scholarly journals Electrifying urban Africa: energy access, city-making and globalisation in Nigeria and Benin

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (0) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Mélanie Rateau ◽  
Armelle Choplin
Keyword(s):  
Global South ◽  
Energy Access ◽  
Solar Panels ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Electricity Access ◽  
Electricity Provision ◽  
Country People ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Electricity access has become a crucial issue in global South cities. While demand is growing, conventional grids are failing or insufficient, especially in Africa. Urban dwellers therefore have to develop a wide range of (in)formal infrastructures to meet their daily electricity needs. Building on recent studies on urban electricity in the global South, this paper aims to contribute to the debates on hybrid forms of electricity provision by analysing the diffusion of solar panels and generators in two cities, Ibadan in Nigeria and Cotonou in Benin. Although neighbouring and relatively similar, these two cities illustrate distinct daily electrical lives. In Nigeria, an electricity-exporting country, people face daily power outages. In Benin, a country that depends on Nigeria for its supply, there is electricity but it is difficult to connect to the grid because of connection costs. Based on an empirical study, the article shows that Ibadan’s inhabitants use generators as a complement to a conventional grid that is almost universal but unreliable. In Cotonou, solar energy is an alternative until they can connect to the grid. Generators and solar panels have become the material markers of urban Africa, providing information on inequalities in access to electricity.

South Africa at a Turning Point?

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Zuern
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Electricity Provision

South Africa is at a crossroads. The state has not adequately addressed dire human development needs, often failing to provide the services it constitutionally guarantees. As a result, citizens are expressing their frustrations in a variety of ways, at times including violence. These serious challenges are most readily apparent in poverty, inequality and unemployment statistics, but also in electricity provision, billing and affordability as well as a recent spate of racially motivated attacks which highlight the tension both among South Africans and between South Africans and darker skinned foreigners. The country has, however, been on the brink before and avoided the worst-case scenario of full-scale civil war and state collapse. Far too often South Africa's past successes have been attributed to the role of one man, Nelson Mandela. While Mandela was indeed an extraordinary human being who rightly deserved the international awards and accolades as well as the deep admiration of so many, South Africa's triumphs as a society and a state are the product of both cooperative and conflicting contributions by a wide range of actors. A central question at the present juncture is how well equipped domestic actors and institutions are to address the crisis. The following pages seek to provide some insights and through the perspectives of three authors to consider causes and possible responses.

scholarly journals Comparative Area Studies and the Study of the Global South

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-287
Author(s):  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Ariel I. Ahram
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
Global South ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Variation ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Range Theory ◽  
Sub Saharan

Comparative Area Studies (CAS) offers a template to bring the Global South back into the foreground of social science inquiry. CAS urges researchers to grapple directly with empirical variations derived from across the seemingly different global regions. CAS offers three comparative modes: intra-regional, cross-regional, and trans-regional. A number of scholars have used CAS’s comparative rubrics, even without knowing about the wider CAS agenda and program. CAS unsettles assumptions about discrete, fixed “regional” or civilizational blocks as well as about nomothetic theory-building aimed at universal or general laws. At the same time, CAS engages in the idea of medium-range theory-building, focusing empirical rigor and induction in order to create concepts and analyses that are portable yet contextualized. These macro-historical theories must be attentive to spatial and temporal variation in the social world. Claims of universalism are suspect. For the study of the Global South, in particular, CAS provides a path for aggregating and leveraging the wide range of observations and interpretations area specialists have to offer on regions as diverse as South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. CAS thus changes the division of labor within social science to allow greater input for scholarship derived from and originating in the developing world.

Another Tale of Two Cities: Lviv and Łódź

2018 ◽  
pp. 114-145
Author(s):  
Maurizio Cinquegrani
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Films ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Jewish Schools

This chapter explores the cinematic image of Lviv and Łódź in wide range of documentary films. It also offers comparisons between fictional and factual films of these places. The chapter also explores physical remnants of the past in the form of buildings which were occupied by Jewish schools, hospitals or homes, and on the role played by these places and ruins in the processes of memorialisation enacted in film.

scholarly journals Solidarity Economy, Social Enterprise, and Innovation Discourses: Understanding Hybrid Forms in Postcolonial Colombia

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Sara Calvo Martínez ◽  
Andrés Morales Pachón ◽  
José María Martín Martín ◽  
Valentín Molina Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Global South ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Global North ◽  
Alternative Discourses ◽  
North And South ◽  
Dynamic Interplay ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Dominant conceptions of solidarity economy, social enterprise, and innovation (SSEI) remain poorly positioned for understanding the diverse models emerging across the global South. The purpose of this paper is to examine the power relations between the global North and South in the production and dissemination of SSEI knowledge, highlighting the importance of recognizing alternative discourses in the global South. This contextual analysis is developed through consideration of the construction of the hybrid SSEI model in Colombia, drawing upon postcolonial theory and using Nicholls’ framework on the legitimacy of SSEI discourses. This paper offers the first application of postcolonial theory to the analysis of SSEI in the global South. This research has demonstrated that the construction of the SSEI sector in Colombia is a reflection of the dynamic interplay of the hybrids, as it incorporates the hero entrepreneur and business-like discourses within the traditional community discourse, which indeed is a combination of domestic (indigenous collective practices) and colonizer influences (e.g., cooperatives, associations). This paper also identifies the current tensions that have emerged from such hybridity within the country.

Constructing the digital self in the Global South

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baird Campbell ◽  
Nell Haynes
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Global South ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Self ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Self Formation

Abstract The papers in this special section examine how people in various contexts of the Global South “construct the self” in online spaces. With examples from Chile, Senegal, and Trinidad, the papers show the wide range of discursive practices, encompassing the textual and the aesthetic, which individuals use to enact gendered and sexual selves online. By privileging gender and sexuality as central components of selfhood, we draw from the longstanding attention paid to gender and sexuality in linguistic studies of identification (see Bucholtz & Hall 2004). In placing this concept within digital worlds, we pay attention to the ways in which daily life is now lived and experienced online. Authors in this issue think critically about practices of self-formation and the performance of gender and sexuality that differ from those that have normalized in the Global North, considering both revolutionary possibility, and re-entrenchment of constraint.

scholarly journals Mitigating Energy Poverty: Mobilizing Climate Finance to Manage the Energy Trilemma in Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abidah B. Setyowati
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Rural Electrification ◽  
Climate Finance ◽  
Energy Access ◽  
Energy Poverty ◽  
Electricity Grid ◽  
Global Challenge ◽  
Electricity Access ◽  
Change Mitigation

Energy poverty remains a key global challenge. In Indonesia, around 25 million people are still without electricity access, and many of them live in geographically isolated areas and remote places that preclude them from access to the electricity grid. Deploying renewable energy sources in these areas could present an opportunity for a remarkable and rare complementarity between energy security, energy access, and climate change mitigation. This article examines how energy trilemma plays out in mobilizing private climate finance for renewable rural electrification in Indonesia. Analysis of relevant documents combined with interviews at local and national levels reveals that multiple barriers persist constraining the mobilization of private climate finance to support renewable rural electrification in Indonesia. In turn, this has led to difficulties with managing the tensions and reaching the complementarity of the three key energy objectives. The article concludes with some recommendations for moving forward.

scholarly journals Benchmarks for energy access: Policy vagueness and incoherence as barriers to sustainable electrification of the global south

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 113-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chukwuka G. Monyei ◽  
Lukumon O. Oyedele ◽  
Olugbenga O. Akinade ◽  
Anuoluwapo O. Ajayi ◽  
Xiaojun J. Luo
Keyword(s):  
Global South ◽  
Energy Access ◽  
Access Policy

Religion and Homeschooling

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton Gaither
Keyword(s):  
Political Polarization ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Christian Conservatives ◽  
The Right ◽  
Home And School ◽  
Conservative Protestants ◽  
Hybrid Forms

Homeschooling as a self-consciously oppositional political movement emerged in the 1970s and 1980s among counterculturalists on both the left and the right due to a mix of historical trends, including the growth of suburbs, feminism, political polarization, and public school bureaucratization and secularization. In its early stages the movement saw cooperation between Christian conservatives and secular leftists, who worked together to relax homeschooling laws in every US state. By the late 1980s, however, a schism had developed and the much larger group of religious conservatives took control of the movement. Though very conservative Protestants continue to dominate the public face of the movement, in recent years homeschooling has grown increasingly common among a wide range of Americans. The historic antagonism between homeschooling and public education is also fading, as many hybrid forms have emerged that blur the boundaries between home and school.

Strategies of cities in globalised interurban competition: The locational policies framework

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (12) ◽  
pp. 2703-2720 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kaufmann ◽  
Tobias Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Tax System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
National Tax

Globalised interurban competition affects cities of various sizes and cities in various locations. Cities have to find ways to position themselves in global markets by formulating locational policies. To capture this wide range of policies, this paper develops an analytical framework of locational policies that is interdisciplinary informed by theories of economic geography and political science. We compare the cities of Lucerne and Ulm to illustrate the added value of the locational policies framework. We found that these two cities feature very different locational policies agendas. By employing a neo-institutional lens, we suggest that place-specific factors enable and constrain the formulation of locational policies. We outline three possible venues to tentatively explain these different locational policies, namely the economic sector mix, the national tax system, and politics. Beyond these empirical findings, this paper shows that the locational policies framework is able to capture a wide range of policies that aim to enhance the competitiveness of a city. Thus, the locational policies framework is a tool that can be used to reveal how cities face the globalised, and increasingly knowledge-intensive, interurban competition.

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