DSpace Collection:

Subnational variegations of populism and left-behind places in the UK and Germany

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Subnational variegations of populism and left-behind places in the UK and Germany Authors: Cure, Fatih Abstract: Populism plays a pivotal role in shaping economic, political, and societal discourse and outcomes, highlighting left-behind places as hotspots of the geographies of discontent as a focal point for understanding contemporary socio-political dynamics. This study draws upon Geographical Political Economy to emphasize the importance of considering time, space and context dependent knowledge in understanding this phenomenon. It undertakes a comparative analysis of Tees Valley, England and Duisburg, Germany, to identify and explain the drivers of populism, and to explore populism’s variegated nature across regions. Addressing the gap in work at the subnational level, the research aims to understand and explain the complexities of populism by examining its causes and manifestations at the regional level with a focus on left-behind regions and old industrial areas. Employing a multi-method approach, including quantitative and qualitative analysis, the thesis finds, first, that economic decline plays an important role in the geography of discontent and second, that beyond statistical indicators, left-behind feelings and loss of identity are also significantly influential in the production and manifestation of discontent especially in the old industrial regions which traditionally have a strong identity and sense of community. The thesis introduces the concept of variegated populism, which goes beyond conventional varieties perspective and dichotomies of economy versus culture. It demonstrates that populism is interconnected and interdependent, recognizing its articulated nature across various ideologies and actors. This highlights the complexity and nuance inherent within populist politics and populist reasons which have multiple dimensions as being real, perceived and mediated by politicians. The research demonstrates the nuanced interplay between economic trajectories, regional identities, and political representation which are the three key element of regional variegations of populism and offering fresh insights into the roots of populism and regional discontent in left-behind places. Description: PhD Thesis

Colonial legacies of knowledge production : the political spirituality of the green tide feminist movement

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Title: Colonial legacies of knowledge production : the political spirituality of the green tide feminist movement Authors: d'Alò, Pilar Morena Abstract: The project undertakes a sociology of knowledge to contribute to the understanding of enduring colonial presents (Povinelli, 2006) by looking at the colonial conditions of possibility of knowledge production in the Argentine Green Tide feminist movement. I analyse how the Green Tide, widely credited by public opinion with reviving feminist activism and theorisation in Latin America and beyond, produced the discourse of a radical, decolonial feminist spirituality centred around the figure of the Witch as a figure able to mobilise imaginaries and activists against the modern episteme of Man (Wynter, 2003). Through Foucauldian (1972) discourse analysis of Green Tide feminist essays, newspaper articles, scholarly papers, collective manifestos, social media posting, and the timelines of Green Tide protest between 2015 and 2020, I look at the conditions of possibility of the Green Tide discourse and situates it within a global political economy of power and knowledge (Deleuze, 1999). Insofar as the Green Tide situates itself both nationally and internationally as a feminist, radical, and decolonial emancipatory project from the South, the thesis is attentive to the “convivial relations” (Puar, 2017a: xxii) of coexistence and mutual informing between the Green Tide discourse, Argentina’s ongoing colonial history, and contemporary mobilisations of Indigenous women. I trace the articulation of the Witch to the Green Tide framework of liberal sexual politics in combination with a popular democracy, and in alignment with race as not whiteness/Europeanness, seeming to rearticulate the sexual politics toward more radical political alternatives. Overall, I argue that by mobilising the Witch, the Green Tide makes a claim to decoloniality, Southerness, and racialised otherness vis-à-vis the Global North, especially so in relation to the country’s recent history of subjection to international financial institutions and national raise in neoliberal conservative politics. However, the thesis’ argument is that this is possible through a representational conflation (Spivak, 1988) of subalternity, indigeneity, non-whiteness, and popular democracy. Representations of an ‘otherwise’ to the episteme of Man are made especially feminist through the Witch as a figure of Southern feminine otherness akin to indigeneity. By producing the feminine difference of the Witch as a difference from modernity through the conflation of racial and classed categories, the Green Tide produces a feminist discourse from the South that elides its racial epistemic and structural conditions of possibility and subsumes difference from the episteme of Man to the primacy of the sexual subject. Description: PhD Thesis

The emergence of a post-developmental state in variegated capitalism? Industrial and regional development policies for the shipbuilding and semiconductor industries in South Korea

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Title: The emergence of a post-developmental state in variegated capitalism? Industrial and regional development policies for the shipbuilding and semiconductor industries in South Korea Authors: Woo, Jungsuk Abstract: Despite claims about the convergence of capital accumulation regimes in the late twentieth century, each country’s economic activities remain persistently differentiated by their geographical and historical settings and pathways. The ‘developmental state’ is conceptualised as one particular actor that has driven the rapid economic growth and industrialisation of East Asian countries since WWII. The concept explains how countries developed into advanced economies within the global capitalist system in a relatively short period of time through a particular configuration of their internal political economic organisations as well as external conditions. Claims have been made that such developmental states underwent neat transition to ‘post-developmental’ state status following the economic crisis of the 1990s and the resultant neoliberalisation. Critically scrutinising this transitional process, this study examines whether post-developmentalism has emerged in South Korea, and does so from a perspective of Evolutionary Economic Geography blended with Geographical Political Economy. In so doing it considers whether South Korea still has developmental attributes. Contrary to conventional discussions that emphasise neoliberalisation of state developmentalism, the study demonstrates the institutional continuity and path-dependency of the developmental state and argues that South Korea’s ‘post-developmental’ state is a product of the evolution of state developmentalism. Although neoliberalisation has accelerated in tandem with economic globalisation, strong developmental legacies remain. To examine the legacies and novelties that emerged during this period of state developmentalism in in South Korea, a cross-sectoral case study of focused on the industrial and regional development policies for the shipbuilding and semiconductor industries is undertaken herein. The case study finds, firstly, that a state-led strategic industrial nurturing programme, a key characteristic of state developmentalism, persists despite changes in targets, such as from shipbuilding to high-tech electronics. Secondly, it suggests that the Korean state has developmental corporate and industrial production strategies and it sustains to date. Industries and corporations that have grown in state-led ways during state developmentalism take an in-house production strategy to protect domestic industries and promote exports. In other words, these corporations have a limited tendency to participate in global production networks in both shipbuilding and semiconductor sectors. Thirdly, the study finds that the spatial unfolding and results of strategic industrialisation have led to the localisation of industries, creating strong local dependency on both industries and the central government. Local governments demonstrate dependence on the national strategic industries and even persistent dependence on the central government. These developments indicate that the role of the central government is still significant in terms of sustaining old industries and establishing new industries in the local areas. To conclude, the strong path dependence of industrial and institutional configurations and strategies formed during the developmental era of the 1960s to the 1980s created strong and enduring continuities which underpinned a lock-in to the developmental configurations and strategies and led to gradual evolution to an open-ended post- developmental state. This gradual evolution across two important economic sectors in South Korea reflects strong institutional path dependence in the face of neoliberalising pressures. Description: Ph. D. Thesis.

The frozen tropics : palaeoglaciations within northern Peru

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Title: The frozen tropics : palaeoglaciations within northern Peru Authors: Lee, Ethan Abstract: Tropical glaciers are sensitive indicators of global climate changes, and how these changes influenced the tropics. Recent research has primarily focused on locations where glaciers are still present, or in high elevation locations with recently vacated glacial cirques. Locations that are fully deglaciated, at low elevations (i.e., < 4,000 m asl) are rarely investigated. These are below the traditional latitudinal Last Glacial Maximum snowline elevation, primarily located within a latitudinal data gap between Perú and Ecuador. This thesis reconstructs the ice masses of the Lagunas de Las Huaringas, northern Perú, an area below 4,000 m asl, to assess their extent and nature, and determine the palaeoclimate they may have existed under. This was achieved by: i) remotely sensed geomorphological mapping of palaeoglacial evidence, to enable a first-order reconstruction of glacier extent and temperature cooling, ii) fieldwork to validate remote mapping, and to acquire samples for cosmogenic nuclide dating, and iii) the first use of PISM, a three-dimensional model, over tropical glaciers, to determine their likely climate envelope and response to climate change during advance to, during, and deglaciation from their past extents (38 ka – 16 ka). Research here demonstrates that glaciers were present, and extensive, within the Laguna de Las Huaringas region, with palaeoglacial landforms extending from source area elevations (~3,900 m asl) to their most extensive ice marginal positions downvalley (~2,800 m asl). Temperature cooling estimates from geomorphological evidence and numerical modelling suggest that extensive cooling (-10℃ from present) and a wetter climate (+30% modern) was necessary for extensive glaciation to occur. This is one of the coldest estimates acquired within the tropical Andes. Modelled maximum ice extents, that are assumed to be the region’s Local Last Glacial Maximum (25.4 ka), or its regional maximum advance during the LGM, falls within the range of previously dated tropical Andean LLGM advances, indicating an early-LLGM for the region. This resulted in an ice plateau configuration, with outlet glaciers extending down valley; different from that determined solely by geomorphological mapping of a cirque-to-valley glaciation. The Las Huaringas ice masses were extremely sensitive to temperature changes, with deglaciation being associated with small increases in temperature (e.g., -10℃ to -8.5℃ from present), deglaciating immediately after the termination of the LLGM period (~17 ka). This thesis highlights that relatively low elevation tropical locations, formerly thought not to have supported extensive glaciers due to being below the South American LGM snowline, were likely glaciated during the last glacial cycle. This has important implications for our understanding of the last glacial climate conditions within the tropics, along with the timing of the LGM across the Andes. Future work should focus on cosmogenic dating to determine the timing of glacial advances at the Lagunas de Las Huaringas, along with further low elevational regions within the latitudinal data gap. Description: PhD Thesis