Political economy of state-building: power after peace

The purpose of this volume is to examine and evaluate the impact of international state-building interventions on the political economy of post-conflict countries over the last 20 years. It analyses how international interventions have shaped political and economic dynamics and structures – both formal and informal – and what kind of state, and what kind of state-society relations have been created as a result, through three different lenses: first, through the approaches taken by different international actors like the UN, the International Financial Institutions, or the European Union, to state-building; second, through detailed analysis of key state-building policies; and third, through a wide range of country case studies. Amongst the recurring themes that are highlighted by the book’s focus on the political economy of state-building, and that help to explain why international state-building interventions have tended to fall short of the visions of interveners and local populations alike are evidence of important continuities between war-time and “post-conflict” economies and authority structures, which are often consolidated as a consequence of international involvement; tensions arising from what are often the competing interests and values held by different interveners and local actors; and, finally, the continuing salience of economic and political violence in state-building processes and war-to-peace transitions. The book aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the complex impact of state-building practices on post-conflict societies, and of the political economy of post-conflict state-building.

Moving the nanoscience and technology (NST) debate forwards: short-term impacts, long-term uncertainty and the social constitution

Nanoscience and technology (NST) are widely cited to be the defining technology for the 21st century. In recent years, the debate surrounding NST has become increasingly public, with much of this interest stemming from two radically opposing long-term visions of a NST-enabled future: ‘nano-optimism’ and ‘nano-pessimism’. This paper demonstrates that NST is a complex and wide-ranging discipline, the future of which is characterised by uncertainty. It argues that consideration of the present-day issues surrounding NST is essential if the public debate is to move forwards. In particular, the social constitution of an emerging technology is crucial if any meaningful discussion surrounding costs and benefits is to be realised. An exploration of the social constitution of NST raises a number of issues, of which unintended consequences and the interests of those who own and control new technologies are highlighted.

City futures: exploring urban retrofit and sustainable transitions

Cities are responsible for up to 70% of global carbon emissions and 75% of global energy consumption. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world's population will live in cities. The critical challenge for contemporary urbanism, therefore, is to understand how to develop the knowledge, capacity and capability for public agencies, the private sector and multiple users in city-regions (i.e. the city and its wider hinterland) to re-engineer systemically their built environment and urban infrastructure in response to climate change and resource constraints. To inform transitions to urban sustainability, key stakeholders' perceptions were sought though a participatory backcasting and scenario foresight process in order to illuminate challenging but realistic socio-technical scenarios for the systemic retrofit of core UK city-regions. The challenge of conceptualizing complex urban transitions is explored across multiple socio-technical ‘regimes’ (housing, non-domestic buildings, urban infrastructure), scales (building, neighbourhood, city-region), and domains (energy, water, use of resources) within a participatory process. The development of three archetypal ‘guiding visions’ of retrofit city-regional futures developed through this process are discussed, along with the contribution that such foresight processes might play in ‘opening up’ the governance and strategic navigation of urban sustainability.

Urban retrofitting: identifying disruptive and sustaining technologies using performative and foresight techniques

Cities, which are now inhabited by a majority of the world's population, are not only an important source of global environmental and resource depletion problems, but can also act as important centres of technological innovation and social learning in the continuing quest for a low carbon future. Planning and managing large-scale transitions in cities to deal with these pressures require an understanding of urban retrofitting at city scale. In this context performative techniques (such as backcasting and roadmapping) can provide valuable tools for helping cities develop a strategic view of the future. However, it is also important to identify ‘disruptive’ and ‘sustaining’ technologies which may contribute to city-based sustainability transitions. This paper presents research findings from the EPSRC Retrofit 2050 project, and explores the relationship between technology roadmaps and transition theory literature, highlighting the research gaps at urban/city level. The paper develops a research methodology to describe the development of three guiding visions for city-regional retrofit futures, and identifies key sustaining and disruptive technologies at city scale within these visions using foresight (horizon scanning) techniques. The implications of the research for city-based transition studies and related methodologies are discussed.

‘Low carbon’ scenarios, roadmaps, transitions and pathways: an overview and discussion

There are a range of studies based in the low carbon arena which use various ‘futures’- based techniques as ways of exploring uncertainties. These techniques range from ‘scenarios’ and ‘roadmaps’ through to ‘transitions’ and ‘pathways’ as well as ‘vision’-based techniques. The overall aim of the paper is therefore to compare and contrast these techniques to develop a simple working typology with the further objective of identifying the implications of this analysis for RETROFIT 2050. Using recent examples of city-based and energy-based studies throughout, the paper compares and contrasts these techniques and finds that the distinctions between them have often been blurred in the field of low carbon. Visions, for example, have been used in both transition theory and futures/Foresight methods, and scenarios have also been used in transition-based studies as well as futures/Foresight studies. Moreover, Foresight techniques which capture expert knowledge and map existing knowledge to develop a set of scenarios and roadmaps which can inform the development of transitions and pathways can not only help potentially overcome any ‘disconnections’ that may exist between the social and the technical lenses in which such future trajectories are mapped, but also promote a strong ‘co-evolutionary’ content.

Pre-Raphaelitism, science and the arts in 'The Germ'

This article demonstrates for the first time how dense the references to science are within the Pre-Raphaelite periodical 'The Germ' (1850). By reading the essays from this magazine together, as they were first published, it is possible to see how thoroughly the Pre-Raphaelites theorised their artistic project in terms of a particular mid-Victorian ideal of science. At the same time, the magazine became a forum in which the question of how far the arts ought to take account of science could be debated. In this debate, the competing visions of Pre-Raphaelitism discussed in Holman Hunt’s later accounts of the movement can be seen emerging at a very early stage in its history.

Reflexive stasis, scale reversal and the myth of modern cinema

This chapter looks at three films whose Portuguese urban settings offer a privileged ground for the re-evaluation of the classical-modern-postmodern categorisation with regard to cinema. They are The State of Things (Wim Wenders, 1982), Foreign Land (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1995) and Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010). In them, the city is the place where characters lose their bearings, names, identities, and where vicious circles, mirrors, replicas and mise-en-abyme bring the vertiginous movement that had characterised the modernist city of 1920s cinema to a halt. Curiously, too, it is the place where so-called postmodern aesthetics finally finds an ideal home in self-ironical tales that expose the film medium’s narrative shortcomings. Intermedial devices, whether Polaroid stills or a cardboard cut-out theatre, are then resorted to in order to turn a larger-than-life reality into framed, manageable narrative miniatures. The scaled-down real, however, turns out to be a disappointing simulacrum, a memory ersatz that unveils the illusory character of cosmopolitan teleology. In my approach, I start by examining the intertwined and transnational genesis of these films that resulted in three correlated visions of the end of history and of storytelling, typical of postmodern aesthetics. I move on to consider intermedia miniaturism as an attempt to stop time within movement, an equation that inevitably brings to mind the Deleuzian movement-time binary, which I revisit in an attempt to disentangle it from the classical-modern opposition. I conclude by proposing reflexive stasis and scale reversal as the common denominator across all modern projects, hence, perhaps, a more advantageous model than modernity to signify artistic and political values.

Environmental justice and conceptions of the green economy

Green economy has become one of the most fashionable terms in global environmental public policy discussions and forums. Despite this popularity, and its being selected as one of the organizing themes of the United Nations Rio+20 Conference in Brazil, June 2012, its prospects as an effective mobilization tool for global environmental sustainability scholarship and practice remains unclear. A major reason for this is that much like its precursor concepts such as environmental sustainability and sustainable development, green economy is a woolly concept which lends itself to many interpretations. Hence, rather than resolve long-standing controversies, green economy merely reinvigorates existing debates over the visions, actors and policies best suited to secure a more sustainable future for all. In this review article, we aim to fill an important gap in scholarship by suggesting various ways in which green economy may be organized and synthesized as a concept, and especially in terms of its relationship with the idea of social and environmental justice. Accordingly, we offer a systemization of possible interpretations of green economy mapped onto a synthesis of existing typologies of environmental justice. This classification provides the context for future analysis of which, and how, various notions of green economy link with various conceptions of justice.

Basic concepts for convection parameterization in weather forecast and climate models: COST Action ES0905 final report

The research network “Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models” was organized with European funding (COST Action ES0905) for the period of 2010–2014. Its extensive brainstorming suggests how the subgrid-scale parameterization problem in atmospheric modeling, especially for convection, can be examined and developed from the point of view of a robust theoretical basis. Our main cautions are current emphasis on massive observational data analyses and process studies. The closure and the entrainment–detrainment problems are identified as the two highest priorities for convection parameterization under the mass–flux formulation. The need for a drastic change of the current European research culture as concerns policies and funding in order not to further deplete the visions of the European researchers focusing on those basic issues is emphasized.

Acoustic Design in Urban Development : analysis of urban soundscapes and acoustic ecology research in New York City

The world is urbanizing rapidly with more than half of the global population now living in cities. Improving urban environments for the well-being of the increasing number of urban citizens is becoming one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. Even though it is common that city planners have visions of a ’good urban milieu’, those visions are concerning visual aesthetics or practical matters. The qualitative perspective of sound, such as sonic diversity and acoustic ecology are neglected aspects in architectural design. Urban planners and politicians are therefore largely unaware of the importance of sounds for the intrinsic quality of a place. Whenever environmental acoustics is on the agenda, the topic is noise abatement or noise legislation – a quantitative attenuation of sounds. Some architects may involve acoustical aspects in their work but sound design or acoustic design has yet to develop to a distinct discipline and be incorporated in urban planning.My aim was to investigate to what extent the urban soundscape is likely to improve if modern architectural techniques merge with principles of acoustics. This is an important, yet unexplored, research area. My study explores and analyses the acoustical aspects in urban development and includes interviews with practitioners in the field of urban acoustics, situated in New York City. My conclusion is that to achieve a better understanding of the human living conditions in mega-cities, there is a need to include sonic components into the holistic sense of urban development.

Energy Analysis within Industrial Hydraulics and Correspondent Solar PV System Design

Energy efficiency and renewable energy use are two main priorities leading to industrial sustainability nowadays according to European Steel Technology Platform (ESTP). Modernization efforts can be done by industries to improve energy consumptions of the production lines. These days, steel making industrial applications are energy and emission intensive. It was estimated that over the past years, energy consumption and corresponding CO2 generation has increased steadily reaching approximately 338.15 parts per million in august 2010 [1]. These kinds of facts and statistics have introduced a lot of room for improvement in energy efficiency for industrial applications through modernization and use of renewable energy sources such as solar Photovoltaic Systems (PV).The purpose of this thesis work is to make a preliminary design and simulation of the solar photovoltaic system which would attempt to cover the energy demand of the initial part of the pickling line hydraulic system at the SSAB steel plant. For this purpose, the energy consumptions of this hydraulic system would be studied and evaluated and a general analysis of the hydraulic and control components performance would be done which would yield a proper set of guidelines contributing towards future energy savings. The results of the energy efficiency analysis showed that the initial part of the pickling line hydraulic system worked with a low efficiency of 3.3%. Results of general analysis showed that hydraulic accumulators of 650 liter size should be used by the initial part pickling line system in combination with a one pump delivery of 100 l/min. Based on this, one PV system can deliver energy to an AC motor-pump set covering 17.6% of total energy and another PV system can supply a DC hydraulic pump substituting 26.7% of the demand. The first system used 290 m2 area of the roof and was sized as 40 kWp, the second used 109 m2 and was sized as 15.2 kWp. It was concluded that the reason for the low efficiency was the oversized design of the system. Incremental modernization efforts could help to improve the hydraulic system energy efficiency and make the design of the solar photovoltaic system realistically possible. Two types of PV systems where analyzed in the thesis work. A method was found calculating the load simulation sequence based on the energy efficiency studies to help in the PV system simulations. Hydraulic accumulators integrated into the pickling line worked as energy storage when being charged by the PV system as well.

Biopolitik, civilsamfund og ’politisk eskatologi’ : Foucaults mistillid over for befolkningens indre kræfter

Biopolitics, Civil Society and Political Eschatology: Foucault’s distrust in the population’s inherent forces Michel Foucault’s scepticism toward discourses on the organic vitality of populations is not only explainable by his attention to the dark ‘underside of biopolitics – the risks of persecution of individuals, who threaten the population’s vitality from the inside. Moreover, it should be understood in light of Foucault’s acute sensitivity to the deep-seated, conflict-ridden nature of the population in terms of its inherent potential for cultural clashes, violent struggles, suspicions, hatred, or, in short, the perpetual conflicts of civil society. Foucault’s work led him to a position of ambiguous support for the state and to a more evident distrust in the forces of the population. He used the term “political eschatologies” about antipolitical visions that pronounce the end of politics in a final accord where social contradictions dissolve and the community will prevail over the state. Foucault played on the religious significations of the term, especially in regard to the religious, fanatic rejection of the duality between state and civil society, a rejection that rests on the belief in a completion of historical and political time and the final salvation of all in “the city of God”. The article demonstrates Foucault’s highly ambiguous view of civil society, it examines his discussion Ferguson’s work on civil society, and it considers Foucault’s use of the term “political eschatologies” to indicate the dangers of extreme, anti-state, political movements. It challenges the image of Foucault as an unequivocal proponent of grass roots and identity politics.