Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

In this discussion of her book The Shock Doctrine (2007, Metropolitan Books), Naomi Klein outlines a number of its key themes and brings the argument to bear on the California wildfires and developments in Latin America. Key issues discussed include the relation between disaster capitalism and creative destruction, natural disasters, neoliberalism, the antiglobalisation movement, the ‘9/11 truth’ campaign, and the relation of this book to her earlier No Logo (2000, Knopf Canada). Questions come from Neil Smith and from the audience at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

In this paper I look at globalization in terms of the metaphysical event of being, arguing that in order to discuss the issue of globalization the ontological conditions of possibility for its historical appearance need to be prioritized. Using the philosophy of Martin Heidegger allows us to see how globalization belongs to the modern calculable understanding of space, and therefore to the particular metaphysical event of technological existence. Through an acknowledgment of the metaphysics of gigantic growth and totalitarian magnitude, globalization is seen as a planetary consummation of the kind of technological disclosure of being. This is a period in which the entire globe stands at the service of complete and manipulative calculability. In this paper I argue that in globalization the world is ontologically understood as a picture in which everything becomes gathered together as a reserve to be ordered and challenged by anthropocentric will and value-creation.

Many diverse spatial features within Foucault's historical studies have been analysed productively within Anglophone human geography. Although much of this work has tended to focus on Foucault's mid to later projects, especially around issues of health, surveillance, governmentality, and sexuality, his earlier archaeological studies have also produced fruitful avenues of research. Concentrating on the latter, and taking up Elden's notion of Foucault's use of space as a tool of analysis, I explore how Foucault's intense study of modern literature, particularly Roussel and Blanchot, contributes to underlying modes of spatialisation that drive his study of the history of clinical medicine, as well as the complex explanation of his archaeological approach. Following Deleuze, I argue that these spatialisations are both the instrument and the object of his studies. They generate devices and tactics for dismantling established methods of analysis and manifest the powerful, multiple effects of discourse, whilst remaining meticulously at the level of description.

To develop and implement public policy requires work. In this paper, we examine some of the work involved in a pathbreaking climate change policy adopted in Portland, Oregon. Seeking to address shortcomings in existing studies of local environmental governance, we focus particular attention on how climate change became a political priority in Portland, how a particular representation of local carbon dioxide emissions was developed in the process of public consultations, and how the local state attempted to achieve its adopted policy objectives by enlisting the self-governing capacities of its residents. To carry out such an analysis, we draw on both actor-network theory (ANT) and governmentality. The first approach offers an understanding of how collective priorities emerge as different actants learn how to move toward their goals by working together, and also suggests how subjects and objects are reshaped by their enrolment in such configurations. The second approach offers a more precise understanding of how the state attempts to achieve its objectives—once they are established—by conducting the conduct of its citizens. Brought together, we argue, ANT and governmentality provide an incisive approach to questions of local environmental governance, and to broader political concerns as well. As each approach addresses well-cited shortcomings of the other, the combined approach developed in this paper could be deployed in many studies that examine the emergence of political priorities and the capacity to achieve them.

Studies of the cultural dimensions of natural disasters have largely opposed the social world to the physical world. In such studies, the social world of humans constructs meaning against the implacable force of nature. In this paper, following the theoretical lead of ‘new materialists’ such as Bruno Latour and Daniel Miller, I argue that the physical world plays an integral role in the construction of meaning out of natural disasters. By focusing on the various cultural narratives surrounding Hurricane Katrina as well as the particular material genre of the house, I analyze the ways the human and physical worlds participate in the production of meaning. The specific materiality of the house in New Orleans is explored through three key stages of the Katrina disaster: the initial landfall and flooding, the first week of ostensible chaos, and the return of residents to their houses.

In this paper we explore from a topological perspective how immediate care is enacted in a home telecare service and critically discuss how immediacy is defined. One approach is to conceive immediate care delivering as dependant on how disciplined the home telecare service inscriptions are and therefore on how uneventful and smooth the assistance is. However, this paper aims to put forward a more complex explanation by pointing out that immediate care delivering is produced not only by expelling indeterminacy but also by taking advantage of it. In order to do this we will use Bachelard's concept of ex-inscription to shed light on the practices and techniques that transform events into opportunities (rather than obstacles) for delivering immediate care to home telecare service users.

This paper explores some of the inequities in the ways in which intellectual property has been applied to agricultural plant genetic resources, focusing primarily on patents. In particular, it is concerned with the importance of what counts as ‘nature’ in making the distinction between something that is ‘invented’ and something that is merely ‘discovered’—a distinction that is at the heart of patent law (although not always made in these terms). While discoveries are understood to be mere revealings of nature, genuine inventions are considered to be human products, and therefore eligible for patent protection. What counts as nature in this discourse, and which kinds of human labour are taken to be genuinely inventive, is, therefore, a highly consequential issue. Ultimately, I argue for both the exposure of the noninnocent and highly political way in which ‘nature’ is formed, and the importance of more honest ways of characterising the coming-into-being of new plant varieties. The final section points to some existing proposals and projects that might help us to build systems of property in this area that are both more equitable and that acknowledge the contributions and needs of all of the diverse actors—human and not—involved in the ‘emergence’ of agricultural biodiversity.

This paper develops an exchange between two important strands of research within contemporary human geography. One concerns the matter of socionatures; the other concerns the operation and establishment of power within liberal, capitalist social formations. Through mobilising some of the recent writings on the political ecology of water, we seek to show how an engagement with Gramscian and Foucauldian work on power could be mutually beneficial for both areas of research. In so doing, we seek to mobilise some of the tensions, as well as the points of engagement, between Gramscian and Foucauldian approaches. Through opening up the ways in which water contributes to the survival of liberal capitalist formations and also to the production of distinctive subjectivities, this dialogue provides new inroads into the politics and praxis of everyday life.

Since the 1970s a growing body of literature has taken a ‘geographic turn’ and sought to incorporate the study of spatial factors into the social sciences. Building on this theoretical literature, this study undertakes a spatial analysis of the contentious politics that have become so closely and regularly linked to international summit diplomacy. The paper examines and compares the protests surrounding two international summits held in Canada: the Vancouver Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (1997) and the Kananaskis G8 summit (2002). These two cases serve to demonstrate many of the important ways in which space is controlled and contested by both protesters and state actors such as the police.