Points of convergence: Deploying the geographies of critical nexus-thinking

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of ‘nexus’ has become a metaphor for resource interactions (particularly between food, water and energy), a policy apparatus to address resource sustainability and an object of academic analysis. Contending that the ways that nexus has been conceptualised and applied so far are invariably incomplete, this paper marks a concerted attempt to draw geographical scholarship into the conceptualisation of nexus-thinking to offer a more complete reading of resource geographies and their underlying interactions. We present critical nexus-thinking as a conceptual framework for tracing the geographies fashioned by resource nexuses, including the enrolment of human and non-human populations into such nexuses, and how the governance of both routine resource interactions and of ‘shocks’ can impact on such populations. To mobilise critical nexus-thinking as a conceptual framework, we draw out three points of convergence between nexus policy logics and critical geographic/scientific scholarship: socio-material-ecological interactions, politics of scale, and flows, blockages and dis/connectivity. We deploy critical nexus-thinking through analysis that extends the 2014/2015 ‘water crisis’ in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area to other sites, spaces and materials in order to critically evaluate the politics, materiality and spatiality of resource governance, and we use this example to point to how scholars might apply critical nexus-thinking analyses in other contexts.

The broiler chicken and the Anthropocene: Using critical nexus thinking to unpack the geographies of Gallus gallus domesticus

“…With the aim of identifying these relations and ontologies, while avoiding the reinforcement of ‘already‐existing injustices and inequalities between regions, populations and species’, Walker and Coles (2021, p. 17) propose a critical approach to nexus thinking. ‘Critical nexus thinking’ (CNT) focuses on points from which relations constituent to the reproduction of the nexus extend, to establish more equitable power relations between actors within a given nexus.…”

“…‘Critical nexus thinking’ (CNT) focuses on points from which relations constituent to the reproduction of the nexus extend, to establish more equitable power relations between actors within a given nexus. Building from Schwanen (2018), CNT attends to how ‘particular socio‐material‐ecological interactions and relationships take shape through particular sites, are generated by particular places and extend to engender others, and yet are shaped by wider (often relatively more durable) structures and practices’ (Walker & Coles, 2021, p. 6). Using CNT, this paper approaches Gallus gallus as one such site of convergence and traces out the relations that assemble in its reproduction, as well as the social and political economic conditions that engender them.…”

“…CNT contests this ontology by adopting a more ‘radical’ relationality (Escobar, 2007) that extends to consider how particular ‘other’ sites, materials, actors, and other relata are also folded into reproduction of the nexus. Its subsequent focus on ‘the relations that matter’ sheds critical light on how their assembly, management, and reproduction within a nexus in turn serves powerful, affluent, and often urban human populations (Walker & Coles, 2021, p. 3).…”

“…This is where CNT comes into its own. Used to ‘“think” laterally about the relations whereby such scales are (and have been) made, as well as mobilised for political ends … [CNT traces] out relations and sites of power … [identifies] the invisible connections that might alter the scales otherwise in play … [and] the territorial extents over which resources and resource governance operate’ (Walker & Coles, 2021, p. 17).…”

“…Positioning the Anthropocene as an ontologically emergent nexus (Williams et al, 2018), rather than a prescribed temporal era, this paper adopts and extends 'critical nexus thinking' (CNT; Walker & Coles, 2021; see also Kraftl et al, 2019;Zara et al, 2020) to identify and trace out the constituent relations that engender Gallus gallus as well as the Anthropocene. Relations of particular concern here include the embodiment and extraction of surplus value from an animal whose corporeal form is manipulated in service of industrial agriculture, the rationalisation and transformation of territories and landscapes into productive units of space (Scott, 1998(Scott, , 2017, and the tightly coupled, interconnected flows of relations, materials, and coordinating technologies that join disparate spaces of production into a coherent system of exchange -the 'supply chain' (Tsing, 2009; see also Busch, 2011;Jackson et al, 2009).…”