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In this paper, we survey the expanding body of literature on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Chinese and Anglophone geography, and locate the main lines of development. The emerging scholarship approaches the BRI as a spatial discourse and examines the production of geographical reasoning in statecraft. It also links up with studies of the BRI as both a material project and an everyday experience. We argue that it is in this combined understanding of BRI's multiple registers, as discourse, project, and experience, that a trilectical approach for future geographical engagement can be identified as the BRI edges to its second decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antiblackness, anti‐Black racism and other oppressions work within systems such as capitalism, white supremacy and globalization. As a system, Canadian higher education institutions are complicit with the oppression of Black, Indigenous and racialized peoples. Anti‐oppressive and antiracist pedagogies attempt to challenge institutional power and oppression but face resistance within the academy and wider society. This paper articulates Black Affirming Pedagogy as an additional anticolonial, antiracist, pro‐Black teaching praxis aimed at furthering educators' resiliencies and capacities for cultivating transformations and social change. Pro‐Black affirmations of Blackness, allyship/solidarity, humanity, diverse knowledge, and action are discussed alongside strategies for praxis. Risks of engaging in Black Affirming Pedagogy and suggestions for overcoming them are also highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of biotechnology is part of a global process of structural change in agriculture characterized by an increased integration of world agriculture with high corporate control. However, as the legal competence to allow the planting and trade of genetically modified (GM) crops commonly lies at the level of the nation state, this remains strategic in the politics of GM crops, both for actors promoting the technology and for social movements struggling against it. This paper illustrates this argument with an analysis of the struggles over GM crops in Brazil. It shows how the implementation of a food regime based on biotechnology, corporate control and neoliberal globalism depended on the state and was a contested process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the experience of two severe disasters (the Hanshin Awaji Earthquake disaster of 1995 and the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster of 2011), I wish to consider 'subsistence' as human life, existence equaling the basic activities of life, an essential mutual act-like existence economy. In this paper, I pursue a positive development of 'disaster-time economics' as a research object under the larger framework of the formation of a 'moral economy,' as part of a critical process. In this paper, in order that a stricken area and society may aim at the realization of a new methodology about 'creative revival' for newly developing independent research involving the state of the revival fund of a wide sense is carried out. Nevertheless, there is an overall understanding of who, in what areas, and using what methodology, has conducted research in the restoration and revival process, as well as the weak points that tend to hinder the process. There is no research on the rationality and function of public finance expenditures or national sources expenditures. Therefore, in this paper, the term 'disaster-time economy' is newly prepared. From this concept, many activities of the project, service, support, self-efforts etc. of a social and private domain are grasped from a public sphere in connection with the process of maintenance/restoration under the disaster. The feature and subject point of the process are clarified. The market economy order that is going to be produced in this process does the basic work and determines the economic order for another self-subsistence over life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper Martin Heidegger's notions about dwelling in the sites of finitude and 'power-free' ( Macht-los) 'letting-be' ( Gelassenheit) are explored as fundamental possibilities for resisting the ontological violence posed by global capitalism, the planetary outcome of the metaphysical condition Heidegger calls the 'machination' ( Machenschaft). Beginning from the planetary machination-the emergence of the flexible and circularly functioning power of calculative intelligibility-resistance is understood ontologically and hence as a radical critique of power as a consummation of the history of the metaphysical constitution of being. The paper culminates in a discussion of Heidegger's view on the awakening of the 'other beginning' of the abyssal 'Event' of being, a groundless 'time-space-play' capable of constituting an alternative modality of relations no longer based upon the calculative functions of power but upon groundless thought and non-violent dwelling in the earth-sites of finite being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in spatial political economy have shown that the shift of power from the national state to subnational states in many Western European countries does not represent a dismantling of the state, but a reconfiguration of statehood that the national state proactively takes part in. The existing literature, however, neglects the path-dependent and contested nature of state spatiality and depicts devolution as the only possible option. In contrast, this paper shows that changes in state spatiality are contingent upon historical and spatial context, where the state may choose to pursue different options. Based on an empirical study of South Korea, this paper shows that the national state may choose to resist the pressure for devolution. The methodological contribution of this paper is on the emphasis of discursive strategy in the study of state spatiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although capitalism is now widely seen to be the world's only remaining form of political economy, most discussion of capitalism is vague regarding what it is and gives it little analytical importance. In this paper, I attempt to determine whether two more explicit conceptions of capitalism– those of Ellen Meiksins Wood and Hernando de Soto– can shed any light on the literature on rural smallholder commodity production in the Asia Pacific, and vice versa. I use the papers collected in this volume to analyse the relevance of‘market dependence’ (Wood) and the various‘mysteries of capital’ (de Soto) for agrarian relations in the Asia Pacific. The paper tries to point towards a definition of capitalism that distinguishes it from such related terms as commercialisation, markets, and globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussing the lifestyle and practices of the Paris group of the contemporary surrealist movement, this paper contributes to debates within economic and political geography that seek to develop the imagining of alternatives to neoliberal globalisation through practices of resistance, and spaces of political and policy engagement. The everyday life of the surrealist movement, in combining creativity with progressive choices and radical economic practices that oppose capitalism, while intellectually investigating ideas of revolution, a different society and utopia, suggests a perspective that contributes to the imagining of such alternatives. This paper outlines the deeply embedded nature of surrealist activity in opposing capitalism and illustrates, as one member of the surrealist group suggests, in quoting Baudelaire, surrealism's insistence for a world in which“action is the sister of dream”. The paper further contributes to discussion on the role of academics in facilitating spaces of political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periods of economic crisis for agriculture in developing countries have been marked in history by declining incomes and worsening employment possibilities, resulting in adverse outcomes of loss of land rights against debt and declining nutrition levels for the poorer majority of populations. This paper argues that a similar conjuncture of agrarian crisis has become visible in recent years, as had been seen in the prelude to the inter–War Depression, owing to the income–deflation inherent in current macroeconomic policies driven by the dominant global neo–liberal agenda. The argument is illustrated primarily with reference to the experience of India under economic reforms. The question of land rights and gender equity are strongly affected by the dominant policy regime; hence the paper, while not addressing these questions directly, seeks to contextualize them through its critique of the dominant neo–liberal policy regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfurling of global capitalism – and its attendant effects – has long been fertile intellectual terrain for geographers. But whilst studies of the processes and mechanisms of globalisation undoubtedly assume a talismanic importance in the discipline, geographers, with few exceptions, have left examinations of early economic liberalism to historians. One such critically important episode in the evolution of the liberal economic project was the repeal of the so-called ‘Corn Laws’ in 1846. Whilst the precise impact of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL) continues to be a matter of conjecture, Eric Sheppard has asserted that their particular take on political economy managed to assume a ‘truth-like status’ and worldwide universality. But the ACLL’s campaign represents only one, albeit decisive, stage in the long intellectual and practical struggle between ‘protectionists’ and the disciples of free trade. Studies of the non-’Manchester’ components have tended to focus squarely upon national politics. This paper examines a pivotal attempt in 1838 by Lord Melbourne’s Government to experiment with the effective elimination of import duties on fresh fruit. Unlike most agricultural commodities, table fruit was produced in a tightly defined area, thus allowing the Government’s experiment to play out, in theory, without national political fallout. Whilst the Government’s clandestine actions left little time for a concerted opposition to develop, Kentish fruit growers soon organised. A formidable lobby was forged that drew wide local support yet also evolved beyond the original ‘epistemic community’. Whilst the coalition failed in their efforts to reintroduce protective duties, their actions allow us to see how protectionist ideologies and policies were vivified through practices at many different spatial scales and to better understand the complex spatiality of protectionist takes on political economy. Their campaign also changed – at least in the short term – the course of British mercantile policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been growing interest in the prospects for a new trade union internationalism in recent years, following the end of the Cold War and the coming together of the main national union organisations into one confederation, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions(ICFTU). For the first time in decades, geopolitical straitjackets and defensive nationalistic postures are giving way to more open, internationalist perspectives as unions attempt to get to grips with global capitalism. However, despite some well-publicised grassroots globalisation campaigns, effective international labour organising and networking remains thin on the ground. One of the reasons for this is that, despite the rhetoric of globalisation and the reality of multi-layered governance, the“national” space remains the critical scale at which unions operate. Variations in both union organisation and the politico-institutional context within which unions operate nationally continue to shape international solidarity activities. This theme is pursued in this paper through the contrasting cases of the UK and Norwegian trade union movements. Although both union movements have been subject to similar problems in recent years, in terms of membership decline and the pressures of increasing global economic integration, the different national political and economic contexts within which unions are embedded have been important in facilitating or constraining international strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is often seen as the final stage in the transition towards a market economy. It is argued that a side-effect of globalization is cultural homogeneity and loss of life world, or ‘McDonaldization’. McDonaldization represents the rationalization of society in the quest for extreme efficiency. More recently, Meštrović has argued that the rationalization of emotions has also occurred and that Western societies are entering a postemotional phase. In postemotional societies there has been a separation of emotion from action. The result is synthetic, manufactured emotions manipulated and standardized for mass consumption. In this paper I explore what it means to nurse in a ‘postemotional society’ and what impact this dulling of the emotions has had on a profession that locates ‘care’ as its central defining concept. My aim is to generate critical discussion of the shape and direction of contemporary society and the role of nursing within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an introduction to papers that were delivered at Bucknell University in the winter of 2000 as part of the Religious Studies Forum. The topic selected were religion, ethics and globalization. At the time, both academic discourse and the popular press were preoccupied with issues related to transition of the society to the third millennium. Globalization was widely thought to be a defining feature of the complex processes, shaping life in the new century and beyond, and thus, seemed to be a fitting topic for the forum. Much of the debate focused on whether globalization would lead to increased material prosperity for all countries, or simply exacerbate the ills already associated with global capitalism.

Recent geographical discussions of postcolonialism have highlighted its emphasis on texts and discourses, its neglect of more material aspects of (post)imperial/colonial domination and the need for detailed empirical research articulating postcolonialism and global capitalism. This paper addresses these issues by reporting on research based in a recent debate in the UK trade press over the 'failure' of Caribbean food to 'cross over' into the UK 'mainstream'. It outlines the contrasting manufacturing and marketing practices of two Jamaican food companies whose accounts of (not) attempting this 'cross-over' illustrate postcolonialism's hybrid, resistant, ambivalent, scale-jumping, boundary-crossing, material cultural politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The direction of anthropology over the last century is tied to the shifts from colonialism to postcolonialism and from modernism to postmodernism. These shifts have seen the thoroughgoing incorporation of the world population into the economic, political and juridical domain established through the last throes of colonialism and the transmutations of capitalism and the State. Anthropology, a discipline whose history shows close and regular links with colonial government, also transforms in association with the world it describes and partly creates. Two dominant trends in contemporary anthropology--applied consultancy and historicist self-reflexivity--are compared for the ways they represent the transmutation, which is characterised, following Fredric Jameson as 'the surrender to the market'. In this way it is asserted that just as the discipline had hitherto revealed its links to colonialism, it now reveals its links to globalisation through a form of commodified self-obsession. To illustrate this quality the paper considers the global chain of cosmetics stores, The Body Shop, as an example of 'late capitalism' and the moral juridical framework of globalisation. Finally, it treats these developments in anthropology as more generally affecting intellectuals and knowledge production through the promotion of intellectual 'silence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]