Theses - Geography
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Item Embargo Nature Unsettled: the making of the wilderness imaginary and the Canadian settler stateDang, Tiffany; Dang, Tiffany [0000-0002-9232-9449]Despite the economic significance of extractive resource industries to the national economy, Canadians hold their national parks—as spaces of untouched nature—in high regard as a key aspect of national pride and identity. By critically investigating the cultural framing of nature in Canada as contextualized within the structure of settler colonialism, I attempt a fuller understanding of these landscapes. Paying particular attention to how settler colonial difference has historically intersected with the cultural framing of nature in Canada, this thesis aims to bring to light histories of racialized labour and non-settler migration alongside histories of Indigenous dispossession regarding the design and control of natural landscapes. Three intersecting themes drive the core of this thesis: (1) landscape representation as a tool of colonisation, (2) the relationship between urbanization, infrastructure, and settler colonisation, and (3) the potential for landscapes futures engaged in decolonial and other-than-human knowledges. This work has primarily focused on the development of landscapes in the Canadian Rocky Mountains as a hinge between Indigenous dispossession and racialized migrant work regimes at the turn of the twentieth century. This is achieved by achieved by an analysis of three historically significant moments in Canadian history. The first considers the development of the earliest national parks in the Rocky Mountains at the turn of the twentieth century as discursive landscapes of settler colonial nationalism. The second recounts the significant racial component of the labour behind infrastructure construction and facilitation i.e. the work of accessing the wilderness. In the third, a major flood event reveals tensions between other-than-human agencies and the material infrastructures of settler colonialism. The scale of these settler colonial landscapes not only encompass Canada as a settler nation, but also the broader geographies of the British Empire. The historical aspects of this thesis have been informed by archival research conducted in Canada and the UK, with significant attention paid to the marketing materials produced by the Canadian Pacific Company and the Canadian Parks Department. These archival sources are complimented by readings of contemporary news media and scientific papers on river hydrology and ecology. Ultimately, this thesis unsettles the nature imaginary in Canada by bringing together landscape studies, urban theory, and settler colonial studies; it expands landscape studies through new considerations around labour, poses a spatial-power link between processes of urbanization and settler colonisation, and moves beyond Indigenous-settler binaries in settler colonial studies by intersecting it with racial histories and other-than-human futures.Item Embargo Seeds of Struggle: A Political Ecology of Millet Growing in Aohan, ChinaJiang, Pei; Jiang, Pei [0009-0005-1147-0408]Seeds are material, relational, and political objects. They can reproduce themselves, embed knowledge, cultural memory, and symbolic meanings, undergo improvements governed by breeders, create economic value along the seed industry chain, and are strategic resources contested by stakeholders. Seen this way, seeds emerge as the nexus of political struggle and technological innovation. To contemplate seed commodification and conservation is also to consider the power relations and political mechanisms through which humans integrate nature and life into the fold of productive activity. To deeply analyse the aforementioned processes, my thesis explores how political actors have sought to ‘govern’ seeds in China over the past seventy years and how cultivators develop everyday modes of resistance to undermine and subvert this control. Conducted as a multi-sited ethnography centred on foxtail millet, the study spans three locations, capturing every moment of the seed and foxtail millet industry. My primary field site, Aohan in Inner Mongolia, China, is considered the centre of origin for foxtail millet. Tracing webs of relations, I studied Wangjinzhuang village in Hebei Province where, similar to Aohan, there is a community seed bank facilitating the exchange of local varieties between villagers and those from Aohan. Additionally, I travelled to China’s southern breeding base in Sanya City, observing winter breeding activities. Drawing on Foucault’s theorisation of biopower, traditionally applied to human life, I extend and apply the concept to seeds and crops, examining the complex intersections between power, technologies, institutions, and the governance of life in the context of plant biopolitics. Three main mechanisms—legislative implementation, biotechnology application, and the dissemination of scientific farming knowledge—control and regulate plant life functions in terms of their spatial, temporal, physical, and epistemic dimensions. Firstly, legal infrastructures allow for private sector involvement in crop reproduction, effectively legitimising capitalist regulation and control over life. Secondly, the use of advanced control technologies, such as biotechnologies, broadens the scope of biopower beyond the individual plant to the intimate molecular level. Finally, the transmission of scientific agricultural knowledge to peasants from breeders, seed corporations, and other stakeholders indicates a reconfiguration of farming activities, potentially widening the power asymmetries between local actors and scientific elites. In particular, the process of commodifying life results in the neglect of values beyond the economic aspects of seeds and the reduction, over time, of plant genetic diversity. On the other hand, government-led conservation has proved to be insufficient, particularly in safeguarding essential aspects such as labour practices, associations, and relationships embedded within seeds. Thus, farmer-led seed regimes and collaborative frameworks play a crucial role in conserving crop variety diversity and the multiple values associated with seeds. Peasants are entangled with foxtail millet in a range of practical activities in production and daily life, including classical Chinese medicine, folklores related to birth, death, marriage, festivals, as well as diverse culinary cultures and foodways. In collaboration with NGOs, breeders, and the market, peasants constructed community seed banks and rebuilt indigenous seed trade routes to exchange seeds and sell products from landraces to sustain the local seed system. These coproduction practices challenge the notion that peasants are ignorant and backward, underscoring the importance of non-elite knowledge in sustaining biological diversity and environmental health. In conclusion, my research contributes a biopolitical perspective to the understanding of agrarian change in China. I conclude that the agrarian history of agricultural capitalisation is about more than only controlling the means and materials of production, as Marxist academics contend. It is also about the governance and regulation of various forms of life. However, due to plant biological resistance and resistance from human actors against capitalist control over agriculture, such governance and regulation are always partial and incomplete and there are opportunities for subversion and resistance. 种子是物质的、关系的和政治的对象。它们能够自我再生产，同时也承载着知识、文化记忆和象征意义；它们经由育种家改良，沿着种子产业链流动并创造经济价值，成为利益相关者争夺的战略资源。就此而言，种子已然成为政治斗争和技术创新的交汇点。思考种子商品化和保护亦是思考人类如何将自然和生命纳入生产活动的权力关系。 为深入分析上述过程，本研究探讨了我国过去七十年来行动者（尤其是资本）如何试图控制种子，以及其他利益相关者如何在日常实践中抵制资本的完全控制。我采用多点民族志方法，主要田野点是世界谷子起源地内蒙古敖汉旗。此外，我还在河北涉县王金庄村、海南三亚南繁基地对传统品种保育、育种实验等开展了研究。 我拓展福柯生命权力的概念，将其应用于种子和作物，考察权力和技术对作物生命的治理。该治理主要通过三项机制实现，即立法、生物技术应用以及科学知识传播，从在空间、时间、物质和认知多重维度上调控种子和作物生命。首先，法律允许私营部门参与作物繁育，使资本和权力对种子的治理合法化。其次，生物技术将生命权力的作用范围从植物个体层面扩展至分子层面。最后，育种者、种子公司和其他利益相关者向农民传递科学农业知识，该过程体现了农民的去技能化以及农民与科学精英之间的权力不对称关系。种子商品化过程中，资本和市场忽视了种子经济价值之外的文化、象征、生态等价值，造成了植物遗传多样性减少。 种质资源保育已然成为应对种子商品化社会生态后果的重要措施。但实践表明，由政府主导的种质保育是不完备的，因为种子库无法存留种子内嵌的劳动实践和社会关系。因此，由农民主导的种子体制和合作框架至关重要。农民在与非政府组织、育种家和市场等合作中，建立起社区种子库，并重建了地方品种贸易路线，以交换种子并销售地方品种产品等方式维护当地的种子系统。这一系列合作生产实践挑战了“农民是无知落后的”这一观念，强调了本土知识在维持生物多样性和环境健康方面的重要性。 总之，我的研究为理解中国种子商品化进程和农政变迁提供了生命政治的视角。结论指出：农业资本化不仅关涉资本对生产资料的控制，还涉及权力对各种生命形式的治理和调控。然而，这种治理和调控总是不完全的，时刻受到人类与非人类行动者不同形式的抵抗。Item Controlled Access Sustainable development dilemmas: Using mixed methods to understand the conflicting opinions on large dams.Goodman, LucyThis multi-scalar investigation explores the scholarly, public, political and economic debate surrounding large dams, which has remained intractable for decades. Proponents argue that the potential benefits of large dams, such as energy and water storage, outweigh their profound negative impacts on people and nature. Opponents argue the reverse, and question whether dams are appropriate and effective. The energy transition and sustainable development imperatives add new narratives to the debate, warranting fresh investigation of the trade-offs, especially for hydropower. This thesis makes five contributions to the literature using a political ecology framework. First, I examine the history of two iconic large dams in India, their decision junctures and themes, and compare the common drivers and debates that cut across both dams. Understanding large dams within India - the most populous country in the world - is critical as Indian decision-making on hydropower is likely to have global implications for the energy transition. Second, I widen the investigation to the debate around large dams in the Global South, characterising three divergent opinion groups and identifying areas of agreement and disagreement. I find opinions are formed not just objectively and based on material interests, but are also influenced by ideologies. A discriminator in the three opinion groups is differing beliefs in whether the local socioeconomic impacts of large dams are positive or negative. Based on this, in a third contribution, I find socioeconomic activity decreases over three years when large dams are constructed, using a unique econometric analysis of satellite imagery (night-time lights), dam locations and construction dates. My fourth contribution is to ground-truth the satellite imagery within my case studies in India. Finally, I combine empirical insights to infer that elements of the hydropower debate are more similar to nuclear than to other non-fossil fuel energy sources. I argue that understanding hydropower as an extreme “nuclear option” may help both sides of the debate to understand each other better.Item Embargo Wolves, Farmers, & Capitalism: A More-Than-Human Political Ecology of Human-Wolf Relations in ItalyDonfrancesco, Valerio; Donfrancesco, Valerio [0000-0001-9539-0715]This doctoral thesis builds on and further develops a more-than-human political ecology, exploring the imbrication of non-human agencies with (capitalist) political economies in the coproduction of human-wildlife relations. Through a multispecies ethnography and other mixed methods, including a historical literature analysis, this work investigates the following research questions, in the context of human-wolf coexistence in Tuscany and Italy: (Q1) how are wolves affected by and responsive to human practices linked to particular political economies, in ways that influence broader human-wolf relations? (Q2) How are wolves a more-than-human force of socioecological change, including agrarian change, shaping human-wolf relations in turn? (Q3) How may caring human-wolf relations unfold, as situated within particular political-economic contexts? These questions are investigated through four empirical chapters. The first chapter, addressing especially Q1 and Q2, (re)traces the historical decline and comeback of wolves in Italy, politicising and nuancing current narratives. The second and third chapters further explore, in the more contemporary settings of rural Tuscany, the focus of Q1 and Q2, respectively. Specifically, the second chapter looks at the intersection of wolves’ mobilities with agrarian change, highlighting how wolves are changing (genetically, behaviourally, and ecologically) by dwelling in shifting agricultural contexts, and how this is affecting local wolf impacts and human-wolf relations. The third chapter explores how, within this agrarian context, wolves are an agent of change, reproducing and undercutting processes of agricultural modernisation. The fourth chapter takes a closer look at Q3, emphasising local ethical propensities for coexisting with wolves based on ‘affirmative biopolitics of living with’, which recognise wolves as subjects rather than as means to an end, but whose actualisation is in part constrained by socioeconomic hardships in the agricultural sector. The emerging picture is one in which wolves are cogent, political actors, conditioning people into implementing particular measures and policies through their affective capacities, presence, and impacts. Wolves are described as entangled in reciprocal and mutually constitutive relations with humans, (asymmetrically) co-shaping the course of socioecological change. In this process, wolf agency is conceived either as becoming channelled into the reproduction of capitalist dynamics, or as a subversive force of change that undermines the status quo and provides opportunities for the production of alternative (co)existences. Through shedding light on these aspects, this research emphasises the value and radical potential of a more-than-human political ecology, which goes beyond dualist frames without losing track of the uneven power relations pervading more-than-human societies.Item Embargo Waiting, Caring, Navigating: An Ethnographic Study of Women's Everyday Lives within and beyond AusterityParpworth, CatrionaThere can be little doubt that the United Kingdom’s austerity programme – relentlessly pursued by successive Conservative-led governments – has had profound socio-economic impacts on the country and its inhabitants. While initial analyses and academics engagements were primarily quantitative in nature, and largely underpinned by fiscal understandings, this thesis – like other work interested in ‘actually existing austerity’ – approaches austerity as something that is lived and felt in the very real and intimate spaces of everyday life. This is not to completely abandon or disregard its ‘economic-ness’, but rather to highlight that austerity is a phenomenon that is also rooted in lived experience. Drawing upon ten months of ethnographic data gathered while volunteering at a women’s centre in Leicester, this thesis starts from the contention that austerity is inherently gendered. It uses a combination of volunteer ethnography, Oral Histories and Futures, participant-generated timelines, photovoice and maps of everyday life to develop in-depth and more nuanced understandings of women’s lives. However, rather than continuing to perpetuate the harmful notion that ‘we’re all in this together’, I take an intersectional approach to argue that the interaction of axes of social difference produces uneven experiences of socio-economic change across space, time and bodies. Despite their shared gender identity, I show how participants were unequally positioned in relation to austerity and, as a result, differentially understood, embodied and navigated its effects in their lives. Centred around three practices – waiting, caring and navigating – this thesis provides powerful insights into the extended time-spaces of austerity. Running counter to narrations of the last thirteen years as a ‘short, sharp pain’, it draws attention to the ways in which the adverse effects of socio-economic change can linger, seeping into all aspects of people’s lives. In doing so, I demonstrate the importance of understanding how austerity becomes entangled in and with everyday practices, ebbing and flowing in intensity between the background and foreground of daily life. Experiences of austerity are not, therefore, temporally or spatially discrete; they extend far beyond the implementation of particular policies, framing our lives in the present and shaping the kinds of futures that we think might be possible.Item Embargo The coming of 'kawa nyampa': Climate change, temporality and prophecies of decline in Himalayan NepalMillington, AliceThis thesis examines cultural constructions of climate and temporality in eastern Nepal, focusing on Walung, a village in Taplejung District. Although the residents of Walung have long noticed manifestations of global climatic change, such observations were primarily attributed to a change in time (Tib. *dus*) rather than climate (Tib. *gnam gshis*). This interpretation often drew upon Buddhist prophetic narratives which foretell an imminent era of decline, termed '*kawa nyampa*' - a vision of degeneration attributed to Guru Rinpoche (Skt. Padmasambhava). In Walung, moral, meteorological, and temporal realms were deeply intertwined, with both climatic disruptions and perceived temporal changes attributed to the wider decay of human morality. The onset of '*kawa nyampa*' was traced to an evening in 1963 when flooding, unleashed by a semi-spiritual entity called the '*khangba*' (snow frog), devastated the village. The flood represented a temporal rupture, marking the end of a period of prosperity (*kawa sangbo*), and was interpreted as a collective punishment for spiritual transgressions. However, the temporal shifts that Walung residents have detected extend beyond climate-related phenomena. They also encompassed broader socioeconomic and political changes, including shifts in local diets and perceptions of declining life expectancy. The central claim of the thesis is that disruptions in climate are predominantly experienced as disruptions to *time* in upper Taplejung. Moreover, the Walung vision of a degenerate time (*kawa nyampa*) is rooted to far vaster landscape of changes than simply meteorology. In the words of one resident: “the change in time means a change in everything” – so too has the change in ‘everything’ produced a change in time. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Taplejung District (November 2021-May 2022) and complemented by secondary field visits to Sikkim and Kathmandu, what begins as a study of climate change unfolds into an analysis of a far deeper sense of temporal disjunction. The thesis deciphers local observations of the stars, migratory birds, and cosmological narratives of deity movements as localised systems of time-reckoning. It also considers the embodied rhythms of life and death within aspects of Himalayan time perception. Against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change and geopolitical ruptures at the Sino-Nepali border, however, these complex synchronicities are becoming destabilised, and time itself is unpicked at its seams. As environmental, geopolitical, and temporal fractures become more pronounced, Walung residents fear the fulfilment of prophetic visions of degeneration.Item Open Access The Politics of Predation: Exploring the Rise of Coyotes in North American CitiesTaves, IlanahThis dissertation examines the relationship between coyotes and the urban neighbourhoods of continental North America that they are increasingly colonising. I employ a multi-disciplinary approach - inspired by the likes of animal geographies, animal studies, urban geography and wildlife ecology - to explore how humans respond to coyotes and how these adapters are navigating urban regions with special attention to the City of Chicago. As a component of their behaviour plasticity, coyotes can adapt to a wide range of environments and are now present in every metropolitan region in the U.S. This brings with it the potential for conflict with human beings, but also opportunities for coexistence. This thesis considers the lives of urban coyotes, their representation in culture and the media, and the appropriate municipal responses to potential conflict. The human-coyote interface is a multifaceted subject and I approach the topic through several themes drawn from different methodologies and disciplines. These themes together offer a “coyote urbanism” or a “feral political ecology”: a revitalized, multi-species ethics of the city inspired by the coyote’s signature adaptability and perseverance.Item Open Access Methods to Preserve Social Networks at Emergency SheltersDouglass, NathanielDuring large-scale disasters, social structures are disrupted. The current focus of emergency management is to ensure that people evacuate safely. Lost in the process is a mechanism for keeping existing social structures intact, despite substantial evidence that maintaining social structures during and after disasters is beneficial. Instead of displaced people self-assembling at emergency shelters, where the social composition may appear somewhat random, this research introduces algorithms incorporating graph and hypergraph partitioning to reunite displaced people with their friends, family, and communities within shelters without unduly prejudicing the speed and efficiency required during evacuations. The research further investigates how to achieve this result dynamically, by assessing real-time information flows and readjusting recommended shelter locations mid-evacuation, all the while maintaining social connections tailored for each individual.Item Open Access New methods to answer old questions: A study of London infant and child mortality at the turn of the twentieth centuryRafferty, Sarah; Rafferty, Sarah [0000-0003-2286-3598]This thesis has strived to understand the inequalities of infant and child mortality in London at the turn of the twentieth century (1895-1911), and to add to the debate on the historical infant mortality decline. Previous studies in this field have been plagued with limitations driven by data availability and quality. Now, historical demographers are turning to new technologies and methods – including big microdata, multilevel analysis and text-mining – to overcome these past issues. This thesis has contributed to the growing literature on new sources and methods, whilst remaining grounded in traditional historical demography debate, and has focused on one urban area: London. London was – and still is – a ‘mosaic of communities’ with its inhabitants’ experiences varying vastly. It is also a city with considerable historical data availability, therefore providing huge potential for comparative analysis. By applying a mixed method approach that utilises both quantitative and qualitative sources, the infant and child mortality experiences of individual Londoners and aggregate London registration sub-districts have been compared. The thesis can be broken down into three main sections. The first section has interrogated the quality of occupational and social class coding of the big microdata project, I-CeM, before comparing and contrasting different data sources/methods in order to determine the accuracy of aggregate infant mortality rates. The second section has employed multilevel modelling techniques to visualise and understand the inequalities – by social class, place, and otherwise – of individual-level indirectly estimated child mortality. The third section added depth and nuance to the quantitative results through both the close-reading, and text-mining, of the Medical Officer of Health Reports for two contrasting areas within London: Bethnal Green and Wandsworth. In the conclusion, the results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses have been triangulated to form robust conclusions and highlight areas suitable for further research. Overall, this thesis has contributed to the body of evidence supporting the role of the ‘Health of Towns’ Movement and Female Empowerment theories of infant mortality decline. Additionally, it has contributed to knowledge on infant and child mortality inequalities associated with social class, place, migrant-status, the employment of mothers and the influence of Women Sanitary Inspectors.Item Embargo "If We Are Nothing Without Them, Then They Are Also Nothing Without Us": Cross-Class Political Mobilisation in Urban PakistanSiddiqui, Hafsah HaseebIn cities of the Global South, socioeconomic class is a major factor in social, spatial, and political fragmentation. The thesis challenges existing approaches to urban politics, which largely theorise political practices as class distinct. The thesis seeks to interrogate these framings through developing the concept of ‘overlapping politics’, defined as a political relationship between two (or more) distinct socio-economic classes of citizen(s) in response to any form of injustice or inequality. Conceptually, the research is inspired by, and builds upon, scholarship on urban politics, class, political relationships, and urban citizenship. Empirically, it explores the long- term relationship between middle-class identifying individuals and the urban poor in Islamabad who collaborate as part of an organised cross-class political party. These groups work together to challenge the threat of eviction and address deficiencies in public infrastructure and service provision. The thesis argues that different class identities ‘overlap’ in political mobilisation strategies, not only influencing the way that those involved relate to, and understand, the city and each other, but also impacting their experiences of urban citizenship. In doing so, it makes three important theoretical contributions. First, it emphasises that claims-making in urban contexts necessitates the formation of cross-class political relationships because of the mutual and fluid contributions of citizens belonging to different class groups. This lies in contrast to previous framings of class groups as insular. Second, it highlights that research on political processes should pay increased attention to the ways that higher-class groups transform themselves, and are transformed, through their involvement. This contrasts the tendency for studies of ‘empowerment’ to focus on the poor. Finally, the concept of ‘overlapping politics’ expands critical understandings of urban citizenship in ways that are of distinct relevance in contexts where the provision of rights is highly differentiated among demographic groups and where citizenship for certain demographic groups is frequently mediated by, and through, other demographic groups. Analysis draws from qualitative data acquired through interviews with 159 individuals and participant observation over eight months of fieldwork. ‘Overlapping politics’ serves as a promising and useful tool in understanding and evaluating the potential for more inclusive urban futures by prioritising the importance of recognising and examining cross-class relationships between urban citizens.Item Controlled Access The emergence of landscape urbanism in London: a critical landscape analysis of urban nature under the AnthropocenePlatt, BenThis thesis explores the complexities and tensions between the contemporary profusion of ecological design rhetoric and the contested histories of material urban landscapes. A specific set of ecological ideas underpin the field of ‘landscape urbanism’: an approach to urban design associated with a group of designers emerging from the University of Philadelphia in the 1990’s, and more recently the Harvard Graduate Design School (GSD). Making claims towards self- emergent systems, processes, networks, grids, and matrices, landscape urbanism tries to dissolve any ontological distinction between landscape, urban ecology, and infrastructure. This thesis looks to unsettle this claim by developing a ‘critical landscape perspective,’ and four subsequent typologies of landscape––topology, topography, wilderness, and playfulness––to foreground the inherent and often playful duplicity, tension, and complexity of urban landscapes. It employs an investigative aesthetics method–– ncluding walking urban transects, interviews with ecologists, designers, and artists, aesthetic analysis, and archival work––along the River Lea, London, focusing on sites such as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the Royal Docks. I engage closely with material urban landscapes to foreground how landscape urbanism mobilizes managerialist and technical renderings of ecology which exists in tension with site- specific, material landscape histories and imaginations. I suggest that this designerly imposition is inseparable from a broader ecological constructivism under the so-called Anthropocene which demands to be situated under the political remit of human intentionality. Highlighting the tensions that exist between and within the curation of atmospheres and processual forms, my thesis will show that landscape remains a mode of ordering and staging space via the use of perspective and affective atmospheres. By re-engaging with the intricate intellectual history of landscape within cultural geography, and contemporary explorations of aesthetic and affective tension and complexity, I conclude by suggesting that landscape must be reasserted as a mode of critical urban analysis; a heuristic lens uniquely capable of capturing tensions between scale, temporality, and power so pressing in the contemporary momentItem Embargo Narrating Cetacean Conservation: Gray Whale Migration, Histories, and Justice on the North American Pacific CoastGuasco, Anna; Guasco, Anna [0000-0003-1659-9057]This dissertation analyses histories, memories, stories, and issues of environmental justice circulating around the migration and conservation of Eastern North Pacific gray whales (*Eschrichtius robustus*). Following the pathway of the whales’ migration along the North American Pacific Coast, each chapter of the dissertation focuses on a significant site of gray whale narration. The first substantive chapter examines gray whales’ heritage as ‘Mexican by birth’ in relation to broader topics of tourism, touch, affect, and entanglement in the lagoons of Baja California Sur, Mexico. The next chapter moves to the California coast to examine critically historical encounters with gray whales as ‘devil-fish’ and ‘friendly whales’ (circa 1840 to 1970). The third substantive chapter focuses on scientific and management controversies around a sub-group of gray whales in the Pacific Northwest in relation to Indigenous whale hunting and the politics of ecological residency. The final substantive chapter takes place within and beyond the Arctic, examining how gray whale-human futures are anticipated and narrated in the context of climate change and the Anthropocene(s). Each chapter draws on a wide range of literatures, including: more-than-human geography, historical and cultural geography, environmental history, blue humanities, affect studies, mobility studies, memory studies, history of science, political ecology, conservation social science, anticolonial theory, environmental justice, ecocriticism, and narratology. Through these multimethod interdisciplinary analyses, the dissertation assesses how gray whale histories and contemporary encounters are narrated in different places throughout the whales’ migration and in different historical moments. The dissertation argues that these narrative processes have both discursive and material ramifications for broader issues of knowledge production, cetacean conservation and management, coastal environmental justice, and more-than-human relationships.Item Open Access Reforming the state from within: public servants and knowledge transfer in post-2008 EcuadorGordon, EllenThis thesis examines how public servants have experienced rapid state reform in Ecuador since the country’s 2008 Constitution which signalled unprecedented, radical change for the state. It traces how plans for transforming by educating public servants were delivered through the Institute of Higher National Studies (IAEN), a state university offering postgraduate courses for bureaucrats. Its students are state workers in diverse roles across the country. This entry point serves to characterise the state reform from an everyday perspective with a broad geographical reach, but also from the particular historical positioning of the IAEN within the Ecuadorian state. This research moves beyond government narratives of transformation to excavate what public servants perceive has changed since 2008. The thesis makes contributions to the field(s) of political geography and anthropology of the state, as well as intervening in debate on state reform in Latin America and beyond. It foregrounds the everyday experience of working in the state, rather than measuring public servants’ accounts and interpretations of the reform against the transformation promised by the government post-2008. It sheds light on the potential challenges to state reform, highlighting how institutions defy state rationality, even when deeply implicated in national development projects. It argues that public servants are co-constructors of state knowledge. However, although they create the state, they also submit to the hierarchies they are implicated in as employees and citizens. This thesis demonstrates that reform lands unevenly in ways which bring long-standing spatial hierarchies and forms of structural violence, which were directly addressed in the 2008 Constitution, to the surface. It highlights that whilst attempts to change the state-civil society dynamic have penetrated the common sense about working in the state, legacies of colonialism, specific historical geographies of the state, and cynicism regarding the post-2008 reforms present serious challenges. It does this drawing on interviews, observation, and documentary research to outline the major themes that characterise public servants’ experiences of work in the state. This approach pieces together local-level, national, and disaggregated understandings of the state, and the overlapping roles played by public servants. This thesis is organised in a way that branches out from the institutional entry point to the broader experiences of the state across the five substantive chapters. Chapter 1 provides historical and political context on the state in Ecuador to introduce this research. Chapter 2 discusses the contributions this thesis makes to political geography and anthropology, whilst also linking the context closely to its main concerns. Chapter 3 discusses the methodological approach of the research. Chapter 4 examines the IAEN as an institution, using interviews with staff and analysing government discourse about the central role of the institution in transforming the state from within. Chapter 5 focuses on teaching at the IAEN, comparing syllabi and observations of classroom interactions to chart how the state is characterised at the institute. Chapter 6 draws on interviews with students (who are public servants) to understand how they interpret their engagement with the IAEN, highlighting the importance of their mobility across the state for knowledge transfer. Chapter 7 examines the civil servants accounts of everyday work, and draws on an observation at a public office, to understand the local experiences of working during reform and how this helps us to characterise the state from the ground up. Chapter 8 examines how the context of crisis represents change and continuities to the state since 2008, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and a national strike. A concluding chapter summarises the findings of this thesis, outlining its key arguments and contributions.Item Embargo Young People at Europe's Margins: An Intimate Geopolitics of the FutureKadich, DinoThis thesis examines how young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina imagine, contest, and enact different futures amidst the country’s political impasse, ongoing mass emigration, and growing global pessimism about the future. Writing against narratives about the region that understand its politics exclusively through the terms of the violent conflict waged in the 1990s, I argue that the emigration phenomenon is part of a profound geopolitical shift led by young people. This shift emerges as a response to the radical disjuncture between the promises they grew up with, of a country that would become ‘modern’, ‘European’, and ‘normal’, and the realities of social, political, and economic stagnation nearly three decades following the beginning of capitalist transition and the end of the war. In order to take account of the ways that young people are engaging the future today, I take a digital-first approach, weaving across different forms of digital media that my interlocutors use to make sense of their lives. By taking the ordinary lives of young people as a starting point for understanding the making of geopolitics, this thesis develops an “intimate geopolitics of the future” to make sense of how the intimate sphere, replete with acts and moments that may appear small or not particularly meaningful through conventional geopolitical imaginaries are, in fact, constitutive in the making of geopolitics. Using both traditional qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews, as well as a participatory video art workshop, I show how young people wrestle with the difficult choices they must make as they attempt to make a life. Beyond the grand narrative of generational warfare, one that has a firm hold in describing ongoing tensions and resentments between today’s youth and their elders, these moves shift the focus to the intimate moments that shape the future, as a political terrain of the possible.Item Open Access Examining the Influence of Aerosols from Air Pollution on Current and Projected Temperatures in the Urban Area of Chongqing, ChinaGao, XingranThis research aims to enhance the understanding of aerosol influences in urban areas, focusing on the case region of Chongqing, China. By investigating scenarios for current and future climate, this study seeks to provide insights into the interactions and impacts of aerosols on urban climate. The research questions are: How do aerosols impact the urban climate in Chongqing under the current climatic conditions? How do aerosols modify the urban climate in Chongqing under climate change conditions by the end of the 21st century? What are the uncertainties in input datasets, model configurations, and simulations of urban climate? The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to evaluate the importance of aerosol effects in urban climate simulations, employing a simplified and computationally efficient approach. Two optimised WRF configurations are utilised to assess the sensitivity of the simulations. One configuration accounts for the aerosol-radiation effects, while the other incorporates the aerosol-cloud-radiation effect. A combination of in-situ observations, remote sensing data, regional climate model and global climate model outputs were used to study past, current, and future urban climate as a function of changes in aerosol concentrations. The results demonstrate that decreasing aerosol concentrations generally result in elevated near-surface temperatures within the urban region of Chongqing, with a more pronounced impact observed when higher amounts of aerosols are reduced. Moreover, simulations that account for the influence of aerosol-cloud-radiation effects exhibit more substantial temperature changes than those that do not consider the aerosol-cloud-radiation effects. The presence of extensive and deep cloud cover amplifies the significance of aerosol-cloud-radiation effects. Partially compensating factors, including atmospheric stability, precipitation, and cloud fraction, contribute to the observed temperature changes in these simulations. Findings indicate that climate change, rather than aerosols, is the primary driver of summer temperature increases in Chongqing's urban area. Contrary to expectations, the long-term aerosol reduction does not lead to additional regional warming and shows no statistically significant temperature change. This lack of temperature response can be attributed to the interplay between aerosols and various meteorological parameters, such as precipitation and the variation of high-level ice clouds. Both climate warming and aerosol variations lead to projected changes in surface relative humidity, liquid water content, planetary boundary layer height, surface heat fluxes, downward shortwave radiation, and net downward longwave radiation, suggesting a drier and more unstable environment. Furthermore, this research addresses uncertainties associated with input datasets for the model, the model configurations, and the model outputs. While the optimal WRF configuration exhibits high accuracy and performance, deviations from actual local conditions highlight inherent uncertainties in the simulated results. This study provides valuable insights into the complex interactions between aerosol concentrations, climate changes, and urban surface weather patterns. The findings enhance the understanding of aerosol effects in urban climate. In addition, the findings address uncertainties in trying to simulate these effects. An accurate representation of aerosol properties and their interactions with radiation is crucial for realistic climate simulations and for developing effective strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation.Item Embargo Radioactive Resurgence? Understanding Nuclear Natures in the Chornobyl Exclusion ZoneTurnbull, Jonathon; Turnbull, Jonathon [0000-0002-2430-9884]At 1.23am in the morning of 26th April 1986, a combination of human error, political mismanagement, and faulty reactor design led to an explosion at the fourth power unit of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the heart of Polissya in northern Ukraine. This event marked the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe. Vast quantities of radiation were released into the atmosphere, and many of these radioisotopes will persist in the environment for thousands of years. In response, 350,000 residents were evacuated from the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone which was set up around the destroyed nuclear reactor. Parts of the Zone will be uninhabitable into the distant future. At the time of the catastrophe, it was predicted the region would be a “dead zone,” incapable of supporting life. Since the evacuation, however, stories of nature’s resurgence have proliferated. Chornobyl’s “nuclear natures” are represented and imagined in diverse ways. Indeed, a spectacle has formed around Chornobyl with images and imaginaries of a postapocalyptic landscape, mutant ecologies, and resurgent nature becoming common refrains in public discourse. This thesis is interested in how such diverse interpretations of nature at Chornobyl have come to co-exist. It aims to produce situated reflections on the Zone’s nuclear natures – in other words, to offer a “counterspectacle” to the aforementioned images and imaginaries – that resist the temptation of singular narratives of recovery, return, monstrousness, and toxicity. To do so, mixed methods fieldwork was conducted in the Zone between 2019 and 2022. The thesis begins by contextualising itself within the emerging field of the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities and discussing the politics and ethics of conducting research in Ukraine in light of Russia’s full-scale invasion which begun on February 24th 2022. The following chapter then lays out a framework for conceptualising nuclear natures as spectacular, weird, and demanding of pragmatic and situated ethical reflection. This framework is then deployed through four empirical chapters. First, I outline Chornobyl’s diverse “representational fallout” across cinema, literature and poetry, art, and more, examining the cultural impact Chornobyl has had in the formation of Ukrainian ecological identity. Second, I examine the scientific field of “radioecology” to elucidate how Chornobyl’s nuclear natures are configured multiply, and how the impacts of radiation on ecology are contested. I unpack the scientific controversy that exists among radioecologists at Chornobyl, outlining a “radioecology of practices” through which radioecological knowledge is produced in the Zone. Third, I follow one particular study of Chornobyl’s wolves in detail to understand how scientific knowledge is translated into spectacular imaginaries. This chapter ties the weirdness of Chornobyl’s wilderness to the containment of nuclear natures within the Zone. When wildlife transgresses the Zone’s borders, it becomes a biosecurity threat; moving discursively from a sign of “radioactive resurgence” to be celebrated, to a contaminated, mutation-inducing threat to so-called uncontaminated wildlife outside the Zone. This chapter also examines the role of technologies in radioecological knowledge production. Fourth, deploying visual and ethnographic methods, I turn to examine the Zone’s vernacular ecologies, focusing on free-roaming dogs and those who live with and care for them in the Zone. “Contaminated care” is developed to account for the messy ethical relations inaugurated by nuclear natures. Progressing from spectacular to situated understandings of radioactive resurgence at Chornobyl, this thesis elucidates the multiplicity of nuclear natures, the politicised pathways through which they become known, and the situated ways in which people respond to contamination. In conclusion, I note the difficulty of determining either nature’s resurgence or nature’s demise at Chornobyl, as if nature is a monolithic thing affected by radiation in only one way. Nature is multiple, ecologies are complex, and species, bodies, and metabolic flows are understood differently according to diverse radioecological practices.Item Open Access Overseas Aid as a Diplomatic Tool: UK Aid in IndiaBillett, SimonWhy would one nation-state give precious resources to another in the form of overseas aid? Decades of public policy and a rich body of research provides answers to Morgenthau’s (1962) seminal question, ranging from poverty alleviation to neo-liberal market expansion to geopolitics. I argue that contemporary UK aid is positioned as a ‘retro-realist’ tool to advance UK geopolitical and diplomatic interests. Taking the case of UK aid to India, I use an ethnographic methodology and my own co-presence in the research site to explore whether and how UK aid delivers diplomatic benefits for the UK Government and with what implications. When such aims are rooted in explicit mutual benefit for both sides, combined with a high degree of tangibility, particularity, performance and symbolism, UK aid does deliver such benefits—both specific and at a strategic scale. Conversely, where these conditions are absent – or where symbolism is imbued with historical tones of extraction, transaction, and unitary power – aid generates a negative reaction that damages the relationship. The UK Government’s focus on dividends sets up a dependency on Indian government reciprocity in which UK officials feel compelled to ‘give’ to maintain their status, empowering Indian officials and reversing traditional post-colonial hierarchies. However, in this contemporary retro-realist paradigm poverty alleviation is largely subjugated and obscured from view. Ontologically, the thesis argues that examining and measuring aid transfers as a set of geographically arranged reciprocal relationships rather than a material transfer may be a fruitful scholarly route of further study as aid itself takes on a more overtly political role. Finally, it provides a real-life case study in foreign policy ethnography.Item Open Access Urban Green Assemblage: A Machinic-MLG Approach to Green CitiesPey, PeiliAs the climate crisis escalates, increasing emphasis is placed upon urban solutions, through urban futures and sociotechnical imaginaries such as the green city agenda. The thesis critically examines the green city agenda in its presumptive context of a multi-level governance often characterised by humans enacting upon the city infrastructure. Through the case study of Singapore, a city that is allegedly ‘green’, the research seeks to go beyond human-centric, static, and dichotomous approaches, and instead approach the green city as one of vital machineries and urban rhythms. By drawing upon the assemblage theory, the thesis conceives of the green city as self-governing, continually arranging, reinforcing and dismantling. The green city is not just a result of social, political and economic influences wrought by human governance, but it is also intrinsically tied to past, existing and future networks of infrastructure, creating an entanglement that is more-than-human. Using qualitative interviews and observational studies in the field, the thesis approaches the organising of the green city from the ground up. Environmental-economic-social-political dimensions of the green city agenda are examined through interconnected human and nonhuman infrastructural networks. The thesis draws upon insights in urban greening, waste management and smart initiatives to make visible the hidden infrastructures and peoples. The tensions and struggles of inequality found at the nexus of hidden sociotechnical networks give rise to further spaces for political and social examination and reveals the dynamics of unsustainability where capitalist modes are reinforced in urban assemblages. Where these tensions occur is conceptualised as the areas of possibilities and rupture, facilitating change for a more environmentally sustainable urban future.Item Open Access Wild Foods for Sustainable Food Security and NutritionMilbank, CharlotteWith global population set to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, there is urgent need to re-evaluate how we produce quality food if we are to meet goals to reduce all forms of malnutrition and environmental and climate commitments. Whilst dominant paradigms around agriculture and environmental conservation have tended to view food production and sustainability goals as insurmountable and mutually exclusive, recent scholarship and policy discussion has highlighted the opportunities that exist in deriving integrated agenda for food security, nutrition, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Within this, retaining and promoting landscape diversity, particularly the maintenance of forests and trees within agricultural landscapes, has become a particular point of interest. This thesis focuses on a particular aspect of such debates, offering novel empirical insights on the potential contributions of “wild foods”, sourced from across diverse landscapes, to safe, sustainable, and nutritious diets in Indigenous Peoples communities in northeast India. Bringing together primary and secondary quantitative data, this thesis demonstrates at multiple scales the ways in which wild foods can be an important addition to diets otherwise oriented around staple grains. At the macro-scale, secondary analyses based on national-level demographic data and remotely sensed data on forest cover indicate the contributions of proximate forest to dietary diversity and improved anthropometric status in infants and young children, particularly in areas of thick forest cover. At the micro-level, analysis of primary data from Meghalaya, northeast India, demonstrates the ways that wild foods contribute to adult dietary diversity and self-reported health. This work demonstrates the huge variety of wild foods consumed across the seasonal calendar and sourced from a diversity of land use categories. Building on these findings, in-depth qualitative work offers insight into the drivers of wild food consumption and use and influencing harvesting behaviours. Whilst motivation to consume wild foods remains strong in the areas under study (due to reasons of taste, health, and culture), factors such as time and labour serve as critical constraints on consumption. Finally, with this PhD completed during and in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the topic of wildmeat is given its own chapter, with consumption practices, drivers of use, and perceptions of health and risk characterised. Building evidence on the ways in which wild foods, sourced from across the landscape mosaic, can contribute to diets whilst ensuring the sustainable management of food biodiversity has significant potential to contribute to sustainable food systems debates, and the achievement of global commitments around food and environment.Item Open Access Geological, historical and present-day erosion and colluviation in Lesotho, southern AfricaSingh, Meena VasiThick colluvial deposits, sometimes reaching a thickness of 10 metres, cover the lowlands of Lesotho. Gully erosion whilst removing the colluvial storages, and resulting in the degradation of the landscape, provides an opportunity to examine colluvial profiles. A genesis for the colluvium is sought in an attempt to understand the conditions of formation, and hence a reconstruction of past environments. The link between colluviation and gullying is examined. The research aims at reaching an understanding of erosion processes over varying timescales and spatial boundaries. Contradictory and often sparse data exists about environmental change in southern Africa. An hypothesis proposed, is that processes of erosion have changed, as the location of erodible sediment has been transferred from the steep slopes (where sheet wash removed soils) and deposited as colluvium on the footslopes and valley bottoms (where gully erosion is incising the colluvium). Hence erosion, is believed to have occurred throughout the geological and historical period. This study has shown that gully erosion which is frequently attributed to land management, is a continuation of a geological process. The effects of climatic factors and intrinsic thresholds controlling the rate and nature of removal processes are assessed. Historical soil erosion has been documented using a wide range of sources ranging from colonial and administrative reports, memoirs and diaries of missionaries, sketches and drawings, to oral history. An examination of traditional Basuto agricultural practices suggests sensitivity to the fragile, semi-arid environment. Recent erosion has been monitored in the field and valuable information gained through interviews with rural women in the field. The change from traditional, subsistence agriculture to a market-oriented agricultural economy led to the disappearance of indigenous conservation practices, as increased output became a priority. Gully expansion in turn, documented since the end of last century, has been destructive to agriculture and poses a threat to fields of cultivated food, and therefore to the livelihood of thousands of people.