Our Human Geography list tackles the big issues, from equality to population growth to sustainability, publishing in cultural and social geography, development geography, political geography, qualitative and quantitative research methods and urban geography.
The list includes internationally renowned names such as Danny Dorling, Loretta Lees and Anne Power. We publish a range of formats including research books that bridge theory and apply it to practice.
This chapter presents a comparative history of development and change over the longue durée. It weaves between Latvian and South African history at pivotal moments in spacetime, with particular focus given to the historical processes of colonization, imperialism, and resistance. The chapter concludes with coverage of national independence and social transitions to democracy.
Post-Soviet Latvia and post-apartheid South Africa are far apart geographically and yet have endured a similar history of colonial and authoritarian rule before transitioning to democracy at the end of the 20th century. This book examines these two nations in an unusual comparative study of post-authoritarian efforts to decolonize production and trade.
The book combines an analysis of political economy and ecocultural heritage to unpack alternative trade formations. It also connects world systems thinking with Indigenous knowledge to articulate a decolonial theory of development and change over the longue durée. Conclusions and insights drawn are timely and important for a planet confronted by crises such as authoritarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.
This culminating chapter returns to various strands presented in earlier chapters of the book to articulate a decolonial theory of development. It begins with a decolonial critique of modern rationalism. Next, it draws from research findings to lay out the three features of authoritarian monocultures as an imperial mode of existence. It then identifies the features of egalitarian ecocultures, showing how this Indigenous and counterhegemonic mode of existence works to establish regenerative food, heritage and trade cultures at the fringes of the hegemonic world-system. These heterotopias of resistance offer critical insight into the relational knowledges, values and practices that support decolonization from within and without.
This chapter shares research findings from a participatory action research study conducted with Rooibos tea farmers at a time of market crisis and against a backdrop of systemic scarcity. It weaves a broader analysis of the racialized political economy informing the Rooibos tea sector with a cultural history of a marginalized yet heritage rich people who are producing Rooibos tea in the Indigenous way of their ancestors at the geographic origin of this culturally important product.
This chapter documents a multiracial body of Ubuntu philosophy and interprets key lessons for an international readership. It joins a textual analysis of the apartheid resistance literature with autoethnographic reflection to show how South Africans are engaging the Ubuntu ethic to organize communities and heal collective trauma. The chapter concludes by situating Ubuntu in sustainable development context.
This chapter documents and interprets Indigenous Latvian philosophy for an international readership. It joins a textual analysis of Latvian Dainas with autoethnographic reflections, showing how one of the largest cultural bodies of recorded folk songs in the world transmit intergenerational wisdom and ecocultural values grounded in an agrarian way of life. The chapter concludes by situating the Dainas in sustainable development context.
This chapter shares research findings from fieldwork conducted at the time of Latvia’s accession into the European Union. It shows how land reforms enabled a generation of farmers to return to the land, where small-scale famers have combined the matriarchal horticultural model of ancient Latvian tradition with investments in local and slow food. It also examines the political, economic, and cultural challenges that Latvia has experienced as part of its integration into the European Union.
This chapter provides an overview of the Latvian and South African case studies. It explicates the theoretical and conceptual frameworks applied in the book and details historical eras of great transformation. After describing research methods and author positionality, the chapter concludes by summarizing the chapters to come.
Theorising Justice surveys philosophical and normative theories of justice and their application within more empirically based social and political science research. Together, the chapters highlight the multifaceted nature of justice as an analytical and political concept and avoids advocating ‘correct’ approaches to justice theorising. Each chapter provides overviews of the background, main tenets and critiques of dominant justice traditions. Part I examines theories of liberalism, libertarianism, cosmopolitanism and the Capabilities Approach, in addition to approaches critical of these mainstream justice traditions, such as feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism and Indigenous perspectives of justice. Yet, a principal concern of the book is to promote further engagement with these differing conceptions of justice within social and political science scholarship. As such, chapters in Part II survey scholarship on environmental, climate, energy, spatial and landscape justice along with intergenerational as well as just transitions approaches. In doing so, the volume illustrates multiple methodological and conceptual approaches for analysing justice, illustrating how applied justice theories may usefully analyse problems of inequity, oppression and domination within more empirically focused research. As justice becomes increasingly important to the discourses within social science and policy scholarship, Theorising Justice will be a valuable reference for students, instructors and practitioners seeking to address the social, political, economic and ecological challenges we face today.
This chapter details canonical perspectives from the progenitors of the Capabilities Approach (CA). The CA approaches the concept of justice through the lens of well-being, a conceptual shift developed in opposition to the mainstream distributive theories of justice as inequality. The chapter highlights how CA theorists identify procedures for measuring inequality and human well-being, in addition to how metrics for identifying social and environmental inequalities can be determined and addressed. The chapter also addresses this approach’s primary critiques, which stress the CA’s tendencies towards individualism and its difficulty in incorporating more structural inequalities inherent to capitalist modernity. The authors end by suggesting that, while the CA is not a theory of justice in itself, its methodological flexibility positions it well to analyse situated inequalities within social, political and environmental research.
