Publications by category
Books
Barnett C (2017).
The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory. Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press.
Abstract:
The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory
Abstract.
Full text.
Banks M, Barnett C (2012). The Uses of Social Science. Milton Keynes, the Open University.
Barnett C, Cloke P, Clarke N, Malpass A (2011). Globalizing Responsibility: the Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.
Mahony N, Newman J, Barnett C (eds)(2010).
Rethinking the Public: Innovations in research, theory and practice., the Policy Press.
Abstract:
Rethinking the Public: Innovations in research, theory and practice
Abstract.
Dikeç M, Clark N, Barnett C (eds)(2009).
Extending Hospitality: giving space, taking time., Edinburgh University Press.
Abstract:
Extending Hospitality: giving space, taking time
Abstract.
Barnett C, Rose G, Robinson J (eds)(2008).
Geographies of Globalisation: a Demanding World., Sage Publications Limited.
Abstract:
Geographies of Globalisation: a Demanding World
Abstract.
Barnett C (eds)(2004). Spaces of Democracy: geographical perspectives on citizenship, participation and representation., SAGE.
Barnett C (2003).
Culture and Democracy: media, space and representation., Edinburgh University Press.
Abstract:
Culture and Democracy: media, space and representation
Abstract.
Journal articles
Barnett C (2020). Logical geographies of action: what are debates about emotions about?. Nonsite.org
Barnett C (2020). Must we mean what we do?.
History of the Human Sciences Full text.
Barnett C (2020). Putting affect into perspective. Syndicate
Kinsley S, Layton J, Davis J, Wills J, Featherstone D, Temenos C, Barnett C (2020). Reading Clive Barnett's the Priority of Injustice. Political Geography, 78, 102065-102065.
Samers M, Barkan J, Kallio K, Fluri J, Barnett C (2020). The priority of injustice. AAG Review of Books, 43-43.
Barnett C (2020). The strange case of urban theory.
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society,
13(3), 443-459.
Abstract:
The strange case of urban theory
Abstract
. Recent debates in urban theory have centred on the problem of whether universal concepts can have applications to particular places. These debates could benefit from more serious attention to how urban thought involves styles of analogical reasoning closer in spirit to casuistry than to explanatory theory. The difficult status of ‘the case’ in urban studies is explored through a consideration of different types of universality in this field, leading to a re-consideration of ideas of experimentalism and wicked problems. Further attention should be given to the multiple styles of reasoning through which urban knowledge is produced and circulated.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2018). Geography and the priority of injustice.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers Full text.
Barnett C (2018). What do cities have to do with democracy?.
Engagée: politisch-philosophische Einmischungen, 10-22.
Full text.
Barnett C (2017). Planning as design in the wicked city.
Resilience Full text.
Barnett C (2017). The situations of urban inquiry: thinking problematically about the city.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Full text.
Barnett C, Parnell S (2016). Ideas, implementation and indicators: epistemologies of the post-2015 urban agenda.
Environment and Urbanization,
28:1, 87-98.
Abstract:
Ideas, implementation and indicators: epistemologies of the post-2015 urban agenda
The success of the campaign for a dedicated urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reflected a consensus on the importance of “cities” in sustainable development. The relevance accorded to cities in the SDGs is twofold, reflected both in the specific place- based content of the Urban Goal and the more general concern with the multiple scales at which all indicators will be institutionalized. Divergent views of the city and urban processes, suppressed within the Urban Goal, are, however, likely to become more explicit as attention shifts to implementation. Acknowledging the different theoretical traditions used to legitimize the new urban agenda is an overdue task. As this agenda develops post-2015, the adequacy of these forms of urban theory will become more contested around, among other concerns, the possibilities and limits of place-based policy, advocacy and activism; and practices of monitoring and evaluating ongoing processes of urban transformation along multiple axes of development.
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C, Mahony N (2016). Marketing practices and the reconfiguration of public action.
Policy and Politics,
44, 367-382.
Abstract:
Marketing practices and the reconfiguration of public action
Market segmentation methodologies are increasingly used in public policy, arts and culture management, and third sector campaigning. Rather than presume that this is an index of creeping neoliberalization, we track the shared and contested understandings of the public benefits of using segmentation methods. Segmentation methods are used to generate stable images of individual and group attitudes and motivations, and these images are used to inform strategies that seek to either change these dispositions or to mobilise them in new directions. Different segments of the population are identified as bearing particular responsibilities for public action on different issues.
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C (2016). Toward a Geography of Injustice.
Alue ja Ympäristö (Finnish Society for Regional and Environmental Studies),
2016:1, 111-118.
Full text.
Barnett C (2015). On problematization: Elaborations on a theme in “Late Foucault”.
Nonsite.org,
16Abstract:
On problematization: Elaborations on a theme in “Late Foucault”
The notion of problematization has recently been identified as a key to interpreting the arc of Michel Foucault’s work. In the social sciences as well as in the humanities, problematization is often invoked to support a method of critical debunking. I argue that a more nuanced reading of elaborations of this notion by Foucault and others points to an alternative interpretation. This alternative turns on appreciating that problematizations are best thought of as creative responses to uncertain situations, an idea presented by Foucault in an account of the plural rationalities of ethical action. It is argued that to fully realize the potential of the idea of problematization, some of the founding assumptions and manoeuvres of critical social analysis need to be interrupted. The notion lends itself to an understanding of the inherent problematicity of all action, and therefore to a more modest understanding of the tasks of social inquiry.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2015). On the milieu of security: situating the emergence of new spaces of public action.
Dialogues in Human Geography,
5(3)(5), 257-270.
Full text.
Barnett C (2015). The scandal of publicity. Dialogues in Human Geography(5), 296-300.
Barnett C (2014). Blue Jeans: the Art of the Ordinary. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(7), 853-856.
Barnett C (2014). Geography and ethics III: from moral geographies to geographies of worth.
Progress in Human Geography,
38(1), 151-160.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics III: from moral geographies to geographies of worth
Geographers' discussions of normative issues oscillate between two poles: the exhortation of 'moral geography' and the descriptive detail of 'moral geographies'. Neither approach gives enough room for ordinarily normative dimensions of action. Recent philosophical discussions of the implicit normativity of practices, and ethnographic discussions of the ordinary, provide resources for developing more modest accounts of normativity and practical reasoning. The relevance to geography of recent re-evaluations of the place of reflection and thought in habitual action is illustrated with reference to the antinomies which shape debates about the ethics and efficacy of behaviour change initiatives. The potential for further developing these insights is explored with reference to the normative turn in contemporary social theory, which includes discussions of conventions, practices of justification, lay normativity, phronesis, recognition and orders of worth. The potential contribution of philosophies of action and intentionality and social theories of the normative for moving geography beyond the impasses of moral geography versus moral geographies depends on suspending an inherited wariness about the normative, which might be helped by thinking of this topic in more ordinary ways. The outlines of a programme for geographies of worth are considered. © the Author(s) 2013.
Abstract.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2014). Media practices and urban politics: conceptualizing the powers of the media-urban nexus.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
32(6), 1054-1070.
Full text.
Barnett C (2014). Theorizing emergent public spheres: negotiating development, democracy and dissent. Acta Academica, 46(1), 1-21.
Barnett C (2014). What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
38(5), 1625-1643.
Abstract:
What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?
The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under-theorized and under-researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present 'democracy' as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under-theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post-Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all-affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the 'spatial turn' in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern. © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited.
Abstract.
Full text.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2014). Where is Urban Politics?.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
38(5), 1551-1560.
Abstract:
Where is Urban Politics?
We outline the rationale for reopening the issue of the spatiality of the 'urban' in urban politics. There is a long tradition of arguing about the distinctive political qualities of urban sites, practices and processes. Recent work often relies on spatial concepts or metaphors that anchor various political phenomena to cities while simultaneously putting the specificity of the urban itself in question. This symposium seeks to extend debates about the relationship between the urban and the political. Instead of asking 'what is urban politics?', seeking a definition of the urban as a starting point we begin by asking 'where is urban politics?'. This question orients all of the contributions to this symposium, and it allows each to trace diverse political dimensions of urban life and living beyond the confines of 'the city' as classically conceived. The symposium engages with 'the urban question' through diverse settings and objects, including infrastructures, in-between spaces, professional cultures, transnational and postcolonial spaces and spaces of sovereignty. Contributions draw on a range of intellectual perspectives, including geography, urban studies, political science and political theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, planning and environmental studies - indicating the range of intellectual traditions that can and do inform the investigation of the urban/political nexus. © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited.
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C (2013). Consumption and its consequences by Daniel Miller Cambridge: Polity, 2012, 205 pp notes, refs and index ISBN 9780745661087. Area, 45(4), 507-508.
Barnett C, Bridge G (2013). Geographies of Radical Democracy: Agonistic Pragmatism and the Formation of Affected Interests.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
103(4), 1022-1040.
Abstract:
Geographies of Radical Democracy: Agonistic Pragmatism and the Formation of Affected Interests
There is significant interest in democracy in contemporary human geography. Theoretically, this interest has been most strongly influenced by poststructuralist theories of radical democracy and associated ontologies of relational spatiality. These emphasize a priori understandings of the spaces of democratic politics, ones that focus on marginal spaces and the destabilization of established patterns. This article develops an alternative account of the spaces of democratic politics that seeks to move beyond the stylized contrast of poststructuralist agonism and liberal consensualism. This alternative draws into focus the spatial dimensions of philosophical pragmatism and the relevance of this tradition for thinking about the geographies of democracy. In particular, the geographical relevance of pragmatism lies in the distinctive inflection of the all-affected principle and of the rationalities of problem solving. Drawing on John Dewey's work, a conceptualization of transactional space is developed to reconfigure understandings of the agonistics of participation as well as the experimental institutionalization of democratic will. The difference that a pragmatist approach makes to understandings of the geographies of democracy is explored in relation to transnational and urban politics. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Abstract.
Barnett C, Clarke N, Cloke P (2013). Problematising practices: author’s response.
Area,
45(2), 260-263.
Full text.
Barnett C (2013). Public action/political space: an appreciative response to John Parkinson.
Policy and politics,
42(3), 449-451.
Full text.
Barnett C (2013). Theory as political technology.
Antipode: a radical journal of geography Full text.
Barnett C (2012). Geography and ethics: Placing life in the space of reasons.
Progress in Human Geography,
36(3), 379-388.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics: Placing life in the space of reasons
Discussions of ethics in recent human geography have been strongly inflected by readings of so-called 'Continental Philosophy'. The ascendancy of this style of theorizing is marked by a tendency to stake ethical claims on ontological assertions, which effectively close down serious consideration of the problem of normativity in social science. Recent work on practical reason emerging from so-called 'Analytical' philosophy presents a series of challenges to how geographers approach the relationships between space, ethics, and power. This work revolves around attempts to displace long-standing dualisms between naturalism and normativity, by blurring boundaries between forms of action and knowledge which belong to a 'space of causality' and those that are placed in a 'space of reasons'. The relevance of this blurring to geography is illustrated by reference to recent debates about the relationships between rationality and habit in unreflective action. Ongoing developments in this tradition of philosophy provide resources for strengthening a nascent strand of work on the geographies of practical reason that is evident in work on ethnomethodology, behaviour change, and geographies of action. © the Author(s) 2012.
Abstract.
Full text.
Marx C, Halcli A, Barnett C (2012). Locating the global governance of HIV and AIDS: Exploring the geographies of transnational advocacy networks.
Health and Place,
18(3), 490-495.
Abstract:
Locating the global governance of HIV and AIDS: Exploring the geographies of transnational advocacy networks
Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the process, transnational advocacy networks have emerged as important actors, and particular places are recognised as key nodes in global HIV and AIDS governance. Using the example of London, UK, this paper examines how these networks are involved in local articulations of global governance and reveals that 'global' processes are inflected by the locations through which networks are routed. The example suggests the need for further analysis of the geographies through which HIV and AIDS is reconfiguring power relations at a variety of spatial scales. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2012). Situating the geographies of injustice in democratic theory.
Geoforum,
43(4), 677-686.
Abstract:
Situating the geographies of injustice in democratic theory
Post-Marxist and poststructuralist ontologies of the political have been important reference points for recent discussions of democracy in critical human geography and related fields. This paper considers the conceptual placement of contestation in a strand of democratic theory often denigrated by these approaches, namely theories of deliberative democracy informed by post-Habermasian Critical Theory. It is argued that this concern with contestation derives from a focus on the relationships between different rationalities of action. It is proposed that this tradition of thought informs a distinctively phenomenological approach to understanding the situations out of which democratic energies emerge. In elaborating on this phenomenological understanding of the emergence of political space, the paper proceeds in three stages. First, it is argued that the strong affinities between ontological conceptualisations of 'the political' and the ontological register of canonical spatial theory squeezes out any serious consideration of the plural rationalities of ordinary political action. Second, debates between deliberative and agonistic theorists of democracy are relocated away from questions of ontology. These are centred instead on disputed understandings of 'normativity'. This move opens up conceptual space for the analysis of phenomenologies of injustice. Third, using the example of debates about transnational democracy in which critical theorists of deliberative democracy explicitly address the reconfigurations of the space of 'the political', it is argued that this Critical Theory tradition can contribute to a distinctively 'topological' sense of political space which follows from thinking of political action as emerging from worldly situations of injustice. In bringing into focus this phenomenological approach to political action, the paper has lessons for both geographers and political theorists. Rather than continuing to resort to a priori models of what is properly political or authentically democratic, geographers would do well to acknowledge the ordinary dynamics and disappointments which shape political action. On the other hand, political theorists might do well to acknowledge the limits of the 'methodological globalism' that characterises so much recent work on the re-scaling of democracy. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2011). Geography and ethics: Justice unbound.
Progress in Human Geography,
35(2), 246-255.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics: Justice unbound
Debates in geography often centre on whether it is possible or preferable to develop robust normative foundations for critique. But the relationship of academic analysis to normative concepts does not need to be thought of in foundational terms, one way or the other. It is better understood in terms of elaboration, elucidation and amplification. Theorizing justice from the bottom up in this way is consistent with certain strands in recent moral and political philosophy, exemplified by Amartya Sen's recent account of comparative justice. Recent work by feminist philosophers including Seyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser, and Iris Marion Young explicitly engages with the question of how to theorize the geographies of democratic justice in non-foundational, modest ways. The proliferation of geographical concerns in moral and political philosophy is indicative of the various ways in which concepts of justice are 'unbound' from forms of containment to which they have often been subjected. Philosophizing about justice is no longer automatically restricted to a national frame; and neither are questions of justice contained within prescriptive styles of reasoning, opening up instead to insights from empirical social sciences. Freeing concepts of justice from imaginary geographical constraints and from restrictive rationalistic conventions presents a challenge to spatial disciplines to suspend their chauvinism about the use of spatial vocabularies in other fields. © the Author(s) 2010.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2011). Theory and events. Geoforum, 42(3), 263-265.
Barnett C (2010). African Literature as Political Philosophy, by M. S. C. Okolo. African Affairs, 109(436), 503-505.
Pykett J, Cloke P, Barnett C, Clarke N, Malpass A (2010). Learning to be global citizens: the rationalities of fair-trade education.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
28(3), 487-508.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2010). The politics of behaviour change. Environment and Planning A, 42(8), 1881-1886.
Dikeç M, Clark N, Barnett C (2009). Extending hospitality: Giving space, taking time.
Paragraph,
32(1), 1-14.
Abstract:
Extending hospitality: Giving space, taking time
The recent revival of the theme of hospitality in the humanities and social sciences reflects a shared concern with issues of belonging, identity and placement that arises out of the experience of globalized social life. In this context, migration - or spatial dislocation and relocation - is often equated with demands for hospitality. There is a need to engage more carefully with the 'proximities' that prompt acts of hospitality and inhospitality; to attend more closely to their spatial and temporal dimensions. Is the stranger or the Other primarily one who is recognisably 'out of place'? Or is there more to being estranged than moving from one territory to another? This brings us to the question of human finitude, and to the possibility of encounters with others that do not simply only occur in time or space, but are themselves generative of new times and spaces.
Abstract.
Rodgers, S. Barnett C, Cochrane A (2009). Mediating urban politics. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(1), 246-249.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2009). Re-engaging the intersections of media, politics and cities - Introduction to a debate.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
33(1), 231-232.
Abstract:
Re-engaging the intersections of media, politics and cities - Introduction to a debate
Within contemporary social theory and social science, urban and media studies are seen as zones of speciality, with distinctive theoretical traditions and substantive concerns. This introduction situates the four short essays making up this Debates and Developments section in relation to a recent interdisciplinary workshop held in June 2008 at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, where participants were encouraged to experiment with and rework the longstanding conceptual differences and disciplinary policing that so often sets apart media and urban studies. The essays showcased here focus on the theoretical approaches urban scholars might bring to bear on studies of how cities and media come together around matters of politics. © 2009 the Author. Journal Compilation © 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Abstract.
Scott D, Barnett C (2009). Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa.
Geoforum,
40(3), 373-382.
Abstract:
Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa
The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a 'brown' issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed 'civic science' strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2009). Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography - Edited by Jeremy W Crampton and Stuart Elden. Area, 41(1), 107-109.
Barnett C (2008). Political affects in public space: Normative blind-spots in non-representational ontologies.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
33(2), 186-200.
Abstract:
Political affects in public space: Normative blind-spots in non-representational ontologies
Recent theoretical debates in human geography have been characterised by a preference for ontological styles of argument. The ontologisation of theory is associated with distinctive claims about rethinking 'the political'. This paper draws on an avowedly 'non-representationalist' philosophical perspective to develop an interpretation of ontology-talk as a genre that provides reasons for certain commitments. This argument is developed with reference to recent accounts of the spatial politics of affect in cultural geography and urban studies, and of the neuropolitics of media affects in political theory. The commitments that the ontology of affect provides reasons for are shown to revolve around understandings of the value of democracy. Assertions of the political relevance of ontologies of affect rhetorically appeal to norms that are not explicitly avowed from these theoretical perspectives. The ontologisation of affect depends on a particular settlement of the priority-claims of different families of concepts. The combination of an ontological style of theoretical analysis and an imperative to claim relevance for affective aspects of life in terms of rethinking 'the political' leads to a presentation of affect as an effective modality of manipulation mediated by infrastructures of public space. The ontological presentation of affect therefore forecloses on a series of normative questions provoked by the acknowledgement of the affective aspects of life. While the value of democracy is thrown into new relief by affect onto-stories, the full implications of any likely reconfiguration of our understandings of democracy remain to be elaborated in this line of thought, not least because it avoids any engagement with the principle of participation by all affected interests. © Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2008.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Cloke P, Barnett C, Malpass A (2008). Spaces and ethics of organic food. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 219-230.
Barnett C, Clarke N, Cloke P, Malpass A (2008). The elusive subjects of neoliberalism: beyond the analysis of governmentality. Cultural Studies, 22, 624-653.
Barnett C (2008). Theorising democracy geographically. Geoforum, 39(5), 1637-1640.
Malpass A, Cloke P, Barnett C, Clarke N (2007). Fairtrade urbanism? the politics of place beyond place in the Bristol Fairtrade City campaign. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 633-645.
Barnett C, Land D (2007). Geographies of generosity: Beyond the 'moral turn'.
Geoforum,
38(6), 1065-1075.
Abstract:
Geographies of generosity: Beyond the 'moral turn'
This paper questions Geographers debates about 'caring at a distance' and the 'geographies of responsibility', focussing on the treatment of the theme of partiality in ethics and justice. Debates in Geography often present partial commitments as morally or politically problematic on the grounds that they prioritize self-interest, exclusionary, and geographically restricted ways of relating to others. We outline how debates about caring at a distance and the geographies of responsibility frame partiality as a problem to be overcome. We argue that Geography's engagements with moral philosophy are premised on faulty assumptions about the sorts of influences people are liable to act upon (one's that privilege causal knowledge as the primary motivating force), and also flawed assumptions about the sorts of problems that academic reasoning about normative issues is meant to address (the assumption that people are too egoistical and not altruistic enough). We use the theme of generosity as an entry point to argue that partiality and finitude might be the conditions for any ethical-political project that de-centres the motivation of practical action away from the sovereign self towards responsive and attentive relations of encounter with the needs of others. Understanding generosity as a modality of power suggests a revised programme for geographical investigations of the intersection between ethics, morality and politics: one which looks at how opportunities to address normative demands in multiple registers are organized and transformed; at the ways in which dispositions to respond and to be receptive to others are worked up; and how opportunities for acting responsively on these dispositions are organized. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Barnett C, Cloke P, Malpass A (2007). Globalising the consumer: politics in an ethical register. Political Geography, 26, 231-249.
Barnett C (2007). In the space of theory: postfoundational geographies of the nation-state.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A,
39(2), 502-504.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2007). Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy.
JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY,
33(2), 459-461.
Author URL.
Barnett C, Scott D (2007). Spaces of opposition: Activism and deliberation in post-apartheid environmental politics.
Environment and Planning A,
39(11), 2612-2631.
Abstract:
Spaces of opposition: Activism and deliberation in post-apartheid environmental politics
Drawing on recent political theory that examines the relationship between inclusive deliberation and oppositional activism in processes of democratisation, we develop a case study of environmental justice mobilisation in post-apartheid South Africa. We focus on the emergence of a network of social movement organisations embedded in particular localities in the city of Durban, connected into national and transnational campaigns, and centred on grievances around industrial air pollution. We analyse how the geographies of uneven industrial and urban development in Durban combine with sedimented place-based histories of activism to make particular locations spaces of democratic contention, in which the scope and operation of formal democratic procedures are challenged and transformed. We examine the range of strategic engagements adopted by social movement organisations in pursuing their objectives, looking in particular at the dynamic interaction between inclusion in deliberative forums and more adversarial, activist strategies of legal challenge and dramaturgical protest. We identify the key organisational features of groups involved in this environmental justice network, which both enable and constrain particular patterns of democratic engagement with the state and capital. We also identify a disjuncture between the interpretative frames of different actors involved in participatory policy making. These factors help to explain the difficulties faced by social movement organisations in opening up the space for legitimate nonparliamentary opposition in a political culture shaped by norms of conciliation and consensus. © 2007 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Barnett C, Cloke P, Malpass A (2007). The political rationalities of fair-trade consumption in the United Kingdom. Politics and Society, 35, 583-607.
Dalby S (2006). In the space of theory: Postfoundational geographies of the nation-state.
ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS,
96(4), 830-832.
Author URL.
Barnett C, Cloke P, Clarke N, Malpass A (2005). Consuming ethics: Articulating the subjects and spaces of ethical consumption.
ANTIPODE,
37(1), 23-45.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2005). Life after Derrida. Antipode, 37(2), 239-241.
Barnett C (2005). Temporality and the paradoxes of democracy. Political Geography, 24(5), 641-647.
Barnett C (2005). The consolations of 'neoliberalism'.
Geoforum,
36(1 SPEC. ISS.), 7-12.
Abstract:
The consolations of 'neoliberalism'
Recent work on neoliberalism has sought to reconcile a Marxist understanding of hegemony with poststructuralist ideas of discourse and governmentality derived from Foucault. This paper argues that this convergence cannot resolve the limitations of Marxist theories of contemporary socio-economic change, and nor do they do justice to the degree to which Foucault's work might be thought of as a supplement to liberal political thought. The turn to Foucault highlights the difficulty that theories of hegemony have in accounting for the suturing together of top-down programmes with the activities of everyday life. However, the prevalent interpretation of governmentality only compounds this problem, by supposing that the implied subject-effects of programmes of rule are either automatically realised, or more or less successfully 'contested' and 'resisted'. Theories of hegemony and of governmentality both assume that subject-formation works through a circular process of recognition and subjection. Both approaches therefore treat 'the social' as a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities. This means that neither approach can acknowledge the proactive role that long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change can play in reshaping formal practices of politics, policy, and administration. The instrumental use of notions of governmentality to sustain theories of neoliberalism and neoliberalization supports a two-dimensional understanding of political power - which is understood in terms of relations of imposition and resistance - and of geographical space - which is understood in terms of the diffusion and contingent combination of hegemonic projects. Theories of neoliberalism provide a consoling image of how the world works, and in their simplistic reiteration of the idea that liberalism privileges the market and individual self-interest, they provide little assistance in thinking about how best to balance equally compelling imperatives to respect pluralistic difference and enable effective collective action. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2005). Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness.
Progress in Human Geography,
29(1), 5-21.
Abstract:
Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness
This paper considers the relevance of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to geography's engagements with both mainstream moral philosophy and poststructuralist theory. This relevance lies in the way in which their work unsettles the ascription of normative value to relations of proximity and distance. Distance is usually understood to be a medium of moral harm or indifference. In contrast, Levinas presents distance as the very condition of responsibility. Grasping the significance of this argument requires an appreciation of the temporality of responsibility and responsiveness that both Levinas and Derrida emphasize. They present an alternative way of understanding the relationality of subjectivity and social processes. Through a schematic exposition of key themes in Levinas' work, prevalent understandings of the spatiality of relations are shown to harbour their own forms of indifference and moral harm. The full effect of Levinas' reconsideration of the value of relations between proximity and distance is brought out in Derrida's recent writings on hospitality. For both thinkers, there is no natural geographical scene for the cultivation of responsibility. Rather, their shared focus upon temporality emphasizes the degree to which responsibility is motivated in response to the activities of others. The implication of this argument is that critical analysis should be reorientated towards practices that shape individual and collective dispositions to acknowledge the claims of others. © 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2004). Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation, and being-with-others.
Political Geography,
23(5), 503-528.
Abstract:
Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation, and being-with-others
This paper addresses the contribution of deconstruction to democratic theory. It critically considers the usefulness of the conceptual distinction between "politics" and "the political" as a means of interpreting deconstruction's relation to political questions. In particular, it critically engages with the inflection of deconstructive themes in the theory of radical democracy (RD) developed by Laclau and Mouffe. It is argued that this approach ontologizes the politics/political distinction, and elides together two distinct senses of otherness. This is registered in the prevalence of spatial tropes in this approach. The spatialization of key issues in political theory leads to a diminished sensitivity to the variegated temporalities through which solidarity and conflict, unity and multiplicity are negotiated. This is discussed with reference to the concept of articulation. By reducing temporality to a metaphysics of contingency, RD converges with a voluntaristic decisionism in its account of hegemony and political authority. The paper proceeds to a critical consideration of the interpretation of "undecidability" in RD, and of the elective affinity between this approach and the fascist critique of liberal democracy associated with Carl Schmitt. This discussion sets the scene for an alternative reading of the political significance of the theme of undecidability in Derrida's thought. This reading focuses on the problem of negotiating two equally compelling forms of responsibility, the urgent responsibility to act in the world, and the patient responsibility to acknowledge otherness. By discussing the complex temporising associated with the theme of undecidability in deconstruction, the paper argues for a reassessment of the normative value of the concept of representation as it has developed in modern democratic theory. It develops an understanding of undecidability that points beyond the undeconstructed decisionism shared by both Schmitt and RD towards an account of the opening of public spaces of deliberation, deferral, and decision. More broadly, the paper is concerned with the moral limits of a prevalent spatialized interpretation of key themes in the poststructuralist canon, including difference, alterity, and otherness. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2004). Yizo Yizo: Citizenship, commodification and popular culture in South Africa.
Media, Culture and Society,
26(2).
Abstract:
Yizo Yizo: Citizenship, commodification and popular culture in South Africa
This article critically examines the development of an innovative approach to educational broadcasting in post-apartheid South Africa. Examining the policy background and the public debate sparked by the controversial drama series, Yizo Yizo, it is argued that the spatial restructuring of media markets re-articulates the sites and scales at which media practices and citizenship are connected. Yizo Yizo makes creative use of globalized media genres to address pressing social issues in ways that connect to national public policy debates. It does so by mainstreaming educational broadcasting, and by recognizing children's complex media literacies and competencies. It is argued that the series is an example of a new rationality of media citizenship developed in the distinctive context of post-apartheid transition that has broader significance for understandings' of the implications of media globalization for citizenship, culture and participation. Yizo Yizo is a practical example of mediated deliberation aimed at empowering citizens. It is indicative of subtle but important shifts in the dimensions of public culture in a highly divided society.
Abstract.
Jeffrey C (2002). Entanglements of power: Geographies of domination/resistance.
ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS,
92(2), 352-353.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2001). Culture, geography, and the arts of government.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
19(1), 7-24.
Abstract:
Culture, geography, and the arts of government
In this paper I endeavor to prise open the theoretical closure of the conceptualization of culture in contemporary human geography. Foucault's later work on government provides the basis for a useable definition of culture as an object of analysis which avoids problems inherent in abstract, generalizing, and expansive notions of culture. The emergence of this Foucauldian approach in cultural studies is discussed, and the distinctive conceptualization of the relations between culture and power that it implies are elaborated. This reconceptualization informs a critical project of tracking the institutional formation of the cultural and the deployment of distinctively cultural forms of regulation into the fabric of modern social life. It is argued that the culture-and-government approach needs to be supplemented by a more sustained consideration of the spatiality and scale of power-relations. It is also suggested that this approach might throw into new perspective the dynamic behind geography's own cultural turn.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2001). Culture, policy, and subsidiary in the European Union: from symbolic identity to the governmentalisation of culture.
Political Geography,
20(4), 405-426.
Abstract:
Culture, policy, and subsidiary in the European Union: from symbolic identity to the governmentalisation of culture
This paper critically assesses the discourse of cultural policy initiatives of the European Union (EU) during the 1990s. It focuses upon the formulation of so-called 'cultural action' following the recognition of culture in the Treaty on European Union in 1992. It explores the multiple instrumentalities ascribed to culture as a medium for the management of European integration, and suggests that the evolution of policies to promote cultural co-operation is indicative of a progressive 'governmentalisation' of culture at the EU level. The paper argues that the focus of critical evaluation of EU cultural policy should be upon practices of citizenship participation in emergent network polities. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Low M, Barnett C (2000). After globalisation.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
18(1), 53-61.
Abstract:
After globalisation
Globalisation has become an almost ubiquitous term in academic debates, policy circles, and popular culture. In this paper we critically consider geography's characteristic form of engagement with the multifaceted features of globalisation discourses and realities. Globalisation provides an entry point for assertions of the conceptual and empirical importance of space, place, context, and locality. However, we argue that this form of engagement subordinates the central, and conceptually problematic, historicism of globalisation to a set of more manageable disciplinary concerns. We provide a critical discussion of the historicist dimensions of globalisation discourses, and indicate some of the ways in which critical accounts can reproduce this historicism. By raising this problem, we suggest that space and spatiality are not always or automatically the most significant entry point for conceptual critique and engagement. The case of globalisation therefore indicates some of the limits of established forms of interdisciplinary dialogue between critical human geography and related fields.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2000). Language equity and the politics of representation in South African media reform.
Social Identities,
6(1), 63-90.
Abstract:
Language equity and the politics of representation in South African media reform
This paper examines how debates on language-equity and identity have helped to shape South African broadcasting reform in the 1990s. The broadcasting sector is of interest as an example of how patterns of institutional transformation give concrete form to constitutionally protected citizenship rights. The politics of language-equity in broadcasting reform has been shaped by conflicts over the legitimacy of who is represented, by what means, by whom, and for what purposes in processes of policy-deliberation and decision-making. The role of public agencies (including the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Broadcasting Authority), private capital, civil society organisations and the state in shaping the significance ascribed to language-equity in the transformation of radio and television services is considered in detail. I argue that entrenched patterns of socio-economic inequality, social relations of ownership and control, and the existing structures of markets for broadcasting services have all constrained attempts to deploy broadcasting as an instrument for fostering more equitable treatment of diverse languages in the public sphere.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). Broadcasting the rainbow nation: Media, democracy, and nation-building in South Africa. Antipode, 31(3), 274-303.
Barnett C (1999). Constructions of apartheid in the international reception of the novels of J. M. Coetzee.
Journal of Southern African Studies,
25(2), 287-301.
Abstract:
Constructions of apartheid in the international reception of the novels of J. M. Coetzee
This paper discusses the international reception of the fiction of South African novelist and critic, J. M. Coetzee, in order to examine the institutional and rhetorical conventions which shaped the selection and circulation of particular forms of writing as exemplars of 'South African literature' from the 1970s through to the 1990s. The representation of Coelzee' s novels in two reading-formations is critically addressed: in non-academic literary reviews; and in the emergent academic paradigm of post-colonial literary theory. It is argued that in both cases, South African literary writing has often been re-inscribed into new contexts according to abstract and moralised understandings of the nature of apartheid.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). Culture, government and spatiality: Reassessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies.
International Journal of Cultural Studies,
2(3), 369-397.
Abstract:
Culture, government and spatiality: Reassessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies
This article critically discusses the reconceptualization of culture and governmentality in recent Australian cultural-policy studies. It argues that the further development of this conceptualization requires a more careful consideration of the complex relations between culture, power and the different spatialities of social practices. The assumptions of this literature regarding social-democratic public institutions and the nation-state are critically addressed in the light of contemporary processes of globalization. It is argued that the use made of Foucault in this paradigm privileges a model of disciplinary power which is dependent on a particular spatialization of social subjects and technologies of the self. As a result, an uncritical application of this model to all cultural practices supports a far too coherent image of practices of government in producing sought-after subject-effects. It is suggested that the different articulations of spatio-temporal presence and absence in cultural technologies require a less totalizing understanding of the forms of power exercised through governmental practices. © 1999 SAGE Publications.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). Deconstructing context: Exposing Derrida.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
24(3), 277-293.
Abstract:
Deconstructing context: Exposing Derrida
Deconstruction has become a theme in various strands of geographical research. It has not, however, been the subject of much explicit commentary. This paper elaborates on some basic themes concerning the relationship between deconstruction and conceptualizations of context, with particular reference to issues of textual interpretation. The double displacement of textuality characteristic of deconstruction is discussed, followed by a consideration of the themes of 'writing' and 'iterability' as distinctive figures for an alternative spatialization of concepts of context. It is argued that deconstruction informs a questioning of the normative assumptions underwriting the value and empirical identity of context.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). The limits of media democratization in South Africa: Politics, privatization and regulation. Media, Culture and Society, 21(5), 649-671.
Barnett C (1999). Uneven liberalisation in Southern Africa: Convergence and democracy in communications policy.
Javnost,
6(3), 101-114.
Abstract:
Uneven liberalisation in Southern Africa: Convergence and democracy in communications policy
Technological convergence between telecommunications, broadcasting and computing has become a central object of communications policy initiatives worldwide. This paper explores the implications of the associated shift towards prioritising industrial and competition policy imperatives over those of cultural policy in the context of processes of democratisation in Southern Africa during the 1990s. It examines the institutional mechanisms by which national regulatory regimes have been adjusted according to the dictates of market liberalisation promoted by international agencies (including the WTO, IMF, and World Bank), and mediated by regionally-based agencies (such as the Southern African Development Community). The paper explores the emerging tension between two philosophies of regulatory independence: a market liberal approach which prioritises transparency and independence as a condition of attracting inward foreign investment, and which endeavours to shield communications regulation from democratic oversight; and a radical democratic approach, which privileges the role of communications in the cultivation of freedom of expression and the extension of political participation, in which regulatory bodies are seen as necessarily independent of direct government control but remain responsive to pressures from civil society. The contested politics of regulatory convergence in Southern Africa are illustrated by reference to recent changes in regulatory policy in South Africa, and the extent to which the South African experience is being generalised through structures of regional governance is critically examined.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1998). Cultural twists and turns.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
16(6), 631-634.
Author URL.
Barnett C (1998). Impure and worldly geography: the africanist discourse of the royal geographical society, 1831-73. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23(2), 239-251.
Leichenko RM (1998). Spaces of globalization: Reasserting the power of the local.
JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE,
38(1), 187-189.
Author URL.
Barnett C (1998). The contradictions of broadcasting reform in post-apartheid South Africa.
Review of African Political Economy(78), 551-570.
Abstract:
The contradictions of broadcasting reform in post-apartheid South Africa
This article examines the process of mass media reform in South Africa during the 1990s, with particular reference to broadcasting. It identifies tensions between the attempt to restructure broadcasting as a public sphere capable of supporting national unification and democratisation, the existence of socioeconomic differentiation and cultural diversity at subnational scales and the pressures which impinge upon the broadcasting sector as a result of policies aimed at internationalising the South African economy. The formulation of broadcasting policy between 1990 and 1995 is reviewed, and the changes that have taken place during the implementation of restructuring and re-regulation from 1996 to 1998 are critically assessed. The article concludes that the intensified commercialisation of broadcasting is at odds with political objectives of transforming the mass media into a public sphere supportive of a diverse and independent civil society.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1998). The cultural turn: Fashion or progress in human geography?.
ANTIPODE,
30(4), 379-+.
Author URL.
Barnett C (1997). "Sing along with the common people": Politics, postcolonialism, and other figures.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
15(2), 137-154.
Abstract:
"Sing along with the common people": Politics, postcolonialism, and other figures
Recent interest amongst critical human geographers in postcolonial theory has been framed by a concern for the relationship between 'politics' and 'theory'. In this paper I address debates in the field of colonial discourse analysis in order to explore the connections between particular conceptions of language and particular models of politics to which oppositional academics consider themselves responsible. The rhetorical representation of empowerment and disempowerment through figures of 'speech' and 'silence', respectively, is critically examined in order to expose the limits of this representation of power relations. Through a reading of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's account of the dilemmas of subaltern representation, contrasted to that of Benita Parry, and staged via an account of their different interpretations of the exemplary postcolonial fictions of J M Coetzee, it is argued that the deconstruction of the conventional metaphorics of speech and silence calls into view the irreducible textuality of the work of representation. This implies that questions about institutional positionality and academic authority be kept squarely in sight when discussing the problems of representing the struggles and agency of marginalised social groups. It is suggested that the continuing suspicion of literary and cultural theory amongst social scientists for being insufficiently 'materialist' and/or 'political' may serve to reproduce certain forms of institutionally sanctioned disciplinary authority.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1996). 'A choice of nightmares': Narration and desire in Heart of Darkness.
Gender, Place and Culture,
3(3), 277-292.
Abstract:
'A choice of nightmares': Narration and desire in Heart of Darkness
This paper considers the gendered organisation of narration in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is argued that the text fictionalises its audience as an exclusively masculine community of readers, bounded together by shared interests and commitments. The discursive construction of preferred reading positions is critically examined with reference to the mobilisation of discourses of cannibalism and representations of femininity in the text. It is argued that positive evaluations of the text, as a critique of imperialism or a commentary on the human condition, are problematised by consideration of the gender values inscribed in the texture of the narrative.
Abstract.
Barnett C, Bowlby S (1996). How to talk properly and influence people. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(1), 125-127.
Barnett C (1996). Reworking theory.
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,
72(1), 80-81.
Author URL.
Barnett C, Low M (1996). Speculating on theory: Towards a political economy of academic publishing.
Area,
28(1), 13-24.
Abstract:
Speculating on theory: Towards a political economy of academic publishing
In the context of the rapid turnover of theory in geography, this paper treats theory as a commodity in relation to academic publishing and argues that translation is a constructive process by which new products circulate in international academic arenas. Results from a preliminary analysis of the translation of French writing are presented and some links between changing practice in the academic publishing industry and changes in intellectual agendas are hypothesised.
Abstract.
BARNETT C (1995). AWAKENING THE DEAD - WHO NEEDS THE HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF BRITISH GEOGRAPHERS,
20(4), 417-419.
Author URL.
BARNETT C (1995). GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS - GREGORY,D.
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,
71(4), 427-435.
Author URL.
BARNETT C (1993). PEDDLING POSTMODERNISM - a RESPONSE TO STROHMAYER AND HANNAH DOMESTICATING POSTMODERNISM.
ANTIPODE,
25(4), 345-358.
Author URL.
BARNETT C (1993). STUCK IN THE POST - AN UNSYMPATHETIC CRITIQUE OF ANDREW SAYER'S 'POSTMODERNIST THOUGHT IN GEOGRAPHY - a REALIST VIEW'.
ANTIPODE,
25(4), 365-368.
Author URL.
Chapters
Barnett C (2020). Deconstruction. In Kobayashi A (Ed) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2nd Edition), Elsevier, 187-194.
Barnett C (2020). Who’s afraid of pragmatism?. In Wills J, Lake RW (Eds.) The Power of Pragmatism: Knowledge Production and Social Inquiry, Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 275-282.
Barnett C, Low, M (2017). Democracy. In Richardson D, Castree N, Goodchild M, Kobayashi A, Liu W, Marston R (Eds.) The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
Barnett C, Parnell S (2017). Spatial rationalities and the possibilities for planing in the New Urban Agenda for Sustainable Development. In Watson V, Bhan G, Srinivas S (Eds.)
The Companion to Planning in the Global South, Routledge.
Full text.
Barnett C (2015). Postcolonialism: Powers of Representation. In Aitken S, Valentine G (Eds.) Approaches to Human Geography.
Barnett C (2014). How to think about public space. In Cloke P, Crang P, Goodwin M (Eds.) Introducing Human Geography.
Barnett C (2013). Political agency between urban and transnational spaces. In Maiguashca B (Ed) Contemporary Political Agency: Theory and Practice, Routledge, 31-51.
Barnett C (2012). Changing Cities. In Tyszczuk R, Smith J, Clark N, Butcher M (Eds.) ATLAS: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World, Black Dog Publishing.
Publications by year
2020
Barnett C (2020). Deconstruction. In Kobayashi A (Ed) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (2nd Edition), Elsevier, 187-194.
Barnett C (2020). Logical geographies of action: what are debates about emotions about?. Nonsite.org
Barnett C (2020). Must we mean what we do?.
History of the Human Sciences Full text.
Barnett C (2020). Putting affect into perspective. Syndicate
Kinsley S, Layton J, Davis J, Wills J, Featherstone D, Temenos C, Barnett C (2020). Reading Clive Barnett's the Priority of Injustice. Political Geography, 78, 102065-102065.
Samers M, Barkan J, Kallio K, Fluri J, Barnett C (2020). The priority of injustice. AAG Review of Books, 43-43.
Barnett C (2020). The strange case of urban theory.
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society,
13(3), 443-459.
Abstract:
The strange case of urban theory
Abstract
. Recent debates in urban theory have centred on the problem of whether universal concepts can have applications to particular places. These debates could benefit from more serious attention to how urban thought involves styles of analogical reasoning closer in spirit to casuistry than to explanatory theory. The difficult status of ‘the case’ in urban studies is explored through a consideration of different types of universality in this field, leading to a re-consideration of ideas of experimentalism and wicked problems. Further attention should be given to the multiple styles of reasoning through which urban knowledge is produced and circulated.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2020). Who’s afraid of pragmatism?. In Wills J, Lake RW (Eds.) The Power of Pragmatism: Knowledge Production and Social Inquiry, Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 275-282.
2018
Barnett C (2018). Geography and the priority of injustice.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers Full text.
Barnett C (2018). What do cities have to do with democracy?.
Engagée: politisch-philosophische Einmischungen, 10-22.
Full text.
2017
Barnett C, Low, M (2017). Democracy. In Richardson D, Castree N, Goodchild M, Kobayashi A, Liu W, Marston R (Eds.) The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
Barnett C (2017). Planning as design in the wicked city.
Resilience Full text.
Barnett C, Parnell S (2017). Spatial rationalities and the possibilities for planing in the New Urban Agenda for Sustainable Development. In Watson V, Bhan G, Srinivas S (Eds.)
The Companion to Planning in the Global South, Routledge.
Full text.
Barnett C (2017).
The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory. Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press.
Abstract:
The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C (2017). The situations of urban inquiry: thinking problematically about the city.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Full text.
2016
Barnett C, Parnell S (2016). Ideas, implementation and indicators: epistemologies of the post-2015 urban agenda.
Environment and Urbanization,
28:1, 87-98.
Abstract:
Ideas, implementation and indicators: epistemologies of the post-2015 urban agenda
The success of the campaign for a dedicated urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reflected a consensus on the importance of “cities” in sustainable development. The relevance accorded to cities in the SDGs is twofold, reflected both in the specific place- based content of the Urban Goal and the more general concern with the multiple scales at which all indicators will be institutionalized. Divergent views of the city and urban processes, suppressed within the Urban Goal, are, however, likely to become more explicit as attention shifts to implementation. Acknowledging the different theoretical traditions used to legitimize the new urban agenda is an overdue task. As this agenda develops post-2015, the adequacy of these forms of urban theory will become more contested around, among other concerns, the possibilities and limits of place-based policy, advocacy and activism; and practices of monitoring and evaluating ongoing processes of urban transformation along multiple axes of development.
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C, Mahony N (2016). Marketing practices and the reconfiguration of public action.
Policy and Politics,
44, 367-382.
Abstract:
Marketing practices and the reconfiguration of public action
Market segmentation methodologies are increasingly used in public policy, arts and culture management, and third sector campaigning. Rather than presume that this is an index of creeping neoliberalization, we track the shared and contested understandings of the public benefits of using segmentation methods. Segmentation methods are used to generate stable images of individual and group attitudes and motivations, and these images are used to inform strategies that seek to either change these dispositions or to mobilise them in new directions. Different segments of the population are identified as bearing particular responsibilities for public action on different issues.
Abstract.
Full text.
Barnett C (2016). Toward a Geography of Injustice.
Alue ja Ympäristö (Finnish Society for Regional and Environmental Studies),
2016:1, 111-118.
Full text.
2015
Barnett C (2015). On problematization: Elaborations on a theme in “Late Foucault”.
Nonsite.org,
16Abstract:
On problematization: Elaborations on a theme in “Late Foucault”
The notion of problematization has recently been identified as a key to interpreting the arc of Michel Foucault’s work. In the social sciences as well as in the humanities, problematization is often invoked to support a method of critical debunking. I argue that a more nuanced reading of elaborations of this notion by Foucault and others points to an alternative interpretation. This alternative turns on appreciating that problematizations are best thought of as creative responses to uncertain situations, an idea presented by Foucault in an account of the plural rationalities of ethical action. It is argued that to fully realize the potential of the idea of problematization, some of the founding assumptions and manoeuvres of critical social analysis need to be interrupted. The notion lends itself to an understanding of the inherent problematicity of all action, and therefore to a more modest understanding of the tasks of social inquiry.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2015). On the milieu of security: situating the emergence of new spaces of public action.
Dialogues in Human Geography,
5(3)(5), 257-270.
Full text.
Barnett C (2015). Postcolonialism: Powers of Representation. In Aitken S, Valentine G (Eds.) Approaches to Human Geography.
Barnett C (2015). The scandal of publicity. Dialogues in Human Geography(5), 296-300.
2014
Barnett C (2014). Blue Jeans: the Art of the Ordinary. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(7), 853-856.
Barnett C (2014). Geography and ethics III: from moral geographies to geographies of worth.
Progress in Human Geography,
38(1), 151-160.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics III: from moral geographies to geographies of worth
Geographers' discussions of normative issues oscillate between two poles: the exhortation of 'moral geography' and the descriptive detail of 'moral geographies'. Neither approach gives enough room for ordinarily normative dimensions of action. Recent philosophical discussions of the implicit normativity of practices, and ethnographic discussions of the ordinary, provide resources for developing more modest accounts of normativity and practical reasoning. The relevance to geography of recent re-evaluations of the place of reflection and thought in habitual action is illustrated with reference to the antinomies which shape debates about the ethics and efficacy of behaviour change initiatives. The potential for further developing these insights is explored with reference to the normative turn in contemporary social theory, which includes discussions of conventions, practices of justification, lay normativity, phronesis, recognition and orders of worth. The potential contribution of philosophies of action and intentionality and social theories of the normative for moving geography beyond the impasses of moral geography versus moral geographies depends on suspending an inherited wariness about the normative, which might be helped by thinking of this topic in more ordinary ways. The outlines of a programme for geographies of worth are considered. © the Author(s) 2013.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2014). How to think about public space. In Cloke P, Crang P, Goodwin M (Eds.) Introducing Human Geography.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2014). Media practices and urban politics: conceptualizing the powers of the media-urban nexus.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
32(6), 1054-1070.
Full text.
Barnett C (2014). Theorizing emergent public spheres: negotiating development, democracy and dissent. Acta Academica, 46(1), 1-21.
Barnett C (2014). What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
38(5), 1625-1643.
Abstract:
What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?
The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under-theorized and under-researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present 'democracy' as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under-theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post-Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all-affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the 'spatial turn' in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern. © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited.
Abstract.
Full text.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2014). Where is Urban Politics?.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
38(5), 1551-1560.
Abstract:
Where is Urban Politics?
We outline the rationale for reopening the issue of the spatiality of the 'urban' in urban politics. There is a long tradition of arguing about the distinctive political qualities of urban sites, practices and processes. Recent work often relies on spatial concepts or metaphors that anchor various political phenomena to cities while simultaneously putting the specificity of the urban itself in question. This symposium seeks to extend debates about the relationship between the urban and the political. Instead of asking 'what is urban politics?', seeking a definition of the urban as a starting point we begin by asking 'where is urban politics?'. This question orients all of the contributions to this symposium, and it allows each to trace diverse political dimensions of urban life and living beyond the confines of 'the city' as classically conceived. The symposium engages with 'the urban question' through diverse settings and objects, including infrastructures, in-between spaces, professional cultures, transnational and postcolonial spaces and spaces of sovereignty. Contributions draw on a range of intellectual perspectives, including geography, urban studies, political science and political theory, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, planning and environmental studies - indicating the range of intellectual traditions that can and do inform the investigation of the urban/political nexus. © 2014 Urban Research Publications Limited.
Abstract.
Full text.
2013
Barnett C (2013). Consumption and its consequences by Daniel Miller Cambridge: Polity, 2012, 205 pp notes, refs and index ISBN 9780745661087. Area, 45(4), 507-508.
Barnett C, Bridge G (2013). Geographies of Radical Democracy: Agonistic Pragmatism and the Formation of Affected Interests.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers,
103(4), 1022-1040.
Abstract:
Geographies of Radical Democracy: Agonistic Pragmatism and the Formation of Affected Interests
There is significant interest in democracy in contemporary human geography. Theoretically, this interest has been most strongly influenced by poststructuralist theories of radical democracy and associated ontologies of relational spatiality. These emphasize a priori understandings of the spaces of democratic politics, ones that focus on marginal spaces and the destabilization of established patterns. This article develops an alternative account of the spaces of democratic politics that seeks to move beyond the stylized contrast of poststructuralist agonism and liberal consensualism. This alternative draws into focus the spatial dimensions of philosophical pragmatism and the relevance of this tradition for thinking about the geographies of democracy. In particular, the geographical relevance of pragmatism lies in the distinctive inflection of the all-affected principle and of the rationalities of problem solving. Drawing on John Dewey's work, a conceptualization of transactional space is developed to reconfigure understandings of the agonistics of participation as well as the experimental institutionalization of democratic will. The difference that a pragmatist approach makes to understandings of the geographies of democracy is explored in relation to transnational and urban politics. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2013). Political agency between urban and transnational spaces. In Maiguashca B (Ed) Contemporary Political Agency: Theory and Practice, Routledge, 31-51.
Barnett C, Clarke N, Cloke P (2013). Problematising practices: author’s response.
Area,
45(2), 260-263.
Full text.
Barnett C (2013). Public action/political space: an appreciative response to John Parkinson.
Policy and politics,
42(3), 449-451.
Full text.
Barnett C (2013). Theory as political technology.
Antipode: a radical journal of geography Full text.
2012
Barnett C (2012). Changing Cities. In Tyszczuk R, Smith J, Clark N, Butcher M (Eds.) ATLAS: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World, Black Dog Publishing.
Barnett C (2012). Geography and ethics: Placing life in the space of reasons.
Progress in Human Geography,
36(3), 379-388.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics: Placing life in the space of reasons
Discussions of ethics in recent human geography have been strongly inflected by readings of so-called 'Continental Philosophy'. The ascendancy of this style of theorizing is marked by a tendency to stake ethical claims on ontological assertions, which effectively close down serious consideration of the problem of normativity in social science. Recent work on practical reason emerging from so-called 'Analytical' philosophy presents a series of challenges to how geographers approach the relationships between space, ethics, and power. This work revolves around attempts to displace long-standing dualisms between naturalism and normativity, by blurring boundaries between forms of action and knowledge which belong to a 'space of causality' and those that are placed in a 'space of reasons'. The relevance of this blurring to geography is illustrated by reference to recent debates about the relationships between rationality and habit in unreflective action. Ongoing developments in this tradition of philosophy provide resources for strengthening a nascent strand of work on the geographies of practical reason that is evident in work on ethnomethodology, behaviour change, and geographies of action. © the Author(s) 2012.
Abstract.
Full text.
Marx C, Halcli A, Barnett C (2012). Locating the global governance of HIV and AIDS: Exploring the geographies of transnational advocacy networks.
Health and Place,
18(3), 490-495.
Abstract:
Locating the global governance of HIV and AIDS: Exploring the geographies of transnational advocacy networks
Over the last two decades, HIV and AIDS have been framed as a "global problem". In the process, transnational advocacy networks have emerged as important actors, and particular places are recognised as key nodes in global HIV and AIDS governance. Using the example of London, UK, this paper examines how these networks are involved in local articulations of global governance and reveals that 'global' processes are inflected by the locations through which networks are routed. The example suggests the need for further analysis of the geographies through which HIV and AIDS is reconfiguring power relations at a variety of spatial scales. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2012). Situating the geographies of injustice in democratic theory.
Geoforum,
43(4), 677-686.
Abstract:
Situating the geographies of injustice in democratic theory
Post-Marxist and poststructuralist ontologies of the political have been important reference points for recent discussions of democracy in critical human geography and related fields. This paper considers the conceptual placement of contestation in a strand of democratic theory often denigrated by these approaches, namely theories of deliberative democracy informed by post-Habermasian Critical Theory. It is argued that this concern with contestation derives from a focus on the relationships between different rationalities of action. It is proposed that this tradition of thought informs a distinctively phenomenological approach to understanding the situations out of which democratic energies emerge. In elaborating on this phenomenological understanding of the emergence of political space, the paper proceeds in three stages. First, it is argued that the strong affinities between ontological conceptualisations of 'the political' and the ontological register of canonical spatial theory squeezes out any serious consideration of the plural rationalities of ordinary political action. Second, debates between deliberative and agonistic theorists of democracy are relocated away from questions of ontology. These are centred instead on disputed understandings of 'normativity'. This move opens up conceptual space for the analysis of phenomenologies of injustice. Third, using the example of debates about transnational democracy in which critical theorists of deliberative democracy explicitly address the reconfigurations of the space of 'the political', it is argued that this Critical Theory tradition can contribute to a distinctively 'topological' sense of political space which follows from thinking of political action as emerging from worldly situations of injustice. In bringing into focus this phenomenological approach to political action, the paper has lessons for both geographers and political theorists. Rather than continuing to resort to a priori models of what is properly political or authentically democratic, geographers would do well to acknowledge the ordinary dynamics and disappointments which shape political action. On the other hand, political theorists might do well to acknowledge the limits of the 'methodological globalism' that characterises so much recent work on the re-scaling of democracy. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract.
Banks M, Barnett C (2012). The Uses of Social Science. Milton Keynes, the Open University.
2011
Barnett C (2011). Geography and ethics: Justice unbound.
Progress in Human Geography,
35(2), 246-255.
Abstract:
Geography and ethics: Justice unbound
Debates in geography often centre on whether it is possible or preferable to develop robust normative foundations for critique. But the relationship of academic analysis to normative concepts does not need to be thought of in foundational terms, one way or the other. It is better understood in terms of elaboration, elucidation and amplification. Theorizing justice from the bottom up in this way is consistent with certain strands in recent moral and political philosophy, exemplified by Amartya Sen's recent account of comparative justice. Recent work by feminist philosophers including Seyla Benhabib, Nancy Fraser, and Iris Marion Young explicitly engages with the question of how to theorize the geographies of democratic justice in non-foundational, modest ways. The proliferation of geographical concerns in moral and political philosophy is indicative of the various ways in which concepts of justice are 'unbound' from forms of containment to which they have often been subjected. Philosophizing about justice is no longer automatically restricted to a national frame; and neither are questions of justice contained within prescriptive styles of reasoning, opening up instead to insights from empirical social sciences. Freeing concepts of justice from imaginary geographical constraints and from restrictive rationalistic conventions presents a challenge to spatial disciplines to suspend their chauvinism about the use of spatial vocabularies in other fields. © the Author(s) 2010.
Abstract.
Barnett C, Cloke P, Clarke N, Malpass A (2011). Globalizing Responsibility: the Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.
Barnett C (2011). Theory and events. Geoforum, 42(3), 263-265.
2010
Barnett C (2010). African Literature as Political Philosophy, by M. S. C. Okolo. African Affairs, 109(436), 503-505.
Pykett J, Cloke P, Barnett C, Clarke N, Malpass A (2010). Learning to be global citizens: the rationalities of fair-trade education.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
28(3), 487-508.
Author URL.
Mahony N, Newman J, Barnett C (eds)(2010).
Rethinking the Public: Innovations in research, theory and practice., the Policy Press.
Abstract:
Rethinking the Public: Innovations in research, theory and practice
Abstract.
Barnett C (2010). The politics of behaviour change. Environment and Planning A, 42(8), 1881-1886.
2009
Dikeç M, Clark N, Barnett C (eds)(2009).
Extending Hospitality: giving space, taking time., Edinburgh University Press.
Abstract:
Extending Hospitality: giving space, taking time
Abstract.
Dikeç M, Clark N, Barnett C (2009). Extending hospitality: Giving space, taking time.
Paragraph,
32(1), 1-14.
Abstract:
Extending hospitality: Giving space, taking time
The recent revival of the theme of hospitality in the humanities and social sciences reflects a shared concern with issues of belonging, identity and placement that arises out of the experience of globalized social life. In this context, migration - or spatial dislocation and relocation - is often equated with demands for hospitality. There is a need to engage more carefully with the 'proximities' that prompt acts of hospitality and inhospitality; to attend more closely to their spatial and temporal dimensions. Is the stranger or the Other primarily one who is recognisably 'out of place'? Or is there more to being estranged than moving from one territory to another? This brings us to the question of human finitude, and to the possibility of encounters with others that do not simply only occur in time or space, but are themselves generative of new times and spaces.
Abstract.
Rodgers, S. Barnett C, Cochrane A (2009). Mediating urban politics. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(1), 246-249.
Rodgers S, Barnett C, Cochrane A (2009). Re-engaging the intersections of media, politics and cities - Introduction to a debate.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
33(1), 231-232.
Abstract:
Re-engaging the intersections of media, politics and cities - Introduction to a debate
Within contemporary social theory and social science, urban and media studies are seen as zones of speciality, with distinctive theoretical traditions and substantive concerns. This introduction situates the four short essays making up this Debates and Developments section in relation to a recent interdisciplinary workshop held in June 2008 at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, where participants were encouraged to experiment with and rework the longstanding conceptual differences and disciplinary policing that so often sets apart media and urban studies. The essays showcased here focus on the theoretical approaches urban scholars might bring to bear on studies of how cities and media come together around matters of politics. © 2009 the Author. Journal Compilation © 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Abstract.
Scott D, Barnett C (2009). Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa.
Geoforum,
40(3), 373-382.
Abstract:
Something in the Air: Civic science and contentious environmental politics in post-apartheid South Africa
The emergence of an environmental movement in post-apartheid South Africa has involved the reframing of the environment as a 'brown' issue, articulating the discourse of social and environmental justice and a rights-based notion of democracy. Environmental movements have pursued a dual strategy of deliberation and activist opposition. Environmental movements have deployed science to pursue the strategic task of democratic opposition and have established networks of environmental knowledge and expertise. Ecological modernization is the dominant approach to environmental governance and adopts a science-based policy approach. In this context the regulation and management of the environment is premised on the need for science, which provides the authoritative basis for a regulatory response. In local environmental movements, there exists a fundamental tension between a cumulative history of lay knowledge about pollution and the lack of official acknowledgement of qualitative narratives. This is accompanied by a lack and suspicion of reliable official data. Environmental movements have thus employed 'civic science' strategically to place the issue of air pollution on the political agenda. This paper uses the case of environmental politics in Durban to reflect on the ways in which civic science and lay knowledge, together constituting community hybrid knowledge, are produced and disseminated in order to pressure the state and capital. The three ways in which knowledge is deployed are: to frame environmental problems, in strategies of oppositional advocacy, and in deliberative policy forums. Empirical analysis shows that civic science is produced through knowledge networks, and both lay knowledge and civic science are opportunistically used by environmental movements to engage both inside and outside formal policy making arenas. This deployment of hybrid knowledge by environmental movements represents a broader challenge to the power of science and technology based on increasing evidence of the hazards and risks facing ordinary people in their daily lives. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2009). Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and geography - Edited by Jeremy W Crampton and Stuart Elden. Area, 41(1), 107-109.
2008
Barnett C, Rose G, Robinson J (eds)(2008).
Geographies of Globalisation: a Demanding World., Sage Publications Limited.
Abstract:
Geographies of Globalisation: a Demanding World
Abstract.
Barnett C (2008). Political affects in public space: Normative blind-spots in non-representational ontologies.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
33(2), 186-200.
Abstract:
Political affects in public space: Normative blind-spots in non-representational ontologies
Recent theoretical debates in human geography have been characterised by a preference for ontological styles of argument. The ontologisation of theory is associated with distinctive claims about rethinking 'the political'. This paper draws on an avowedly 'non-representationalist' philosophical perspective to develop an interpretation of ontology-talk as a genre that provides reasons for certain commitments. This argument is developed with reference to recent accounts of the spatial politics of affect in cultural geography and urban studies, and of the neuropolitics of media affects in political theory. The commitments that the ontology of affect provides reasons for are shown to revolve around understandings of the value of democracy. Assertions of the political relevance of ontologies of affect rhetorically appeal to norms that are not explicitly avowed from these theoretical perspectives. The ontologisation of affect depends on a particular settlement of the priority-claims of different families of concepts. The combination of an ontological style of theoretical analysis and an imperative to claim relevance for affective aspects of life in terms of rethinking 'the political' leads to a presentation of affect as an effective modality of manipulation mediated by infrastructures of public space. The ontological presentation of affect therefore forecloses on a series of normative questions provoked by the acknowledgement of the affective aspects of life. While the value of democracy is thrown into new relief by affect onto-stories, the full implications of any likely reconfiguration of our understandings of democracy remain to be elaborated in this line of thought, not least because it avoids any engagement with the principle of participation by all affected interests. © Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2008.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Cloke P, Barnett C, Malpass A (2008). Spaces and ethics of organic food. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 219-230.
Barnett C, Clarke N, Cloke P, Malpass A (2008). The elusive subjects of neoliberalism: beyond the analysis of governmentality. Cultural Studies, 22, 624-653.
Barnett C (2008). Theorising democracy geographically. Geoforum, 39(5), 1637-1640.
2007
Malpass A, Cloke P, Barnett C, Clarke N (2007). Fairtrade urbanism? the politics of place beyond place in the Bristol Fairtrade City campaign. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 633-645.
Barnett C, Land D (2007). Geographies of generosity: Beyond the 'moral turn'.
Geoforum,
38(6), 1065-1075.
Abstract:
Geographies of generosity: Beyond the 'moral turn'
This paper questions Geographers debates about 'caring at a distance' and the 'geographies of responsibility', focussing on the treatment of the theme of partiality in ethics and justice. Debates in Geography often present partial commitments as morally or politically problematic on the grounds that they prioritize self-interest, exclusionary, and geographically restricted ways of relating to others. We outline how debates about caring at a distance and the geographies of responsibility frame partiality as a problem to be overcome. We argue that Geography's engagements with moral philosophy are premised on faulty assumptions about the sorts of influences people are liable to act upon (one's that privilege causal knowledge as the primary motivating force), and also flawed assumptions about the sorts of problems that academic reasoning about normative issues is meant to address (the assumption that people are too egoistical and not altruistic enough). We use the theme of generosity as an entry point to argue that partiality and finitude might be the conditions for any ethical-political project that de-centres the motivation of practical action away from the sovereign self towards responsive and attentive relations of encounter with the needs of others. Understanding generosity as a modality of power suggests a revised programme for geographical investigations of the intersection between ethics, morality and politics: one which looks at how opportunities to address normative demands in multiple registers are organized and transformed; at the ways in which dispositions to respond and to be receptive to others are worked up; and how opportunities for acting responsively on these dispositions are organized. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Barnett C, Cloke P, Malpass A (2007). Globalising the consumer: politics in an ethical register. Political Geography, 26, 231-249.
Barnett C (2007). In the space of theory: postfoundational geographies of the nation-state.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A,
39(2), 502-504.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2007). Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy.
JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY,
33(2), 459-461.
Author URL.
Barnett C, Scott D (2007). Spaces of opposition: Activism and deliberation in post-apartheid environmental politics.
Environment and Planning A,
39(11), 2612-2631.
Abstract:
Spaces of opposition: Activism and deliberation in post-apartheid environmental politics
Drawing on recent political theory that examines the relationship between inclusive deliberation and oppositional activism in processes of democratisation, we develop a case study of environmental justice mobilisation in post-apartheid South Africa. We focus on the emergence of a network of social movement organisations embedded in particular localities in the city of Durban, connected into national and transnational campaigns, and centred on grievances around industrial air pollution. We analyse how the geographies of uneven industrial and urban development in Durban combine with sedimented place-based histories of activism to make particular locations spaces of democratic contention, in which the scope and operation of formal democratic procedures are challenged and transformed. We examine the range of strategic engagements adopted by social movement organisations in pursuing their objectives, looking in particular at the dynamic interaction between inclusion in deliberative forums and more adversarial, activist strategies of legal challenge and dramaturgical protest. We identify the key organisational features of groups involved in this environmental justice network, which both enable and constrain particular patterns of democratic engagement with the state and capital. We also identify a disjuncture between the interpretative frames of different actors involved in participatory policy making. These factors help to explain the difficulties faced by social movement organisations in opening up the space for legitimate nonparliamentary opposition in a political culture shaped by norms of conciliation and consensus. © 2007 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain.
Abstract.
Clarke N, Barnett C, Cloke P, Malpass A (2007). The political rationalities of fair-trade consumption in the United Kingdom. Politics and Society, 35, 583-607.
2006
Dalby S (2006). In the space of theory: Postfoundational geographies of the nation-state.
ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS,
96(4), 830-832.
Author URL.
2005
Barnett C, Cloke P, Clarke N, Malpass A (2005). Consuming ethics: Articulating the subjects and spaces of ethical consumption.
ANTIPODE,
37(1), 23-45.
Author URL.
Barnett C (2005). Life after Derrida. Antipode, 37(2), 239-241.
Barnett C (2005). Temporality and the paradoxes of democracy. Political Geography, 24(5), 641-647.
Barnett C (2005). The consolations of 'neoliberalism'.
Geoforum,
36(1 SPEC. ISS.), 7-12.
Abstract:
The consolations of 'neoliberalism'
Recent work on neoliberalism has sought to reconcile a Marxist understanding of hegemony with poststructuralist ideas of discourse and governmentality derived from Foucault. This paper argues that this convergence cannot resolve the limitations of Marxist theories of contemporary socio-economic change, and nor do they do justice to the degree to which Foucault's work might be thought of as a supplement to liberal political thought. The turn to Foucault highlights the difficulty that theories of hegemony have in accounting for the suturing together of top-down programmes with the activities of everyday life. However, the prevalent interpretation of governmentality only compounds this problem, by supposing that the implied subject-effects of programmes of rule are either automatically realised, or more or less successfully 'contested' and 'resisted'. Theories of hegemony and of governmentality both assume that subject-formation works through a circular process of recognition and subjection. Both approaches therefore treat 'the social' as a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities. This means that neither approach can acknowledge the proactive role that long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change can play in reshaping formal practices of politics, policy, and administration. The instrumental use of notions of governmentality to sustain theories of neoliberalism and neoliberalization supports a two-dimensional understanding of political power - which is understood in terms of relations of imposition and resistance - and of geographical space - which is understood in terms of the diffusion and contingent combination of hegemonic projects. Theories of neoliberalism provide a consoling image of how the world works, and in their simplistic reiteration of the idea that liberalism privileges the market and individual self-interest, they provide little assistance in thinking about how best to balance equally compelling imperatives to respect pluralistic difference and enable effective collective action. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2005). Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness.
Progress in Human Geography,
29(1), 5-21.
Abstract:
Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness
This paper considers the relevance of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to geography's engagements with both mainstream moral philosophy and poststructuralist theory. This relevance lies in the way in which their work unsettles the ascription of normative value to relations of proximity and distance. Distance is usually understood to be a medium of moral harm or indifference. In contrast, Levinas presents distance as the very condition of responsibility. Grasping the significance of this argument requires an appreciation of the temporality of responsibility and responsiveness that both Levinas and Derrida emphasize. They present an alternative way of understanding the relationality of subjectivity and social processes. Through a schematic exposition of key themes in Levinas' work, prevalent understandings of the spatiality of relations are shown to harbour their own forms of indifference and moral harm. The full effect of Levinas' reconsideration of the value of relations between proximity and distance is brought out in Derrida's recent writings on hospitality. For both thinkers, there is no natural geographical scene for the cultivation of responsibility. Rather, their shared focus upon temporality emphasizes the degree to which responsibility is motivated in response to the activities of others. The implication of this argument is that critical analysis should be reorientated towards practices that shape individual and collective dispositions to acknowledge the claims of others. © 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.
Abstract.
2004
Barnett C (2004). Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation, and being-with-others.
Political Geography,
23(5), 503-528.
Abstract:
Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation, and being-with-others
This paper addresses the contribution of deconstruction to democratic theory. It critically considers the usefulness of the conceptual distinction between "politics" and "the political" as a means of interpreting deconstruction's relation to political questions. In particular, it critically engages with the inflection of deconstructive themes in the theory of radical democracy (RD) developed by Laclau and Mouffe. It is argued that this approach ontologizes the politics/political distinction, and elides together two distinct senses of otherness. This is registered in the prevalence of spatial tropes in this approach. The spatialization of key issues in political theory leads to a diminished sensitivity to the variegated temporalities through which solidarity and conflict, unity and multiplicity are negotiated. This is discussed with reference to the concept of articulation. By reducing temporality to a metaphysics of contingency, RD converges with a voluntaristic decisionism in its account of hegemony and political authority. The paper proceeds to a critical consideration of the interpretation of "undecidability" in RD, and of the elective affinity between this approach and the fascist critique of liberal democracy associated with Carl Schmitt. This discussion sets the scene for an alternative reading of the political significance of the theme of undecidability in Derrida's thought. This reading focuses on the problem of negotiating two equally compelling forms of responsibility, the urgent responsibility to act in the world, and the patient responsibility to acknowledge otherness. By discussing the complex temporising associated with the theme of undecidability in deconstruction, the paper argues for a reassessment of the normative value of the concept of representation as it has developed in modern democratic theory. It develops an understanding of undecidability that points beyond the undeconstructed decisionism shared by both Schmitt and RD towards an account of the opening of public spaces of deliberation, deferral, and decision. More broadly, the paper is concerned with the moral limits of a prevalent spatialized interpretation of key themes in the poststructuralist canon, including difference, alterity, and otherness. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
Barnett C (eds)(2004). Spaces of Democracy: geographical perspectives on citizenship, participation and representation., SAGE.
Barnett C (2004). Yizo Yizo: Citizenship, commodification and popular culture in South Africa.
Media, Culture and Society,
26(2).
Abstract:
Yizo Yizo: Citizenship, commodification and popular culture in South Africa
This article critically examines the development of an innovative approach to educational broadcasting in post-apartheid South Africa. Examining the policy background and the public debate sparked by the controversial drama series, Yizo Yizo, it is argued that the spatial restructuring of media markets re-articulates the sites and scales at which media practices and citizenship are connected. Yizo Yizo makes creative use of globalized media genres to address pressing social issues in ways that connect to national public policy debates. It does so by mainstreaming educational broadcasting, and by recognizing children's complex media literacies and competencies. It is argued that the series is an example of a new rationality of media citizenship developed in the distinctive context of post-apartheid transition that has broader significance for understandings' of the implications of media globalization for citizenship, culture and participation. Yizo Yizo is a practical example of mediated deliberation aimed at empowering citizens. It is indicative of subtle but important shifts in the dimensions of public culture in a highly divided society.
Abstract.
2003
Barnett C (2003).
Culture and Democracy: media, space and representation., Edinburgh University Press.
Abstract:
Culture and Democracy: media, space and representation
Abstract.
2002
Jeffrey C (2002). Entanglements of power: Geographies of domination/resistance.
ANNALS OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS,
92(2), 352-353.
Author URL.
2001
Barnett C (2001). Culture, geography, and the arts of government.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
19(1), 7-24.
Abstract:
Culture, geography, and the arts of government
In this paper I endeavor to prise open the theoretical closure of the conceptualization of culture in contemporary human geography. Foucault's later work on government provides the basis for a useable definition of culture as an object of analysis which avoids problems inherent in abstract, generalizing, and expansive notions of culture. The emergence of this Foucauldian approach in cultural studies is discussed, and the distinctive conceptualization of the relations between culture and power that it implies are elaborated. This reconceptualization informs a critical project of tracking the institutional formation of the cultural and the deployment of distinctively cultural forms of regulation into the fabric of modern social life. It is argued that the culture-and-government approach needs to be supplemented by a more sustained consideration of the spatiality and scale of power-relations. It is also suggested that this approach might throw into new perspective the dynamic behind geography's own cultural turn.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2001). Culture, policy, and subsidiary in the European Union: from symbolic identity to the governmentalisation of culture.
Political Geography,
20(4), 405-426.
Abstract:
Culture, policy, and subsidiary in the European Union: from symbolic identity to the governmentalisation of culture
This paper critically assesses the discourse of cultural policy initiatives of the European Union (EU) during the 1990s. It focuses upon the formulation of so-called 'cultural action' following the recognition of culture in the Treaty on European Union in 1992. It explores the multiple instrumentalities ascribed to culture as a medium for the management of European integration, and suggests that the evolution of policies to promote cultural co-operation is indicative of a progressive 'governmentalisation' of culture at the EU level. The paper argues that the focus of critical evaluation of EU cultural policy should be upon practices of citizenship participation in emergent network polities. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract.
2000
Low M, Barnett C (2000). After globalisation.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
18(1), 53-61.
Abstract:
After globalisation
Globalisation has become an almost ubiquitous term in academic debates, policy circles, and popular culture. In this paper we critically consider geography's characteristic form of engagement with the multifaceted features of globalisation discourses and realities. Globalisation provides an entry point for assertions of the conceptual and empirical importance of space, place, context, and locality. However, we argue that this form of engagement subordinates the central, and conceptually problematic, historicism of globalisation to a set of more manageable disciplinary concerns. We provide a critical discussion of the historicist dimensions of globalisation discourses, and indicate some of the ways in which critical accounts can reproduce this historicism. By raising this problem, we suggest that space and spatiality are not always or automatically the most significant entry point for conceptual critique and engagement. The case of globalisation therefore indicates some of the limits of established forms of interdisciplinary dialogue between critical human geography and related fields.
Abstract.
Barnett C (2000). Language equity and the politics of representation in South African media reform.
Social Identities,
6(1), 63-90.
Abstract:
Language equity and the politics of representation in South African media reform
This paper examines how debates on language-equity and identity have helped to shape South African broadcasting reform in the 1990s. The broadcasting sector is of interest as an example of how patterns of institutional transformation give concrete form to constitutionally protected citizenship rights. The politics of language-equity in broadcasting reform has been shaped by conflicts over the legitimacy of who is represented, by what means, by whom, and for what purposes in processes of policy-deliberation and decision-making. The role of public agencies (including the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Broadcasting Authority), private capital, civil society organisations and the state in shaping the significance ascribed to language-equity in the transformation of radio and television services is considered in detail. I argue that entrenched patterns of socio-economic inequality, social relations of ownership and control, and the existing structures of markets for broadcasting services have all constrained attempts to deploy broadcasting as an instrument for fostering more equitable treatment of diverse languages in the public sphere.
Abstract.
1999
Barnett C (1999). Broadcasting the rainbow nation: Media, democracy, and nation-building in South Africa. Antipode, 31(3), 274-303.
Barnett C (1999). Constructions of apartheid in the international reception of the novels of J. M. Coetzee.
Journal of Southern African Studies,
25(2), 287-301.
Abstract:
Constructions of apartheid in the international reception of the novels of J. M. Coetzee
This paper discusses the international reception of the fiction of South African novelist and critic, J. M. Coetzee, in order to examine the institutional and rhetorical conventions which shaped the selection and circulation of particular forms of writing as exemplars of 'South African literature' from the 1970s through to the 1990s. The representation of Coelzee' s novels in two reading-formations is critically addressed: in non-academic literary reviews; and in the emergent academic paradigm of post-colonial literary theory. It is argued that in both cases, South African literary writing has often been re-inscribed into new contexts according to abstract and moralised understandings of the nature of apartheid.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). Culture, government and spatiality: Reassessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies.
International Journal of Cultural Studies,
2(3), 369-397.
Abstract:
Culture, government and spatiality: Reassessing the 'Foucault effect' in cultural-policy studies
This article critically discusses the reconceptualization of culture and governmentality in recent Australian cultural-policy studies. It argues that the further development of this conceptualization requires a more careful consideration of the complex relations between culture, power and the different spatialities of social practices. The assumptions of this literature regarding social-democratic public institutions and the nation-state are critically addressed in the light of contemporary processes of globalization. It is argued that the use made of Foucault in this paradigm privileges a model of disciplinary power which is dependent on a particular spatialization of social subjects and technologies of the self. As a result, an uncritical application of this model to all cultural practices supports a far too coherent image of practices of government in producing sought-after subject-effects. It is suggested that the different articulations of spatio-temporal presence and absence in cultural technologies require a less totalizing understanding of the forms of power exercised through governmental practices. © 1999 SAGE Publications.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). Deconstructing context: Exposing Derrida.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
24(3), 277-293.
Abstract:
Deconstructing context: Exposing Derrida
Deconstruction has become a theme in various strands of geographical research. It has not, however, been the subject of much explicit commentary. This paper elaborates on some basic themes concerning the relationship between deconstruction and conceptualizations of context, with particular reference to issues of textual interpretation. The double displacement of textuality characteristic of deconstruction is discussed, followed by a consideration of the themes of 'writing' and 'iterability' as distinctive figures for an alternative spatialization of concepts of context. It is argued that deconstruction informs a questioning of the normative assumptions underwriting the value and empirical identity of context.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1999). The limits of media democratization in South Africa: Politics, privatization and regulation. Media, Culture and Society, 21(5), 649-671.
Barnett C (1999). Uneven liberalisation in Southern Africa: Convergence and democracy in communications policy.
Javnost,
6(3), 101-114.
Abstract:
Uneven liberalisation in Southern Africa: Convergence and democracy in communications policy
Technological convergence between telecommunications, broadcasting and computing has become a central object of communications policy initiatives worldwide. This paper explores the implications of the associated shift towards prioritising industrial and competition policy imperatives over those of cultural policy in the context of processes of democratisation in Southern Africa during the 1990s. It examines the institutional mechanisms by which national regulatory regimes have been adjusted according to the dictates of market liberalisation promoted by international agencies (including the WTO, IMF, and World Bank), and mediated by regionally-based agencies (such as the Southern African Development Community). The paper explores the emerging tension between two philosophies of regulatory independence: a market liberal approach which prioritises transparency and independence as a condition of attracting inward foreign investment, and which endeavours to shield communications regulation from democratic oversight; and a radical democratic approach, which privileges the role of communications in the cultivation of freedom of expression and the extension of political participation, in which regulatory bodies are seen as necessarily independent of direct government control but remain responsive to pressures from civil society. The contested politics of regulatory convergence in Southern Africa are illustrated by reference to recent changes in regulatory policy in South Africa, and the extent to which the South African experience is being generalised through structures of regional governance is critically examined.
Abstract.
1998
Barnett C (1998). Cultural twists and turns.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
16(6), 631-634.
Author URL.
Barnett C (1998). Impure and worldly geography: the africanist discourse of the royal geographical society, 1831-73. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23(2), 239-251.
Leichenko RM (1998). Spaces of globalization: Reasserting the power of the local.
JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE,
38(1), 187-189.
Author URL.
Barnett C (1998). The contradictions of broadcasting reform in post-apartheid South Africa.
Review of African Political Economy(78), 551-570.
Abstract:
The contradictions of broadcasting reform in post-apartheid South Africa
This article examines the process of mass media reform in South Africa during the 1990s, with particular reference to broadcasting. It identifies tensions between the attempt to restructure broadcasting as a public sphere capable of supporting national unification and democratisation, the existence of socioeconomic differentiation and cultural diversity at subnational scales and the pressures which impinge upon the broadcasting sector as a result of policies aimed at internationalising the South African economy. The formulation of broadcasting policy between 1990 and 1995 is reviewed, and the changes that have taken place during the implementation of restructuring and re-regulation from 1996 to 1998 are critically assessed. The article concludes that the intensified commercialisation of broadcasting is at odds with political objectives of transforming the mass media into a public sphere supportive of a diverse and independent civil society.
Abstract.
Barnett C (1998). The cultural turn: Fashion or progress in human geography?.
ANTIPODE,
30(4), 379-+.
Author URL.
1997
Barnett C (1997). "Sing along with the common people": Politics, postcolonialism, and other figures.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
15(2), 137-154.
Abstract:
"Sing along with the common people": Politics, postcolonialism, and other figures
Recent interest amongst critical human geographers in postcolonial theory has been framed by a concern for the relationship between 'politics' and 'theory'. In this paper I address debates in the field of colonial discourse analysis in order to explore the connections between particular conceptions of language and particular models of politics to which oppositional academics consider themselves responsible. The rhetorical representation of empowerment and disempowerment through figures of 'speech' and 'silence', respectively, is critically examined in order to expose the limits of this representation of power relations. Through a reading of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's account of the dilemmas of subaltern representation, contrasted to that of Benita Parry, and staged via an account of their different interpretations of the exemplary postcolonial fictions of J M Coetzee, it is argued that the deconstruction of the conventional metaphorics of speech and silence calls into view the irreducible textuality of the work of representation. This implies that questions about institutional positionality and academic authority be kept squarely in sight when discussing the problems of representing the struggles and agency of marginalised social groups. It is suggested that the continuing suspicion of literary and cultural theory amongst social scientists for being insufficiently 'materialist' and/or 'political' may serve to reproduce certain forms of institutionally sanctioned disciplinary authority.
Abstract.
1996
Barnett C (1996). 'A choice of nightmares': Narration and desire in Heart of Darkness.
Gender, Place and Culture,
3(3), 277-292.
Abstract:
'A choice of nightmares': Narration and desire in Heart of Darkness
This paper considers the gendered organisation of narration in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is argued that the text fictionalises its audience as an exclusively masculine community of readers, bounded together by shared interests and commitments. The discursive construction of preferred reading positions is critically examined with reference to the mobilisation of discourses of cannibalism and representations of femininity in the text. It is argued that positive evaluations of the text, as a critique of imperialism or a commentary on the human condition, are problematised by consideration of the gender values inscribed in the texture of the narrative.
Abstract.
Barnett C, Bowlby S (1996). How to talk properly and influence people. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(1), 125-127.
Barnett C (1996). Impure and Worldly Geography: the Africanist Discourse of the Royal Geographical Society, 1832-1873.
Barnett C (1996). Reworking theory.
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,
72(1), 80-81.
Author URL.
Barnett C, Low M (1996). Speculating on theory: Towards a political economy of academic publishing.
Area,
28(1), 13-24.
Abstract:
Speculating on theory: Towards a political economy of academic publishing
In the context of the rapid turnover of theory in geography, this paper treats theory as a commodity in relation to academic publishing and argues that translation is a constructive process by which new products circulate in international academic arenas. Results from a preliminary analysis of the translation of French writing are presented and some links between changing practice in the academic publishing industry and changes in intellectual agendas are hypothesised.
Abstract.
1995
BARNETT C (1995). AWAKENING THE DEAD - WHO NEEDS THE HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTE OF BRITISH GEOGRAPHERS,
20(4), 417-419.
Author URL.
BARNETT C (1995). GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATIONS - GREGORY,D.
ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY,
71(4), 427-435.
Author URL.
1993
BARNETT C (1993). PEDDLING POSTMODERNISM - a RESPONSE TO STROHMAYER AND HANNAH DOMESTICATING POSTMODERNISM.
ANTIPODE,
25(4), 345-358.
Author URL.
BARNETT C (1993). STUCK IN THE POST - AN UNSYMPATHETIC CRITIQUE OF ANDREW SAYER'S 'POSTMODERNIST THOUGHT IN GEOGRAPHY - a REALIST VIEW'.
ANTIPODE,
25(4), 365-368.
Author URL.
