December 2023 Update

Dear POLLEN Members and Friends,  We are pleased to share with you our latest newsletter of the year. Here you can find publications, vacancies, CfP, and much more from our…

Dear POLLEN Members and Friends, 

We are pleased to share with you our latest newsletter of the year. Here you can find publications, vacancies, CfP, and much more from our vibrant community.

Before we get to it, we want to remind you that the POLLEN24 Conference has extended the Call for Submission deadline to January 15th, 2024. More information about the conference here. Also, the conference team would like to stress the decentralized nature of the conference, and encourage participating in Dodoma/Lima if your work is focused there, or if you can attend in person.

We will continue posting CfP for the POLLEN 24 conference in our POLLEN Blog. If you are organizing a CfP and want to share it in our Blog, please send us the information, including a link to the CfP to our email: politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.

Finally, just a quick reminder that if your POLLEN Node has not been introduced by us yet, or if your Node is keen to share its work, vacancy opportunities, or others in our upcoming newsletter, please write to us at politicalecologynetwork@gmail.com.

Enjoy the reading and happy holidays!

With best regards from your POLLEN Secretariat  

Fabiola Espinoza, Torsten Krause, 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. Christiansen, J. (2023). State capacity and the ‘value’ of sustainable finance: Understanding the state-mediated rent and value production through the Seychelles Blue Bonds. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0308518X231201467. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X231201467 
     
  2. Smith K, Langford A and Lawrence G (2023). Tracking farmland investment in Australia: Institutional finance and the politics of data mapping. Journal of Agrarian Change 23(3): 518-546. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12531  
     
  3. James Boafo & Kristen Lyons (2023). A political ecology of farmers’ exposure to pesticides in Ghana. Cogent Food & Agriculture, 9:2, DOI: 10.1080/23311932.2023.2286728
     
  4. Asiyanbi, A. P., & Ogar, E. (2023). Community mobilization at the convergence of conservation and extraction. Geoforum, 147, 103886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103886
     
  5. Svarstad, Hanne, Alfredo Jornet, Glen P. Peters, Tom G. Griffiths og Tor A. Benjaminsen (2023): Critical Climate Education is crucial for fast and just transformations. Nature Climate Change Vol. 13(12): 1274-1275. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01875-2

Events & Announcements 

  1. International Symposium Demands for justice and responses to socio-spatial and environmental justice in the Global South  
    When: April 25th– 26, 2024  
    Where:  Montpellier, France 
    More info: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vvi6JLIUMSgYeke6xVfl7oFpwDMgHVMvs_AB_qnSFVw/edit?usp=sharing
  1. Conference Disruptive borderlands. Unpacking the innovative potential of transbordering practices, imaginaries and policies 
    When: September 4th– 6th, 2024  
    Where:  Luxembourg  
    More info: https://luxborderconf.sciencesconf.org/ 

Vacancies 

  1. Postdoctoral researcher in Africa and Global History (Ghent University) 
    Brief description: The History Department at Ghent University is recruiting 1 postdoctoral researcher for the ERC Starting Grant Project ‘CATTLEFRONTIERS – (Post)Colonial Cattle Frontiers: Capitalism, Science and Empire in Southern and Central Africa, 1890s-1970s’ (2023-2028), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Samuël Coghe. CATTLEFRONTIERS explores how colonialism, global capitalism and science transformed cattle production in Southern and Central Africa during the colonial and early postcolonial period. 
    More info: https://jobs.ugent.be/job/Ghent-Postdoctoral-Researcher-in-African-and-Global-History-%28ERC-Project-CATTLEFRONTIERS%29-9000/783678502/?from=email&refid=15145706902&utm_source=J2WEmail&source=2&eid=25102-202317040517-23117484702&locale=en_GB 
    Deadline: January 10th, 2024  

  2. Assistant Professor in Business, Rural Livelihoods and Governance (Copenhagen University) 
    Brief description: The Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen is looking for applicants with documented research experience, including empirical qualitative and/or quantitative data collection, within one or more of the following areas: (i) Research on private business involvement in environmental product harvesting or extraction and how this affects sustainability, local producers, and the livelihoods and resilience of local residents, including poverty and well-being. (ii) Research on what happens to value chains/production networks with increased private sector engagement in the governance of environmental products. (iii) Research on how interactions between national and transnational businesses, civil society, and governments may support or undermine sustainable development. 
    More info: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx/?cid=1307&departmentId=18971&ProjectId=160617&MediaId=5&SkipAdvertisement=false&s=09 
    Deadline: February 4th, 2024 

  3. Associate Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Science (Lund University).  
    Brief description: We are looking for a promising researcher who can build and lead a research group within one of the following themes: (I) Climate change and societal processes (placed at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Science); (ii) Sustainable retailing and consumption (placed at the Department of Service Studies); (iii) Legal mobilization & access to justice (placed at the Sociology of Law Department); (iv) Cultural criminology (placed at the Department of Sociology); (v) Comparative political ecology (placed at the Department of Human Geography); (vi) Threats and security in a changing world (placed at the Department of Political Science)  
    More info: https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:681782/?fbclid=IwAR1eeqwPFvfV0x_xyQkmpiukF9kq0SbwRMyJ-kT4f-I0lOF7H3pdnzuJlOI&s=09 
    Deadline: February 15th, 2024 

Calls 

  1. Call for papers for the panel “Rural African futures: The role of work” at the Conference Reconfigurations in Africa and in African Studies  
    More info: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/vad2024/p/13832 
    Contact: Muriel Côte (muriel.cote@keg.lu.se) 
    Deadline:  January 31st, 2024 

  2. Several Calls for Papers for #POLLEN24. Below are the titles, brief descriptions, contacts, and deadlines for submission. More information on the CfP can be found in the news section of the POLLEN blog. Link here:: https://politicalecologynetwork.org/category/news/

    –Political Epistemologies and Ontologies. We aim at navigating this intellectual material-ideational battlefield and exploring the more middle-ground positions that rigorously bring together and analyze the economies, ecologies, epistemologies, and ontologies of the different actors involved in socio-environmental contestations. We welcome contributions from scholars with diverse academic backgrounds, spanning from philosophical to empirical social sciences (philosophy, human geography, cultural anthropology, environmental history), addressing the economic and ecological dimensions of epistemological and ontological conflicts or the epistemic and ontological dimensions of economic and ecological conflicts. Contact: Fabio Gatti (fabio.gatti@wur.nl). Deadline: January 12, 2024.

    – Interrogating ontologies and epistemologies of the ‘green transition’: Political ecology meets political ontology in the North. This session seeks to explore ontologies and epistemologies of ‘green transitions’ in the Global North, as well as their ripple effects in the Global South. The session welcomes contributions dealing with green transition and decoloniality through the lenses of political ecology and/or political ontology. Contact: Tatiana Sokolova (tatiana.sokolova@sh.se). Deadline: January 12, 2024.

    –Political Ecologies of War and Conflict in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Scholars in the political ecology network (POLLEN) working in, and on, “Africa”, focus mostly on Southern and Eastern Africa, and also, yet, to a more limited extent West Africa. Overall, Central Africa, and also the Great Lakes Region, has been less central to topical debates in Political Ecology. This is surprising, as the region is experiencing many of the main challenges interrogated by Political Ecology. At this POLLEN conference, we want to create a platform for this research – moving across disciplinary boundaries – which will allow the Great Lakes region to become more central to debates in Political Ecology. List of topics are broad, from conservation in violent environment, political ecology of memory, to nature-society relations in times of war (among many others). Contact: esther.marijnen@wur.nl,david.mwambari@kuleuven.be and an.ansoms@uclouvain.be. Deadline: 10th January, 2024. 

    – What are safeguards for? Evidence to promote a transition in safeguards from ‘doing no harm’ to ‘doing better’ for community rights. Given the highly unequal history of access for Indigenous People, local communities, and Afro-descendants to land and resources, political participation, and public services in the landscapes of the Global South where different actions are implemented, ‘doing no harm’ (or respecting the pre-project status quo) is insufficient (Larson et al. 2021). Interventions that do not follow stringent, transparent, and clear rights-responsive safeguards may inadvertently exacerbate historical experiences of exclusion. This session aims to present lessons and potential ways out of this context.  Contacts: Pablo Sarmiento Barletti (j.sarmiento@cifor-icraf.org) and Deborah Delgado Pugley (deborah.delgado@pucp.pe). Deadline: January 10th, 2024.  

    – Co-creating diverse knowledges through decolonial and feminist political ecology and science and technology studies. This session seeks to explore the various methodologies of engaging, from various positionalities, with non-academic actors: local communities, Indigenous peoples, artists, social movements, and other-than-human entities – in the co-production of research. We invite presentations of experiences and reflections attentive to the challenges of epistemic power as they play out in the context of sustainability transitions and transformations, post-colonialism, and decoloniality.  We especially welcome scholars working with decolonial, feminist and STS perspectives, political ecology and political ontology.  Contact: tatiana.sokolova@sh.se . Deadline: January 12th, 2024.  

    – Political ecology of nature-based value chains. This panel seeks submissions that help understand the political ecology of nature-based value chains, i.e. value chains which work with nature to address societal challenges. It invites contributions that engage with these themes and questions: that engage with these themes and questions: How can nature-based solutions, political ecology and value or commodity chains intersect meaningfully?; How differently are considerations around risk and security viewed across political ecology and value chains?; How could a political ecology of nature-based value chains help understand and govern recent dynamics in wildlife trade, agriculture and forestry?; How can a political ecology of nature-based value chains engage with more-than-human perspectives?; How does a political ecology of nature-based value chains help cope with the current polycrisis across all dimensions of sustainability? Contact: Judith Krauss (judith.krauss@york.ac.uk). Deadline: January 5th, 2024.

    – Urban Frontiers. From Illegal Land Occupation to Legalized Property. Urban property development in the Global South often starts out in illegality and only subsequently becomes legal. It happens when people code and re-code access to land and then conjure up legality for facts already existing on the ground. The panel explores how this happens. The call welcomes contribution that examines how different actors create law, fragment by fragment, constructing what they believe to be already there and the consequences of these processes. Moreover, they are but the latest episodes of long-term historical processes. Therefore, we invite contributions that explore the legacy of colonial processes of legalization on contemporary processes of rulemaking. Contact: kh@ifro.ku.dk or clund@ifro.ku.dk. Deadline: January 15th, 2024.

    – Exploring the Pluriverse: Experiments in radical alternatives from eco-swaraj to degrowth .This call for papers seeks to explore the work of prefigurative politics in creating a pluriverse – a world where many worlds fit in. We invite submissions working on what we define as radical alternatives to the destructive hegemonic system. The session is hosted by the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, a process that has been working to create spaces of collaboration and exchange, in order to learn about and from each other, critically but constructively challenge each other, offer active solidarity to each other. It seeks to facilitate people seeking transformative change, hopefully eventually converging into a critical mass of alternative ways that can support the conditions for the radical systemic changes we need. Contact: vasna.ramasar@hek.lu.se. Deadline: January 5th, 2024

Other news items 

  1. New post on Institutional landscapes by Zannie Langford. The author opens the theme on “intermediaries”  a neglected class in research on the assetization of farmland and agriculture. Her research explores questions of how private sector finance has become entwined in the pursuit of rural development goals. In her new book Assembling Financialization: Local Actors and the Making of Agricultural Investment, she explores how different forms of finance have become incorporated in rural agriculture in Northern Australia. Read the post here: https://institutionallandscapes.org/contribution/12-local-actors-and-the-work-of-investment-mediation-in-australian-agriculture/. For past posts, see here: http://institutionallandscapes.org/startseite/guest-contributions/ 

  2. New podcast on GMO politics in Tanzania and Germany as part of the BATATA project. In part one, Dr. Richard Mbunda of the University of Dar es Salaam, one of East Africa’s foremost experts on food sovereignty and the political economy of agriculture, interviews Thomas Potthast, a global ethics scholar and GMO politics expert at the University of Tübingen, with a focus on the GMO situation in Germany/Europe. In the next instalment, the roles are shifting and Thomas interviews Richard on the situation in Tanzania. Part 1: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6M9Zf2atWfsXaVugCuEPwf  / Part 2: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0BXWfh9CASYrCAuIAqbw5q (transcripts soon available in Kiswahili). This collaborative and cross-regional approach follows, see for instance our recent contribution to ROAPE (“Beyond Productivity: Reimagining Futures of Agriculture and Bioeconomy”). 

  3. PhD on political ecology of education in Oslo 18-21 June 2024. The course will critically examine the state of the art of current mainstream as well as critical approaches to education about sustainability, climate crisis and environmental conflicts. Based on their own research topics, course participants will be encouraged to discuss ways of combining insights from the cross-disciplinary field of political ecology, various other relevant traditions of critical empirical research, as well as critical education traditions. More information here: https://hioa365-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/tonjsh_oslomet_no/EW5a7HL98ixOju_jZux1bjwB-onOiZta-Ejf4DczSAECeQ?e=6aVNH4

  4. The Review of African Political Economy has just published a double special issue on “The Climate Emergency in Africa: Crisis, Solutions and Resistance (ROAPE volume 50, issues 177 – 178). You can find it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/crea20/current