Steve Hinchliffe

Urban Wild Things: A Cosmopolitical Experiment

Cities are inhabited by all manner of things and made up of all manner of practices, many of which are unnoticed by urban politics and disregarded by science. In this paper we do two things. First, we add to the sense that urban living spaces involve much more than human worlds and are often prime sites for human and nonhuman ecologies. Second, we experiment with what is involved in taking these nonhuman worlds and ecologies seriously and in producing a politics for urban wilds. In order to do this we learn how to sense urban wildlife. In learning new engagements we also learn new things and in particular come to see urban wilds as matters of controversy. For this reason we have borrowed and adapted Latours language to talk of wild things. Wild things become more rather than less real as people learn to engage with them. At the same time, wild things are too disputed, sociable, and uncertain to become constant objects upon which a stable urban politics can be constructed. So a parliament of wild things might be rather different from the house of representatives that we commonly imagine. It may be closer to what Stengers (1997, Power and Invention University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN) has characterised as cosmopolitics, a politics that is worked out without recourse to old binaries of nature and society. Using empirical work with urban wildlife-trust members we muddy the clean lines of representational politics, and start to grapple with issues that a reconvened wild politics might involve.

Living cities: Towards a politics of conviviality

Against the cartographic opposition between cities and natures in modern western societies the idea of urban ecology has seemed little more than a contradiction in terms. But things are brewing in cities. The spaces and species that have been erased from urban visions and values now find themselves the subject of a ‘greening’ of urban policy that has gathered some momentum in the UK on at least two fronts. First, urban biodiversity is starting to be accorded the kind of conservation significance once reserved for rural and sparsely populated regions. So much so that the distinction between greenbelt and brown-field land is no longer an automatic marker of ecological value. In this, scientific energies are being newly invested in the importance of so-called ‘recombinant ecology’ (Barker, 2000). This refers to the biological communities assembled through the dense comings and goings of urban life, rather than the discrete and undisturbed relations between particular species and habitats that are the staple of conservation biology. Urban wildlife groups, amateur naturalists, voluntary organizations, no less than the highly visible animals and plants that make their way in and through cities, have been key players in this realignment of urban spaces and conservation concerns. Second, there is a growing sense in the urban policy community of the importance of this ‘recombinant ecology’ to what makes cities liveable and to the attachments of civic identity and association. Critical here is the extent to which this ecological fabric is constituted as a public good or urban commons, including leisure spaces such as parks and allotments; feral spaces such as abandoned railway sidings and derelict land; and remnant spaces such as waterways and woodlands. This gathering of energies has found expression in unprecedented policy investment in what has become known as the ‘urban green’. Good examples include, the report of the Urban Green Taskforce (2002) Green Spaces: Better Places (www.dtlr.gov.uk); English Nature’s new magazine Urbio on ‘urban biodiversity and human culture’ (March 2002) and the Government policy Science as Culture Vol. 15, No. 2, 123–138, June 2006

Helping the earth begins at home The social construction of socio-environmental responsibilities

Abstract This paper evaluates the British governments current (and five-year old) campaign for energy conservation, ‘Helping the Earth Begins at Home’. The paper starts by reviewing some of the arguments which can be used to support this type of policy initiative which, on the face of it, urges people to consider the global implications of local actions. The argument then turns to focus upon the ideological work that was invested into the production of the campaign, and in particular the redefinition of legitimate concern (for the global) and legitimate sites of activity (the local). Following this, the paper investigates the ways in which the campaign was consumed (read, ignored, rejected, acted upon) by members of the public. Long interview transcripts with householders in Bristol, UK, are analysed and represented to Illustrate the weaknesses of the campaign. The paper finishes by drawing together some of the implications of this work for socio-environmental action.

Indeterminacy in-decisions - science, policy and politics in the BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) crisis

Increasingly, non-human geographies have unfastened nature from its foundational moorings. In a parallel development, the benefits of adhering to precautionary and participatory forms of decision-making have become common place in environmental geography and in government policy. And yet, on closer inspection, there is a danger in these latter approaches that old certainties regarding non-human natures remain unquestioned. The result can be a tendency to gravitate towards bureaucratic and technical solutions to, or closures on, what are, first and foremost, political and open-ended problems. This paper uses an empirical engagement with BSE-related scientific and policy practices, along with insights from non-human geographies, science studies and poststructuralism to suggest that such certainties and resolutions are misplaced.

Technology, Power, and Space—The Means and Ends of Geographies of Technology

This paper is about the means and ends of geographical inquiries into technology and technoscience. In working through a body of literature commonly grouped together under the collective phrase ‘science, technology, and society’, and in seeking to work upon empirical research on electricity networks, the author draws attention to the ontological and representational issues that are confronted when thinking through geographies of technology and geographies of techno-scientific knowledge. In the first part of the paper the ontological status of nonhumans and the politics of representation are discussed as a consequence of a rejection of technical and social determinisms. In the second part, the author turns to review some of the analytical metaphors that are conjured with in order to address the issues raised in the first part. In the third part of the paper the more overtly spatial metaphors of the literature of science, technology, and society are confronted and the move from a measured and ordered managerialist approach to the spatiality of technologies and technoscience is reviewed. In the fourth section, some lessons for the politics of a reconfigured geographical engagement with technology and technoscience are raised.

Performance and Experimental Knowledge: Outdoor Management Training and the End of Epistemology

In this paper I am concerned with experimental learning and knowing. By experimental I refer to a broad set of performances that have the potential to bring about something new. In this view, experiments are not, even in their more restricted sense in scientific laboratories, limited to the corroboration or representation of an idea or thought. Experiments are on going. They are considered in this paper to be thought-in-action. This concern with experimentation and experimental knowledge is developed through an engagement with training activities on outdoor management courses in Britain. Meanwhile, and in addition to this empirical focus, the paper serves as an appraisal of some current themes in social science thinking and practice. So, in part 1 of the paper, I detail some of the recent shifts in academic approaches to knowledge, focusing in particular on the much-vaunted decline of epistemology. This partial review of academic practice then allows me, in part 2 of the paper, to discuss the changes in knowledge practices and styles that have been set in motion in the management professions. Particular emphasis is given in this paper to the changing roles of corporate training with respect to the production of ‘new’ kinds of knowing and organising. Picking outdoor management training as a useful case with which to explore these shifts, I trace some of the ways in which large organisations set about the task of creating knowledgeable employees. Three themes of outdoor training are developed (embodiment, play, and experimental learning). In part 3 I develop an analysis of the ways in which a training course is conducted. The paper ends by drawing together some of the characteristic features of a performative geography of performance.

Differentiated Circuits: The Ecologies of Knowing and Securing Life

The question of how to make life secure in a world of zoonotic disease threats is often answered in terms of an ever-tighter regulation of wild, domestic, and human life, as a means to control disease. Conversely, in both theoretical and practical engagements with the business of making life safe, there is recognition of the circulatory and excessive qualities of life, its ability to overflow grids of intelligibility, and a requirement for knowledge practices to be responsive to a mutable world. In this paper we use empirical work on the field and laboratory practices involved in knowing life, specifically within the UKs avian influenza wild bird survey, in order to argue strongly for a form of biosecurity that does not seek to integrate life or the practices that make it intelligible into grids and closed circuits. Extending work by Latour, we argue that the truth-value of life science not only stems from the circulation of references along a single chain of reference; it is also dependent upon the productive alliance of knowledge forms and practices that are loosely brought together in this process. By demonstrating the range of practices, materials, and movements involved in making life knowable, we claim that it is the spatial configurations of knowledge practices, organisms, and materials, their ongoing differentiation and not their integration, that make safe life a possibility.

Software for Qualitative Research: 2. Some Thoughts on ‘Aiding’ Analysis

In this paper we reject accounts which portray computer aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) as neutral and benign. We argue that applying computer software to qualitative projects raises a number of important issues that go to the heart of ethnography. Although we initially work with a distinction between tactile and digital ethnographics, the issues that we raise are not unique to computer-aided analyses. Indeed, we argue that the adoption of computers marks a useful moment in which to think critically about the means and ends of qualitative analysis. In this paper we urge qualitative researchers to avoid both an outright rejection and an unquestioning adoption of computer software packages. Rather, we work towards a ‘crafty’ approach to ethnography where computers are incorporated into the body of research in a critically reflexive and creative manner. We end the paper with some thoughts on the potential of such incorporation.

Software for qualitative research: 1. Prospectus and overview

In recent years there has been growing interest in the use of computers within qualitative geography. In this paper we review the types of software packages that have been adopted and outline some of their distinctive features. We discuss the intellectual and institutional reasons for the interest in the software and highlight the ways in which such reasons have shaped the use made of these packages. We argue that only a contextual account of how packages are adopted, adapted, and used can explain the situation in geography. Furthermore we suggest that the archaeologies underlying the packages—their theoretical presuppositions—are remarkably homogeneous and need to be clearly understood before deciding how the packages might be used. We outline how some of these presuppositions have affected the ways in which the packages have been used, and develop—from our own experiences—some points about informal networks of adoption and institutional contexts. The point of this is to suggest the minimal role played by formal software guides and manuals in choosing whether and how to use a package. The paper outlines the current ‘state of play’ and raises issues of future use to be addressed in a second paper on this theme. Our intention is neither to sell a particular package, nor to say “to do X, use package Y”, because such recommendations are often misleading. Rather, our aim is to provoke discussion about the use of software packages in qualitative geography.

Invasive species management will benefit from social impact assessment

Summary Invasive species management aims to prevent or mitigate the impacts of introduced species but management interventions can themselves generate social impacts that must be understood and addressed. Established approaches for addressing the social implications of invasive species management can be limited in effectiveness and democratic legitimacy. More deliberative, participatory approaches are emerging that allow integration of a broader range of socio-political considerations. Nevertheless, there is a need to ensure that these are rigorous applications of social science. Social impact assessment offers a structured process of identifying, evaluating and addressing social costs and benefits. We highlight its potential value for enabling meaningful public participation in planning and as a key component of integrated assessments of management options. Policy implications. As invasive species management grows in scope and scale, social impact assessment provides a rigorous process for recognising and responding to social concerns. It could therefore produce more democratic, less conflict-prone and more effective interventions.