R Véron
Biographic Data
| ID | 673857 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Véron |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Véron |
| SIGNATURE | VÉRON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lausanne |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6829-5712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 501 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Remaking land–water boundaries in the Rhone plain in Switzerland: A reinterpretation of past and present river training using a ‘postcolonial mirror
Of Practices and (Micro)politics: Challenges of Organic Waste Segregation in Dschang, Cameroon
Waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly. While biodegradable waste remains predominant, it is rarely treated separately by municipal solid waste management systems, thus foregoing the possibility to reduce the volume going to landfills or dumpsites. This paper discusses the unique case of the small city of Dschang, Cameroon, where the municipality operates two central composting plants that treat about 20% of the city’s house…
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 …
On the (In)visibility of Practices: Opportunities for the Promotion of Household Waste-Segregation in Western Switzerland
Organic waste is both a refuse and a resource. Focusing on household waste in a city in Western Switzerland, this study examines the practices of waste segregation in relation to the city’s (organic) waste management system. Based on qualitative research with diverse households and experts in waste management, we use social practice theory to discuss the meanings and materiality of household organic waste segregation. We show how more or less vis…
Sustainable security” through river enlargements: A political ecology of nature-based solutions and flood control in the Rhone Valley, Switzerland
The largest ongoing river training project in Switzerland, the so-called Third Correction of the Rhone in the Valais, builds on nature-based solutions (river enlargements and renaturation) while official documents and discourses also refer to an ill-defined notion of “sustainable security” and the goal of controlling floods. Drawing on qualitative data from stakeholder interviews and analysis of official documents, this paper examines the concept…
Histories of Urban Deltascapes: A Comparison of Arles and Kolkata
Delta cities are exposed to cycles of fluvial risks that have been managed across space and time. Floods and flood mitigation in urban deltascapes are therefore dependent on territorial and historicised dynamics. This paper uses historical urban political ecology (HUPE) to unravel the changing interactions between biophysical and political-economic processes affecting urban deltascapes in particular periods from the sixteenth century onwards. We …
Informal production of the city: Momos, migrants, and an urban village in Delhi
This paper attempts to understand the production of the city through informality. In particular, informal practices related to the momo (dumpling) industry, concentrated in the "urban village" of Chirag Dilli, are analysed in their dialectic relationship with formal planning and legislation in Delhi. We use a Lefebvrian framework that views city-making as an interaction of formal representations in the form of master plans, etc., informal and for…
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 …
Towards a Foucauldian Urban Political Ecology of water: Rethinking the hydro-social cy-cle and scholars' critical engagement
Thirty years after the death of Michel Foucault, notwithstanding the fact that his thought has profoundly shaped the contemporary reflection and contributed to move beyond structuralism, the Urban Political Ecology in general and the Urban Political Ecology of water in particular are still dominated by Marxist-inspired theoretical frameworks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical rationale for the development and implementation of a Foucauldia…
Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives
India's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid-1990s. A persistent coconut crisis 'narrative' emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative bas…
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…
How to govern the urban hydrosocial cycle: Archaeo-genealogy of hydromentalities in the Swiss urban water sector between 1850 and 1950
Switzerland appears to be a privileged place to investigate the urban political ecology of tap water because of the specificities of its political culture and organization and the relative abundance of drinking water in the country. In this paper, we refer to a Foucauldian theorization of power that is increasingly employed in the social sciences, including in human geography and political ecology. We also implement a Foucauldian methodology. In …
Urban geography in the era of globalization: The cities of the future Emerging knowledge and urban regulations
Cette contribution collective rend compte des savoirs émergents mobilisés par les géographes romands en matière d'analyse et de modélisation des diverses formes de relation à l'espace que les individus et les groupes sociaux ne cessent de produire et de transformer
State power and protected areas: Dynamics and contradictions of forest conservation in Madhya Pradesh, India
Micro-insurance through corporate-NGO partnerships in West Bengal: Opportunities and Constraints
This Practical Note examines the nascent micro-insurance sector in West Bengal, paying particular attention to the corporate–NGO partnership model for micro-insurance distribution, which has been enabled by India's unique regulatory framework. We challenge the popular construction of this model as a ‘win–win’ for all parties by analysing conflicting understandings of micro-insurance schemes and their purposes by insurance companies, NGOs, and poo…
Seeing the state again
Decentralized Corruption or Corrupt Decentralization? Community Monitoring of Poverty-Alleviation Schemes in Eastern India
Remaking Urban Environments: The Political Ecology of Air Pollution in Delhi
In the growing field of urban political ecology, so far not much attention has been paid to air-quality and related policies. In this paper I examine the recent far-reaching air-pollution policies in India's capital, as well as the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations and judicial activism, in view of their implications for different groups of the urban population. I analyze these policies in the wider context of Delhi's ongoing st…
Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on f…
The Everyday State and Political Society in Eastern India: Structuring Access to the Employment Assurance Scheme
The positive roles that political parties might play in development have recently been downplayed in favour of accounts of the virtues of civil society and participatory development. This article challenges some assumptions inherent in this shift in emphasis. It considers how political society has mediated the agency of the rural poor in three locales in eastern India in respect of the national demand-driven Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). In …
Brainstorming, Modified Logframes and the Conversion of Research Hypotheses into Field Questions: Reflections from Team‐based Fieldwork in Eastern India
This paper considers some practical problems associated with organising large‐scale comparative field research in eastern India. The focus of the paper is on the use of brainstorming and “modified logframes” as two means by which hypotheses about the working of the local state from the point of view of the rural poor could be turned into concrete field questions. The paper is less concerned with ethical and positional issues relating to team‐base…
Enhancing pro-poor governance in Eastern India: Participation, politics and action research
This paper uses the experience of a recent programme of action research in Eastern India to reflect on the use of participatory ideals within governance reform. In a situation where there are profound difficulties in local governance, it assesses the potential for participatory forms of stakeholder engagement to begin a process of reform. It criticizes views of reform put forward by both the World Bank and Robert Chambers, and argues instead that…
Participation and Power: Poor People's Engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme
Participation' has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a 'participatory' development programme - India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) - intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varie…
Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on f…
Remaking Urban Environments: The Political Ecology of Air Pollution in Delhi
In the growing field of urban political ecology, so far not much attention has been paid to air-quality and related policies. In this paper I examine the recent far-reaching air-pollution policies in India's capital, as well as the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations and judicial activism, in view of their implications for different groups of the urban population. I analyze these policies in the wider context of Delhi's ongoing st…
The “New” Kerala Model: Lessons for Sustainable Development
Decentralized Corruption or Corrupt Decentralization? Community Monitoring of Poverty-Alleviation Schemes in Eastern India
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…
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…
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…
Informal production of the city: Momos, migrants, and an urban village in Delhi
This paper attempts to understand the production of the city through informality. In particular, informal practices related to the momo (dumpling) industry, concentrated in the "urban village" of Chirag Dilli, are analysed in their dialectic relationship with formal planning and legislation in Delhi. We use a Lefebvrian framework that views city-making as an interaction of formal representations in the form of master plans, etc., informal and for…
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 …
Participation and Power: Poor People's Engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme
Participation' has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a 'participatory' development programme - India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) - intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varie…
Towards a Foucauldian Urban Political Ecology of water: Rethinking the hydro-social cy-cle and scholars' critical engagement
Thirty years after the death of Michel Foucault, notwithstanding the fact that his thought has profoundly shaped the contemporary reflection and contributed to move beyond structuralism, the Urban Political Ecology in general and the Urban Political Ecology of water in particular are still dominated by Marxist-inspired theoretical frameworks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical rationale for the development and implementation of a Foucauldia…
State power and protected areas: Dynamics and contradictions of forest conservation in Madhya Pradesh, India
Seeing the state again
On the (In)visibility of Practices: Opportunities for the Promotion of Household Waste-Segregation in Western Switzerland
Organic waste is both a refuse and a resource. Focusing on household waste in a city in Western Switzerland, this study examines the practices of waste segregation in relation to the city’s (organic) waste management system. Based on qualitative research with diverse households and experts in waste management, we use social practice theory to discuss the meanings and materiality of household organic waste segregation. We show how more or less vis…
Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives
India's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid-1990s. A persistent coconut crisis 'narrative' emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative bas…
Micro-insurance through corporate-NGO partnerships in West Bengal: Opportunities and Constraints
This Practical Note examines the nascent micro-insurance sector in West Bengal, paying particular attention to the corporate–NGO partnership model for micro-insurance distribution, which has been enabled by India's unique regulatory framework. We challenge the popular construction of this model as a ‘win–win’ for all parties by analysing conflicting understandings of micro-insurance schemes and their purposes by insurance companies, NGOs, and poo…
Enhancing pro-poor governance in Eastern India: Participation, politics and action research
This paper uses the experience of a recent programme of action research in Eastern India to reflect on the use of participatory ideals within governance reform. In a situation where there are profound difficulties in local governance, it assesses the potential for participatory forms of stakeholder engagement to begin a process of reform. It criticizes views of reform put forward by both the World Bank and Robert Chambers, and argues instead that…
Konstituierung von Kleinunternehmer-Selbsthilfegruppen im städtischen Java, Indonesien
No abstract available
The “New” Kerala Model: Lessons for Sustainable Development
The Everyday State and Political Society in Eastern India: Structuring Access to the Employment Assurance Scheme
The positive roles that political parties might play in development have recently been downplayed in favour of accounts of the virtues of civil society and participatory development. This article challenges some assumptions inherent in this shift in emphasis. It considers how political society has mediated the agency of the rural poor in three locales in eastern India in respect of the national demand-driven Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). In …
Brainstorming, Modified Logframes and the Conversion of Research Hypotheses into Field Questions: Reflections from Team‐based Fieldwork in Eastern India
This paper considers some practical problems associated with organising large‐scale comparative field research in eastern India. The focus of the paper is on the use of brainstorming and “modified logframes” as two means by which hypotheses about the working of the local state from the point of view of the rural poor could be turned into concrete field questions. The paper is less concerned with ethical and positional issues relating to team‐base…
Enhancing pro-poor governance in Eastern India: Participation, politics and action research
This paper uses the experience of a recent programme of action research in Eastern India to reflect on the use of participatory ideals within governance reform. In a situation where there are profound difficulties in local governance, it assesses the potential for participatory forms of stakeholder engagement to begin a process of reform. It criticizes views of reform put forward by both the World Bank and Robert Chambers, and argues instead that…
Participation and Power: Poor People's Engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme
Participation' has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a 'participatory' development programme - India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) - intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varie…
Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on f…
Decentralized Corruption or Corrupt Decentralization? Community Monitoring of Poverty-Alleviation Schemes in Eastern India
Remaking Urban Environments: The Political Ecology of Air Pollution in Delhi
In the growing field of urban political ecology, so far not much attention has been paid to air-quality and related policies. In this paper I examine the recent far-reaching air-pollution policies in India's capital, as well as the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations and judicial activism, in view of their implications for different groups of the urban population. I analyze these policies in the wider context of Delhi's ongoing st…
Seeing the state again
State power and protected areas: Dynamics and contradictions of forest conservation in Madhya Pradesh, India
Micro-insurance through corporate-NGO partnerships in West Bengal: Opportunities and Constraints
This Practical Note examines the nascent micro-insurance sector in West Bengal, paying particular attention to the corporate–NGO partnership model for micro-insurance distribution, which has been enabled by India's unique regulatory framework. We challenge the popular construction of this model as a ‘win–win’ for all parties by analysing conflicting understandings of micro-insurance schemes and their purposes by insurance companies, NGOs, and poo…
Urban geography in the era of globalization: The cities of the future Emerging knowledge and urban regulations
Cette contribution collective rend compte des savoirs émergents mobilisés par les géographes romands en matière d'analyse et de modélisation des diverses formes de relation à l'espace que les individus et les groupes sociaux ne cessent de produire et de transformer
How to govern the urban hydrosocial cycle: Archaeo-genealogy of hydromentalities in the Swiss urban water sector between 1850 and 1950
Switzerland appears to be a privileged place to investigate the urban political ecology of tap water because of the specificities of its political culture and organization and the relative abundance of drinking water in the country. In this paper, we refer to a Foucauldian theorization of power that is increasingly employed in the social sciences, including in human geography and political ecology. We also implement a Foucauldian methodology. In …
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 …
Towards a Foucauldian Urban Political Ecology of water: Rethinking the hydro-social cy-cle and scholars' critical engagement
Thirty years after the death of Michel Foucault, notwithstanding the fact that his thought has profoundly shaped the contemporary reflection and contributed to move beyond structuralism, the Urban Political Ecology in general and the Urban Political Ecology of water in particular are still dominated by Marxist-inspired theoretical frameworks. This paper aims to provide a theoretical rationale for the development and implementation of a Foucauldia…
Coconut Crisis in Kerala? Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Perspectives
India's oilseeds sector, which includes its coconut economy, experienced drastic changes in the wake of agricultural liberalization in the mid-1990s. A persistent coconut crisis 'narrative' emerged after sharp price declines between 2000 and 2002 in which small farmers in the state of Kerala, India's main coconut producer, were identified as victims of the liberalized importation of cheap palm oil. This article describes this crisis narrative bas…
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…
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…
Informal production of the city: Momos, migrants, and an urban village in Delhi
This paper attempts to understand the production of the city through informality. In particular, informal practices related to the momo (dumpling) industry, concentrated in the "urban village" of Chirag Dilli, are analysed in their dialectic relationship with formal planning and legislation in Delhi. We use a Lefebvrian framework that views city-making as an interaction of formal representations in the form of master plans, etc., informal and for…
Histories of Urban Deltascapes: A Comparison of Arles and Kolkata
Delta cities are exposed to cycles of fluvial risks that have been managed across space and time. Floods and flood mitigation in urban deltascapes are therefore dependent on territorial and historicised dynamics. This paper uses historical urban political ecology (HUPE) to unravel the changing interactions between biophysical and political-economic processes affecting urban deltascapes in particular periods from the sixteenth century onwards. We …
On the (In)visibility of Practices: Opportunities for the Promotion of Household Waste-Segregation in Western Switzerland
Organic waste is both a refuse and a resource. Focusing on household waste in a city in Western Switzerland, this study examines the practices of waste segregation in relation to the city’s (organic) waste management system. Based on qualitative research with diverse households and experts in waste management, we use social practice theory to discuss the meanings and materiality of household organic waste segregation. We show how more or less vis…
Sustainable security” through river enlargements: A political ecology of nature-based solutions and flood control in the Rhone Valley, Switzerland
The largest ongoing river training project in Switzerland, the so-called Third Correction of the Rhone in the Valais, builds on nature-based solutions (river enlargements and renaturation) while official documents and discourses also refer to an ill-defined notion of “sustainable security” and the goal of controlling floods. Drawing on qualitative data from stakeholder interviews and analysis of official documents, this paper examines the concept…
Of Practices and (Micro)politics: Challenges of Organic Waste Segregation in Dschang, Cameroon
Waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly. While biodegradable waste remains predominant, it is rarely treated separately by municipal solid waste management systems, thus foregoing the possibility to reduce the volume going to landfills or dumpsites. This paper discusses the unique case of the small city of Dschang, Cameroon, where the municipality operates two central composting plants that treat about 20% of the city’s house…
Political science (21 works) · Economics (18 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Geography (14 works) · Economic growth (11 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (10 works) · Corporate governance (8 works) · Political ecology (7 works)