Abstract: As the political economy of social science research has shifted, subcontracted research assistants have taken over an ever growing part of the research process. In this article, we report on a case study of the experiences of local research assistants employed on UK‐directed research projects on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While refugee research is framed in the UK as a noble project of helping the world's most vulnerable, these assistants speak critically of their sense of alienation, exploitation and disillusionment with the research they work on. Such problems arise, we argue, not just from subcontracted labour relations in the workplace itself, but also the broader political economy of how overseas social science research is currently produced. Addressing these problems requires giving better recognition to the work, interests and concerns of research assistants, but also rethinking and restructuring the global production of social science research more generally.

Abstract: Models suggest that climate change mitigation now depends on negative emissions, i.e. the large‐scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This assumption has been criticised in the climate policy literature for being unfeasible and unjust. This article asks how critical scholars can make sense of, and contribute to these debates. It suggests that negative emissions can be conceived of as a spatiotemporal fix that promises to defer the devaluation of fixed capital. But the negative emissions example also challenges us to broaden our conception of how the socioecological contradictions of capitalism can be “fixed”. I outline three ways in which it does this by highlighting the significance of a predominantly temporal fix, the role of hegemonic, sociopolitical interventions involving multiple actors, and the possibility of safeguarding existing production processes. I conclude that spatiotemporal fixes to climate change should be seen as part of a wider political economy of delay in devaluing carbon‐intensive accumulation processes. (Less)

Abstract: This paper explores the shaping of Bangladesh's southern coastal region, often framed as the most climate vulnerable place in the world, as a zone of climate crisis. As rising waters threaten communities inhabiting the low-lying coastal islands scattered across the deltaic plain, many within the government and donor community have identified shrimp aquaculture as a principal adaptation strategy. Shrimp aquaculture is integral to the dynamics of what I call anticipatory ruination, a discursive and material process of social and ecological destruction in anticipation of real or perceived threats. I elaborate anticipatory ruination as a process that both responds to and produces Bangladesh's climate crisis. I use this concept to explore not only the dynamics taking place in Bangladesh's delta region, but also the ways in which climate crisis is constituted more broadly.

Abstract: This paper challenges dominant geographies of urban theory by conceptualising the dynamics of displacement in Oakland through place-specific histories of racial/spatial politics. It argues that the repeated transposition of a San Francisco-based model of “tech gentrification” results in deracinated dispossessions, or accounts of displacement uprooted from grounded histories of racial violence and resistance. It also argues that, while urban scholars acknowledge the role of historical difference in contouring dispossessions in metropolitan versus postcolonial cities, this consideration should be broadened to account for the racial/colonial dimensions of urbanism in the US as well. Treating Oakland as a “crossroads of theory”, this paper joins calls for a deeper engagement between postcolonial urban studies and critical race and ethnic studies from North America. Drawing upon the authors’ activist and empirical work, it contends that “thinking from Oakland” demands a foregrounding of racial capitalism, policing, and refusal.

Abstract: Digital technologies that allow large numbers of laypeople to contribute to humanitarian action facilitate the deepening adoption and adaptation of private-sector logics and rationalities in humanitarianism. This is increasingly taking place through philanthro-capitalism, a process in which philanthropy and humanitarianism are made central to business models. Key to this transformation is the way private businesses find supporting “digital humanitarian” organizations such as Standby Task Force to be amenable to their capital accumulation imperatives. Privatesector institutions channel feelings of closeness to aid recipients that digital humanitarian technologies enable, in order to legitimize their claims to “help” the recipients. This has ultimately led to humanitarian and state institutions re-articulating capitalist logics in ways that reflect the new digital humanitarian avenues of entry. In this article, I characterize this process by drawing out three capitalist logics that humanitarian and state institutions re-articulate in the context of digital humanitarianism, in an emergent form of philanthro-capitalism. Specifically, I argue that branding, efficiency, and bottom lines take altered forms in this context, in part being de-politicized as a necessary condition for their adoption. This de-politicization involves normalizing these logics by framing social and political problems as technical in nature and thus both beyond critique and amenable to digital humanitarian “solutions”. I take this line of argumentation to then re-politicize each of these logics and the capitalist relations that they entail. Introduction New data production and digital labor arrangements are playing a key role in humanitarianism’s becoming more capitalist. Over the last 15 years, crowdsourcing, social media, and mass collaboration have been impacting the ways humanitarian agencies address crises, in the phenomenon many are calling “digital humanitarianism” (Meier 2015). Concurrently, private, for-profit businesses are increasingly making philanthropy and humanitarianism central to their business models while humanitarian agencies rely more strongly on contracting work to these companies. This marriage between philanthropy and capitalist relations has been called “philanthro-capitalism”, and has made philanthropy a new site for capital accumulation. The form of philanthro-capitalism that is enabled by digital humanitarianism newly de-politicizes the exploitation of marginalized communities, with implications for how we understand the shifting relations between private business and humanitarian action. New Frontiers of Philanthro-capitalism 2 Digital humanitarianism is exemplified in the volunteer-generated global basemap OpenStreetMap, the crowdsourcing data collection and mapping platform Ushahidi, and the loosely-coordinated group of contributors emerging in crises under the banner of the Standby Task Force. It has generally been discussed in academic and practitioners’ circles as a primarily technological advance in data production, gathering, and processing capacities. Claiming to “revolutionize” humanitarianism and emergency management (Meier 2011, 2012), digital humanitarians often crowdsource mapping responsibilities (Haklay and Weber 2008), develop algorithms to process social media datasets (Pohl, Bouchachia, and Hellwagner 2013), and have recently begun using robotics such as unmanned aerial vehicles (Sandvik and Lohne 2014; Kerasidou et al 2015; Hunt et al. 2016; TEDxTalks 2016). However, some recent engagements with digital humanitarianism have expanded the breadth of the concept, rethinking it as a phenomenon that is co-constituted with social and political processes. This nascent scholarship asks us to question the practices, assumptions, and politics of knowledge representation that digital humanitarianism adopts, and which it in turn comes to impact (Burns 2019; Duffield 2016). Building on a decades-old trend of turning crises and disasters into sites of private business and capital accumulation (Klein 2007; Adams 2013; Loewenstein 2015), private, forprofit businesses have recently been making philanthropy and humanitarianism core to their business models. Through this shift, companies now leverage charity to sell goods and services, increase profits, and thereby accumulate capital. For example, Toms Shoes and Warby Parker promise to donate one of their products – shoes and eyeglasses, respectively -to a “person in need” for every such product someone purchases from them. For every purchase of a bottle of Ethos Water, its parent company Starbucks donates $0.05 to water-related charities. In each of these cases, businesses recruit customers with the attractive proposal that their consumption will help others. The businesses, in turn, expect that this charity will help them sell more of their products. At the same time, the figureheads of contemporary capitalism have discovered that by donating large sums to charitable organizations, they channel their strengthened social and political influence through non-profit organizations and philanthropic initiatives. Calling this the “charitable-industrial complex”, Buffet (2014) describes his observations of the tensions this creates: “Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.” While research paints a more complex picture of these tensions, Buffet brings to our attention the uncomfortable coming-together of philanthropy and contemporary capitalism. Philanthro-capitalism and digital humanitarianism are merging as private businesses become more involved in providing digital technologies to humanitarian organizations. This raises important questions about what philanthro-capitalism “looks like” when it occurs in digital humanitarianism, as well as the geographies and variegated implications of this convergence. I have argued elsewhere that these two trends are actually part-in-parcel of the same process, the privatization and neoliberalization of humanitarianism (Burns 2019). Importantly, while exemplifying broadly identifiable similarities, these emergent practices take a variety of forms and severity. On the one hand are organizations that engage digital technologies with hopes of reducing resource expenditure; on the other hand are those such as UNICEF’s Innovation Fund which uses “models of financing and methodologies used by venture capital funds”; still others engage privately-funded map-a-thons and datathons in response to a

Abstract: Social mix policies have emerged as a prominent mechanism to legitimate neighbourhood redevelopment efforts across the US. Despite integrationist rhetoric, results often disabuse marginalised communities of their claims to the city. This paper employs a hybrid spatio-temporal analysis at the intersection of political-economic theories of gentrification and post-colonial and Black geographies literatures to examine underlying cultural logics and affective experiences animating such processes of neighbourhood transformation, contestation, and succession. Reflecting on 15 years of experience researching Over-the-Rhine (OTR), Cincinnati, we contribute a stylised distinction between the foundational, mature, and ongoing legacies of urban settler colonial relations. Our account discloses the power geometries shaping neighbourhood space by illustrating the impact of the discourses, tactics, and strategies employed by pro-development actors and neighbourhood activists as OTR’s socio-political landscape shifted over time. In conclusion, we engage the thorny questions these dynamics raise surrounding how inner-city neighbourhoods are theorised and struggled over after gentrification. Resumen: Pol ıticas de mezcla social han emergido como un mecanismo prominente para legitimar los esfuerzos de redesarrollo vecinal a lo largo de los Estados Unidos. A pesar de la ret orica integracionista, los resultados frecuentemente reniegan a las comunidades marginalizadas de sus derechos a la ciudad. Este art ıculo usa un an alisis h ıbrido espaciotemporal en la intersecci on de teor ıas pol ıtico-econ omicos y las literaturas poscoloniales y de las Afro-geograf ıas para examinar las l ogicas culturales subyacentes y las experiencias afectivas que animan tales procesos de transformaci on, contestaci on, y sucesi on vecinal. Bas andonos en 15 a~ nos de experiencia investigativa en Over-the-Rhine (OTR), Cincinnati, contribuimos con una distinci on estilizada entre los legados del “colonialismo de colonos” urbano, que pueden distinguirse entre legados fundacionales, maduros, o en proceso. Ilustrando el efecto de los discursos, t acticas y estrategias que han empleado los actores pro-desarrollo y las activistas vecinales a trav es de los cambios hist oricos en el paisaje sociopol ıtico en OTR, nuestra cr onica revela las geometr ıas del poder que dan forma al espacio vecinal. En conclusi on, abordamos las arduas preguntas planteadas por estas din amicas, preguntas acerca de c omo teorizar y c omo luchan por los barrios marginales despu es de la gentrificaci on.

Abstract: DTU Orbit (28/10/2019) Making Space for Wind Farms: Practices of Territorial Stigmatisation in Rural Denmark While issues of siting wind farms have often revolved around their local resistance, finding adequate locations and gaining access to land for large wind energy projects has become an increasingly significant challenge for developers, in particular in small countries with relatively mature wind energy sectors, such as Denmark. By drawing on the case of “OutskirtsDenmark”, this paper focuses on how existing territorial stigma of rural areas is co-produced and mobilised by wind farm developers to make space for large wind farm projects. In doing so, we demonstrate that the mobilisation of stigma through derogatory rhetoric and forecasting rural decline is used to legitimise the purchase and demolition of properties in marginalised rural areas. We then critically discuss how these developer practices produce controversies over the erosion of rural communities and are entangled in a neoliberal undermining of the planning system, revealing issues of rural energy justice.

Abstract: Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Abstract: This paper seeks to extend geographic thinking on the changing constitution of the UK welfare state, suggesting the need to supplement ideas of the “shadow state” with an analysis of the blurring of the bureaucratic practices through which welfare is now delivered by public, private and third sector providers alike. Focusing on the growing convergence of the bureaucratic practices of benefits officials and food bank organisations, we interrogate the production of moral distance that characterise both. We reveal the ideological values embedded in voucher and referral systems used by many food banks, and the ways in which these systems further stigmatise and exclude people in need of support. Contrasting these practices with those of a variety of “ethical insurgents”, we suggest that food banks are sites of both the further cementing and of challenge to the injustices of Britain's new welfare apparatus.

Abstract: This article explores the benign and malignant power of the visual in the racialised framing of the ongoing 'European refugee crisis'. Bringing together literatures on racial discourses, visuality, storytelling and decoloniality for the first time, this paper breaks new ground in our understandings of the political possibilities that visual storytelling offers in shifting 'lines of sight' in an increasingly vitriolic anti-refugee climate. It does this by analysing prominent graphic narratives created by the non-profit organisation PositiveNegatives, animating the refugee experiences of Syrian men in Scandinavia. We consider the affective engagements that such progressive storytelling promotes and the decolonial potential invested in it, arguing that the modality and content of narratives of this genre offer important scope to provoke encounter and empathy. Contributing to geographies of race, migration, visuality and decoloniality, we suggest that these narratives allow new and gently radical ways of resisting the dehumanising impetus of mainstream media discourses.

Abstract: While critical authors have interrogated the roots of business logistics, this paper extends the analysis and contributes to a larger critique of the cohering field of Humanitarian Logistics (HL), noting the overlap in the logistical cartographies of militarism and humanitarianism. The focus is on the UAE’s expanding logistics space into the Horn of Africa and the production of specialised HL zones like Dubai International Humanitarian City (DIHC). The article makes three core arguments. First, a logistics lens enables us to expand the study of aid beyond immediate conflict zones, into more distant spaces often constructed as ‘stable’. Second, the placement of logistics at the core of aid delivery has been a key mechanism for inserting market imperatives into humanitarian activities. Third, this gives countries outside the advanced core, such as the UAE, power to leverage and expand their logistics space for multiple purposes, in war making, aid, and commercial activities.

Abstract: We analyse a half-century of Chilean urban reforms to explain the introduction of a system of urban accumulation by dispossession of public resources and opportunities. Three stages have been conceptualised in the imposition of a neoliberal creative-destructive process: proto-neoliberalism, roll-back and roll-out periods. Empirical studies have traditionally analysed this process by examining a single urban policy's evolution over time. In this paper, we go beyond these types of studies by performing a systemic analysis of multiple urban policy reforms in Santiago, Chile. We use a genealogical thematic analysis to track changes in laws, government programmes and planning documents from between 1952 and 2014. Our analysis identifies different “urban systems of accumulation” by looking at the interplay of four urban policies: (1) urban planning deregulation; (2) social housing privatisation; (3) devolution of territorial taxes; and (4) decreased public service provision. Moreover, our multidimensional policy analysis in Santiago characterises a more radical, fourth expression in the creative destruction process of “accumulation by dismantling”. Consequently, we advocate for more multidimensional urban policy research that goes beyond a three-period analysis in order to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary neoliberal creative-destructive processes in variegated geographies.

Abstract: This paper examines the ways in which colonial violence is transformed and spatialised into negotiated precarities at the occupied Palestine. The notion of “negotiated precarity” is developed herein, to refer to two aspects in particular. First, to spatial compartmentalisation, which shows how the settler colonial power operates by creating precarious administrative zones, where the life of the colonised becomes prone to several flexible, negotiated uses of power. Second, negotiated precarity is used to refer to the conduct of the colonised that counters, transforms, redirects, cancels or hampers the colonial spatialisations of power. By focusing on the “negotiated precarities” in a singular West Bank village, I exemplify how the colonial governing is entwined with spatial compartments that enable several informal, indirect and ad hoc techniques of colonial violence, but also how the colonial governing is constantly mobilised, negotiated, countered and redirected in/through the everyday Palestinian spaces.

Abstract: The Uyuni salt flat (Salar de Uyuni) in Bolivia possesses the largest lithium deposit in the world. Over the past 40 years, this location has been commodified and radically transformed. This paper examines how a landscape, understood from its material attributes and qualities, shapes and is shaped by social relations unfolding in a process of commodification and mining expansion. Based on primary qualitative data, the paper explores two elements: (1) how the symbolic meaning of this landscape has changed over time for the surrounding indigenous communities; and (2) how the different materialities of the salt flat as landscape, as ulexite and as lithium allow understanding of the drivers of socio-environmental change and conflict in this region. The paper argues that social relations and governance frameworks are interlinked with changing symbolic meanings and the different materialities of the Uyuni salt flat. Resumen: El Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flat) en Bolivia posee el mayor dep osito de litio del mundo. En los ultimos 40 a~ nos, el Salar ha sido mercantilizado y radicalmente transformado. Este art ıculo examina como un entorno natural, determinado a partir de sus atributos y caracter ısticas materiales define y es definido simult aneamente por diferentes relaciones sociales que se desenvuelven en un proceso de mercantilizaci on y expansi on minera. Basado en informaci on primaria cualitativa, el articulo explora dos elementos: [i] c omo ha cambiado el significado simb olico del Salar de Uyuni a lo largo del tiempo para las comunidades ind ıgenas que lo rodean; [ii] c omo las diferentes materialidades del Salar entendidas como paisaje, como ulexita y como litio permiten entender las diferentes causas y efectos de cambios socio-ambientales y conflictos en la regi on. El presente art ıculo plantea que las relaciones sociales y los marcos de gobernanza de recursos est an interrelacionados con cambios en el significado simb olico de un lugar y con diferentes materialidades que co-existen en el Salar de Uyuni.

Abstract: The article exposes attacks on infrastructures of social reproduction as a prime gentrification strategy, but also as an effective focal point for community resistance. We exemplify this through the conflict over Ancoats Dispensary, a Victorian hospital at the heart of one of the UK's most deprived communities in East Manchester, which faced demolition following the 2000 New Islington Regeneration Plan. Using ethnographic and archival data we show how 200 years of community struggles for healthcare became catalytic for establishing Ancoats’ working class identity and how Ancoats Dispensary became the spatial/material and symbolic infrastructure for community continuity. The building's socially embedded history became key for articulating anti‐gentrification struggles as its planned demolition was seen as a symbolic demolition of the community itself. Local citizens formed the Ancoats Dispensary Trust and utilised tactics from historical struggles and entrepreneurial strategies to envision an alternative future in the defence of social reproduction infrastructures.

Abstract: This paper analyses the experimental nature of alternative spaces and the affective, emotional and embodied experience their enactment generates. In so doing, it grounds the analysis on the intentional community of Damanhur (Italy), as an example of experimental spaces. Scholarship concerning intentional communities draws on utopian studies that consider them as utopian laboratories. More recently, non‐representational approaches have emphasised the processual nature of utopias, yet studies have overlooked the experimental nature of these alternative spaces. Drawing upon in‐depth ethnographic data, this paper engages with community experimentations that took place in Damanhur for residents and visitors. It illustrates how utopian enactment is experimental and thus, disordering, unsettling and creative. Moreover, I argue that experimentations are not limited to unsettling the social structure of the community and, when studying the enactment of alternative spaces, emphasis should also be on their capacity to affect the individual.