| 1. |
- Farahani, Ilia, et al.
(författare)
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Public housing, intersectoral competition, and urban ground rent: Iran’s first public housing program that never was
- 2021
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - : SAGE Publications. - 1942-7786 .- 2633-674X. ; 14:1, s. 45-61
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper investigates the structural political economic drivers of the housing market in urban Iran and the ways in which social and economic dynamics of the housing sector are rooted in peculiarities of Iranian capitalism, characterized by a relatively small public economy, low productivity of capital, and an underdeveloped financial system. The paper examines these processes and mechanisms in the light of the illustrative case of the country’s first and largest state-led housing program, the Mehr Housing Program (MHP). The paper argues that the program’s failure is due primarily to the state’s market-oriented approach toward housing. The MHP’s units were sold at their market prices, and the state subsidized the land to the developers with low rent, facilitating investments. Utilizing an intersectoral and multi-scalar analytical framework, we further argue that what drives the investment is absolute ground rent present in the housing sector due to its labor-intensive character. The high level of rent is due to persistently low profitability in the manufacturing sector and, subsequently, excess profits in construction and housing. Thus, rent-seeking investors tend to invest in housing. These peculiarities of the Iranian economy determined the trajectory and thefailure of the MHP as a public housing initiative.
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| 2. |
- Fielding, Russell, et al.
(författare)
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Mutual Aid, Environmental Policy, and the Regulation of Faroese Pilot Whaling
- 2015
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - Bolton : Institute of Human Geography. - 1942-7786 .- 2633-674X. ; 8:3, s. 37-48
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines the evolution of unwritten regulations and formal government policies in the control of the Faroese pilot whale drive, or grindadrap. This form of whaling has occurred in the Faroe Islands since at least the sixteenth century, probably much longer. Informed by theories of anarchist geography, we discuss specific policies, both formal and informal, regulating when and where whales may be pursued, actions of whalers in boats and onshore, equipment permitted for use, and the distribution of meat and blubber from the hunt that have developed over the centuries in response to internal or external pressures and calls for change. Our discussion gives special attention to a recent change in the regulation of grindadrap, namely the requirement, beginning in 2015, that whalers who participate in the killing process—as distinct from other aspects of whaling—be certified as having attended a training course on the subject. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned through a reading of anarchist geographies as applied to the topic at hand.
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| 3. |
- Holgersen, Ståle, 1980-
(författare)
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Searching for “Solutions” to Crisis : A Critique of Urban Austerity and Keynesianism
- 2018
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - : Sage Publications. - 1942-7786 .- 2633-674X. ; 11:2, s. 38-58
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Based on reflections on how economic crises under capitalism have been typically “solved”, particularly by examining processes of creative destruction and spatial fixes, this paper argues for the need to rethink the duality between austerity, and Keynesian crisis management, given the nature of the current economic crisis. Austerity is a key policy instrument of neoliberalism. Keynesianism is regarded as neoliberalism’s antithesis. Conventionally understood, continued austerity would mean more post-Fordist and neoliberal geographies, while a Keynesian approach would mean more demand management. This paper argues that such a conclusion is over-simplistic, indeed incorrect. Crisis management inspired by Keynes is less concerned with the destructive parts of crises and seldom challenges the power of capital. Therefore, Keynesian crisis management risks reproducing neoliberal spaces and neoliberal urban and regional policies. This paper questions whether Keynesian crisis management — i.e. boosting aggregate demand during slumps — is a “solution” to the current crisis. The paper questions Keynesianism in its belief, for example, that climate change can be stopped within a framework that still perpetuates, and advocates for, compound economic growth. The paper concludes by arguing for the need to see beyond Keynesianism, and explores what a Marxist approach to spatial fix and creative destruction might mean.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- O'byrne, David
(författare)
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A contribution to building unified movements for the environment: aligning interests, forming alliances
- 2020
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - : SAGE Publications. - 1942-7786 .- 2633-674X. ; 13:2, s. 127-138
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this paper is to outline a way in which research can contribute to the advance of environmental social movements. Current struggles under capitalism are fragmented and localized, which means that creating unity out of fragmented struggles is essential for movements to become more successful. The Right to the City (RTC) as a concept, in its most radical formulation, has this ambition at its core. I examine various attempts from the RTC literature to promote unity, paying particular attention to the use of ideas of justice. In general these attempts are too abstract to be of practical use to existing movements. They do provide useful insight to researchers, by showing the necessity of paying attention to the context that particular movements operate in, but means of formulating advice for movement activists remain vague. I argue that to be more useful to movements, research should and can have something to say about the practical issues movements face, such as, how demands are framed and how to engage with other organizations. I argue that this can be done by bringing together analysis at a number of levels. In the case of movements of labor for the environment, Marxist geographic structural analysis can be combined with political and cultural analysis based on Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and analysis of the dynamics of movement emergence and advance using social movement theory. I argue that such a framework can connect a vision for radical change with the more immediate problems of organizing social movements.
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| 6. |
- Tsoni, Ioanna
(författare)
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'They won't let us come, they won't let us stay, they won't let us leave’. Liminality in the Aegean borderscape : The case of irregular migrants, volunteers and locals on Lesvos
- 2016
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - : Sage. - 1942-7786 .- 2633-674X. ; 9:2, s. 35-46
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper draws on ethnographic observations along the south-eastern Mediterranean informal migration route through the Aegean Sea. I focus on the Greek border island of Lesvos as the central stage where the European crisis of asylum has been recently unfolding. In the absence of coherent national and European asylum policies, newly arrived migrants, refugees, and receiving communities (comprised mainly of local residents and volunteers from mainland Greece and Europe) are left to cope with and against each other, leading to multiple personal and collective passages. In this interstitial transit space, subjectivities are made and remade through their participation and resistance to the ongoing production of EU borders. I suggest that liminality provides a useful lens through which to understand the perplexing ‘time-spaces’ and interactions between multiple actors involved in the teetering asylum system on the margins of Europe. I argue that, through various actors’ experiences on Lesvos as a complex social site, liminality emerges as a form of sustained social marginality and exclusion that extends beyond Lesvos itself. The protracted and broadened crisis context in which asylum-seekers and receiving communities of locals and volunteers on Lesvos find themselves provides a salient example of the gradual socio-spatial and temporal ‘stretching’ of liminality from a transitional phase towards a condition of permanent and portable liminality experienced at both the individual and the collective level, and both at and away from borders.
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| 7. |
- DeBono, Daniela
(författare)
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Returning and Deporting Irregular Migrants : Not a Solution to the ‘Refugee Crisis’
- 2016
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - : Institute for Human Geography. - 1942-7786. ; 2:9, s. 101-112
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Tis article questions whether the presentation of the return and deportation of irregular migrants as a solution to the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ is ethical. Legally, the return of irregular migrants may be a legitimate activity by the state, but the current pressure by the European Commission on member-states to increase the current 40 percent rate of effective returns can lead them to operate returns below minimal human rights standards in a bid to increase the rate. Detailed knowledge of the impact of returns – including depor-tation from and to different countries – on migrants’ welfare and human rights is scarce. Based on studies on returns from EU member-states to different countries, I make three arguments. First, due to the complexity of the return process, statistics need to be unpacked better. Second, there are key conceptual problems un-derpinning current EU returns policy. Tird, research strongly indicates that returns can render people vulnerable. In the absence of in-depth knowledge on the effects of return on migrants, I conclude with an appeal for returns to be treated with caution and their linking to the refugee crisis to be avoided.
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| 8. |
- Farahani, Ilia
(författare)
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Capitalist urbanization in the post-neoliberal and de-globalizing world economy: A minor critical engagement with VIP-Urbanism literature
- 2024
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - 1942-7786.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The special issue “Contesting VIP Urbanism” includes timely analytical interventions to contest an increasing tendency to luxury investments in many capitalist cities of the past decades. This essay raises some theoretical and empirical questions concerning the present state of globalization and neoliberalism as two defining characteristics of an era of the global capitalist economy in which both the tendency toward VIP-Urbanism and the approaches criticizing it arise. It aims to extend the discussion on contesting the tendency toward VIP-Urbanism by drawing attention to questions regarding the role of macroeconomic structural forces that enable or hinder urban governance. In response to the changing historical context, the essay proposes developing a multi-scalar and inter-sectoral framework, which also includes reintroducing the national level into urban geographic inquiry to contextualize micro dynamics of investments over individual land plots by individual investors.
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| 9. |
- Polanska, Dominika V.
(författare)
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Organizing social and spatial boundaries. : Squatting's material practicies and social relationships
- 2016
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Ingår i: Human Geography. - 1942-7786. ; 9:1, s. 30-45
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The prerequisites for squatting are somewhat different from other social movements. Most squatters tend to live (literally reside) in their movement and risk being overwhelmed and burnt-out by the intensity and emotional involvement of this kind of activism. The fact that squatters’ struggles revolve around a physical place, which in itself is a form of protest, and that the most involved activists are expected to locate their everyday lives to this place, puts a lot of pressure on the squatters and the way they handle their social relationships or more material practices and needs.The aim of this article is to examine how social and spatial boundaries are regulated and organized by squatters and to discuss how the spaces within squats are regulated and how the boundaries are negotiated by the squatting activists in light of these spaces being the ‘embodiment’ of the squatting movement requiring some special organizational measures to create order and avoid conflicts that could lead to the movement’s decline. The squatting movement in Warsaw will serve as an example, and its recent development and internal diversification will be used to illustrate the importance of organization of social and spatial boundaries. I will also discuss the reverse effects of the refinement of the boundaries resulting in the creation of hierarchies and processes of exclusion, seclusion, inflexibility and impenetrability faced by squatters in the studied case.The material for this study is based on 20 semi-structured interviews with squatters’ activists conducted in 2013. The theoretical framework of the study is combining a social movement approach with organizational theory. I argue that squatting, as any social movement, should be analysed as intersecting social orders of networks, institutions and organizations, as it needs to create organizational measures, use dominant institutional order(s) and/or create new shared norms and beliefs, alongside founding its activity on networks of trust, horizontality and reciprocity, in order to function smoothly and not exhaust its current resources (social, symbolic, material).
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