominant powerholders and marginalised voices. It also considers the potential of critical dialogic accounting to contribute to the ‘deepening democracy’ paradigm in fostering more democratic and participatory governance in the Pacific context. The findings indicate that current approaches to accountability and participation are shaped by the ‘neoliberal development’ paradigm, favouring more powerful actors over other interested groups and consensus-based methods that stifle debate. These findings extend current accounting research that highlights the possibilities of critical dialogic accounting to critique neoliberal approaches and to facilitate democratic participation within the context of developing countries (Alawattage & Azure, 2019; Tanima, Brown & Dillard, 2020). In surfacing the political contestations surrounding Samoa’s land reform and drawing on Dillard and Vinnari’s (2019) proposals for responsibility networks, the study also provides a basis for developing more effective ways of ensuring accountability to, and participation of, less powerful groups.</p>

Live or be left to die? Deregulated bodies and the global production network: Expendable workers of the Bangladeshi apparel industry in the time of Covid

This paper draws upon the experience of mainly women workers in the Bangladeshi apparel industry to explore whether deregulated bodies are the fundamental condition of work in the global production network (GPN). We organised the study during the first waves of Covid-19. To conceptualise how ‘deregulated bodies’ have been structured into the industry as the exchange condition of work, we draw on the work of transnational feminist and Marxist scholars. The study provides insights about how a gendered GPN emerged under the neoliberal development regime; the pattern of work and work conditions are innately linked to volatile market conditions. By documenting workers’ lived experiences, the paper enhances our empirical understanding of how workers depend upon work, and how a form of expendable but regulated life linked with work has been embedded in GPN. Our findings reveal that unlike those of other human beings, workers’ bodies do not need to be regulated by norms that enable protection from Covid-19. As for the workers, work implies earning for living and survival, so ‘live or be left to die’ becomes the fundamental employment condition, and the possibility of their death an overlooked consideration. This reality has not changed or been challenged, despite the existence of compliance regimes. We further argue that as scholars, we bear a responsibility to consider how we engage in research on the implications of such organisation practices in a global environment, when all of us are experiencing the pandemic.

A critical examination of remittances as a neoliberal development strategy: the burden of development on an exploitable migrant workforce

In recent years, the migration and development framework has shifted to a focus on the role of diasporas and migrant remittances in homeland development. Using criticality and particularly political economy as a methodology, this research paper sheds light on how the so-called migration-development nexus is embedded within a context of unequal neoliberal economic globalization. The research paper demonstrates that current approaches are a resurgence of modernization theories of development, which ignore the structural and historic conditions within which international migration from the Global South to the Global North is embedded. The research paper puts forward that the current focus on remittances as a source of development places the burden of a country's development onto an exploitable migrant workforce.

A critical examination of remittances as a neoliberal development strategy: the burden of development on an exploitable migrant workforce

In recent years, the migration and development framework has shifted to a focus on the role of diasporas and migrant remittances in homeland development. Using criticality and particularly political economy as a methodology, this research paper sheds light on how the so-called migration-development nexus is embedded within a context of unequal neoliberal economic globalization. The research paper demonstrates that current approaches are a resurgence of modernization theories of development, which ignore the structural and historic conditions within which international migration from the Global South to the Global North is embedded. The research paper puts forward that the current focus on remittances as a source of development places the burden of a country's development onto an exploitable migrant workforce.