scholarly journals Conditions and Constrains for Reflexive Governance of Industrial Risks: The Case of the South Durban Industrial Basin, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5679
Author(s):  
Llewellyn Leonard ◽  
Rolf Lidskog

Within sustainability development paradigms, state governance is considered important in interventions to address risks produced by the industrial society. However, there is largely a lack of understanding, especially in the Global South, about the nature and workings of the governance institutions necessary to tackle risks effectively. Reflexive governance, as a new mode of governance, has been developed as a way to be more inclusive and more reflexive and respond to complex risks. Conversely, there is limited scholarly work that has examined the theoretical and empirical foundations of this governance approach, especially how it may unfold in the Global South. This paper explores the conditions and constrains for reflexive governance in a particular case: that of the South Durban Industrial Basin. South Durban is one of the most polluted regions in southern Africa and has been the most active industrial site of contention between local residents and industry and government during apartheid and into the new democracy. Empirical analysis found a number of constrains involved in enabling reflexive governance. It also found that a close alliance between government and industry to promote economic development has overshadowed social and environmental protection. Reflexive governance practitioners need to be cognisant of its applicability across diverse geographic settings and beyond western notions of reflexive governance.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (267-268) ◽  
pp. 259-263
Author(s):  
Stephanie Rudwick ◽  
Sinfree Makoni

Abstract In this short article we call for decolonization strategies in the Sociology of Language through a focus shift towards the global South, in particular Africa and a heightened attention to “race” as a significant category. We highlight three primary points that require critical attention in a decolonized Sociology of Language: (i) the identification of northern sociolinguistic theories which have been masked as universal and a critical shift towards theoretical frameworks emerging from the South; (ii) the acknowledgement of “white” privilege and “white fragility” in language studies and its related problem of ignoring “race” as a significant category, in scholarship as well as among authors/editors; and (iii) the under-representation of (especially female) scholars of colour in sociolinguistic research.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110246
Author(s):  
Federico Ferretti

This paper addresses the engagement of critical geographers from Northeastern Brazil with regional planning, aiming at transforming society by acting on their region’s spaces. Extending and putting in relation literature on planning theory in the Global South and geographical scholarship on decoloniality, I explore new archives showing how the planning work that these geographers performed from 1957 to 1964 was an example of the ‘South’ re-elaborating and putting into practice notions arising from ‘international’ literature, such as that of ‘active geography’, and pioneering critical uses of instruments, such as mappings and statistics, that have often been associated with technocracy and political conservatism. Connected with peasants’ struggles and with a theoretical framework that is cognisant of the colonial histories and insurgent Black and indigenous traditions in the Northeast, these geographers’ works show that there is no ‘Southern Theory’ without a concrete engagement of scholars with social and political problems, one which is not limited to ‘participation’, but aims at challenging the political powers in place. Although not devoid of contradictions that are analysed here, the experiences of these Southern geographers acting in and for the South can provide precious insights into current (Northern or Southern) scholarly programmes aimed at resisting oppression.


Author(s):  
Guilherme Cavalcante Silva

Over the last few years, data studies within Social Sciences watched a growth in the number of researches highlighting the need for more proficuous participation from the Global South in the debates of the field. The lack of Southern voices in the academic scholarship on the one hand, and of recognition of the importance and autonomy of its local data practices, such as those from indigenous data movements, on the other, had been decisive in establishing a Big Data in the South agenda. This paper displays an analytical mapping of 131 articles published from 2014-2016 in Big Data & Society (BD&S), a leading journal acknowledged for its pioneering promotion of Big Data research among social scientists. Its goal is to provide an overview of the way data practices are approached in BD&S papers concerning its geopolitical instance. It argues that there is a tendency to generalise data practices overlooking the specific consequences of Big Data in Southern contexts because of an almost exclusive presence of Euroamerican perspectives in the journal. This paper argues that this happens as a result of an epistemological asymmetry that pervades Social Sciences.


Author(s):  
Sergio Fadini

The relationship between tourism and local residents is one of the most important problems of the tourist governance in a site; both in mature tourism destinations like European cultural towns, or in other sites, and where tourism is a novelty, so problems can be more. The concept of responsible tourism was born for helping local communities that bear tourism impact, using the values of sustainable development. So, inside it, this theme is very important, for who think that local communites must be more active in tourism; and for who think that it’s enough if they gain money from tourist activities. This paper analyzes the situation in Matera, a little town in the south of Italy, where tourism is becoming an important economic activity. Here there are daily problems between who plan and citizens. A planning concerning not only tourism, as the restricted traffic zone.


2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. 535-552
Author(s):  
Astrid Wood

In the post-colonial context, the global South has become the approved nomenclature for the non-European, non-Western parts of the world. The term promises a departure from post-colonial development geographies and from the material and discursive legacies of colonialism by ostensibly blurring the bifurcations between developed and developing, rich and poor, centre and periphery. In concept, the post-colonial literature mitigates the disparity between cities of the North and South by highlighting the achievements of elsewhere. But what happens when we try to teach this approach in the classroom? How do we locate the South without relying on concepts of otherness? And how do we communicate the importance of the South without re-creating the regional hierarchies that have dominated for far too long? This article outlines the academic arguments before turning to the opportunities and constraints associated with delivering an undergraduate module that teaches post-colonial concepts without relying on colonial constructs.


Author(s):  
Joseph R. Slaughter ◽  
Kerry Bystrom

Responding to the way the Southern parts of the Atlantic have historically been obscured in conceptions of the Atlantic world and through the critical oceanic studies concepts of fluidity, solvency, and drift, this chapter serves as a critical introduction to the South Atlantic. Beginning with a rereading of the Atlantic Charter, it poses the South Atlantic both as a material geographic region (something along the lines of a South Atlantic Rim) and as a set of largely unfulfilled visions—including those of anti-imperial solidarity and resistance generated through imaginative and political engagement from different parts of the Global South with the Atlantic world. It also reflects on the conditions under which something called the “Global South Atlantic” could come into being and the modes of historical, cultural, and literary comparison by which a multilingual and multinational region might be grasped.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Mynster Christensen

Contemporary warfare depends on private security contractors from countries in the Global South. In Sierra Leone, this dependency has produced emerging markets for private military and security companies (PMSCs) seeking to recruit cheap, military-experienced labor. This article explores how demobilized militia and soldiers in Sierra Leone negotiate categorical divides to make themselves employable for private security contracting in Iraq. Based on 19 months of fieldwork tracing militia soldiers as they move between shift ing security constellations, the article introduces the notion of “shadow soldiering” to explain the entanglements of public-private spheres and the blurring of boundaries between the visible and invisible that characterize these constellations. While scholarly work on PMSCs has increasingly highlighted the public-private interconnectedness, the article contributes an ethnographically informed perspective on how security contractors on the ground interpret such entanglements and how global security dynamics intersects with the local, everyday practices and processes that facilitate the supply of contractors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-393
Author(s):  
Manisha Desai

In this article, I focus on the work of the South Asian Network for Gender Transformation (SANGAT) to show how it goes beyond the current turn to the Global South in much contemporary transnational feminisms. It does so in two ways. One, as evident in the name, it defines a regional imaginary, which is place-based and informed by the long history of interactions in the area beyond the colonial, postcolonial, and recent global forces, as well as in conversation with discourses and practices from the North. Second, its praxis connects activists across borders in a process of mutual learning that acknowledges power inequalities and draws upon local as well as transnational feminist theories and methodologies to enable sustainable collaborations for social and gender justice in the region. Thus, rather than reproducing the North/South binaries with its attendant erasures SANGAT seeks to go beyond them to develop place-based yet connected ‘solidarities of epistemologies’ and praxis.


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