M Watts
Biographic Data
| ID | 26605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Watts |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Watts |
| SIGNATURE | WATTS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1559-3091 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 797 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The demise of the moral economy: Food and famine in a Sudano-Sahelian region in historical perspective
Consistently unreliable: Oil spill data and transparency discourse
State as Illusion
Moral Economies of Corruption is an important intervention, and Steven Pierce provides an alternative way of viewing the long history of anticorruption programs in Nigeria. As Michael J. Watts' contribution discusses, there are a number of dangers that lurk in the discursive and performative orientation of the book. Sometimes the shifting character of what constitutes corruption produces less a systematic account of corruption than a history of s…
Reflections on circulation, logistics, and the frontiers of capitalist supply chains
Geographies of Limited Statehood
Starting from the presupposition that areas of limited statehood (ALS) are not ungoverned, but 'differently' governed, this chapter proposes a spatial grammar that analyses authority and governance as a socio-spatial relationship. This spatial grammar distinguishes four types of dynamic socio-spatial relations-territory, place, scale, and network-and enables us to spatially analyse (a) how political authority is contested, claimed, upheld, and di…
Colonialism, Decolonization, and Neocolonialism
Modern colonialism in its various norms and forms extended over the period from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. In the New World, which had been subjected to Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch colonial rule in the First Age of Colonialism , the first wave of decolonization occurred in the eighteenth century. In this regard, the so‐called Classical Age of Imperialism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was short, the first …
Violence
Given the close relations between violent conflict and modernity, it is no surprise that the complex forms, dynamics, and trajectories of violence have come to be seen as central to the understanding of modern life as much as it is an object of much social science theorizing, including geographical theory. It is now commonplace to acknowledge that the great arc of modernization – or for that matter the Enlightenment – bears all the marks of coerc…
Frontiers: Authority, Precarity, and Insurgency at the Edge of the State
The mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960; a study of violent peasant entrepreneurs, by Anton Blok
It is well known what ideology is propagated through the multifarious forms of bourgeois propaganda among the masses of the North: the South is a lead weight which impedes a more rapid civil develo
Chronicle of a future foretold: The complex legacies of Ken Saro-Wiwa
On confluences and divergences
Turbulent Oil: Conflict and Insecurity in the Niger Delta
The Niger Delta region of Nigeria has been engulfed by oil-related conflict for over two decades now, and concerns pertaining to Nigeria's national security, economic stability, and global energy security have been brought to the fore of global discourse. This paper reflects on the character and dynamics of oil turbulence and in particular the transformation of the conflict from a community protest against oil industry operations to insurgency an…
Planet of the Wageless
Blind faith: Some personal reflections on Nigerian fieldwork
Now and Then 1
Antipode was launched into the firmament of the 1970s. We might reflect upon how well the journal and its contributors fully appreciated the historical gravity and weight of what was surrounding the project to create “a radical journal of geography”. What sort of radicalism was on offer? The language was “social relevance” from “a radical (Left) political viewpoint”. In writing to celebrate Antipode 's birthday, this time in another, and similar,…
Power and Education
Using a meta-analysis activity to make critical reflection explicit in teacher education
Soft Machine: A Note on Oil Addiction
Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex, and Corporate Social Responsibility
One of the most important aspects of the rise of post-1945 global capitalism has been the call for transnational corporations to conform to basic human rights principles. This chapter reviews the efforts within the oil industry (with a particular focus on their operations in the less-developed countries) to develop corporate social responsibility and the related development of voluntary, legal, and statutory programs by governments, nongovernment…
Antinomies of community: Some thoughts on geography, resources and empire
Community is a fundamental modality for the conduct of modern politics. This paper explores the antinomies of community in an oil nation: Nigeria. Oil states stand in relation to a particular sort of capitalism (what I call petro‐capitalism) in which a key resource (petroleum) and a logic of extraction figure centrally in the making and breaking of community. I pose the following questions: how are communities imagined (or not), territorialized (…
Conclusion
Liberation ecology integrates critical approaches to political economy with notions derived from poststructural philosophy. The quest is to understand the ways human practice transforms the Earth and the ways in which environmental practices, institutions, and knowledges might be subverted, contested, and reformed. In this sense Liberation Ecologies speaks to a critical analysis of environmental degradation and rehabilitation framed by something …
Hour of darkness: Vulnerability, security and globalization
The events of September 11th in New York and Washington DC have compelled us to focus on the links between globalization and security. I focus on this relationship by exploring the links between food security, vulnerability to hunger and the world market. Using the new book by Mike Davis on late Victorian famines, I show how his political ecology of famine challenges the work of Amartya Sen on entitlements. My contribution examines how and why en…
Struggles over Geography: Violence, Freedom and Development at the Millennium
Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century
Climate Change and Food Insecurity: Toward a Sociology and Geography of Vulnerability
The space of vulnerability: The Causal Structure of Hunger and Famine
Mass poverty results from long-term changes in social production and distribution mechanisms; famines result from violent short-term changes in the same mechanisms. Growth of mass poverty increases vulnerability to famine through raising the proportion of the population surviving on the margin... Famines increases mass poverty by permanently altering the distribution of assets in favor of the [rich] (Ghose, A.K., 1989: 127). The focus on entitlem…
Antinomies of community: Some thoughts on geography, resources and empire
Community is a fundamental modality for the conduct of modern politics. This paper explores the antinomies of community in an oil nation: Nigeria. Oil states stand in relation to a particular sort of capitalism (what I call petro‐capitalism) in which a key resource (petroleum) and a logic of extraction figure centrally in the making and breaking of community. I pose the following questions: how are communities imagined (or not), territorialized (…
Climate change and social vulnerability
Development I: Power, Knowledge, Discursive Practice
The agrarian question in Africa: Debating the crisis
Frontiers: Authority, Precarity, and Insurgency at the Edge of the State
Space for Everything (A Commentary)
Mapping Meaning, Denoting Difference, Imagining Identity: Dialectical Images and Postmodern Geographies
This paper explores some common ground between cultural studies and geographic approaches to globalization and modernity. An understanding of the revalidation of place and locality associated with
Hunger, famine and the space of vulnerability
Reflections on circulation, logistics, and the frontiers of capitalist supply chains
State, oil, and Accumulation; from Boom to Crisis
The sharp increase in crude petroleum prices during the 1970s had a startling impact on state, economy, and society among oil producers. The meteoric growth of oil rents not only enlarged and centralized the state itself but simultaneously internationalized and domesticated the public sector. Fiscal rather than market mechanisms played a significant role in all oil-producing states, especially in so-called high absorbers. Adopting Nigeria as an e…
Turbulent Oil: Conflict and Insecurity in the Niger Delta
The Niger Delta region of Nigeria has been engulfed by oil-related conflict for over two decades now, and concerns pertaining to Nigeria's national security, economic stability, and global energy security have been brought to the fore of global discourse. This paper reflects on the character and dynamics of oil turbulence and in particular the transformation of the conflict from a community protest against oil industry operations to insurgency an…
Reworking Modernity: Capitalism and Symbolic Discontent
Survey 11: Powers of Production-Geographers among the Peasants
Crisis and Change in African Agriculture: A Comparative Study of the Ivory Coast and Nigeria
The notion of a general crisis in African agriculture has entered current African development lexicon with great rapidity. In spite of questionable quality of some of most basic agricultural production statistics (see Berry, 1984), critics of quite different political and theoretical persuasion have promoted view of widespread structural stagnation (World Bank, 1981; Eicher, 1982; Lofchie and Commins, 1982). Sustained by realities of starving pea…
On confluences and divergences
Chronicle of a future foretold: The complex legacies of Ken Saro-Wiwa
The Political Economy of Climatic Hazards: A Village Perspective on Drought and Peasant Economy in a Semi-Arid Région of West Africa
M. J. Watts - Économie politique des accidents climatiques: perspective villageoise sur la sécheresse et l'économie paysanne dans une région semi-aride d'Afrique occidentale. A partir d'une analyse des conséquences sociales de la récente sécheresse en pays hausa, une critique de l'approche purement géographique de l'étude des accidents climatiques et de leurs effets sur les sociétés qui en sont victimes. Même la description en termes d'écologie s…
Consistently unreliable: Oil spill data and transparency discourse
Geographies of Limited Statehood
Starting from the presupposition that areas of limited statehood (ALS) are not ungoverned, but 'differently' governed, this chapter proposes a spatial grammar that analyses authority and governance as a socio-spatial relationship. This spatial grammar distinguishes four types of dynamic socio-spatial relations-territory, place, scale, and network-and enables us to spatially analyse (a) how political authority is contested, claimed, upheld, and di…
Planet of the Wageless
Now and Then 1
Antipode was launched into the firmament of the 1970s. We might reflect upon how well the journal and its contributors fully appreciated the historical gravity and weight of what was surrounding the project to create “a radical journal of geography”. What sort of radicalism was on offer? The language was “social relevance” from “a radical (Left) political viewpoint”. In writing to celebrate Antipode 's birthday, this time in another, and similar,…
State as Illusion
Moral Economies of Corruption is an important intervention, and Steven Pierce provides an alternative way of viewing the long history of anticorruption programs in Nigeria. As Michael J. Watts' contribution discusses, there are a number of dangers that lurk in the discursive and performative orientation of the book. Sometimes the shifting character of what constitutes corruption produces less a systematic account of corruption than a history of s…
Using a meta-analysis activity to make critical reflection explicit in teacher education
The Political Economy of Climatic Hazards: A Village Perspective on Drought and Peasant Economy in a Semi-Arid Région of West Africa
M. J. Watts - Économie politique des accidents climatiques: perspective villageoise sur la sécheresse et l'économie paysanne dans une région semi-aride d'Afrique occidentale. A partir d'une analyse des conséquences sociales de la récente sécheresse en pays hausa, une critique de l'approche purement géographique de l'étude des accidents climatiques et de leurs effets sur les sociétés qui en sont victimes. Même la description en termes d'écologie s…
State, oil, and Accumulation; from Boom to Crisis
The sharp increase in crude petroleum prices during the 1970s had a startling impact on state, economy, and society among oil producers. The meteoric growth of oil rents not only enlarged and centralized the state itself but simultaneously internationalized and domesticated the public sector. Fiscal rather than market mechanisms played a significant role in all oil-producing states, especially in so-called high absorbers. Adopting Nigeria as an e…
Books/Livres
Crisis and Change in African Agriculture: A Comparative Study of the Ivory Coast and Nigeria
The notion of a general crisis in African agriculture has entered current African development lexicon with great rapidity. In spite of questionable quality of some of most basic agricultural production statistics (see Berry, 1984), critics of quite different political and theoretical persuasion have promoted view of widespread structural stagnation (World Bank, 1981; Eicher, 1982; Lofchie and Commins, 1982). Sustained by realities of starving pea…
The Agrarian Question in Africa: What Is the Question
Survey 11: Powers of Production-Geographers among the Peasants
Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for a Prosecution
Journal Article Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for a Prosecution Get access Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for a Prosecution, by Polly Hill. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986. xiii+198 pp. £22.50 hardback, £7.95 paperback. ISBN 0 521 31104 2 and 31096 2. MICHAEL J. WATTS MICHAEL J. WATTS University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goo…
The agrarian question in Africa: Debating the crisis
Screening for ischaemic heart disease risk factors at a health fair: Low attendance by those at highest risk
Among people attending a heart disease screening project at a Health Fair in Sheffield, only 22 of 425 (5.2%) lived in areas with more than 25% of the population belonging to social classes IV or V. The incidence of heart disease is known to be particularly high in these areas, where 15.1% of the total population live. By analysis of the attendance rates from districts other than those immediately adjacent to the site of the Health Fair, we found…
Mapping Meaning, Denoting Difference, Imagining Identity: Dialectical Images and Postmodern Geographies
This paper explores some common ground between cultural studies and geographic approaches to globalization and modernity. An understanding of the revalidation of place and locality associated with
Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent
Using both grand conceptualizations and grounded case studies, Allan Pred and Michael Watts look at how people cope with and give meaning to capitalism and modernity in different times and places. As capital accumulation has grown and taken new forms, it has affected technology and labor relations which in turn have affected people's daily lives. These changes have not always been either welcome or easy. Pred and Watts focus on the symbolic disco…
Space for Everything (A Commentary)
Hunger, famine and the space of vulnerability
Development I: Power, Knowledge, Discursive Practice
The space of vulnerability: The Causal Structure of Hunger and Famine
Mass poverty results from long-term changes in social production and distribution mechanisms; famines result from violent short-term changes in the same mechanisms. Growth of mass poverty increases vulnerability to famine through raising the proportion of the population surviving on the margin... Famines increases mass poverty by permanently altering the distribution of assets in favor of the [rich] (Ghose, A.K., 1989: 127). The focus on entitlem…
Climate change and social vulnerability
Reworking Modernity: Capitalism and Symbolic Discontent
Reworking Modernity: Capitalism and Symbolic Discontent
Climate Change and Food Insecurity: Toward a Sociology and Geography of Vulnerability
Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century
Conclusion
Liberation ecology integrates critical approaches to political economy with notions derived from poststructural philosophy. The quest is to understand the ways human practice transforms the Earth and the ways in which environmental practices, institutions, and knowledges might be subverted, contested, and reformed. In this sense Liberation Ecologies speaks to a critical analysis of environmental degradation and rehabilitation framed by something …
Hour of darkness: Vulnerability, security and globalization
The events of September 11th in New York and Washington DC have compelled us to focus on the links between globalization and security. I focus on this relationship by exploring the links between food security, vulnerability to hunger and the world market. Using the new book by Mike Davis on late Victorian famines, I show how his political ecology of famine challenges the work of Amartya Sen on entitlements. My contribution examines how and why en…
Struggles over Geography: Violence, Freedom and Development at the Millennium
Antinomies of community: Some thoughts on geography, resources and empire
Community is a fundamental modality for the conduct of modern politics. This paper explores the antinomies of community in an oil nation: Nigeria. Oil states stand in relation to a particular sort of capitalism (what I call petro‐capitalism) in which a key resource (petroleum) and a logic of extraction figure centrally in the making and breaking of community. I pose the following questions: how are communities imagined (or not), territorialized (…
Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex, and Corporate Social Responsibility
One of the most important aspects of the rise of post-1945 global capitalism has been the call for transnational corporations to conform to basic human rights principles. This chapter reviews the efforts within the oil industry (with a particular focus on their operations in the less-developed countries) to develop corporate social responsibility and the related development of voluntary, legal, and statutory programs by governments, nongovernment…
Political science (28 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Geography (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Economics (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Engineering (7 works) · Natural Resources and Economic Development (7 works)