This article explores how place-based learning and the development of socio-material place-literacies unfold in an urban settlement that regularly experiences runaway fires. We present a selection of verbal texts and photographs produced by community-based co-researchers in an informal settlement on the outskirts of the South African city of Cape Town. The assemblage of these multimodal texts reveals a harmscape in which fire is one of a complex set of intersecting and interoperating risks resulting from environmental, socio-historical, political and socio-economic factors. It also shows how those living within this harmscape have learned to read the traces of both future and past fires that are inscribed upon it. We suggest that attempts to reduce the harms caused by fire in such a space must recognise that it is not a simple problem of either the material or social environment, and that both its causes and consequences are multidimensional and extended. The development of such fire literacies is a powerful illustration of the pedagogical affect of repeated, ordinary, quotidian experience of place, where place has become an Anthropocene harmscape.
The research is based on a multi-year field project since the first year of operation of the Addis–Djibouti Railway in 2018, coupled with an ongoing investigation into the Addis Ababa Light Train. The article deals with the geopolitical situation of Ethiopia as a landlocked sub-Saharan African country with the intention of achieving better connectivity into global flows via an enhanced rail network and port access. With this, Ethiopia strives to fulfil its national development goals and position itself not only as the political ‘capital’ of the continent housing the HQ of the African Union, but also as an economic powerhouse of the Horn of Africa macro-region. Within the realm of International Relations and geopolitics, the research tackles numerous dimensions of the two railway developments, critically looking at their transformative prospects and challenges, ranging from inner-city transportation, via the multiplying effects of large connecting infrastructure to the issue of debt. The article wishes to contribute to a deeper understanding of the everyday presence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative with all such projects and Chinese loans in general – but from the African developmental side. Special attention will be given to what extent Chinese activities connected to infrastructure enhancement can be understood as constitutive elements of development – in particular, as interpreted by the Ethiopian side – in the 21st century, also compared with previous forms and interpretations since the 1960s.
Theories of catastrophic and existential risk raise concern about hazards capable of causing large-scale or irreversible harm, yet they pay limited attention to how such risks are shaped by cross-country differences in development. This raises a critical question: does higher human development correspond to uniformly safer structural conditions in the face of catastrophic disruption? Using the Hazard–Vulnerability–Exposure framework and cross-sectional data for 156 countries, this study examines how the Human Development Index (HDI) is associated with selected vulnerability and exposure proxies, focusing the empirical comparison on these two components of the framework. The results reveal a clear development gradient. Higher HDI values are associated with lower values on the selected vulnerability indicators and higher values on the selected exposure indicators, which capture digital and technological integration. Higher development therefore does not correspond to uniformly lower values across the selected risk-relevant indicators. Rather, countries at higher development levels exhibit a different configuration of structural conditions, characterized by lower levels of structural vulnerability and greater digital and technological interdependence. These findings support a development-sensitive approach to risk governance across stages of development.
This article examines how domestic political institutions shape the conflict dynamics surrounding Chinese-backed infrastructure projects in Africa. Focusing on Bui Dam in Ghana and Merowe Dam in Sudan, it argues that similar development projects can generate markedly different trajectories of contention depending on how states mobilise and deploy state capacity. Drawing on scholarship on regime type, state capacity, and contentious politics, the article shows that democratic and authoritarian political contexts condition both the strategies states adopt towards affected communities and the forms of resistance that emerge in response. The article develops a comparative qualitative analysis based on fieldwork, interviews, documentary sources, and process tracing. It demonstrates that in Ghana, relatively stronger administrative capacity and more open political institutions enabled more institutionalised and negotiated forms of contestation, even though significant tensions, exclusions, and grievances persisted throughout the project. In contrast, Sudan’s military-autocratic political structure and reliance on coercive state capacity contributed to highly exclusionary forms of project implementation, violent repression, and more transgressive conflict dynamics. By placing domestic political institutions at the centre of the analysis, the article contributes to debates on China–Africa relations and infrastructure-led development by showing that the political consequences of Chinese-backed projects are mediated through the institutional and political environments in which they are embedded. More broadly, the study highlights the disconnect between official development narratives surrounding mega-dam projects and the lived experiences of affected communities.
Promoting gender equality is a long-standing global health priority, with growing emphasis on engaging men as allies and agents of change. Accordingly, several studies have used attitudinal surveys to document variability in men’s support for women’s empowerment. However, understanding has been limited by a tendency to explore only a narrow range of socio-demographic measures, and much uncertainty remains about the causal pathways driving observed associations. In effort to move this literature forward, we take a mixed methods ‘positive deviance’ approach to understanding variability in men’s support for women’s empowerment, drawing on data from a single urbanizing community in north-west Tanzania. We surveyed young men (N = 335) to first assess socio-demographic correlates of support, then conducted follow-up in-depth interviews with exceptionally supportive outliers to explore formative influences (n = 18). Supporting past research, quantitative analysis suggests that education and media exposure play important roles, but demographic factors such as age and marital status were not associated with men’s attitudes. Outlier interviews indicate that interaction with capable schoolgirls and women teachers rather than course content alone drives education effects, and exposure to globalized cultural influences is diffuse rather than curtailed by direct ownership of media technology. Furthermore, while lacking obvious proxies in our quantitative survey, a family history of cooperation between genders and contemporary observations of the economic benefits of supporting women’s empowerment were viewed as pivotal in shaping men’s views. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for both survey and intervention design.
