Environment and Society has put out a call for papers for Volume 10 (2019), to be guested edited by Simin Fadaee and Seth Schindler, with a thematic focus on Megaprojects.
Small is no longer beautiful. Small is outdated, old-fashioned, inefficient, and ugly. The future now consists of an ambitious series of massive plans and schemes for new infrastructure projects, beltways, roadways, railways, investment corridors, disaster-proofed cities and countries, carbon capture and storage, reforestation, wall building, migration fostering, terraformation, space exploration, global sports events, and so much more. The proponents of megaprojects resurrect modernist dreams of yesteryear, yet they offer utopian visions of an uncharted future. Though many of these megaprojects are still being planned or are in nascent stages, they clearly have the potential to transform everyday life for many people and thus are likely to provoke resistance.
We invite any articles that explore different aspects of megaprojects. This could include their environmental or social consequences, politics surrounding their planning and/or realization, and the visions and/or assumptions that animate them. It could entail exploring the organized collective opposition to these schemes, such as protest events, campaigns, and social movements, or subtle acts of refusal. It could also examine the futures that megaprojects promise, their consequences, and the alternative futures they foreclose. It could focus on highly visible lumpy schemes (border walls, HS2, the Green Climate Fund) that are territorialized and driven by governments. Alternatively, it could examine massive and far-reaching systemic changes in technology or social trends that reshape how large groups of people think or behave but that arise from consumer choice, political action, and private entrepreneurship as well as state guidance (internet of things, social media, electric cars, and artificial intelligence).
Topics for this issue could include but are not limited to:
–Biomass energy carbon capture & storage schemes
–The One Belt One Road Initiative
–Agricultural Growth Corridors of East Africa
–HS2 and similar schemes
–Smart cities
–Reconstruction after disasters
–Preparation for natural disasters
–Climate agreements & climate change financing
–Sporting events (World Cup, Olympics)
–The internet of things
–Rewilding visions
–Large mining or dam building plans
–The smartphone revolution
–Geographical positioning systems
–Search engines
–Diverse military projects
–Security barriers
–Transformations in urban planning
Complete details, including the submission timeline, can be found on the announcement here.