Europejski Zielony Ład jako narzędzie modernizacji i legitymizacji projektu europejskiego

Covid-19 pandemic created a new environment to New Green Deal - flagship initiative of European Commission and crucial element of Ursula von der Leyen political manifesto. Author argues, that faced with the possibility of weakening or postponing ambitious environmental programme because of new challenges the commission, backed by important group pf member states decided to build a direct link between reconstruction after pandemics and greening of the economy. The result was a push forward with decarbonisation commitments - the stimuli for change should be bound together to strengthen their interdependence and build a momentum for modernization of EU in both economic and political dimensions. Conditionality of Next Generation Europe financial instrument is one of the links between these two dimensions.

Europejski Zielony Ład jako narzędzie modernizacji i legitymizacji projektu europejskiego

Covid-19 pandemic created a new environment to New Green Deal - flagship initiative of European Commission and crucial element of Ursula von der Leyen political manifesto. Author argues, that faced with the possibility of weakening or postponing ambitious environmental programme because of new challenges the commission, backed by important group pf member states decided to build a direct link between reconstruction after pandemics and greening of the economy. The result was a push forward with decarbonisation commitments - the stimuli for change should be bound together to strengthen their interdependence and build a momentum for modernization of EU in both economic and political dimensions. Conditionality of Next Generation Europe financial instrument is one of the links between these two dimensions.

A pomidory są te, co zawsze. Refleksje z baskijskiego terenu

This article focuses on personal experience of fieldwork in the Basque Country. The author reflects on the linguistic and political dimensions of her research, on the relationship between the researcher and research participants, and on the emotional challengesof ethnographic fieldwork, with particular focus on the impact of motherhood on such research. Emphasizing the importance of autoethnography, the author also points out a variety of approaches to the research process and ways of presenting research results.

Conclusion

The conclusion argues that the aesthetic dimensions of biblical poetry require active engagement with the poem that does not merely uncover a meaning that already exists, but rather enacts a moment of human encounter. In doing so, it re-emphasizes the importance of formal analysis even while resisting New Criticism’s tendency to suppress historical, social, and political dimensions of the text and its interpretation. It follows John Dewey in arguing that reading is always an act of re-creation, and that even reading old material brings a new poem into existence. Ultimately, it suggests that biblical poetry now and again acknowledges its unfinished business: the way it leans toward the future and its readers, and thereby resists the nothingness of destruction.

(Counter)mapping renewables: Space, justice, and politics of wind and solar power in Mexico

The ongoing expansion of renewable energies entails major spatial reconfigurations with social, environmental, and political dimensions. These emerging geographies are, however, in the process of taking shape, as their early configurations are still open to democratic intervention and contestation. While a recent line of research highlights the prominent role that maps are playing in directing such processes, the potential effects of countermapping on these evolving geographies have not yet been explored. In this article, we present a countermapping initiative promoting a dialogue between critical geography, political ecology, and environmental justice. Our work is the result of an alliance between Geocomunes—a collective of activist cartographers based in Mexico—and the EjAtlas—a global collaborative project tracking cases of grassroots mobilizations against environmental injustices. We take the case of Mexico's low-carbon development strategy to dissect the spatial expansion of wind and solar mega-projects at both national and regional scales. Our project consists of a series of databases and maps aimed to “fill” the spaces and relations otherwise “emptied” by the state's cartographic tools designed to promote investments in the sector. When presenting our results, we highlight how renewable energy projects in Mexico have so far juxtaposed with local territories, peoples, and resources, in ways that trigger instances of environmental injustice on the ground. We close this article by discussing the role of critical cartography and countermapping in building alternative political–economic projects for the energy transition.

The UK as victim and hero in the Sun’s coverage of the Brexit ‘humiliation’

This paper discusses how emotions were mobilised by the British tabloid press as discursive strategies of persuasion during the public debate on the implementation of Brexit. Using the case study of the Suns coverage of the alleged UKs humiliation at the Salzburg meeting (2018) during the Brexit negotiations, the analysis addresses the questions of how and through which linguistic means actors and events were framed discursively in such an article. The findings suggest that The Sun elicited emotions of fear, frustration, pride, and freedom to frame Brexit along a long-established narrative of domination and national heroism. The discourse was also sustained by a discursive prosody in keeping with a satirical genre and a populist register that have often characterised the British tabloid press. In particular the linguistic analysis has shown how antagonistic representations of the UK and the EU were driven by an allegory of incompetent gangsterism and morally justified resistance. Emotionalisation in the article was thus aimed both at ridiculing the EU and at representing it as a criminal organisation. Such framing was instrumental in pushing the newspaper agenda as much as in legitimising and institutionalising harder forms of Brexit with the tabloids readership. Approaching journalist discourse at the intersection of affective, stylistic, and political dimensions of communication, this paper extends the body of literature on the instrumental use of emotive arguments and populist narratives and on the wider historical role of tabloid journalism in representing political relations. between the UK and the EU.

Books review: Voskressenski, A.D. (Eds.). (2020). China’s Infinite Transition and Its Limits. Economic, Military and Political Dimensions. Springer Global (Singapore): Palgrave Macmillan, 97 p.; Voskressenski, A.D. (Eds.). (2019). Model of Contemporary China Development: Appraisals, Discussions, Prognostications. Moscow: MGIMO, Strategicheskie izyskaniya publ., 736 p. (In Russian)

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Pathways, targets and temporalities: Analysing English agriculture's net zero futures

Net zero emissions targets are of growing international relevance given their increasing uptake by governments across the world. This article analyses net zero targets as a distinctly future-oriented approach to environmental governance. It does so from a critical perspective, examining whether net zero targets serve to reproduce the existing temporalities of environmental policymaking or whether they represent a break with current practices and, in turn, develop new temporalities and novel ways of engaging with the future. In order to do this, this article focuses on efforts to reduce agricultural emissions in England to net zero. In 2019 the United Kingdom introduced legislation requiring a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This, in turn, has encouraged actors in the food system to produce various imagined pathways to net-zero agriculture. This article critically analyses how these imagined pathways are discursively produced by influential actors within this sphere through a critical discourse analysis of recent grey literature produced by Defra, the Climate Change Committee and the National Farmers’ Union. It asserts that, to an extent, the net zero and target oriented approaches enshrined in current environmental policymaking represent the ongoing reproduction of both an ‘empty’ modernist future with some post-political dimensions. This assessment is, however, nuanced by recognising the tensions that emerge within and between the state and non-state institutions producing these discourses. Ultimately, however, the net zero transition draws actors together around a techno-optimistic vision of an agricultural future defined by sustainable intensification and negative emissions technologies. In doing so, it serves to suppress calls for transformative change in agriculture based on social as well as material change.

Socioeconomic and Political Dimensions of COVID-19 Dispersion

This study aims to provide understanding on how certain factors lead to the formation of clusters of areas of COVID-19 dispersion to guide policy decisions and government actions. It utilized an ecological study design which analyzes data at the population or group level. The units of observation are the barangays in Cebu City. These barangays are the nodes in the network and the edge considered is the presence of areas of convergence. In order to identify the nodes for this study, data mining was done to get the number of reported COVID-19 cases in Cebu City from the Cebu City Health Office as of May 23, 2020. Only thirty-nine (39) barangays with COVID-19 cases were included in the study. Results revealed that although public and private transportation is controlled during the implementation of Enhanced Community Quarantine, it is assumed that the spread started prior to implementation of strict prohibitions which led to the rise of cases later on. Even at the time of the strict community quarantine restrictions, economic activities related to basic necessities were still allowed. For instance, public markets were open with prohibitions related to schedules only. This implies that people are still mobile at certain times despite the presence of restrictions. People still converge in areas where economic activities are present.