Tag: territorial inequality

Space cowboys, Evian bottles, and the Islets of Langerhans: Scenario Planning and the Territorial Body in Time

Mechanical Dolphin

On Saturday 25th February 2023, I’m presenting a paper, “The Ghosts We See From the Mountains: Scenario Planning and the Territorial Body in Time” at the University of Warwick conference “Territorial Bodies: World Culture in Crisis“.

As the conference organisers explain,

The concept of ‘territorial bodies’ takes inspiration from the Latin American feminist transnational concept of ‘body-territory’, which has been used as a ‘strategic’ tool to engender new forms of global solidarity, linking multi-form violence at various scales. More broadly, body-territory becomes a lens through which to critique overlapping forms of violence in an era of socio-ecological crisis. This conference encompasses wide-ranging perspectives on the concept of ‘territorial bodies’, from the extractive plunder and dispossession of land, to the violation of gendered bodies, to the exploitation of racialised bodies and uneven flows of migration. We aim to critically evaluate the interconnections between bodies and territories, using the framework of “territorial bodies” to generate new modes of understanding crisis in neoliberal culture.

My paper, drawing on the example of the IMAJINE project, explores how scenario planning can inform our discussion of the ‘body-territory’.

What do we learn about territorial bodies and their attendant inequalities when we examine them from the perspective of multiple imagined futures?

How does investigating the future of territory itself enrich our understanding of the bodies which inhabit said future, and the power relations in which they are enmeshed? How can that understanding in turn usefully inform action in the present?

And, insofar as scenarios themselves render time in spatial metaphors – with factors, actors, and uncertainties juxtaposed to explore the dynamics of times to come – what do we learn about the body-in-time when we consider it in territorial terms?

You can read the paper as a PDF here, or watch a partial preview on YouTube. Find the full conference programme online here.

The Ghosts We See from the Mountains: IMAJINE at the Territorial Bodies Conference

Mechanical Dolphin
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Body Is A Battleground), 1989
Image BY-NC 2.0 by Flickr user Rocor

I’m pleased to say I’ll be presenting at the Territorial Bodies Conference held at the University of Warwick in February 2023.

My paper, “The ghosts we see from the mountains: Scenario planning and the territorial body in time”, will explore the intersection between bodies and territories via the questions of spatial justice explored by the IMAJINE scenarios for the future of European territorial inequality, and consider how scenario planning can give insights into the ways we understand the relationship between bodies and territories over time.

Find out more at the University of Warwick conference website or via the Territorial Bodies account on Twitter.

Publication of the IMAJINE Scenarios for the Future of European Regional Inequality

Mechanical Dolphin

The four scenarios produced by the Horizon 2020 IMAJINE project to explore the future of European regional inequality have now been published.

The scenarios explore questions of territorial equality – Do EU citizens have equal rights and opportunities regardless of wherever they live? – and spatial justice – Are different places treated fairly? Is your ability to realise your rights compromised by where you live?

Questions of justice are defined socially and narratively – even when a court says it is considering “the balance of probabilities”, it adjudicates between competing stories told by the parties arguing a case. That means we can’t just run the numbers when it comes to the future of inequality, but must explore how notions of fairness and justice might change in times to come – and what those changing notions might tell us about issues in the present.

As Ursula K. Le Guin put it in the quote we chose for IMAJINE’s epigraph, “We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom.”

Each vision of Europe in 2048 offers a different perspective on these issues as they are emerging in the present, and offers an opportunity to reframe the discussion around regional development and inequality. The scenario set includes respondents from a wide range of sectors and institutions around the world, offering further insight into the implications of each scenario.

You can download the IMAJINE scenario document as a PDF from the project website – and there’ll be further updates and expert responses at the IMAJINE homepage as the scenarios are rolled out over the coming months.

The IMAJINE Project: Scenario Discussions on the Conversation & Ireland’s Moncrieff Show

Mechanical Dolphin

Last week, I guested on Sean Moncrieff’s show, broadcast by Ireland’s Newstalk Radio, talking about the IMAJINE project’s scenarios for the future of European regional inequality.

What will the difference between the haves and have-nots of the EU look like a generation from now? IMAJINE’s scenarios present four different, plausible, provocative answers to that question.

You can hear our quarter-hour discussion in its own standalone episode of the Moncrieff podcast, at the Newstalk website, on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

NUI Galway’s Marie Mahon and I have also written a short article on the initial IMAJINE scenario sketches, which is up at The Conversation: you can check out “Climate-protected citadels, virtual worlds only for the privileged: is this the future of inequality?” there.

RTÉ Brainstorm: IMAJINE Scenarios for the Future of Europe

Mechanical Dolphin

The earliest outputs from the IMAJINE scenario project, which explores the future of the Europe Union, have been released as “sketches”. These are rough drafts of the future contexts we’ll be exploring through the end of this year and into 2021.

Over at the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ’s Brainstorm site, Marie Mahon of the National University of Ireland Galway and I write about four futures that the IMAJINE team started to explore this summer – and where they might take us next.