A new regime of carbon counting: the practices and politics of accounting for everyday carbon through C02e

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyzes the counting practices that create the ‘e’ in ‘CO2e’. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden, 2012 and Star and Griesemer, 1989) we conceptualize here as ‘boundary objects’. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of ‘everyday supply chain carbon’. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable and in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product's carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, is the outcome of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn, inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

Theorizing Literacy, Politics and Social Process: revisiting Maktab literacy in Rian in search of a paradigm

Literacy as a social practice is integrally linked with social, economic and political institutions and processes. As such, it has a material base which is fundamentally constituted in power relations. Literacy is therefore interwoven with the text and context of everyday living in which multi-levelled meanings are organically produced at both individual and societal level. This paper argues that if language thus mediates social reality, then it follows that literacy defined as a social practice cannot really be addressed as a reified, neutral activity but that it should take account of the social, cultural and political processes in which literacy practices are embedded. Drawing on the work of key writers within the field, the paper foregrounds the primary role of the state in defining the forms and levels of literacy required and made available at particular moments within society. In a case-study of the social construction of literacy meanings in pre-revolutionary Iran, it explores the view that the discourse about societal literacy levels has historically constituted a key terrain in which the struggle for control over meaning has taken place. This struggle, it is argued, sets the interests of the state to maintain ideological and political control over the production of knowledge within the culture and society over and against the needs identified by the individual for personal development, empowerment and liberation. In an overall sense, the paper examines existing theoretical perspectives on societal literacy programmes in terms of the scope that they provide for analyses that encompass the multi-levelled power relations that shape and influence dominant discourses on the relative value of literacy for both the individual and society

Spectacular foodscapes: food celebrities and the politics of lifestyle mediation in an age of inequality

This editorial introduces a special issue of Food, Culture & Society and works to add a parallel, substantive take on the phenomenon of the food celebrity and the mediated, everyday cultural politics they create. We start by exploring the concept of the foodscape. Specifically, we argue that food celebrities represent a fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they “perform” and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced. We then explore the key roles and privileges of food celebrity, arguing that the celebrity chef is not the only high-profile, mediating figure at work on the foodscape. Key food celebrity paradoxes are identified and discussed: food celebrities must work to be authentic and aspirational, accessible yet exclusive, responsibilizing but also empowering. We conclude with a short contextualization of the papers in this special issue, and argue for the rich potential of food celebrity scholarship as a way to better understand food inequalities

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

Crocodile crimes: people versus wildlife and the politics of postcolonial conservation on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe

This article is about the politics of conservation in postcolonial Southern Africa. It focuses on the process and consequences of redefining the Nile crocodile as an endangered species and explores the linked local and international, commercial and conservationist interests that allowed the animal to re-establish itself in state-protected waterways in colonial and postcolonial contexts. It investigates the effects of the animal's successful re-accommodation by examining conflicts between crocodiles and the fishing communities sharing space on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. Fishermen's hostile representations of the animal emphasize competition for fish, harassment, fear, loss of assets and loss of life. Their fear of crocodiles is heightened by the animal's entanglement in local social life, through its association with witchcraft. The article emphasizes the importance of considering both hegemonic and marginalized ideas about animals in the light of the material interactions, relations of power and historical contexts that shape them. Understanding the attitudes and circumstances of the local communities who bear the physical and economic costs of living with dangerous animals is important-it threatens the future of conservation programmes and reveals the potential for significant abuses to accompany the conservation of wildlife in postcolonial contexts. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation - as in the context of colonial era evictions - there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of 'sites of memory', which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern 'memory', suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and 'being first'. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Changing times, changing places: urban development and the politics of space - time

Much of the writing on urban regeneration in the UK has been focused on the types of urban spaces that have been created in city centres. Less has been written about the issue of when the benefits of regeneration could and should be delivered to a range of different interests, and the different time frames that exist in any development area. Different perceptions of time have been reflected in dominant development philosophies in the UK and elsewhere. The trickle-down agendas of the 1980s, for example, were criticised for their focus on the short-term time frames and needs of developers, often at the expense of those of local communities. The recent emergence of sustainability discourses, however, ostensibly changes the time focus of development and promotes a broader concern with new imagined futures. This paper draws on the example of development in Salford Quays, in the North West of England, to argue that more attention needs to be given to the politics of space-time in urban development processes. It begins by discussing the importance and relevance of this approach before turning to the case study and the ways in which the local politics of space-time has influenced development agendas and outcomes. The paper argues that such an approach harbours the potential for more progressive, far-reaching, and sustainable development agendas to be developed and implemented.

Diversity and difference in the everyday lives of Ugandan street children: The significance of age and gender for understanding the use of space

Childhood is characterised by diversity and difference across and within societies. Street children have a unique relationship to the urban environment evident through their use of the city. The everyday geographies that street children produce are diversified through the spaces they frequent and the activities they engage in. Drawing on a range of children-centred qualitative methods, this article focuses on street children's use of urban space in Kampala, Uganda. The article demonstrates the importance of considering variables such as gender and age in the analysis of street children's socio-spatial experiences, which, to date, have rarely been considered in other accounts of street children's lives. In addition the article highlights the need for also including street children's individuality and agency into understanding their use of space. The article concludes by arguing for policies to be sensitive to the diversity that characterises street children's lives and calls for a more nuanced approach where policies are designed to accommodate street children's age and gender differences, and their individual needs, interests and abilities.

"To strive for economic and social justice": welfare, sexuality, and party politics in San Francisco in the 1960s

This article explores how liberal politicians like Phil Burton of San Francisco joined with welfare rights lobbyists and bureaucrats to embrace late twntieth-century notions of sexual equality through a broader reconception of economic equality brought about by the expansion of the California welfare state in the early 1960s.