Jenny Pickerill

Holding the Future Together: Towards a Theorisation of the Spaces and Times of Transition:

Social scientists often use the notion of ‘transition’ to denote diverse trajectories of change in different types of bodies: from individuals, to communities, to nation-states. Yet little work has theorised how transition might occur across, between, or beyond these bodies. The aim of this paper is to sketch out a multiple, synthetic, and generative (but by no means universal) theory of transition. Primarily drawing on the British context, we explore and exemplify two contentions. Firstly, that the notion of transition is increasingly being deployed to frame and combine discourses in terms of community development, responses to environmental change, and the individual lifecourse. Specifically framed as ‘transition’, such discourses are gaining increasing purchase in imagining futures that reconfigure, but do not transform, assumed neoliberal futures. Our second contention is that these discourses and policies must try to ‘hold the future together’ in one or more senses. They must wrestle with a tension between imminent threats (climate change, economic nonproductivity) which weigh heavily on the present and its possible futures, and the precarious act of redirecting those futures in ways that might better hold together diverse social groups, communities, and places.

The Difficult and Hopeful Ethics of Research on, and with, Social Movements

This article explores a number of key questions that serve to introduce this special issue on the ethics of research on activism. We first set out the limitations of the bureaucratic response to ethical complexities in our field. We then examine two approaches often used to justify research that demands time consuming and potentially risky participation in research by activists. We label these approaches the ethic of immediate reciprocity and the ethic of general reciprocity and question their impacts. We note, in particular, the tendency of ethics of reciprocity to preclude research on ‘ugly movements’ whose politics offends the left and liberal leanings predominant among movement researchers. The two ethics also imply different positionalities for the researcher vis-à-vis their subject movement which we explore, alongside dilemmas thrown up by multiple approaches to knowledge production and by complex issues of researcher and activist identities. The overall move to increasing complexity offered by this paper will, we hope, provide food for thought for others who confront real-world ethical dilemmas in fields marked by contention. We also hope that it will encourage readers to turn next to the wide range of contributions offered in this issue.

Transnational anti-war activism: Solidarity, diversity and the Internet in Australia, Britain and the United states after 9/11

The upsurge in activism opposing wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to represent a significant process of transnational collective action. Using data collected through participant observation, interviews and web site analysis, this article explores the role of the Internet in facilitating transnational activism between Australia, Britain and the United States. This research confirms Tarrows (2005a) assertion of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’– a primary commitment to locally contextualised action combined with a desire for transnational support. The Internet is used primarily for gathering news and for sharing symbolic expressions of solidarity. In Australia, in particular, with fewer domestic anti-war resources on-line, international networking proves particularly useful. To an extent, on-line networks reach across both political diversity and geographical boundaries. However, on-line resources do not appear to enable the more personal connections required to build stable, working coalitions across borders.

The Anti-War/Peace Movement in Britain and the conditions of Information War

Using the concept of Information War we explore the conditions and mediation of contemporary war. Examples from British anti-war and peace movements are then employed to better understand the importance of ‘symbolic struggles’, focusing on the importance of the internet in recent opposition to wars. These examples signify a shift away from the era where the mediation of war could be closely controlled towards one where the influences of journalists and public opinion are more ambiguous and uncertain. While there is little doubt that those who wage war remain powerful and superior, their need to seek legitimacy amongst their publics, together with the use of new media, provide an environment through which voices of dissent can more easily be amplified.

Leak detection from rural aqueducts using airborne remote sensing techniques

Water companies require quick methods of identifying leakage from rural subterranean aqueducts over large areas. This research assessed the possibility of locating water leaks using airborne remotely sensed data and thus considered if such leaks expressed unique and identifiable features. Analysis of soil moisture and vegetation biomass inferred using Airborne Thematic Mapper imagery enabled two known leaks to be highlighted as distinct from their immediate surroundings on the Vyrnwy Aqueduct, North West England.

Post 9/11

This book sets out to analyse the anti-war movement in Britain during the opening years of the 21st century. To address this subject adequately we need first to detail the circumstances in which anti-war activism developed over this period. That such activity is shaped by conditions beyond activists themselves is scarcely contentious, since it is obvious that it has waxed and waned depending on broad trends and issues. It would be hard, for instance, to comprehend the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)-led protests during the late 1950s and early 1960s without acknowledging the post-war rivalries of the Soviet Union and the United States, just as the re-emergence of anti-war protests in the early 1980s owes much to the Second Cold War of that time and to NATO’s decisions to relocate nuclear missiles across Europe. None of this is to suggest that the anti-war activists, who are our main concern, are merely respondents to external forces rather than pro-active agents of change. Without trivializing the strength of protesters’ convictions or organizational efforts, we nevertheless recognize that those beliefs and actions are conditioned partly by their historical situation. For this reason, we begin by setting out the wider contexts within which our subject is situated.

Bodies, building and bricks: Women architects and builders in eight eco-communities in Argentina, Britain, Spain, Thailand and USA

Eco-building is a male domain where men are presumed to be better builders and designers, more men than women build and women find their design ideas and contributions to eco-building are belittled. This article suggests that a focus on bodies, embodiment and the ‘doing’ of building is a potentially productive way to move beyond current gender discrimination. This article makes three key interventions using empirical material from eight case studies of eco-communities in Britain, Thailand, Spain, the USA and Argentina. First, it uses a focus on eco-communities to illustrate the enduring persistence of gender divisions in architecture and building. Second, by using multi-site examples of eco-communities from diverse countries this article finds more commonalities than differences in gender discrimination across cultures and nationalities. Third, it outlines three spaces of opportunity through which more gender-neutral approaches are being developed in eco-building: (1) in challenging the need for ‘strong’ bodies, (2) by practising more embodied ways of building and (3) by making visible womens bodies in building. The ‘doing’ and manual aspect of eco-building is unfamiliar for many (not just women) and interviewees commented on the need to (re)learn how to be practical and to understand the physical possibilities (and limitations) of their bodies.

Academics’ diverse online public communications

The main argument in this article that academics should engage with blogging but should do so mindful of its problems – is valid and an important one. However, we also need to place blogging in its historical context of work on Internet activism and public geographies and relate it to the current rising trend for geographers to employ other social media such as Twitter. While I support and encourage the use of social media, and the public and policy engagement it facilitates, it also pushes geographers to become more like journalists – a move we should approach critically and with caution.

Black and green: the future of Indigenous–environmentalist relations in Australia

ABSTRACT Indigenous–environmental relations in Australia have a difficult history. Two examples from fieldwork in northern Australia – the Wild Rivers campaign in Queensland and contestations over Walmadan (James Price Point) in Western Australia – facilitate exploration of the contrast between the sustained, multiple and detailed efforts that environmental groups have put into black–green relations, and the public perception that environmentalists do not care about Indigenous people. The multiple competing political narratives of different Indigenous activists and environmental organisations around notions of environment and economy are identified. This detailed analysis suggests that environmentalists need to advocate for a peopled-landscape and all activists must engage in a more nuanced discussion and understanding of diverse forms of economy.

Critically Interrogating Eco-Homes

Eco-homes have only been researched in fragmented and partial ways, which fail to adequately examine their complexities and possibilities. Numerous myths about eco-homes persist in the public imagination and policy support has been mixed with, in practice, little change to the construction of contemporary homes. The ecological and social potential of eco-homes are being undermined by a technocratic focus, the capacity and behaviour of occupants, and a weakening of design as developments are scaled up. This intervention identifies five ways in which eco-homes need to be more robustly interrogated to strengthen their potential, through their breadth and diversity, dynamic nature, socio-material interdependencies, place, and understanding of their political economies. Crucially these interrogations need to be researched simultaneously to ensure that the full diversity of eco-homes is understood through their multiple interdependencies, multi-scalar practices and materialities.