Mohammed Rafi Arefin
Biographic Data
| ID | 341341 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mohammed Rafi Arefin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mohammed Rafi |
| FAMILY NAME | Arefin |
| SIGNATURE | AREFIN M R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9227-9587 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Geographies of biosecurity
The current era of emerging infectious disease demands an elaboration of critical geography’s approach to biosecurity. We argue for further engagement with historicizations of empire to tease out the racialized, colonial, and class structures that create biosecurity crises and solutions. We suggest that work in political economy and critical surveillance studies offers ways to untangle the processes of racial capitalism, extraction, and racial im…
A Global Era of Disposability
This Symposium explores how under‐examined relations of disposability underpin socio‐ecological transformation in the Anthropocene. The Symposium makes four inventions into ongoing debates at the intersection of discard studies and planetary change. First, it illuminates how new frontiers of accumulation work to revalue discards through shifting waste/value dialectics. Second, it encourages analysis of discards not as incidental of systems and st…
The Commodification of Waste in Cairo, Egypt
Dominant narratives of Cairo's waste challenges frame the issue as a consequence of overpopulation and unsanitary behaviour, advocating for technocratic solutions led by global private firms and technological innovation. These narratives, however, obscure the commodification of waste and the colonial discourses that justify waste's valorisation. Together capital and colonialism transform labour and infrastructure continually producing a system th…
Digitalizing sewage
Expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, Wastewater-Based Surveillance (WBS) is now heralded by scientists and policy makers alike as the future of monitoring and governing urban health. The expansion of WBS reflects larger neoliberal governance trends whereby digitalizing states increasingly rely on producing big data as a ‘best practice’ to surveil various aspects of everyday life. With a focus on three South Asian cities, our paper investigates …
Urban political ecologies of sewage surveillance
With the outbreak of COVID‐19, wastewater surveillance for public health rapidly emerged and expanded globally. In this article we chart the variegated ecosystem of private firms that work closely with public and non‐profit entities to transform metabolic flows of sewage into vital and valuable bioinformation, thereby creating new multi‐institutional spaces of public health governance. We draw on literature in urban political ecology and politica…
Political ecologies of a university and land at Cairo's urban periphery
In 2008, the American University in Cairo (AUC) moved from its downtown campus in Tahrir Square to the center of New Cairo. Through an analysis of AUC's historical land acquisitions at Cairo's urban periphery, this article examines how the university sought to influence land use over the past century. We argue that AUC's relatively recent role in New Cairo is an expression of the institution's century-long aspirations to acquire land on Cairo's p…
Counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations
In this commentary, we argue that geographical thought and praxis must engage with repressive biosecurity and biosurveillance systems and fight for alternatives. In doing so, geographers can contribute to an emerging anti-colonial and anti-racist interdisciplinary science. We suggest two counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations: working with those who have been cast out of biopolitical worlds and have long been fostering lif…
Infrastructural occupations
Infrastructural Discontent in the Sanitary City
In this article, I examine the relationship between waste, revolt, and repression in Cairo's sanitation system from the early 20 th century to the present. I coin the term infrastructural discontent in the sanitary city to describe how discontent slowly accretes around Cairo's sanitation system and becomes a powerful force in the city's politics—a force that can be mobilised for popular revolt and state repression. I detail three expressions of i…
The State, Sewers, and Security
On 25 October 2015, Alexandria, Egypt, experienced heavy rainstorms, which overwhelmed the city’s sewer and drainage systems. The storm flooded the city and caused the death of seven residents. How the causes of the 2015 Alexandria floods would be narrated and explained became a subject of national contestation; the Egyptian state claimed that the floods were caused not by failures of urban environmental governance or climate change as others sug…
Historical geographies of, and for, the present
While many human geographers maintain a long-standing interest in historical analysis, we believe that there is a need to more explicitly examine the theories, methods, and, ultimately, the stakes of such work. For this forum, we invited five geographers to reflect on their own approach to historical analysis and its implications for scholarly and political debates in the present. These commentaries suggest that, at its best, historical analysis …
Generating anxiety, short-circuiting desire
While batteries are ubiquitous in modern life, they often go unnoticed; that is, until they stop working. Each time a battery dies and becomes waste, our modernist expectations of convenient, reliable energy sources, and our unexamined dependence on these volatile combinations of heavy metals, plastics, and chemical pastes is exposed. In this paper, we document and visualize battery waste flows across North America to reveal the anxiety-ridden pr…
Undisciplining environmental justice research with visual storytelling
Infrastructural Discontent in the Sanitary City
In this article, I examine the relationship between waste, revolt, and repression in Cairo's sanitation system from the early 20 th century to the present. I coin the term infrastructural discontent in the sanitary city to describe how discontent slowly accretes around Cairo's sanitation system and becomes a powerful force in the city's politics—a force that can be mobilised for popular revolt and state repression. I detail three expressions of i…
Historical geographies of, and for, the present
While many human geographers maintain a long-standing interest in historical analysis, we believe that there is a need to more explicitly examine the theories, methods, and, ultimately, the stakes of such work. For this forum, we invited five geographers to reflect on their own approach to historical analysis and its implications for scholarly and political debates in the present. These commentaries suggest that, at its best, historical analysis …
Generating anxiety, short-circuiting desire
While batteries are ubiquitous in modern life, they often go unnoticed; that is, until they stop working. Each time a battery dies and becomes waste, our modernist expectations of convenient, reliable energy sources, and our unexamined dependence on these volatile combinations of heavy metals, plastics, and chemical pastes is exposed. In this paper, we document and visualize battery waste flows across North America to reveal the anxiety-ridden pr…
Undisciplining environmental justice research with visual storytelling
The State, Sewers, and Security
On 25 October 2015, Alexandria, Egypt, experienced heavy rainstorms, which overwhelmed the city’s sewer and drainage systems. The storm flooded the city and caused the death of seven residents. How the causes of the 2015 Alexandria floods would be narrated and explained became a subject of national contestation; the Egyptian state claimed that the floods were caused not by failures of urban environmental governance or climate change as others sug…
Urban political ecologies of sewage surveillance
With the outbreak of COVID‐19, wastewater surveillance for public health rapidly emerged and expanded globally. In this article we chart the variegated ecosystem of private firms that work closely with public and non‐profit entities to transform metabolic flows of sewage into vital and valuable bioinformation, thereby creating new multi‐institutional spaces of public health governance. We draw on literature in urban political ecology and politica…
A Global Era of Disposability
This Symposium explores how under‐examined relations of disposability underpin socio‐ecological transformation in the Anthropocene. The Symposium makes four inventions into ongoing debates at the intersection of discard studies and planetary change. First, it illuminates how new frontiers of accumulation work to revalue discards through shifting waste/value dialectics. Second, it encourages analysis of discards not as incidental of systems and st…
Counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations
In this commentary, we argue that geographical thought and praxis must engage with repressive biosecurity and biosurveillance systems and fight for alternatives. In doing so, geographers can contribute to an emerging anti-colonial and anti-racist interdisciplinary science. We suggest two counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations: working with those who have been cast out of biopolitical worlds and have long been fostering lif…
Geographies of biosecurity
The current era of emerging infectious disease demands an elaboration of critical geography’s approach to biosecurity. We argue for further engagement with historicizations of empire to tease out the racialized, colonial, and class structures that create biosecurity crises and solutions. We suggest that work in political economy and critical surveillance studies offers ways to untangle the processes of racial capitalism, extraction, and racial im…
Infrastructural occupations
Undisciplining environmental justice research with visual storytelling
Historical geographies of, and for, the present
While many human geographers maintain a long-standing interest in historical analysis, we believe that there is a need to more explicitly examine the theories, methods, and, ultimately, the stakes of such work. For this forum, we invited five geographers to reflect on their own approach to historical analysis and its implications for scholarly and political debates in the present. These commentaries suggest that, at its best, historical analysis …
Generating anxiety, short-circuiting desire
While batteries are ubiquitous in modern life, they often go unnoticed; that is, until they stop working. Each time a battery dies and becomes waste, our modernist expectations of convenient, reliable energy sources, and our unexamined dependence on these volatile combinations of heavy metals, plastics, and chemical pastes is exposed. In this paper, we document and visualize battery waste flows across North America to reveal the anxiety-ridden pr…
Infrastructural Discontent in the Sanitary City
In this article, I examine the relationship between waste, revolt, and repression in Cairo's sanitation system from the early 20 th century to the present. I coin the term infrastructural discontent in the sanitary city to describe how discontent slowly accretes around Cairo's sanitation system and becomes a powerful force in the city's politics—a force that can be mobilised for popular revolt and state repression. I detail three expressions of i…
The State, Sewers, and Security
On 25 October 2015, Alexandria, Egypt, experienced heavy rainstorms, which overwhelmed the city’s sewer and drainage systems. The storm flooded the city and caused the death of seven residents. How the causes of the 2015 Alexandria floods would be narrated and explained became a subject of national contestation; the Egyptian state claimed that the floods were caused not by failures of urban environmental governance or climate change as others sug…
Infrastructural occupations
Counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations
In this commentary, we argue that geographical thought and praxis must engage with repressive biosecurity and biosurveillance systems and fight for alternatives. In doing so, geographers can contribute to an emerging anti-colonial and anti-racist interdisciplinary science. We suggest two counter-collaborations towards alternative bio-securitizations: working with those who have been cast out of biopolitical worlds and have long been fostering lif…
Urban political ecologies of sewage surveillance
With the outbreak of COVID‐19, wastewater surveillance for public health rapidly emerged and expanded globally. In this article we chart the variegated ecosystem of private firms that work closely with public and non‐profit entities to transform metabolic flows of sewage into vital and valuable bioinformation, thereby creating new multi‐institutional spaces of public health governance. We draw on literature in urban political ecology and politica…
Political ecologies of a university and land at Cairo's urban periphery
In 2008, the American University in Cairo (AUC) moved from its downtown campus in Tahrir Square to the center of New Cairo. Through an analysis of AUC's historical land acquisitions at Cairo's urban periphery, this article examines how the university sought to influence land use over the past century. We argue that AUC's relatively recent role in New Cairo is an expression of the institution's century-long aspirations to acquire land on Cairo's p…
A Global Era of Disposability
This Symposium explores how under‐examined relations of disposability underpin socio‐ecological transformation in the Anthropocene. The Symposium makes four inventions into ongoing debates at the intersection of discard studies and planetary change. First, it illuminates how new frontiers of accumulation work to revalue discards through shifting waste/value dialectics. Second, it encourages analysis of discards not as incidental of systems and st…
The Commodification of Waste in Cairo, Egypt
Dominant narratives of Cairo's waste challenges frame the issue as a consequence of overpopulation and unsanitary behaviour, advocating for technocratic solutions led by global private firms and technological innovation. These narratives, however, obscure the commodification of waste and the colonial discourses that justify waste's valorisation. Together capital and colonialism transform labour and infrastructure continually producing a system th…
Digitalizing sewage
Expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, Wastewater-Based Surveillance (WBS) is now heralded by scientists and policy makers alike as the future of monitoring and governing urban health. The expansion of WBS reflects larger neoliberal governance trends whereby digitalizing states increasingly rely on producing big data as a ‘best practice’ to surveil various aspects of everyday life. With a focus on three South Asian cities, our paper investigates …
Geographies of biosecurity
The current era of emerging infectious disease demands an elaboration of critical geography’s approach to biosecurity. We argue for further engagement with historicizations of empire to tease out the racialized, colonial, and class structures that create biosecurity crises and solutions. We suggest that work in political economy and critical surveillance studies offers ways to untangle the processes of racial capitalism, extraction, and racial im…
Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Business (4 works) · Colonialism (4 works)