Morag Bell

Aid and the Geopolitics of the Post‐Colonial: Critical Reflections on New Labour’s Overseas Development Strategy

In the post Cold War era, issues of poverty, inequality and social exclusion have become central to many of the key discussions of international relations and development aid. In this context, this article sets out to analyse the nature and specificity of the development strategy of the New Labour government in Britain, as it has evolved since 1997. In the setting of the literatures on post-colonialism, aid and development, the authors examine the specific concepts and approaches that help to frame such a strategy, giving particular attention to the commonalities and divergences between the British Government’s 1997 and 2000 White Papers. The perspective used connects ideas and issues from domains of knowledge which tend to remain independent of each other, namely aid and development studies and post-colonial theory. Situated on the terrain of aid and development, the guiding objective of the article is to raise certain questions concerning power, knowledge and geopolitics, so that a wider conceptual and policy-oriented debate might be engendered.

Of plagues, planes and politics: Controlling the global spread of infectious diseases by air

Abstract In recent years, the implications of globalisation for the spread of infectious diseases has begun to emerge as an area of concern to political geographers. Unsurprisingly, much of the contemporary literature focuses on the multifarious threats posed by human and, increasingly, non-human mobility. Prompted by current geopolitical concerns surrounding the public health implications of regular international air travel, this paper extends such research by exploring the ways in which the technology of the aeroplane stimulated the production of new international sanitary initiatives aimed at safeguarding global public health in an era of mass aeromobility. By tracing the development of sanitary regulations for aerial navigation, from their origins in the 1920s through the twentieth century in particular, we document the emergence of a series of public health interventions that were designed to limit the public health threat associated with increased international air travel and the concomitant rise in the mobility of infectious diseases. From inoculation certificates to quarantine and the routine ‘disinsection’ of passenger aircraft with powerful insecticides, modern air travel is replete with a complex set of procedures designed to lessen the risks associated with flying between different climatic and ecological zones. Our detailed examination of the historical context in which these procedures were devised and implemented leads us to consider the importance of time and space, power and efficacy, to the development of a more nuanced understanding of the shifting public health response to an increasingly fluid, mobile, and inter-connected society.

The political ecology of dambo soil and water resources in Zimbabwe

Current patterns of natural resource use in developing countries reflect both the structural demands of the national and international economy and local interactions between rural communities and their natural environments. The example of small-scale cultivation of Zimbabwes dambo wetlands is used to show how political economy may be integrated with environment in studies of soil and water resource utilisation. Reference is made to the results of field investigations into the use of dambo wetlands in three of Zimbabwes Communal Areas. These studies indicate that catenary variations in soil type were ignored under legislation restricting dambo cultivation during the colonial era. There remain important variations both within and between areas in response to the measures imposed by the colonial state, which are reflected today in different intensities of resource use.

Airports, Localities and Disease: Representations of Global Travel During the H1N1 Pandemic

Abstract During summer 2009, the UK experienced one of the highest incidences of H1N1 infection outside of the Americas and Australia. Building on existing research into biosecurity and the spread of infectious disease via the global airline network, this paper explores the biopolitics of public health in the UK through an in-depth empirical analysis of the representation of H1N1 in UK national and regional newspapers. We uncover new discourses relating to the significance of the airport as a site for control and the ethics of the treatment of the traveller as a potential transmitter of disease. We conclude by highlighting how the global spread of infectious diseases is grounded in particular localities associated with distinctive notions of biosecurity and the traveller.

Inquiring Minds and Postcolonial Devices: Examining Poverty at a Distance

Inquiries into poverty in the countries of the South have become a preoccupation and a focus for action among many institutions located in the North. This article interprets inquiries as cultural devices through which the complexities of North/South interactions can be analyzed. It builds on postcolonial critiques of these interactions, examining the role of inquiries in light of current debates about ethnocentrism. It examines the extent to which, in particular times and places, inquiries may act as “postcolonial” devices. The article focuses on an inquiry into poverty and development in southern Africa, known as the Second Carnegie Inquiry, which was carried out in South Africa during the 1980s with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The hybrid framework adopted combines insights from the postcolonial turn with recent work in the geographies of science. By shifting the analysis from institutions, such as the Northern philanthropic trusts, to particular devices and their contexts, the article argues that the spatial genealogies of knowledge can be traced, together with the diverse modes and relations of power on which inquiries such as those of Carnegie are based and that they also serve to produce. This approach questions the assumption that, in their exercise of power at a distance, cultural institutions have fixed or singular identities. It provides the opportunity to highlight the uncertainties that frequently lie behind a projected global image and the ways in which this image may be deliberately harnessed and manipulated for specific purposes within the South.

The local impact of global climate change: reporting on landscape transformation and threatened identity in the English regional newspaper press:

This paper contributes to extant understandings of media representations of climate change by examining the role of the English regional newspaper press in the transformation and dissemination of climate change discourse. Unlike previous accounts, this paper contends that such newspapers shape public understandings of climate change in ways that have yet to be adequately charted. With this in mind, this paper examines the ways in which global climate change is translated into a locally relevant phenomenon. That is, it focuses on its “domestication.” Although we acknowledge that there are a number of ways in which this process occurs, specific attention is drawn to stories that highlight the destruction of local landscape features, the transformation of important habitats, and the arrival of “alien” species. The broader significance of such stories is considered in relation to long-standing debates concerning the importance of landscape to notions of national and regional identity.

The admission of women Fellows to the Royal Geographical Society, 1892-1914; the controversy and the outcome

The decision of the Royal Geographical Society, in 1913, to admit women Fellows marked the conclusion of a protracted debate extending over 20 years. The controversy surrounding womens admission drew the Society into the broader questions within contemporary British science and politics. These included the nature of scientific progress, national efficiency, imperial patronage, social justice and the moral rights of citizens. This paper discusses the debate within the Society and the context within which the decision to admit women was reached. It reviews the group of women candidates who were proposed and elected Fellows during 1913 and briefly outlines their activities within the Society. In elaborating on what was a highly contentious issue in the history of geography and of its major institution at the time, the paper contributes to a rapidly expanding literature on the entry of women to learned societies and professional occupations in Europe and North America since the late nineteenth century.

American philanthropy, the Carnegie corporation and poverty in South Africa.

This paper examines two inquiries into poverty in South Africa funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the first in the late 1920s to early 1930s and the second during the 1980s. When analysed together the inquiries offer insights into the dynamic relations and tensions between this American foundation, normative science and interpretations of poverty in South Africa during the twentieth century. The paper highlights the common ground as well as the profound differences between the inquiries and the national and international, political and institutional contexts within which they were conducted. It suggests that far from being deployed with confidence and certainty, underpinning both inquiries were contextual, institutional and intellectual uncertainties which were associated with particular visions of South Africa and the United States held by the Corporation and their funding recipients. Reference is made to the strategies employed to overcome these anxieties including the shifting notions of co-operative science they sought to promote, the contrasting meanings attached to the cultural technologies employed and the complex associations which they endeavoured to encourage. In offering a more nuanced interpretation of North‐South relations than many contemporary analyses, the paper examines, through these strategies, the attempts made to satisfy the objectives of both the Corporation and its funding recipients in South Africa and the tensions which emerged over the locations of knowledge and institutional control.

Germs, genes and postcolonial geographies: reading the return of tuberculosis to Leicester, UK, 2001

This paper is inspired by an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis in the British East Midlands city of Leicester in 2001. In an era characterized by unprecedented advances in Western medical science an event of this kind might appear surprising. It challenges the feeling of wellbeing held in many Western countries, particularly in relation to diseases that appear both temporally and spatially distant. The paper examines how the event was reported in regional and national newspaper media and considers the significance attached to scale in the interactions between experts, the media and the public. In our analysis we mobilize a particular reading based on two biological metaphors, the membrane and the gene. We use this reading to reconsider the connectivity between disease, nation and identity in a world that is increasingly fluid, mobile, anxious and uncertain.

The National Forest and Local Agenda 21: An Experiment in Integrated Landscape Planning

The post-Rio environmental accord has offered new opportunities for landscape planning linking global concerns with Local Agenda 21 through concepts of sustainable development. This paper analyses the potential for integrated landscape planning by linking the aims of global sustainability with a major initiative of the UK Government, the National Forest located in the English Midlands. A common commitment to concepts of partnership and participation facilitated by local authorities can be found in the National Forest Strategy and in the principles of Local Agenda 21. Using case studies comparing local fora created to implement parts of the National Forest Strategy with focus groups formed to prepare Local Agenda 21 Action Plans, it is argued that a common consensus between these endeavours has not so far been achieved. Problems associated with the interpretation of national government policy guidance following the Earth Summit coupled with the constitution, membership and goals of specific groups are viewed as the primary reasons for conflict. These have implications for achieving compatibility between the Forest ideals and those enshrined in Local Agenda 21, particularly in localities where mineral exploitation and landfill are contentious planning concerns.