| 1. |
- Ronnås, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Urbanisation, central planning and Tolley's model of urban growth : A critical review
- 1993
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier Ltd. - 1872-9398 .- 0016-7185. ; 24:2, s. 193-204
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study of urbanisation under central planning, while rich in empirical documentation, still lacks a theory that can take recent advances in our understanding of the socialist (or formerly socialist) societies into account. However, one of a host of new developments in urbanisation studies, the model devised by Tolley, holds great promises in store to inform our endeavours to appreciate the circumstances under which the rural-to-urban drift might take place in a variety of settings. This prompts an effort to evaluate the model's potential contribution towards an improved comprehension of urbanisation in socialist polities. Although previous studies indicate that Tolley's model would seem to fit developments in China and that of other Soviet-type economies in a rather congenial manner, it is here suggested that it is not fully appropriate. As the original model is premised upon carefully specified causal links which are not present under central planning, the conclusions drawn from an apparent congruence of patterns derived from nationally aggregated statistics are spurious at best. Therefore, it is argued, while useful in other contexts Tolley's model sheds little light on urbanisation under central planning. More generally, scholars taking an interest in comparative urbanisation would benefit from studying the processes which mold the patterns in individual cases rather than merely comparing the patterns as such.
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| 2. |
- Adama, Onyanta, 1961-
(författare)
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Abuja is not for the poor : Street vending and the politics of public space
- 2020
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 109, s. 14-23
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article examines how street vendors in Abuja, Nigeria are experiencing and responding to the attempts to restrict their access to public space. Modernist planning and the increasing trend in the privatization of public space is limiting the amount and types of public spaces available to street vendors. Drawing largely on primary research, the article reports that street vendors are responding by adopting a range of spatial, relational and temporal tactics. Specifically, it cites the Ready-to-Run tactic, relocating to relatively more secure sites, informal relations and networks and operating at certain times of the day. Access to the street and mobility are key factors that shape the types of tactics adopted. Vendors prioritize proximity to the street in order to maximize access to potential customers. The highly mobile vendors are more likely to adopt spatial and temporal tactics, while the less mobile tend to rely on informal relations and networks. Furthermore, in the absence of formal organizing, individual agency is more prevalent. Where collective agency exists, it is often a response to an immediate challenge. Gender and age influence the experiences of vendors and the tactics adopted. The Abuja case is a notable example of the link between modernist planning, particularly the master plan approach and socio-spatial exclusion. As a city built from scratch, the plan laid the foundation for socio-spatial exclusion by planning the poor out of the city. The plan remains at the centre of contemporary urban politics, notably the relations between the state and informal workers.
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| 3. |
- Alami, Ilias, et al.
(författare)
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The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism : Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown
- 2024
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 153
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Scholars within the fields of political ecology, environmental political theory, and international political economy tend to evaluate the prospects of state-led environmental transitions in general terms – enquiring as to the capitalist state’s inherent properties and their environmental implications. Less attention has been paid to how the state’s green capacities are conditioned by contemporary evolutions in the form and pace of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s directional pattern of historical development poses unique challenges for green state projects. Its drive to raise labour productivity metabolises nature on a growing scale, while generating conditions of overproduction and rendering a progressively larger portion of the population superfluous to the production process. Thus, the question is not simply whether the state can rise to the challenge of climate change, but rather how states are scrambling to govern the intersecting crises of climate catastrophe, economic stagnation, and surplus humanity. This ‘wicked trinity’ compounds the tensions at the heart of the capitalist state, resulting in an increasing inability to perform its role while sustaining its liberal form. This governance trilemma is illustrated by the case of the solar photovoltaic boom, where the spectacular increase in the productivity and scale of solar panel manufacturing have generated oversupply and falling profitability. States have reacted by indefinitely providing subsidies, financing automation technologies that exacerbate labour superfluity, and relocating solar panel manufacturing to places with authoritarian labour regimes. The case of photovoltaics is a microcosm of the general predicament faced by states as they struggle to govern capitalism’s secular developmental tendencies.
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| 4. |
- Alatalo, Juha M., et al.
(författare)
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The Swedish system : The image cracking when taking a closer look
- 2014
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 53, s. 82-83
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweden has a high international profile regarding social issues and projects an image as one of the best countries in the world in terms of social indicators. Here we argue for a revised view as the reality is that Swedish system is very segregated, particularly in terms of (1) relative lack of women in positions of high influence, (2) it is the worst country in the EU28 regarding long-term unemployment for people born outside the country, and (3) it has a education system that after a number of reforms is involved in a "race towards the bottom" to profit from students. At the same time Sweden undervalues foreign academic qualifications and getting work largely depends on "who you know", not "what you know".
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| 5. |
- Andersson Djurfeldt, Agnes, et al.
(författare)
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Community, cohesion and context: agrarian development and religion in Eastern Region, Ghana
- 2014
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 1872-9398 .- 0016-7185. ; 52, s. 78-89
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of community based dynamics in successful agrarian development is considered through comparing two neighbouring villages in Ghana, with similar agro-ecological conditions and market access: one, Gyedi, is a religious community and the other, Apaa, is not. While the direct role of religion in promoting agrarian development is limited, interaction with extension staff in Gyedi enables farmers to avoid problems characteristic of smallholder realities in Africa in general. Skills intensive technologies and internal market co-ordination promoted by community cohesion are key explanations for diverging development trajectories. The role of tenancy arrangements in diverging trajectories, pointing to the potential challenges for pro-poor agricultural growth strategies in other settings.
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| 6. |
- Andersson, Ida, fil. dr. 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Regional policy mobilities : Shaping and reshaping bioeconomy policies in Värmland and Västerbotten, Sweden
- 2021
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 121, s. 142-151
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Interest has grown over recent years in policy programs targeting a green, bio-based economy. In the European Union, the European Commission promotes the development of bioeconomy policy and encourages the use of biomass and waste for industrial purposes. Alongside these technical dimensions, European bioeconomy policy also promotes knowledge sharing, learning from others, and so-called ‘best practice’. Consequently, many European places and policymakers that have committed to developing a bio-based economy are now sharing their positive policy experiences. However, sharing ‘best practice’ for green economy policy programs has sometimes been described as producing oversimplified views of complex climate issues. Despite such criticisms, policymakers continue to search for and share bioeconomy policy ‘best practice’. This paper explores the development of bioeconomy policy with a focus on shareability and dissemination of ‘best practice’ in two Swedish regions, Värmland and Västerbotten. Herein, we adopt the conceptual underpinnings of urban policy mobilities to explain green policymaking, and more specifically bioeconomy policy development on a regional scale. So far, policy mobilities research has had a primarily urban focus, whereas this paper provides valuable insights into how these processes take place within regional and more peripheral settings. Thus, we seek to understand the role of ‘best practice’ in the development of regional bioeconomy policies and which elements of these policies are promoted as transferable elsewhere.
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| 7. |
- Axelsson, Linn, et al.
(författare)
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Emerging topologies of transnational employment : 'Posting' Thai workers in Sweden’s wild berry industry beyond regulatory reach
- 2018
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 89, s. 1-10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper suggests a need to pay closer attention to the fact that employment is increasingly stretched across several regulatory regimes. This may help explain why governments, which rely on national legislative frameworks, struggle to protect the interests of transnationally mobile low-skilled workers. By adopting a topological approach to state regulation and authority, the paper demonstrates how powerful actors have reconfigured employment in Sweden’s wild berry industry in a spatial sense by engaging transnational subcontractors. It argues that transnational subcontracting inserts distance into employment relationships, thereby creating precarious migrant workers whose simultaneous absence and presence in several regulatory regimes places them partly beyond the regulatory reach of any one nation-state or nationally based trade union. The paper also argues that the Swedish government’s response to precarious working conditions in the wild berry industry can be understood as a series of attempts aimed at bringing transnational employment relationships within its regulatory reach. Drawing on topological spatial vocabulary, it shows how these attempts are less about the movement of state infrastructure into transnational space than about the stretching and folding of space itself, in an attempt to establish a powerful Swedish presence across distance. On the other hand, the paper concludes that transnational subcontracting opens up a space which enables wild berry actors to circumvent regulations and, as such, it remains very difficult for the Swedish government to reach into employment relationships in this industry.
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| 8. |
- Axelsson, Linn, et al.
(författare)
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On waiting, work-time and imagined futures : Theorizing temporal precariousness among Chinese chefs in Sweden’s restaurant industry
- 2017
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 78, s. 169-178
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the precarious working conditions in the Chinese restaurant industry in Sweden – a country considered to have one of Europe’s most liberal labour immigration policies. Drawing upon a theoretical framework inspired by scholarship on precarious work and time geography, the paper argues that precarious work performed by migrant labour can be usefully understood through three interrelated temporal processes that, when they work together, produce and maintain precarious work-life situations. They are: (1) work-time arrangements: that is, actual working hours per day and over the annual cycle, the pace and intensity of work and the flexibility demanded of migrant workers in terms of when work is carried out, (2) the spatio-temporal ‘waiting zones’ indirectly produced by immigration policies that delay full access to labour markets and in which precarious work-time arrangements consequently arise, and (3) migrant workers’ imagined futures, which motivate them to accept precarious work-time arrangements during a transitory period. The paper thus also illuminates that the Chinese chefs in Sweden’s restaurant industry are not just passive victims of exploitative work-time arrangements. Rather, waiting – for a return to China or settlement in Sweden – may be part of migrants’ strategies to achieve certain life course trajectories.
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| 9. |
- Bachmann, Jan, 1978, et al.
(författare)
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(Re-)moving earth, building Kenya – The politics of sand extraction in Kedong
- 2024
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 149
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article delves into the critical domain of sand mining and trade in the context of rapid urbanization and massive infrastructure development in Kenya. It joins the growing body of work in geography and political ecology that interrogates the social and political intricacies that govern the removal and forwarding of this ‘mundane’ mineral. More specifically, this article seeks to reappraise the concept of extractivism a term often applied in the discussion of mining of more inherently valuable commodities, describing a form of accumulation based on the depletion of resources in the context of unequal relations. The article focuses on Kedong Valley, a place of colossal sand removal operations, significant revenue generation, and enclave characteristics. It is an area where contestations around the environment, land ownership and use, livelihoods and political authority have long intersected and where sand mining ventures have raised the stakes for control over the land. However, uncharacteristic for extractivism, instead of a few dominant actors, the extractive agents in the Kenyan sand business are many, close and fragmented. The need for effective governance of sand extraction ties together different claims to regulatory authority expressed through norms, regulations, interests and coercion. The self-organization of loaders, for example, has built considerable leverage for collective claim-making, exposing the ‘socially thick’ relations of extraction practices. The paper demonstrates that the concept of extractivism realizes its analytical value when complementing its structural take with attending to how claims to political authority are made through extraction practices in concrete places.
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| 10. |
- Bergame, Nathalie
(författare)
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Cultivating commoner subjectivities and transforming agency in commoned urban gardens
- 2023
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Ingår i: Geoforum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-7185 .- 1872-9398. ; 141
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Commoning as a mechanism for transforming agency and subjectivities is relevant in a contemporary urban context structured by neoliberal capitalist relations that work to alienate people, suppress agency and enclose spaces. Despite wide agreement that commoning practices mediate subject formation and agential change, little has been written on the epistemological and ontological grounds for understanding how commoning practices achieve this. Grounded in the social realist theory put forward by Archer (2000), which suggests understanding transformations linked to agency and subjectivity as outcomes of the dialectical relation between agency and structure, mediated by practice in space and over time, this paper analyses the burgeoning practice of urban gardening in common in the City of Stockholm, Sweden, with respect to its potential to transform agency and subjectivity. I find that (i) conditioned by structural context, gardeners assume a variety of (contradictory) subjectivities (the commoner, the white encloser, the unpaid public manager and hobby gardener), and (ii) that through the collective nature of the gardens, roles are created and a corporate agency emerges, which (iii) allows some gardeners to become social actors whereby they can live out their personal identities and change the structural context for others.
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