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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 26 October 2023

Valentina Carraro

Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in disaster research and practice. While, in some cases, these practices incorporate methods inspired by critical…

Abstract

Purpose

Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in disaster research and practice. While, in some cases, these practices incorporate methods inspired by critical cartography and critical GIS, they rarely engage with the theoretical discussions that animate those fields.

Design/methodology/approach

In this commentary, the author considers three such discussions, and draws out their relevance for disaster studies: the turn towards processual cartographies, political economy analysis of datafication and calls for theorising computing of and from the South.

Findings

The review highlights how these discussions can contribute to the work of scholars engaged in mapping for disaster risk management and research. First, it can counter the taken-for-granted nature of disaster-related maps, and encourage debate about how such maps are produced, used and circulated. Second, it can foster a reflexive attitude towards the urge to quantify and map disasters. Third, it can help to rethink the role of digital technologies with respect to ongoing conversations on the need to decolonise disaster studies.

Originality/value

The paper aims to familiarise disaster studies scholars with literature that has received relatively little attention in this field and, by doing so, contribute to a repoliticisation of disaster-related maps.

Details

Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, vol. 32 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-3562

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 June 2023

Erik Melin and Johan Gaddefors

The purpose of this article is to explore how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in entrepreneurship.

1623

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to explore how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach

It is based on an inductive longitudinal case study of a garden in a rural community in northern Sweden. The methodology includes an ethnography of the garden, spanning the course of 16 years, and a careful investigation of the entrepreneurial processes contained within it.

Findings

This article identifies and describes different practices to explain how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in the garden's context. Three different practices were identified and discussed, namely “calling”, “resisting”, and “provoking”.

Originality/value

Agency/structure constitutes a longstanding conundrum in entrepreneurship and context. This study contributes to the on-going debate on context in entrepreneurship, and introduces a posthumanist perspective—particularly that of distributed agency—to theorising in entrepreneurship. Rather than focussing on a human (hero)-driven change process, induced through the exploitation of material objects, this novel perspective views entrepreneurship as both a human and a nonhuman venture, occurring through interactions located in particular places and times. Coming from the agency/structure dichotomy, this article reaches out for elements traditionally established on the structure side, distributing them to the agency side of the dichotomy. As such, it contributes to an understanding of the agency of nonhuman elements, and how they direct entrepreneurship in context. This theoretical development prepares entrepreneurship theories to be better able to engage with nonhuman elements and provides example solutions for the ongoing climate crisis.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. 29 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

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