Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core focus of geography, linking subfields such as urban, economic, and political ecology, yet strategies for achieving this goal remain illusive. Socio-technical transition theorists have made important contributions to our knowledge of the challenges and possibilities for achieving more sustainable societies, but this body of work generally lacks consideration of the influences of geography and power relations as forces shaping sustainability initiatives in practice. This paper assesses the significance for geographers interested in understanding the space, time, and scalar characteristics of sustainable development of one major strand of socio-technical transition theory, the multi-level perspective on socio-technical regime transitions. We describe the socio-technical transition approach, identify four major limitations facing it, show how insights from geographers – particularly political ecologists – can help address these challenges, and briefly examine a case study (GMO and food production) showing how a refined transition framework can improve our understanding of the social, political, and spatial dynamics that shape the prospects for more just and environmentally sustainable forms of development.

Place-making -the set of social, political and material processes by which people iteratively create and recreate the experienced geographies in which they live -is an important but oft-neglected part of political theory. Place-making is an inherently networked process, constituted by the socio-spatial relationships that link individuals together through a common place-frame. While place-oriented scholars have long acknowledged the importance of interaction and communication in place-making, the mutual integration of network concepts, political theorisations and place conceptualisations has been relatively weak. We use case studies in Bolivia's forests and Athens, USA to explore how integrating these concepts can guide empirical research. This article argues that a more robust and explicit notion of 'relational place-making' -the networked, political processes of place-framing -positions the concept of place in a way that offers new analytical utility for political and urban geographic scholars.key words place politics networks place-framing relationality place-making

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Theorizing practice in economic geography: foundations, challenges, and possibilities Abstract: Over the last decade or so there has been an identifiable shift in the interests of many economic geographers towards a concern with practices: stabilized, routinized, or improvised social actions that constitute and reproduce economic space, and through and within which socioeconomic actors and communities embed knowledge, organize production activities, and interpret and derive meaning from the world. Although this shift has gained significant momentum its general theoretical significance remains somewhat unclear and the concept is vulnerable to criticisms that it is incoherent, too 'micro-scale' in emphasis, unable to provide valid links between everyday practices and higher-order phenomena (e.g., institutions, class structures) and that, in some cases, it lacks a sound political economy. This paper argues that whilst it undoubtedly has limitations, the practice-oriented shift represents an ongoing development of a longstanding and heterodox field of social scientific interest from both within and beyond the subdiscipline. We first highlight the diverse strands of economic geography scholarship that have an explicit interest in practices and then propose an epistemological and methodological framework for a practice-oriented economic geography. The framework is based on the polemical argument that insight from both critical realist and actor-network perspectives can provide the basis to better demarcate practices in relation to their social and spatio-temporal dimensions. It goes on to outline a reformulated retroductive methodology to assess the impacts and theoretical significance of particular economic-geographical practices. The paper concludes that practice offers a potentially powerful, yet complementary, epistemological tool that can create conceptual space for the study of a wide range of socioeconomic and geographical phenomena. Permanent repository link

Based on results of field testing conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE/NETL), this article provides preliminary costs for mercury control via conventional activated carbon injection (ACI), brominated ACI, and conventional ACI coupled with the application of a sorbent enhancement additive (SEA) to coal prior to combustion. The economic analyses are reported on a plant-specific basis in terms of the cost required to achieve low (50%), mid (70%), and high (90%) levels of mercury removal "above and beyond" the baseline mercury removal achieved by existing emission control equipment. In other words, the levels of mercury control are directly attributable to ACI. Mercury control costs via ACI have been amortized on a current dollar basis. Using a 20-year book life, levelized costs for the incremental increase in cost of electricity (COE), expressed in mills per kilowatt-hour (mills/kWh), and the incremental cost of mercury control, expressed in dollars per pound of mercury removed ($/lb Hg removed), have been calculated for each level of ACI mercury control. For this analysis, the increase in COE varied from 0.14 mills/kWh to 3.92 mills/kWh. Meanwhile, the incremental cost of mercury control ranged from $3810/lb Hg removed to $166000/lb Hg removed.

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