Ground Level: Commuting and Sustainability w/ Vicki Reif-Breitwieser and James Jackson

Every day, millions of people travel to and from their main occupation. Commuting is a central part of daily life, but it is also political. Managing the public transport network is an important part of the job of local officials, for example the mayor of London. Public transport policies are likewise a key element of any progressive strategy for sustainable development, including in the UK, where electrification and nationalisation are reshaping mobility. 

Everyday political economy has long discussed commuting through Marxist and feminist analyses of labour alienation, particularly in relation to caring jobs undertaken by those socialised as women. We take a different perspective, focusing instead on the global dimensions of the everyday political economy of transport electrification in public and private transport, and exploring the everyday realities of electrification supply chains. 

Concepts discussed: green growth, green extractivism and mining, green transition and China’s role, electrification policies, electric vehicles, indigenous and everyday resistance. 

Host: Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London. 

Guests:

Vicki Reif-Breitwieser is a postgraduate researcher in Politics at University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on conflict and violence associated with extractive industries in Latin America. Her PhD thesis interrogates the relationship between extractivism and the green transition with extensive fieldwork in Argentina. 

Dr James Jackson is a Hallsworth Research Fellow at University of Manchester having completed his PhD at SPERI. His work examines the politics of the electric vehicle transition and the intersection of fiscal, monetary and climate policy. He has published widely on the politics of the electric vehicle transition in Germany and the UK, and he is currently writing a monograph on the subject. 

References

Davies, M. (2016). Revisiting the Everyday in IPE with Henri Lefebvre and Postcolonialism. International Political Sociology, 10(1), pp. 22-38.

Gudynas, G. (2021). Extractivism: Politics, Economy & Ecology. Fernwood Publishing.

Haas, T. (2021). The Political Economy of Ecological Modernisation in Germany. New Political Economy, 26(4), 660–673.

Jackson, J. (2023). (Re)coordinating the German political economy: E-mobility and the Verkeswende. German Politics, 33: (4), 807-829.

Jackson, J. (2023). Decarbonisation through modernisation: The UK’s EV transition as a vehicle of industrial change, Competition and Change, 28: (2), 231-250.

Keil, A. K., & Steinberger, J. K. (2024). Cars, capitalism and ecological crises: understanding systemic barriers to a sustainability transition in the German car industry. New Political Economy, 29(1), 90–110.

Reif-Breitwieser, V. (2023) ‘The political economy of managing conflict: the state-corporate nexus and 'greening' extractivism’ SPERI Blog, 21st November. Available at: https://speri-blog.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/blog/2023/the-political-economy-of-managing-conflict 

Reif-Breitwieser, V. & Tidy, J. (2024) ‘Extraction, infrastructure, and the coloniality of violence: Why land matters’ SPERI Blog, 28th November. Available at: https://speri-blog.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/blog/2024/extraction-infrastructure-and-the-coloniality-of-violence 

Remme, D and Jackson, J., 2023. Green Mission Creep: Extractivism and the circular economy of electric vehicles, Journal of Cleaner Production, 394, 136346. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136346

This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.