Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

There is a growing narrative that the outcome of the UK referendum on European Union membership was the product of disenfranchisement and disillusionment wrought by the uneven consequences of economic restructuring in different UK regions, cities and communities. Those most likely to vote ‘leave’ were concentrated among those ‘left behind’ by globalisation, whilst those voting ‘remain’ were clustered within more affluent areas and social groups. These uneven geographies of leave and remain voting have been taken to reveal two diametrically opposed groups in British politics, obscuring the messy and contradictory ways in which votes are cast. In seeking to bring these complexities to light, this paper explores the motivating factors behind the Brexit vote amongst older working-class white men in Sunderland, England. The paper shows how economic stagnation and the experience of different forms of marginality led to a nostalgia for times past and a mistrust of political elites amongst this cohort. The paper documents how the feelings expressed by research participants became linked to the European Union project and its real and perceived impacts on the local area. In doing so, it shows that the referendum shaped and changed the electorate by asking them to align themselves with those either for or against Britain’s membership of the EU. The paper concludes by reflecting on the possibilities for creating an inclusive form of politics that treats different responses to the referendum question as the basis for an open conversation about democracy and democratic ideals.

This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at the European level, particularly focusing on the work of the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities. The research consisted of three levels of data generation and analysis: a discourse analysis of policy documents and project descriptions of the 61 Commitments in the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities ‘citizen-focus’ cluster; interviews with a dozen stakeholders working on citizen engagement in a small sample of European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities flagship projects; and twenty interviews with city officers and corporate exhibitors at the 2017 Smart City Expo and World Congress. We contend that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supra-national institutions like the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism whilst promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as ‘citizen-focused’, smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly ‘citizen-focused’, an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in the right to the city, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.

Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as such. I do this both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Theoretically, the paper presents a rereading of post-foundational theory and its implications for dealing with climate change. Empirically, the paper is based on activist research in the Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action movements, which have variably been depicted as profoundly political and depoliticised. The paper argues that it is often overlooked that it is on the level of discourse or representation that the diagnosis of post-politics should be made. It is not reality as such which is post-political, but the way reality is portrayed and thereby constructed. On this basis, I argue that post-politics is a real problem for climate movements and that the attempt to overcome it is not only a necessity but also a profound challenge for them.

This article examines the development of U.S. offshore aquaculture policy and governance through the lens of assemblage and mobility. It first characterizes the offshore aquaculture policy assemblage and identifies three “strands” of policy reform that have taken hold and influenced policy, regulatory, and governance development over time: (1) federal legislation, (2) regional management, and (3) administrative cooperation. The article then draws on two specific cases of policy mobility, based in California and the Gulf of Mexico, to show how policy models and ideas moved not only across U.S. geographies, but also across time and institutional scales. Together, the analysis demonstrates the sociomateriality of policy; it shows how policy ideas and practices travel and transform, emphasizing where policies come from, how they are reshaped by local geographies and practices, and, in turn, how they reshape the broader policy landscape in the process. Among other outcomes, these mobilities led to an infusion of precautionary policy ideas at the national scale, a critical reinterpretation of policy authority by a federal agency, and greater interest in shellfish aquaculture and administrative cooperation across all institutional scales. By exploring subnational processes in a novel policy context (oceans), this article contributes to emerging work on policy assemblage and mobility, advances research on oceans geography and governance practices, and argues for greater engagement with the oceans among critical geographers and policy scholars.

This article explores the role of large-scale water infrastructure in the formation of states in sub-Saharan Africa. We examine this through a focus on government agents and their shifting hydro-developmental visions of the state in colonial and post-colonial Mozambique. Over time, the focus, underlying principles and goals of the hydraulic mission shifted, triggered by contextual factors and historical developments within and outside the country. We identify the making of three hydraulic paradigms, fostering different imaginaries of ‘the state’ and social and spatial engineering of the territory: the ‘Estado Novo’ (1930–1974), the socialist post-independence state-space (1974–1987) and the neoliberal state (1987–present). We then conclude by discussing how the shifting discursive justifications for infrastructure projects consolidate different state projects and link these to material re-patterning of hydrosocial territories. Whilst promoted as a rupture with the past, emerging projects tend to reaffirm, rather than redistribute, power and water within the country.

Across the secular West, the slaughter of animals for food has become an almost clandestine activity. Very occasionally however, when slaughter comes into view, social and political controversy emerges. In this paper, I examine two such episodes in England and the controversies subsequently engendered: the controversy over kosher meat and the Jewish method of slaughter (shechita) in the 19th century, and the contemporary controversy over halal meat and the Muslim method of slaughter (dhabiha). These controversies are complex and double-edged in that, not only do they involve food, which often invokes anxieties about what is being ingested and what moral boundaries are being crossed, they also involve religion. Both episodes are also linked to periods of rapid migration into the UK, and to concerns about integration and the threats posed to British values and national identity by the food practices of outsiders. However, while concern over kosher meat production and Jewish migrants in the 19th century was largely concealed within the spatial boundaries of Jewish communities, from the late 20th century onwards halal meat has become increasingly visible in line with the demographic expansion of the Muslim population out of racialized community spaces. It is in this context, I contend, in line with a new and emerging geography of religious food practice, that halal meat has breached the boundaries of the permissible to challenge the ‘civilized’ values underpinning the hegemonic food discourse.

This article explores the impact of regional innovation policies in the upgrading of multinational subsidiaries. To this end, it analyses the design and implementation of a cluster organization, the Andalusian Plastic Innovation Technology Centre, created in 2005 by the Regional Government to support the technological development of firms located in an Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)-generated agglomeration. Nowadays, ANDALTEC has ‘de facto’ turned into the research and development department of Valeo lighting Spain, playing a key role in the upgrading of the subsidiary and acting as a barrier to avoid relocation. Through this narrative, we shall witness how subsidiary managers, as policy entrepreneurs, enrolled and mobilized local actors to promote into the political agenda the creation of the innovation centre. The case illustrates that cluster policies are far more complex than portrayed in conventional accounts based on the heroic policy maker. They are designed and implemented in extremely uncertain and complex multi-actor and multi-level environments easing the way to customization or capture by special interests.

Learning is essential in allowing policies and programmes to become adaptive to uncertain and changing circumstances. In this article, we use the case of the Dutch National Collaboration Programme on Air Quality (in Dutch: Nationaal Samenwerkingsprogramma Luchtkwaliteit (NSL)) to argue that the organisation of learning processes influences the extent to which policies and programmes can adapt. Learning is a diverse process that focuses both on improving knowledge of the effects of possible policy strategies and on bargaining and negotiation in which we interpret and make sense of such knowledge. Learning strategies can be organised by either focussing on exploring new ways to understand and approach problems or on exploiting existing knowledge, measures and capabilities by optimising and refining them. To be adaptive, it is important to balance both strategies, as otherwise two main risks might undermine the programmes’ adaptive capacity. First, there is the risk that the implementation of adaptive programmes is constrained by premature consensus, constraining the capacity to learn regarding the suitability of, and agreement on, existing problem definitions and programme goals during programme implementation. Second, there is also the risk of premature programming, constraining the capacity to learn regarding the suitability of the actions and approaches adopted. What makes the NSL such an interesting case study is that while the programme was designed to be adaptive on the basis of an on-going learning process, in practice, it largely failed to do so. On the basis of 67 interviews with stakeholders in the NSL and two focus group discussions, we show that the NSL failed to anticipate both risks. Processes of learning have become marginalised and focused predominantly on exploitation at the expense of exploration. As such, the NSL convincingly shows how a lack of organising learning is constraining the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and also contributes to its possible failure.

‘Community’ is frequently identified as an important element of sustainable development policy, with communities thought to be particularly effective spaces in which to encourage individuals to adopt sustainable lifestyles. The potential power of a community-based approach derives from the ability of community groups to tap into existing social networks and local bonds of trust to communicate messages and enact change. To date, there has been little consideration of the position and influence of newcomers to communities within this rationale. This paper explores this issue through two government-funded, community-led sustainability projects in rural Scotland. We observe that the majority of those most actively involved in these two projects had migrated to the communities and were considered ‘incomers’ by both themselves and other ‘local’ residents. Drawing these observations together with literature on rural migration and participation in community activity, we explore the potential implications for the outcomes of initiatives seeking to influence lifestyle change. We question whether projects that are established by, and primarily comprised of, individuals who are not necessarily considered ‘locals’ locally align with the rationale behind a ‘community-led’ approach.