December 2022 & January 2023 Updates

Dear POLLEN Members and Friends, 

We wish you a 2023 full of joy. Let´s keep spreading the word and the work of political ecologists.

Has your POLLEN node NOT been introduced by us? If your node is keen to share your work in upcoming newsletters, please write to us at 

politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com. 

We also welcome proposals for blog posts on the POLLEN blog – please contact us at the same email address with any ideas! 

We are pleased to post the latest publications, CfPs and more from our lively community. 

With best regards from your POLLEN Secretariat 

Torsten Krause, Juan Samper, Mine Islar and Wim Carton 

IMPORTANT! To get the best view of this newsletter, please enable the media content at the top of the e-mail. 

Publications

Journal articles 

1. Carton, W. Hougaard, I. Markusson, N. & Lund, JF. (2023) Is carbon removal delaying emission reductions? doi.org/10.1002/wcc.826 

2. Debates in Post-development & Degrowth Vol. 2: https://politicalecologynetwork.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/04853-degrowthvolume2.pdf  

3. Dunlap A and Riquito M. 2023. Social warfare for lithium extraction? Open-pit lithium mining, counterinsurgency tactics and enforcing green extractivism in northern Portugal. Energy Research & Social Science 95(1): 1-21. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629622004157  

4. Iddrisu AY, Ouma S and Yaro JA (2022) When agricultural commercialization fails: ‘Re-visiting’ value-chain agriculture and its ruins in northern Ghana. Globalizations: 1–21. 

5. Marks, D. 2023. Unequal and unjust: The political ecology of Bangkok’s increasing urban heat island” and the link to it is here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980221140999. 

6. Loureiro, M., et al. (2023) Governance Diaries: An Approach to Researching Marginalized People’s Lived Experiences in Difficult Settings. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221150106 

7. Rita Calvário & Annette Aurélie Desmarais (2023) The feminist dimensions of food sovereignty: insights from La Via Campesina’s politics, The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2153042 

8. Special issue: Introduction on infrastructural harm, providing a nice overview of infrastructural research, revealing gaps, raising questions and outlining the contributors: 
   Kallianos Y, Dunlap A and Dalakoglou D. 2022. Introducing Infrastructural Harm: Rethinking moral entanglements, spatio-temporal modalities, and resistance(s). Globalizations: 1-20. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2022.2153493 

9. Special Issue on Territory and decolonisation: debates from the Global Souths: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtwt20/6/4-6  

10. Sullivan, S. and Ganuses, W.S. 2022 !Nara harvesters of the northern Namib: a cultural history through three photographed encounters. Journal of the Namibian Scientific Society 69: 115-139, Special Issue “Gobabeb@60” 

Books & book chapters 

1. Stacey, Paul. (2023) Global Power and Local Struggles in Developing Countries. https://brill.com/display/title/60893  

2. Sutherland, William (2022) Transforming conservation: A practical guide to evidence and decision-making. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0321 Open access. 

Events & Announcements 

1. A message from the newly formed Enviornmental Justice Studies mailinglist: 
   “Dear colleagues, 
   Following recurring discussions with several of you over the years, I am excited to announce the launch of EJList, a mailing list specifically devoted to the field of environmental justice studies. EJList is meant to become the go-to international email discussion group promoting the development and dissemination of environmental and climate justice research and scholarship – something which was long overdue in the field! 
   The list may be used for the discussion of any topic related to environmental justice and climate justice activism, regulation, and research, including (but not limited to) reports on research and publications; calls for papers and proposals; notices of meetings, conferences, reading groups; job announcements; etc.  
   If, like me, you are interested in staying up to date with the latest developments in the field and/or in easily reaching out to the environmental justice research community, join the list by clicking on the Subscribe link from the list webpage. 
   The list is open to everyone, even though the target audience is environmental/climate justice scholars. It is hosted by UCLouvain in Belgium and uses the mailing list service Sympa, a free and open-source software. 
   Please also do forward this announcement to your own environmental justice colleagues, students, and networks; the more the merrier.  
   All the best,  
   Brendan C.  
   EJList” 

2. Climate Change and the Politics of Land 
   Online seminar by Prof. Saturnino “June” M. Borras, Jr., Fellow at the Transnational Institute 
   11 January 2023, 18:00-19:30 (GMT+9) 
   Registration link: https://www.kasasustainability.org/environmental-change-workshop  
   Organized by KASA Sustainability, and supported by the Sophia University Graduate Program of Global Studies, and the Institute of Comparative Culture. 
   For any concerns, please contact we@kasasustainability.org. 

3. Workshop 4 Water Ethics (W4W), the Swiss Chinese Law Association (SCLA) and Globethics.net are hosting this International Conference on Water Management and Water Ethics in the Chinese context, in celebration of the recent publication of the Chinese translation of Blue Ethics: Ethical Perspectives on Sustainable, Fair Water Resources Use and Management and Water Ethics: Principles and Guidelines on 07 December 2022,11:00-12:50 CET(Click Here to Register) 

4. PhD Course – Political Ecology of Land and Food Systems 
   When: 30 May-02 June 2023 
   Where: Bergen, Norway 
   Organizers: Department of Geography, University of Bergen + several Norwegian POLLEN nodes 
   Keynotes: Michael Watts and Nancy Peluso (UC Berkeley) 
   Course website: https://www.uib.no/en/course/GEO903 
   Registration form: https://skjemaker.app.uib.no/view.php?id=13951063 
   Application deadline: 01 March 2023 

5. Environmental justice and violence: Resistances, articulations, and intersections 
   When: 4-6 October 2023 
   Where: San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico 
   More info: https://enjust.net/conference-mexico-2023/  

Vacancies 

1. Phd Position at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies: 
   The successful candidate will work within the 4-year research project entitled “Environmental Human Rights Defenders – Change Agents at the Crossroads of Climate change, Biodiversity and Cultural Conservation”, funded by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS). In a collaborative and ambitious research environment, participating researchers will collaborate to produce high level and cutting-edge research at the nexus of academia, society and policy. 
   Environmental human rights defenders (EHRD) are increasingly being recognized as pivotal actors in transformations towards sustainability, biodiversity protection and climate action. In addition, EHRD often defend the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities and other marginalized groups.  However, they may also be facing intimidation and violence for their efforts. Rarely are the struggles for political, cultural, social, economic and environmental rights made visible in international policy arenas. In this inter-disciplinary project, we seek to investigate how and to what extent are EHRD confronting these challenges, and acting as agents of change for cultural and biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation and adaptation. 
   Deadline: 16 of feb 2023 
   More info: https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:577514/  

2. Adjunct Professor Environmental Studies at Dickinson College 
   Candidates should submit the following via QUEST (online application system) at https://jobs.dickinson.edu: Letter of interest; Contact details for two references (at least one speaking to teaching ability); Teaching statement that references the candidate’s teaching philosophy, experience and ability to teach an upper level course in their area of expertise; Current CV. Review of applications will begin on January 15, 2023 and continue until the position is filled. 

3. The Department of Geographical Sciences at University of Maryland, College Park, is seeking a Post-Doctoral Associate in Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. This position will be part of a large multi-year international research project, “Operation Pangolin: Unifying Diverse Data Streams to Redefine Species Conservation,” including other conservation criminology-related research as well as new research proposed by the applicant.  
   Position open until filled. 
   More info: https://ejobs.umd.edu/postings/101049  

4. Project Researcher in Urban Governance (Södertörn University, Sweden) 
   We are looking for a motivated and qualified researcher to join our project team and collaborate on the development and delivery of project outcomes targeting practitioners, planners, and policymakers in the frame of contemporary aims and ambitions for more participatory and inclusive urban governance.  
   The School of Natural Sciences, Technology and Environmental Studies of Södertörn University is located at Flemingsberg Campus, Stockholm Region. We offer an international, collaborative, and highly interdisciplinary working environment. Our ambition is to recruit a talented researcher who has a strong interest in social and environmental justice and equity, the positioning of less-represented groups in relation to contemporary urban challenges. 
   Deadline: 24 Feb 2023 
   Please see the call text here: https://www.sh.se/english/sodertorn-university/meet-sodertorn-university/this-is-sodertorn-university/vacant-positions?rmpage=job&rmjob=6236&rmlang=UK 

Calls 

1. Call for contributions: 
   Review of African Political Economy special issue, titled ‘The climate emergency in Africa: crisis, solutions and resistance’ 
   Themes: Extraction and the exploitation of fossil fuels // War, repression and climate change // Renewable energy sources and labour // Climate disaster in Africa and its impacts // Solutions 
   More info: https://roape.net/2022/10/06/roape-special-issue-call-for-contributors-the-climate-emergency-in-africa-crisis-solutions-and-resistance/ 

2. Call for Abstracts:  
   International Conference “Sustainable Food and Biomass Futures. Localised approaches to agricultural change and bioeconomy”, June 22-24, 2023, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany 
   More info here: https://www.transect.de/call-for-papers-international-conference-on-sustainable-food-and-biomass-futures 

3. Call for Papers: On Relationalities: Politics, Narrative, Sociality 
   The theme of relationality is now centre stage in contemporary political and social thought. From relational ontology to post-foundational ethics and black feminisms, relationality has far-reaching implications for debates in politics, ethics, and aesthetics. For this symposium we invite engagements with, revisions of, and challenges to relationality as well as interventions about its role in the humanities and arts today. Relationality is a transdisciplinary topic that questions the academy, and compels us to rethink the conventions of an event like this. Our institutional and disciplinary practices normalise a certain politics of relationality while foreclosing others. For that reason, we are particularly open to interdisciplinary contributions from across the humanities, social sciences, and beyond. Colleagues working in (but not limited to) sociology, gender studies, history, black studies, queer theory, literary studies, politics, decolonial studies, cultural geography, disability studies, visual cultures, anthropology, neurodiversity studies, indigenous thought, environmental studies, and philosophy are invited to participate. 

4. Call for Proposals for a Special Issue on Political Ecology by the Ecology, Economy and Society – The INSEE Journal 
   One of the relatively new academic traditions to emerge in the 1980s, political ecology has emerged in recent decades as a powerful analytical tool to explain how capitalist development processes affect the environment, how international conservation organizations influence national governments, and how environmental changes threaten local livelihoods. Political ecology, as an interdisciplinary field, often brings together political economy and cultural ecology, with an emphasis on multi-scalar analysis that elucidates linkages between local/everyday events and regional/national/global/planetary processes.  It illuminates ‘the political’ in ecological questions through the examination of power relationships and elucidation of forms of power, cross-scale links in political processes in view of which environmental decisions are made by communities, and the dynamics of the market and priorities of the nations.  
   EES is proposing a special issue on Political Ecology for Volume 6(2), to be published in July 2023. We are inviting: 
   Original research papers – not exceeding 8000 words; and 
   Insights from the field – not exceeding 2000 words 
   Detailed submission guidelines are available on the journal website. 

5. CfP ECAS – Disrupting “modernity” – Towards alternative bioeconomic futures in Africa – deadline Jan 23rd. 
   Organizers: Leiyo Singo (University of Bayreuth), Dr. Richard Mbunda (University of Dar es Salaam) 
   This panel discusses alternatives to the mainstream bioeconomy narrative. Its core idea — an economy that respects environmental limits and provides enough resources for a fulfilling life — contains space for a plurality of interpretations, which we seek to showcase with a view from Africa. 
   Long Abstract: 
   The policy field of “bioeconomy” has emerged in the Global North as an attempt to unify the goals of climate change mitigation and sustaining economic growth. It envisions an economy that deploys only renewable resources. Although policies based on it have been directed at economies of the Global North, it is obvious that a transformation of the resource base from fossils to renewables will have tremendous impacts on economies of the Global South, including land-rich economies in Africa.  
   Scholars and activists from the Degrowth movement in the Global North have been criticizing the ethical and epistemic presuppositions of the mainstream bioeconomy narrative and its underlying notions of modernity and progress. However, the voices of African stakeholders remain scarce. 
   This panel intends to present views from Africa on alternatives to the mainstream bioeconomy narrative. Its core idea — an economy that respects environmental limits and provides enough resources for a fulfilling life — contains space for a plurality of interpretations for which we use the notion “bio_economy”. The goal of the panel is to identify and discuss African variants of this plurality. 
   Particularly, we invite contributions that present voices from members of social groups in Africa which find themselves at the margins of public or political debates about their conceptions of desirable land-use, agriculture, or other areas relevant for a bioeconomy; their attitudes to agricultural technologies, GMOs, notions of productivity; their conceptions of a fulfilling life; strategies for politicization of marginalized visions of land-use, agriculture, pastoralism etc. 
   Submit an abstract: https://ecasconference.org/2023/programme#12589 

6. CfP: The Great Convergence? Agricultural Modernization and its Others in Global Perspective 
   With this panel, we want to discuss focal points for convergence as well as divergence among discourses on agricultural modernization (and its others) and how they shape local realities. In how far do the politically dominating narratives of agricultural modernity in different parts of the world converge despite their apparent differences? How do these narratives manifest in agrarian policies, practices, and imaginaries? Where do these ideas originate from, and how do they shape realities on the ground? And finally, what other visions of agriculture exist, where do they originate from, and in what might they converge globally, too? 
   More info: https://dkg2023.de/sitzungen/the-great-convergence-agricultural-modernization-81592 
    

Other news items 

• Interview with Andrea Brock and Nathan Stephens-Griffin about their research, and the open letter in support of imprisoned colleague Jan Goodey: https://environmentalpoliticsjournal.net/interviews/interview-with-andrea-brock-and-nathan-stephens-griffin-about-their-research-and-the-open-letter-in-support-of-imprisoned-colleague-jan-goodey/ 
• Beating, kicking, tearing down houses – how police, RWE, and the German state are causing climate catastrophe in the German Rhineland: https://politicalecologynetwork.org/2023/01/27/beating-kicking-tearing-down-houses-how-police-rwe-and-the-german-state-are-causing-climate-catastrophe-in-the-german-rhineland/  

• Dunlap A and Kass H. 2023. Stop Cop City! Revisiting Degrowth & Permanent Ecological Conflict. Degrowth.info, Available at: https://degrowth.info/en/blog/stop-cop-city-revisiting-degrowth-permanent-ecological-conflict.    
• Follow the Money – Catching up with time: Revisiting an agri-investment in Zambia, anthropologist Tijo Salverda reflects on a widely neglected dimension in studies of the finance-driven land rush: the dimension of time. http://institutionallandscapes.org/contribution/4-follow-the-money-catching-up-with-time/