Natasha Cornea
Biographic Data
| ID | 282796 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Natasha Cornea |
| GIVEN NAMES | Natasha |
| FAMILY NAME | Cornea |
| SIGNATURE | CORNEA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2739-6132 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 98 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Seeing the state in waste? Exploring the everyday state and imagined state performance in Lusaka's lower income settlements
In this paper I demonstrate the ways that the everyday state is produced in and through Lusaka's rubbish, although the state is largely absent from the day‐to‐day management of the solid waste in the city. This analysis draws insight from over 90 semi‐structured interviews with a range of respondents in Lusaka, primarily focussed on the cities’ lower income settlements. I build on the overlapping conversation in political geography on the state a…
Environmental Governance in Small Cities: Decentralization, Municipal Capacity and Autonomy in Gujarat and West Bengal
India’s 74th Constitutional Amendment obliges state governments to devolve responsibilities related to urban environmental resources and services to the Urban Local Bodies. However, the existing literature points to deficiencies in urban decentralization, including a mismatch between resources and responsibilities, financial constraints, and a lack of capacities at the municipal level. This article, based on comparative fieldwork and analysis of …
Urban Ecological Futures: Five Eco-Community Strategies for more Sustainable and Equitable Cities
Cities are critical sites for understanding, and potentially ameliorating, the effects of global ecological change, the climate emergency and natural resource depletion. Contemporary cities are sociomaterially connected through global markets, trade and transportation, placing ever-increasing demands on the natural environment and generating dangerous pollutants and emissions. Current approaches to address these environmental crises are dominated…
How many Kirulapana Canals are there in Colombo? Reading everyday imageries and imaginations using southern theory
Urban imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations are always plural and illustrate the formation of knowledge hegemonies. In this article, we engage with the problematic of reading infrastructures with a southern theory lens. We explore multiple imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations of the Kirulapana Canal in Colombo via everyday practices. Analysing the geographical imaginations of the state officials and residents, we illustrate (i)…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South
In the global South, urban infrastructures and environments are marked by significant heterogeneity and the presence of multiple overlapping systems, configurations and actor networks that keep the city working – water flows, electricity is available, and waste is collected. This occurs in the face of what has been traditionally characterized as failed or incomplete infrastructures and the presence of governance practices that often deviate from …
Territorialising control in urban West Bengal: Social clubs and everyday governance in the spaces between state and party
Analysis of politics in urban West Bengal has focussed on the near hegemonic control of political parties and the state on daily life – overlooking or under-accounting for the complex institutional assemblages that shape spaces of the political in daily life. Addressing this empirical gap, this paper examines the role of social clubs, who discursively imagine themselves to be not political in governing the city. I demonstrate the ways that clubs,…
Everyday governance and urban environments: Towards a more interdisciplinary urban political ecology
Urban political ecology (UPE) has mainly evolved within the discipline of geography to examine the power relations that produce uneven urban spaces (infrastructures and natures) and unequal access to resources in cities. Its increasingly poststructuralist orientation demands the questioning of received categories and concepts, including those of (neoliberal) governance, government, and of the state. This paper attempts to open this black box by r…
Clean city politics: An urban political ecology of solid waste in West Bengal, India
Solid waste management is often perceived as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing local governments in urban India and elsewhere in the global south. However, solid waste is not simply a managerial problem but is in many ways a highly political issue that involves diverse political actors at different scales. Particularly at the local level, solid waste management can also be a key part of broader political strategies, acting th…
Of parks and politics: The production of socio-nature in a Gujarati town
Urban parks in India are often discussed as positive environmental projects, and their creation appears as unproblematic in public discourse. This paper presents the creation of a municipal park in a small city in Gujarat, India. Using insights from history and architecture, we stress the importance of reading parks as political and to some extent ideological prajects in the larger context of city-making. The political ecology and history of the …
Ponds, Power and Institutions: The Everyday Governance of Accessing Urban Water Bodies in a Small Bengali City
While researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. Thes…
Introduction. Environmental Politics in Urban India
This special issue of SAMAJ, composed of six empirical papers and this introduction seeks to throw light on environmental politics in contemporary urban India. Adopting a deliberately broad understanding of the environment, to include environmental amenities, urban natural resources and the built environment, the diverse case studies within this issue contribute to an interlinked set of discussions on the politicization of India’s urban environme…
Everyday governance and urban environments: Towards a more interdisciplinary urban political ecology
Urban political ecology (UPE) has mainly evolved within the discipline of geography to examine the power relations that produce uneven urban spaces (infrastructures and natures) and unequal access to resources in cities. Its increasingly poststructuralist orientation demands the questioning of received categories and concepts, including those of (neoliberal) governance, government, and of the state. This paper attempts to open this black box by r…
Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South
In the global South, urban infrastructures and environments are marked by significant heterogeneity and the presence of multiple overlapping systems, configurations and actor networks that keep the city working – water flows, electricity is available, and waste is collected. This occurs in the face of what has been traditionally characterized as failed or incomplete infrastructures and the presence of governance practices that often deviate from …
Ponds, Power and Institutions: The Everyday Governance of Accessing Urban Water Bodies in a Small Bengali City
While researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. Thes…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Clean city politics: An urban political ecology of solid waste in West Bengal, India
Solid waste management is often perceived as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing local governments in urban India and elsewhere in the global south. However, solid waste is not simply a managerial problem but is in many ways a highly political issue that involves diverse political actors at different scales. Particularly at the local level, solid waste management can also be a key part of broader political strategies, acting th…
Of parks and politics: The production of socio-nature in a Gujarati town
Urban parks in India are often discussed as positive environmental projects, and their creation appears as unproblematic in public discourse. This paper presents the creation of a municipal park in a small city in Gujarat, India. Using insights from history and architecture, we stress the importance of reading parks as political and to some extent ideological prajects in the larger context of city-making. The political ecology and history of the …
Territorialising control in urban West Bengal: Social clubs and everyday governance in the spaces between state and party
Analysis of politics in urban West Bengal has focussed on the near hegemonic control of political parties and the state on daily life – overlooking or under-accounting for the complex institutional assemblages that shape spaces of the political in daily life. Addressing this empirical gap, this paper examines the role of social clubs, who discursively imagine themselves to be not political in governing the city. I demonstrate the ways that clubs,…
Urban Ecological Futures: Five Eco-Community Strategies for more Sustainable and Equitable Cities
Cities are critical sites for understanding, and potentially ameliorating, the effects of global ecological change, the climate emergency and natural resource depletion. Contemporary cities are sociomaterially connected through global markets, trade and transportation, placing ever-increasing demands on the natural environment and generating dangerous pollutants and emissions. Current approaches to address these environmental crises are dominated…
How many Kirulapana Canals are there in Colombo? Reading everyday imageries and imaginations using southern theory
Urban imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations are always plural and illustrate the formation of knowledge hegemonies. In this article, we engage with the problematic of reading infrastructures with a southern theory lens. We explore multiple imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations of the Kirulapana Canal in Colombo via everyday practices. Analysing the geographical imaginations of the state officials and residents, we illustrate (i)…
Of parks and politics: The production of socio-nature in a Gujarati town
Urban parks in India are often discussed as positive environmental projects, and their creation appears as unproblematic in public discourse. This paper presents the creation of a municipal park in a small city in Gujarat, India. Using insights from history and architecture, we stress the importance of reading parks as political and to some extent ideological prajects in the larger context of city-making. The political ecology and history of the …
Ponds, Power and Institutions: The Everyday Governance of Accessing Urban Water Bodies in a Small Bengali City
While researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. Thes…
Introduction. Environmental Politics in Urban India
This special issue of SAMAJ, composed of six empirical papers and this introduction seeks to throw light on environmental politics in contemporary urban India. Adopting a deliberately broad understanding of the environment, to include environmental amenities, urban natural resources and the built environment, the diverse case studies within this issue contribute to an interlinked set of discussions on the politicization of India’s urban environme…
Everyday governance and urban environments: Towards a more interdisciplinary urban political ecology
Urban political ecology (UPE) has mainly evolved within the discipline of geography to examine the power relations that produce uneven urban spaces (infrastructures and natures) and unequal access to resources in cities. Its increasingly poststructuralist orientation demands the questioning of received categories and concepts, including those of (neoliberal) governance, government, and of the state. This paper attempts to open this black box by r…
Clean city politics: An urban political ecology of solid waste in West Bengal, India
Solid waste management is often perceived as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing local governments in urban India and elsewhere in the global south. However, solid waste is not simply a managerial problem but is in many ways a highly political issue that involves diverse political actors at different scales. Particularly at the local level, solid waste management can also be a key part of broader political strategies, acting th…
Territorialising control in urban West Bengal: Social clubs and everyday governance in the spaces between state and party
Analysis of politics in urban West Bengal has focussed on the near hegemonic control of political parties and the state on daily life – overlooking or under-accounting for the complex institutional assemblages that shape spaces of the political in daily life. Addressing this empirical gap, this paper examines the role of social clubs, who discursively imagine themselves to be not political in governing the city. I demonstrate the ways that clubs,…
Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday: Perspectives from and of the global South
In the global South, urban infrastructures and environments are marked by significant heterogeneity and the presence of multiple overlapping systems, configurations and actor networks that keep the city working – water flows, electricity is available, and waste is collected. This occurs in the face of what has been traditionally characterized as failed or incomplete infrastructures and the presence of governance practices that often deviate from …
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Seeing the state in waste? Exploring the everyday state and imagined state performance in Lusaka's lower income settlements
In this paper I demonstrate the ways that the everyday state is produced in and through Lusaka's rubbish, although the state is largely absent from the day‐to‐day management of the solid waste in the city. This analysis draws insight from over 90 semi‐structured interviews with a range of respondents in Lusaka, primarily focussed on the cities’ lower income settlements. I build on the overlapping conversation in political geography on the state a…
Environmental Governance in Small Cities: Decentralization, Municipal Capacity and Autonomy in Gujarat and West Bengal
India’s 74th Constitutional Amendment obliges state governments to devolve responsibilities related to urban environmental resources and services to the Urban Local Bodies. However, the existing literature points to deficiencies in urban decentralization, including a mismatch between resources and responsibilities, financial constraints, and a lack of capacities at the municipal level. This article, based on comparative fieldwork and analysis of …
Urban Ecological Futures: Five Eco-Community Strategies for more Sustainable and Equitable Cities
Cities are critical sites for understanding, and potentially ameliorating, the effects of global ecological change, the climate emergency and natural resource depletion. Contemporary cities are sociomaterially connected through global markets, trade and transportation, placing ever-increasing demands on the natural environment and generating dangerous pollutants and emissions. Current approaches to address these environmental crises are dominated…
How many Kirulapana Canals are there in Colombo? Reading everyday imageries and imaginations using southern theory
Urban imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations are always plural and illustrate the formation of knowledge hegemonies. In this article, we engage with the problematic of reading infrastructures with a southern theory lens. We explore multiple imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations of the Kirulapana Canal in Colombo via everyday practices. Analysing the geographical imaginations of the state officials and residents, we illustrate (i)…
Political science (12 works) · Politics (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Geography (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (8 works) · Corporate governance (7 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (5 works)