No abstract
“Sustainability” is used strategically in urban governance; it is a means as well as an end. Some argue that the focus often lies on the former. The point of this paper is not to show that “sustainability” is used to achieve a diverse set of goals, but rather how this is done. The article starts with three stories about the transformations of three post-industrial cities (Malmö, Essen, Almada) and lays out how the transformations have been enacted (or not), thus demonstrating the dynamic and context-specific way “sustainability” is put to work in urban governance. Further, the argument is that stories, due to their ontological entanglements, may well be more than “good stories”. In and through stories, “sustainability” as an urban governance issue is un/made along with certain kinds of post-industrial cities. The article points out how stories make sustainability marketable while unmaking it as something that requires fundamental change. Moreover, the claim is that these two stories make competitive post-industrial cities and unmake connections between industrial pasts and global environmental challenges. Nevertheless, they also cause critique and dispute and might pave the way for different dis/connections.
No abstract
Einige Gedanken und zwei Einladungen Wie in fast allen Bereichen stellt die Corona-Krise auch für Wissenschaftler*innen in der frühen Berufsphase Probleme und Herausforderungen durch ein Brennglas verstärkt dar: angefangen von dem Bangen um Verlängerungen von Arbeitsverträgen oder Stipendien über Doppelbelastungen von Online-Lehre und Erziehungsaufgaben bis hin zu Isolation durch Mangel von Strukturen im Home-Office. Gleichzeitig setzt aber auch hier eine Selbstoptimierungslogik ein: Jetzt, wo viele berufliche und soziale Verpflichtungen reduziert scheinen, sei ja endlich genug Zeit da, um in aller Ruhe zu schreiben-den lange aufgeschobenen Artikel, das halb fertige Kapitel oder vielleicht auch endlich die Dissertation. Zeit, so wird oft beklagt, fehlt im Alltag von Doktorand*innen: Lehre, Kolloquien, Workshops, Tagungen und Konferenzen, oder nicht zuletzt die Finanzierung des Lebensunterhalts buhlen um die knappe Ressource.
How are we to think like a climate?" This may be the first question that arises when reading the title of Hannah Knox' timely ethnography on climate change governance in the city of Manchester. Is it a mere conceptualisation of climate as a "form of thought" (p.8)? An acknowledgement of "stabilized effects of interactions" (p.8) between interacting entities? Most of all, the prompt to think like a climate invites people to "inhabit global ecological relations and their projection into the future" (p.264). This mode of thinking understands climate in a multifaceted manner, paying special attention to its material dynamics. It brings into view how climate can be understood as a rainstorm disturbing a meeting, and how it is seen in data, spreadsheets, models and documents as well as in activist spaces. Thinking Like a Climate explores myriad ways in which planners, politicians, activists and anthropologists can, should and already do try to grasp climate change. The book successfully describes entanglements of city administration and politics, policy-making, activism, climate science and data representations. It starts with theoretical and methodological aspirations that are taken up in two empirical sections and make up the largest part of Knox' ethnography. Though the kaleidoscopic presentation of empirical findings and theoretical approaches is
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