Ecologies and Economies of Action—Sustainability, Calculations, and other Things

Steve Hinchliffe, Matthew B Kearnes, Monica Degen and Sarah Whatmore
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Steve Hinchliffe: Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, England
Matthew B Kearnes: Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy, Furness College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YG, England
Monica Degen: Sociology and Communications, School of Social Sciences and Law, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, England
Sarah Whatmore: Oxford University Centre for the Environment (OUCE), University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Park Roads, Oxford OX1 3QY, England

Environment and Planning A, 2007, vol. 39, issue 2, 260-282

Abstract: In ecological, environmental, and urban-regeneration terms, the participatory turn and the turn to action have been written about at length in both academic and official literatures. From neighbourhood renewal to lay ecologies, people are being ‘given’ all kinds of agency in the making of economy and ecology. Yet relatively little has been said regarding the financial organisation of this new populism, which is often achieved through calculation and audit, and the framing of a return. In this paper we look at the uneasy coalition of civic action and its calculability. It focuses on the funding and running of a British Pakistani and Bangladeshi women's gardening initiative in inner city Birmingham, England. We fuse empirical work with gardeners and funding agencies with theoretical understandings of calculation in order to argue for a mode of organisation that not only includes a responsibility to act but also a responsibility to otherness. Rather than arguing for or against calculation, we describe a more diverse ecology of action and in so doing open arguments for reconfiguring the ways in which sustainable activities are funded.

Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:39:y:2007:i:2:p:260-282

DOI: 10.1068/a38110

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