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.

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

The politics of fiscal policy during economic downturns, 1981-2010

This article investigates fiscal policy responses to the Great Recession in historical perspective. We explore general trends in the frequency, size and composition of fiscal stimulus as well as the impact of government partisanship on fiscal policy outputs during the four international recessions of 1980-81, 1990-91, 2001-02 and 2008-09. Encompassing 17-23 OECD countries, our analysis calls into question the idea of a general retreat from fiscal policy activism since the early 1980s. The propensity of governments to respond to economic downturns by engaging in fiscal stimulus has increased over time and we do not observe any secular trend in the size of stimulus measures. At the same time, OECD governments have relied more on tax cuts to stimulate demand in the two recessions of the 2000s than they did in the early 1980s or early 1990s. Regarding government partisanship, we do not find any significant direct partisan effects on either the size or the composition of fiscal stimulus for any of the four recession episodes. However, the size of the welfare state conditioned the impact of government partisanship in the two recessions of the 2000s, with Left-leaning governments distinctly more prone to engage in discretionary fiscal stimulus and/or spending increases in large welfare states, but not in small welfare states.

Climate justice and the international regime: before, during and after Paris

With a focus on key themes and debates, this article aims to illustrate and assess how the interaction between justice and politics has shaped the international regime and defined the nature of the international agreement that was signed in COP21 Paris. The work demonstrates that despite the rise of neo-conservatism and self-interested power politics, questions of global distributive justice remain a central aspect of the international politics of climate change. However, while it is relatively easy to demonstrate that international climate politics is not beyond the reach of moral contestations, the assessment of exactly how much impact justice has on climate policies and the broader normative structures of the climate governance regime remains a very difficult task. As the world digests the Paris Agreement, it is vital that the current state of justice issues within the international climate change regime is comprehensively understood by scholars of climate justice and by academics and practitioners, not least because how these intractable issues of justice are dealt with (or not) will be a crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of the emerging climate regime.

Assisted Living: The Politics of Medicaid and Medicare

In this paper I examine the structure of the current assisted living industry in order to explain how and why it is appealing and effective, as well as look at its limitations. I discuss the politics of Medicaid and Medicare, and how through these programs the federal and state governments are failing to provide adequate care for the nation’s senior population. Like the rest of our health care system, these two public health insurance systems are fragmented, and consequently, financing long-term care is complicated and insufficient. Ultimately, this paper will function as a policy report and I will propose: standardized requirements for assisted living facilities; a stricter and new way to regulate assisted living on the state level; restructured models for the public insurance programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Theological Voices. PAC Politics and the Abortion Debate: Abortion Politics and the Reagan Era

This investigation shall focus upon the issue of legalized abortion. I believe the complex controversy surrounding the issue of abortion, demonstrates more clearly than any other single contemporary issue the social, political, moral and religious forces working for change in a post-Reagan America. I shall examine in depth the theology, writings, strategies and activities of those Americans who seek to express themselves and their beliefs in religious, or religiously supported interest groups. The current debate surrounding abortion legislation lends itself to several forms of analysis: religious, political, sociological, etc. I will write from the perspective of a student of religion. I shall focus more upon the religious, moral and theological conviction-s of the abortion activists than upon their constitutional right to free speech or assembly. I shall give more attention to denominational structures and church/state relations than to the structuring of representative districts and democratic theory.

The Long Game: Hamas, The IRA, and the Politics of Radicalization in Palestine and Northern Ireland

The value of a comparative study of the two conflicts stems from a remarkable similarity in the structural organization of political violence by its most influential practitioners: the IRA and Hamas. At the core, I have merely tried my best to approach a beguiling question in a fresh, dynamic way. The stultifying discourse of conflict that serves as lingua franca for the Israeli‐Palestinian issue has largely reduced strategic debate to how best the conflict can be managed – not ended. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus on “economic peace” and unwillingness to commit to a two‐state solution – the consensus that has governed peacemaking for decades – belies such thinking. The Clinton Administration’s cadre of Mideast negotiators operated amidst the most rapid institutionalization of Palestinian democracy in history ‐ yet remained obsessed with Israeli‐Arab “confidence‐building” measures, doing little to legitimize the gains of Oslo. So long as Palestinians continue to view the creation of Israel as “al‐Nakba” – the catastrophe – whilst successive Israeli governments refuse to grant their aspirations any legitimacy, there can be no progress. Peace requires empathy, a substantial compromise in the context of internecine conflict. The “long war” both conflicts have become mandates an equally expansive, broad‐based and labor‐intensive approach – a demanding process that can only be called The Long Game.