Gustav Cederlöf
Biographic Data
| ID | 1176841 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gustav Cederlöf |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gustav |
| FAMILY NAME | Cederlöf |
| SIGNATURE | CEDERLÖF G |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6234-0380 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Agriculture in a Socialist City
Urban political ecology has developed as a critique of capitalist urbanization. This article develops the concept of alter‐urban political ecology to define urban environments emerging not from capitalist urbanization but from efforts to transform it. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in five urban farms in socialist Cuba, I argue that a Marxist critique of colonial capitalism matters less as an analytical tool and more as a…
Risky energy geographies
An energy transition is needed to mitigate climate change, but the shift to renewables is also a broader opportunity to reduce disaster risk. This article integrates perspectives from energy geographies and critical disaster studies to examine how energy transition intersects with disaster risk reduction. Unpacking the energy-disasters interface, ‘energy’ is conceptualised in two ways: first, as a hazard produced socio-naturally in energy hazards…
Decolonising polycrisis
This commentary argues that the concept of ‘polycrisis’ must be critically reoriented through a decolonial lens, particularly about the global South, where overlapping crises have long been the norm. While ‘polycrisis’ has become a buzzword among global economic and political elites, scholars have studied its relevance mainly for the global North. Using the climate and debt crises as two entry points, we delineate how these crises interlock in th…
Swedish human ecology, political ecology, and the struggle for interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinary research and education on human-environment relations has a natural place in many Anglo-American geography and anthropology departments. In Sweden, however, critical scholarship across the socio-natural divide has largely been outsourced to the interdisciplinary field of human ecology. Since the 1970s, Swedish human ecologists have sought to integrate perspectives from the social and natural sciences, giving rise to challenging …
Disaster Risk Reduction and the Cuban Exception
Energy as object and relation
A fundamental question in energy geographies is how the materiality of energy should be conceptualised. In the physical sciences, energy is a concept of thermodynamics, but this is a kind of materiality that has received little attention in energy geographies. This article engages with recent social-science energy research on thermodynamics to conceptualise a continuous, relational mode of materiality. This contrasts with the discrete, object-lik…
System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems
This article examines an epistemological dilemma at the center of social and environmental impact assessment: where and when the "system boundaries" that define the extent of an energy technology with socio-environmental impact should be drawn. We demonstrate how system boundaries give rise to different epistemological problems, first, when socio-environmental impact is studied across commodity chains, notably in life cycle assessments (LCA), and…
The Revolutionary City
During the Cold War, Havana symbolised the struggle for national liberation in Latin America. Yet in few other places on the island of Cuba did the Revolution's visions of development materialise as they did in the southern city of Cienfuegos. This article examines why two half-finished nuclear reactors and a decaying 'nuclear city' still remain in Cienfuegos. Through a comprehensive spatial and infrastructural transformation of Cuba, the revolut…
Undergraduate student perceptions of assessment and feedback practice
Assessment and feedback practices sit at the heart of education and the student experience. This paper reports on undergraduate perceptions of assessment and feedback in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, UK. Twenty-eight first and second-year students across six focus groups provided comments on their understanding of feedback, their feedback experiences, and what they felt could be improved. It was clear that students desired…
Out of steam
Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines th…
Maintaining power
With the Energy Revolution of 2005, the energy and carbon intensity of the Cuban state‐economy decreased by over a third. More than an issue of low‐carbon transition, however, this article suggests that the Energy Revolution was an attempt to maintain social power relations through everyday energy use. Drawing on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, the article conceptualises energy infrastructures as co‐constitutive of the ecological con…
On PetroCaribe
Has Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and justice
Given the many problems with fossil energy, the fact that solar energy still only constitutes an insignificant fraction of global energy use requires explanation. The most common explanation is that multinational corporations with vested interests in fossil fuels have been actively preventing the development of solar energy technologies. But this explanation is difficult to apply to the case of Cuba. This article takes Cuban energy policy since t…
Low-carbon food supply
Out of steam
Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines th…
Has Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and justice
Given the many problems with fossil energy, the fact that solar energy still only constitutes an insignificant fraction of global energy use requires explanation. The most common explanation is that multinational corporations with vested interests in fossil fuels have been actively preventing the development of solar energy technologies. But this explanation is difficult to apply to the case of Cuba. This article takes Cuban energy policy since t…
Energy as object and relation
A fundamental question in energy geographies is how the materiality of energy should be conceptualised. In the physical sciences, energy is a concept of thermodynamics, but this is a kind of materiality that has received little attention in energy geographies. This article engages with recent social-science energy research on thermodynamics to conceptualise a continuous, relational mode of materiality. This contrasts with the discrete, object-lik…
Maintaining power
With the Energy Revolution of 2005, the energy and carbon intensity of the Cuban state‐economy decreased by over a third. More than an issue of low‐carbon transition, however, this article suggests that the Energy Revolution was an attempt to maintain social power relations through everyday energy use. Drawing on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, the article conceptualises energy infrastructures as co‐constitutive of the ecological con…
On PetroCaribe
Low-carbon food supply
The Revolutionary City
During the Cold War, Havana symbolised the struggle for national liberation in Latin America. Yet in few other places on the island of Cuba did the Revolution's visions of development materialise as they did in the southern city of Cienfuegos. This article examines why two half-finished nuclear reactors and a decaying 'nuclear city' still remain in Cienfuegos. Through a comprehensive spatial and infrastructural transformation of Cuba, the revolut…
Undergraduate student perceptions of assessment and feedback practice
Assessment and feedback practices sit at the heart of education and the student experience. This paper reports on undergraduate perceptions of assessment and feedback in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, UK. Twenty-eight first and second-year students across six focus groups provided comments on their understanding of feedback, their feedback experiences, and what they felt could be improved. It was clear that students desired…
Disaster Risk Reduction and the Cuban Exception
System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems
This article examines an epistemological dilemma at the center of social and environmental impact assessment: where and when the "system boundaries" that define the extent of an energy technology with socio-environmental impact should be drawn. We demonstrate how system boundaries give rise to different epistemological problems, first, when socio-environmental impact is studied across commodity chains, notably in life cycle assessments (LCA), and…
Low-carbon food supply
Undergraduate student perceptions of assessment and feedback practice
Assessment and feedback practices sit at the heart of education and the student experience. This paper reports on undergraduate perceptions of assessment and feedback in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, UK. Twenty-eight first and second-year students across six focus groups provided comments on their understanding of feedback, their feedback experiences, and what they felt could be improved. It was clear that students desired…
Out of steam
Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines th…
Maintaining power
With the Energy Revolution of 2005, the energy and carbon intensity of the Cuban state‐economy decreased by over a third. More than an issue of low‐carbon transition, however, this article suggests that the Energy Revolution was an attempt to maintain social power relations through everyday energy use. Drawing on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, the article conceptualises energy infrastructures as co‐constitutive of the ecological con…
On PetroCaribe
Has Cuba exposed the myth of “free” solar power? Energy, space, and justice
Given the many problems with fossil energy, the fact that solar energy still only constitutes an insignificant fraction of global energy use requires explanation. The most common explanation is that multinational corporations with vested interests in fossil fuels have been actively preventing the development of solar energy technologies. But this explanation is difficult to apply to the case of Cuba. This article takes Cuban energy policy since t…
The Revolutionary City
During the Cold War, Havana symbolised the struggle for national liberation in Latin America. Yet in few other places on the island of Cuba did the Revolution's visions of development materialise as they did in the southern city of Cienfuegos. This article examines why two half-finished nuclear reactors and a decaying 'nuclear city' still remain in Cienfuegos. Through a comprehensive spatial and infrastructural transformation of Cuba, the revolut…
System boundaries as epistemological and ethnographic problems
This article examines an epistemological dilemma at the center of social and environmental impact assessment: where and when the "system boundaries" that define the extent of an energy technology with socio-environmental impact should be drawn. We demonstrate how system boundaries give rise to different epistemological problems, first, when socio-environmental impact is studied across commodity chains, notably in life cycle assessments (LCA), and…
Energy as object and relation
A fundamental question in energy geographies is how the materiality of energy should be conceptualised. In the physical sciences, energy is a concept of thermodynamics, but this is a kind of materiality that has received little attention in energy geographies. This article engages with recent social-science energy research on thermodynamics to conceptualise a continuous, relational mode of materiality. This contrasts with the discrete, object-lik…
Decolonising polycrisis
This commentary argues that the concept of ‘polycrisis’ must be critically reoriented through a decolonial lens, particularly about the global South, where overlapping crises have long been the norm. While ‘polycrisis’ has become a buzzword among global economic and political elites, scholars have studied its relevance mainly for the global North. Using the climate and debt crises as two entry points, we delineate how these crises interlock in th…
Swedish human ecology, political ecology, and the struggle for interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinary research and education on human-environment relations has a natural place in many Anglo-American geography and anthropology departments. In Sweden, however, critical scholarship across the socio-natural divide has largely been outsourced to the interdisciplinary field of human ecology. Since the 1970s, Swedish human ecologists have sought to integrate perspectives from the social and natural sciences, giving rise to challenging …
Disaster Risk Reduction and the Cuban Exception
Agriculture in a Socialist City
Urban political ecology has developed as a critique of capitalist urbanization. This article develops the concept of alter‐urban political ecology to define urban environments emerging not from capitalist urbanization but from efforts to transform it. Drawing on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in five urban farms in socialist Cuba, I argue that a Marxist critique of colonial capitalism matters less as an analytical tool and more as a…
Risky energy geographies
An energy transition is needed to mitigate climate change, but the shift to renewables is also a broader opportunity to reduce disaster risk. This article integrates perspectives from energy geographies and critical disaster studies to examine how energy transition intersects with disaster risk reduction. Unpacking the energy-disasters interface, ‘energy’ is conceptualised in two ways: first, as a hazard produced socio-naturally in energy hazards…
Political science (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political ecology (4 works) · Political economy (4 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works)