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This article examines a group of intellectual workers who occupy a peripheral but not powerless position in the global economy of knowledge. How do they handle relations with the global metropole, especially in new fields of research where established hierarchies are in question? Three new domains of knowledge – climate change, HIV/AIDS and gender studies – are studied through interviews with 70 active researchers in Southern-tier countries Brazil, South Africa and Australia. A pattern of extraversion, involving active adoption of paradigms from the metropole, is widespread and institutionally supported. Major alternative knowledge formations have not emerged in these domains. However contestations of more specific kinds are frequent. Paradigms are adapted, criticism is offered, activism is engaged, capacities are developed and allegiances sometimes changed. The valorization of local knowledge, which goes beyond the abstractions of universalized paradigms, is particularly significant. Not stark subordination, but a complex collective negotiation characterizes the response of intellectual workers in the Southern tier.

A large number of governance interventions are being developed in order to reduce deforestation and enhance the sustainability of commodity supply chains across the tropics. The extent to which individual agricultural commodity supply chain interventions can achieve scale, and environmental or social objectives, depends in part on the ways in which those interventions interact with other interventions. We use a case-study of the new Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) cattle certification program in Brazil to explore the different ways in which governance interventions interact. We examine the broad landscape of policies and programs that affect sustainability in the cattle supply chain in Brazil, and assess whether such interventions support or constrain the scaling up of the SAN cattle program. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from government, private sector, and civil society organizations. We found that multiple interventions are acting in a complementary manner to enhance sustainability and therefore enable the scaling up of the SAN program, by aiding compliance with environmental laws, adoption of good production practices, and improved monitoring. At the same time, limited development, implementation, and complementarity of some interventions could be antagonistic to the SAN program's expansion because they maintain a context in which many actors operate far below the sustainability criteria required by the program. Our holistic approach enables us to identify specific gaps in the complex landscape of governance interventions in Brazil. Greater strategic complementarity and coordination between interventions may catalyze a more coherent and effective pathway to reduced deforestation and enhanced sustainability.

The European Green Deal (EGD) is an ambitious strategy. However, significant events, incidents, and demands, from democratic backsliding in the EU to the Covid-19 pandemic, are causing the ground to shift underfoot. These events go beyond ordinary changes or even individual crises, cumulatively fuelling a “new normal” of turbulence for the EU, encompassing rapid, unpredictable changes. This turbulence can help and hinder policy design and implementation, requiring policy actors to think outside the box and beyond the status quo. This article investigates how the European Commission and other key actors can engage effectively <em>with</em> turbulence to ensure the successful delivery and implementation of the EGD. The first half of the article strengthens and adapts turbulent governance literature (Ansell &amp; Trondal, 2018). It delineates how turbulence differs from crisis; expands the forms of turbulence to include horizontal scalar and policy turbulence, as well as its transversal attribute; and shifts the focus to governing <em>with</em> turbulence rather than against<em> </em>turbulence. The second half undertakes an initial analysis of the EGD in light of turbulence and provides a springboard for further investigations within this thematic issue and beyond. It is apparent that the EGD is both responding and contributing to a varied landscape of turbulence. Policy actors must identify and understand the sources of turbulence—including their transversal nature and the potential for responses to increase turbulence—if they are to effectively govern <em>with</em> turbulence.

The energy analysis of injection moulding processes is influenced by complex interactions amongst the moulded part, its material, the injection machine, the process parameters and the environmental conditions. The availability of energy usage analyses that comprehend information on specific materials and machine kind is limited. This paper reports a study that estimates and analyses the power usage profile (PUP), the specific energy consumption (SEC), and the energy distribution at an operation level of two different injected parts made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and produced in a hybrid injection moulding machine. The methodology followed by the authors incorporates an experiment carried out in an industrial facility. A large sample size, and data-acquisition and data post-processing processes to obtain an accurate PUP and SEC are used. A breakdown of the energy consumed by the injection moulding process of the parts studied at an operation level using Sankey diagrams is discussed. The study results are used to identify strategies to reduce the energy consumed by the processes. The methodology employed, and the strategies reported could be used with other plastic parts regardless of the material and machine used. The results reported are new experimental data useful input for theoretical models.

The Chilean energy transition has been internationally recognized as a case of successful public policy in the promotion of renewable energies, even being defined as an “energy revolution”. However...

Local Governments (LGs) have strengthened the financial control as a consequence of mandatory requirements to ensure financial sustainability in their management. The aim of this study is to determine whether financial indicators about financial conditions defined in Spanish regulation are backed by worldwide generally accepted financial benchmarking indicators. For this purpose, we analyze the relationship between Spanish indicators of financial sustainability based on European Union (EU) regulations and Financial Trends Monitoring System Indicators (FTMS) of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). For this purpose, two methodologies are applied: discriminant analysis and logistic regression, where the dependent variables are each of the Spanish financial indicators and the independent variables are ICMA indicators. The evidence supports that variables that are related to the control of expenditures, debt and the revenues show a greater explanatory power of financial sustainability, being the most important elements which offer relevant information about the financial sustainability measurement of LGs.

As the world searches for renewable energy in the face of climate change and China attempts to expand its power supply to further its economic development, hydroelectricity has moved to the top of the country’s energy agenda. This has given rise to a new form of “hydropower discourse” in China. The discourse is underpinned by the ideas of environmental protection and sustainable development, which are widely perceived as unobjectionable in view of the current availability of resources. This article argues that the apparent ethical pursuit of renewable energy by building dams to generate electricity masks relations of dominance and helps to enable large energy companies, political leaders, and regional decision makers to pursue their interests against those who have limited or no access to the knowledge and capital employed in the development process. It will examine the ideological assumptions and institutional rootedness of hydropower discourse, and the power relations embedded in it.