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Publication

Publication

Conference and Seminar Presentations

Event: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, February 2012
Session Title: 1505 Honouring Neil Wrigley (part two)
Paper Title: Retailers, Supply Networks and Changing Articulations of Ethicality: Lessons from Flower Valley in South Africa

Event: Seminar at the Department of Geography, Glasgow University, February 2012 & Seminar at the Department of Geography, Kings College London, May 2010
Paper Title: Alternative Production and the Politics of Place: Between Abstract Ethics and Moral Experience in South Africa

Event: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, April 2011
Session Title: The politics of expectations: Nature, Culture, and the Production of Space II
Paper Title: Fighting for Fynbos: The Politics of Expectation in Ethical Wildflower Harvesting

Event: Royal Geographical Society- Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) Conference 2011
Paper Title: Fairtrade Production and the Politics of Place: The Braided Communities of Eksteenskuil in South Africa

Event: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, April 2010
Session Title: 4171 Real Worlds and Environmental Visions I
Paper Title: A New Politics of Place? Biodiversity, Conservation and Community Development in South Africa’s Cape Floral Kingdom
Presentation: A New Politics of Place? Biodiversity, Conservation and Community Development in South Africa’s Cape Floral Kingdom


Academic Papers

Futures, ethics and the politics of expectation in biodiversity conservation: A case study of South African sustainable wildflower harvesting

Cheryl McEwana, Alex Hughesb & David Beka

aDepartment of Geography, Durham University, Science Site, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom
bSchool of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, 5th Floor Claremont Tower, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom

Abstract

Corporate efforts to demonstrate ‘sustainability’ within production networks are driving a continued demand for new metrics. This raises questions concerning which experts will be enlisted in their creation, what data and calculative methods they will draw on, and how and whether different publics will be convinced of the rigour of these metrics and their ethical purpose. Debates about futures and expectations tend to be western-centric; in response, this paper highlights the sophisticated environmental science and knowledges in a global South context where politics and uncertainty are of utmost importance. It draws on research into sustainable wild flower harvesting in the Cape Floral Kingdom (CFK), in the Western Cape province of South Africa, to explore the politics of expectation and future making driving debates about biodiversity conservation and socio-economic empowerment within rural communities.

It focuses specifically on how expectations of technologies, databases, knowledge and the environment play out in this particular site of production, influencing debates about sustainability, but also perspectives on what is ethical. The case study demonstrates that expectations are neither uniform nor uncontested, but bound up with inequities of power and authority in defining futures. The paper draws on postcolonial approaches to conclude that a radical opening of databases and knowledge production might challenge these asymmetries, but that constraints exist because of external pressures and expectations that arise from the political economy of biodiversity conservation.

2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The full paper can be viewed here.

Please cite this article in press as: McEwan, C., et al. Futures, ethics and the politics of expectation in biodiversity conservation: A case study of South.

African sustainable wildflower harvesting. Geoforum (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.09.010

Retailers, Supply Networks and Changing Articulations of Ethicality: Lessons from Flower Valley in South Africa

Alex Hughesa, Cheryl McEwanb & David Bekb

aSchool of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, 5th Floor Claremont Tower, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, United Kingdom
bDepartment of Geography, Durham University, Science Site, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

Accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Geography, further details to follow.