Graham Pickren

Political ecologies of electronic waste: uncertainty and legitimacy in the governance of e-waste geographies

Geographers broadly, and political ecologists in particular, have been at the forefront of analyzing the progressive linking of Northern consumption practices with livelihoods elsewhere, problematizing the devolution that places ‘citizen-consumers’, NGOs, and corporate actors as key political agents of protecting workers and environments, promoting ‘ethical’ trade, and ‘greening’ economies through their purchasing choices. Utilizing empirical work on the development of certification and labeling schemes designed to ensure the safe recycling of used electronics, or e-wastes, across a global supply chain, this paper extends lessons learned from these critical analyses of consumer politics to ongoing debates about e-waste, trade, and recycling. I highlight the ambiguities and democratic deficits that emerge from promoting global environmental justice politics through market-driven disposal choices. I analyze the practices of representation through which NGOs and institutions produce e-waste as an object of regulation/commodification that is amenable to consumer action and argue that there is a disconnect between the abstractions necessary to sell ‘ethical’ e-waste recycling and the nuances of place-specific recycling practices. Like other fair trade schemes, certifications for ethical electronics recyclers rely upon narratives, such as environmental justice, that construct the e-waste problem in ways that render it governable, or ‘legible’ in Scotts sense. However, given the complexity of global commodity-networks like those for used electronics, these governing narratives rely on abstractions that oversimplify and rework the fetish of what e-waste is, where it goes, and how it should be managed. In unearthing both what labels do as well as the silences and ambiguities embedded within them, the limits and opportunities of consumer-driven waste politics come more clearly into view.

‘The global assemblage of digital flow’: Critical data studies and the infrastructures of computing

Geographers have been at the forefront of interrogating the changes made possible by the ubiquity of computing and the phenomenon of ‘big data’ in an emerging field known as ‘critical data studies’. In this article, I argue that engagement with the proliferation of computing infrastructures that make these new developments possible in the first place allows critical data studies to gain important historical-geographical perspective, connect to new manifestations of uneven development, and better grasp the role of non-human actors within emerging socio-technical relations. This expanded empirical framing opens up new theoretical implications and opportunities for public engagement with critical infrastructure.

Where Can I Build My Student Housing?: The Politics of Studentification in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia

In June of 2001, the 500 residents of the Garden Springs manufactured housing community in Athens Clarke-County, Georgia were notified that the land their homes sat on had been sold for the purpose of developing a luxury apartment complex geared towards students at the University of Georgia. The result of this change in land use was the displacement of 101 families and the dispersion of a racially diverse working-class community, many of whom were Latino/a immigrants. Utilizing a case-study examination of Garden Springs and the community that replaced it—The Lodge of Athens, this paper attempts to more fully conceptualize the contingent role of university students within the politics of urban (re)development by offering insights into how the location and type of student housing has impacted and intersected with local political struggles over land use. This study informs emerging debates about student geographies and the phenomenon of studentification.

Global destruction networks, the labour process and employment relations

Although there has been a proliferation of writing recently on global commodity/value chains and production networks, labour and employment relations have been largely absent or conceived of in a limited manner in these discussions. As a counter to this, we argue for locating employment relations, labour and the labour process at the heart of analysis of both global production networks (GPNs) and of what we are calling global destruction networks (GDNs), which are networks through which commodities move at the purported ends of their lives. We argue that labour shapes the structure of both GPNs and GDNs. Through examining how GDNs – which often involve significant amounts of informal labour – are intimately connected to the operations of GPNs, we also challenge dualistic thinking that perceives some of the work involved in retrieving components from waste for reuse in GPNs as ‘wasted labour’.

Innovation, development and global destruction networks

Contemporary capitalism produces huge quantities of commodities whose use value is frequently short-lived, often because capitalists’ need to secure profits involves the planned obsolescence of their products. Such waste, however, regularly contains valuable materials which can be retrieved and reused as inputs for new commodities. In this chapter, then, we explore the economic paths – what we call Global Destruction Networks (GDNs) – through which some of this waste travels as it is processed and its components recovered. In many ways, these GDNs are Other to the more familiar Global Production Networks (GPNs) in which commodities are first assembled, except that they involve the taking apart of discarded products. The chapter outlines three GDNs – those involving e-waste, shipping and vehicles – to argue that an important mechanism by which to connect the workings of GDNs with those of GPNs is through following the movement of value, conceptualised here in Marxian terms of congealed labour.

Blended learning with international students: a multiliteracies approach

Abstract While the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continues to transform learning, international migration and the increasing complexity of intercultural exchange and communication continue to do so as well. In this paper, we connect the dots and ask how ICTs can be used to enhance the learning experiences of international students. Using a case study of a new program for first-year international students at a Canadian university, we bring together insights from blended learning and multiliteracies approaches to show how multiple cultural references and multimedia can form the basis for the development of new potentials between learners, knowledge, and disciplinary practice. This involves an analysis of the innovative structure of a two-course sequence in Human Geography, followed by a discussion of student feedback on the model. Based on our results, we conclude that blended learning offers not only a sophisticated approach to multiliteracies in the context of an international student setting, but for teaching students in the social sciences and humanities more broadly.