Matthew B Anderson | Eastern Washington University (original) (raw)

Journal articles by Matthew B Anderson

The Canadian Geographer, 2019

The paper builds upon studies employing a syllabi-based methodology that suggest a tendency for c... more The paper builds upon studies employing a syllabi-based methodology that suggest a tendency for critical GIS courses to emphasize reading/discussion about GIS without actually doing GIS, and for traditional GIS instruction courses to emphasize the technical capacities of GIS software without incorporating critical theory in substantive ways. However, through ethnographic evidence we reveal that there is likely more innovative theory-practice transcending pedagogies being utilized than would necessarily show up in such a syllabi-based methodology. There are also very real and differentially manifest pragmatic, departmental, and institutional barriers in place to effectively incorporating critical social theory into courses that actually do GIS. We first catalogue these barriers as a means of ascertaining what can (and cannot) be done to overcome them through GIS pedagogic innovation. We then outline the (often-veiled) pedagogic strategies deployed by critical GIS scholars today to navigate and circumvent these barriers.

Antipode, 2019

This study examines the role of class monopoly rent in shaping the spatial form and pattern of ur... more This study examines the role of class monopoly rent in shaping the spatial form and pattern of urban redevelopment processes in the contemporary neoliberal city. Since an initial flourishing literature during the 1970s and 1980s, urban land rent theory has fallen from the analytic radar of critical urban studies since the early 1990s, with the influence of class monopoly rent often considered an aberration of how capitalist real estate markets normally operate, if not rejected. Consequently, class monopoly rent has never been systematically elaborated. Based on an empirical analysis of Portland’s Pearl District, this study suggests that the influence of class monopoly rent in contemporary processes of urban redevelopment is far more pervasive than often recognized, representing a “standard institutional practice” that is endemic (rather than aberrational) to the working of neoliberal urban governing regimes, and embeds in the social and physical landscape in a multiplicity of ways.

Water Resources Management, 2019

In 2013, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation engaged twenty citizens wit... more In 2013, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation engaged twenty citizens with diverse water interests as the Yellowstone Basin Advisory Council (YBAC). The purpose of the YBAC was to provide basin-specific recommendations for an updated water plan. Our research group documented the degree to which the YBAC incorporated scientific and technical information into its deliberations and final recommendations. Based on empirical evidence, this study illuminated three dynamics that discouraged the group’s use of certain sets of scientific and technical information. However, we also found that the convening managers, technical experts, and YBAC members were operating as pragmatic participants who created deliberative spaces
where tensions between conflicting goals and values did not need to be addressed head-on. We argue that because this pragmatism guided certain scientific issues to the sideline, it helped the group pre-empt conditions of intractability that would otherwise threaten the overall collaborative process. While the sidelining was important in terms of getting things done,^ it, nonetheless, marginalized some important scientific issues. To validate and advance our findings, we presented
the YBAC case, the dynamics that sidelined science, and our corrective recommendations to water resources professionals. We then solicited their ideas for specific strategies they might employ to avoid sidelining essential scientific and technical information. As a research innovation, their inputs help close the loop between critical observations and practice.

Progress in Human Geography

Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of poli... more Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socioeconomic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and " the political, " PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized.

This paper applies Douglas' cultural theory of risk to understand perceptions of risk associated ... more This paper applies Douglas' cultural theory of risk to understand perceptions of risk associated with oil and gas development in eastern Montana. Based on the analysis of interviews with 36 rural residents, findings show the dominant perception of risk is most closely aligned with an Individualist worldview. Despite direct experience with oil or wastewater spills, most interviewees described spills as " no big deal " , viewed nature as resilient, and felt that the economic benefits outweigh negative impacts. Cultural theory was a useful heuristic for understanding this dominant worldview, as well as identifying points of deviation. For example, interviewees discussed the benefits of landowner associations – a more Egalitarian approach to dealing with oil companies. Some landowners relied on external authorities (e.g., sheriff) when dealing with oil companies, revealing a Hierarchical approach to issues they face. Interviewees expressed frustration with the lack of enforcement of existing regulations, which can be interpreted as either support for – or indictment of – Hierarchical solutions. While the Individualist worldview is dominant, our qualitative analysis reveals the complex tensions at work among rural residents. The results suggest areas where policymakers, advocacy groups, and residents may find common ground to address potential environmental and health risks.

This study deepens our understanding of the institutional limitations of participatory water plan... more This study deepens our understanding of the institutional limitations of participatory water planning. Based on an analysis of a participatory planning effort in Montana, U.S.A., we examine the ways in which prior appropriation (PA), an established legal doctrine based on privatized water rights, both constrains and enables the effective functioning of this mode of governance to enhance water conservation practices. In
one situation, a state-led proposal to require water-use measuring was undermined by strong libertarian resistance to governmental regulation. As an expression of path dependency, PA redirected the deliberations back to the status-quo. Yet, in another state-led proposal, PA functioned as a boundary object that helped garner consensual support for what is effectively an alternative water sharing plan based on ‘shared sacrifice.’ In this second case, PA functioned as a pragmatic means to facilitate conservation practices to address future projections of growing water
scarcity and drought. The study empirically examines the discursive framework of both policy recommendations and the mechanisms that led to their seemingly divergent receptions from planning participants. Evidence is drawn from a systematic content analysis of video recording transcriptions, ethnographic notes taken during meetings, and key interactions observed among planning participants and the research team.

A B S T R A C T This paper uses the case of recent efforts in the Yellowstone River watershed to ... more A B S T R A C T This paper uses the case of recent efforts in the Yellowstone River watershed to illuminate how the implementation of Integrated Water Resources (IWRM)-styled activities by a Montana state agency is best understood as an exercise in practical expediency that indirectly, but consequentially, supports hegemonic neo-liberalism. We present an innovative use of Q method, focus groups, and participant observations, as means to examine how scale-based interventions by the state moved IWRM-style reforms forward. The activities under consideration allow us to advance an empirically-based critique of so-called integrated approaches to environmental reform with a specific focus on the rescaling process inherent to adoption of the IWRM model. We argue that efforts to transition to IWRM-style governance are likely to be accompanied by stealthy, scale-based interventions. We use the concepts of " standardized packages " and " boundary objects " to raise questions about the degree to which use of such tactics should be interpreted as evidence of a broader hegemonic project to further imbricate neoliberal governmentality, as the literature on post-politics would suggest, or whether eco-scaling and careful circumscription of participation are simply the most convenient strategies for those charged with difficult and complex tasks.

In United States water resources management, water quantity planning (supply, availability, and u... more In United States water resources management, water quantity planning (supply, availability, and use) fall within the domain of individual states. Because water is a shared resource held in trust for the use of a state's citizenry, its management obliges the involvement of water users. Under the above regime, states have much discretion concerning how to accomplish this. In state water planning, a variety of activities are considered stakeholder engagement. Natural resource management agencies often treat public participation as a chore for attaining legitimacy whose resources might be better used for technical aspects of planning. This paper details the public participation design for the 2015 Montana State Water Plan's Yellowstone Basin scoping phase. It argues that design of participatory practices is the key variable for successful participation. Stakeholders are experts whose knowledge can be incorporated into planning to inform priorities, corroborate biophysical data, and supply insights for communicating science and policy to citizens across specific localities.We argue that stakeholder engagement in water resources planning should be treated as research for the purposes of gathering and organizing social and biophysical truths. Through participant data approaches, citizen comments as data can improve the informational basis of planning and relational aspects. Public buy-in (legitimation) is not the objective of stakeholder participation; however, it can be a by-product of good design which suits the context and effectively uses citizen input to improve decision making. Using experience from basin-scale citizen advisory committees, this essay offers recommendations for water planners to design productive public engagement practices.

This paper chronicles the rhetorical mechanisms that fostered a potentially radical re-thinking o... more This paper chronicles the rhetorical mechanisms that fostered a potentially radical re-thinking of water rights and property in a most unlikely place: the libertarian Western U.S., and mobilized by the least likely of actors: state officials. There is growing interest, in geography and beyond, in the question of what constitutes the ‘‘properly political” in contexts where dissent is actively forestalled by those with power. Much has been written about the ‘‘properly political” as the disruption of the established order by previously excluded actors. Comparatively less research, however, has focused on the ‘‘conditions of possibility” that might exist within ostensibly ‘‘post-political” governing arenas. This paper deepens our understanding of this by examining a participatory water planning group in Montana, which was convened by the state to develop recommendations for a new state water plan. The group was inspired by an alternative drought-management model called ‘‘shared giving.” Imbued with principles of ‘‘collectivism” and ‘‘equality,” the model was strategically (and necessarily) promoted through the discursive shell of the existing prior appropriation system. This was accomplished not by an oppositional force of marginalized actors, but state officials that are rarely, if ever, deemed ‘‘disruptive,” and through tactics that are best characterized as post-political. We interpret this case as reflecting a hybrid governing assemblage that highlights both post-political closure and transformative possibilities simultaneously, and conclude by suggesting that the post-political concept, itself, risks foreclosing on conditions whereby fruitful outcomes might become possible from within established governing frameworks otherwise written-off as post-political.

The role of a particular aspect of collaboration, dissensus, in stimulating critical reconsiderat... more The role of a particular aspect of collaboration, dissensus, in stimulating critical reconsideration of ‘prior appropriation’, a historically hegemonic condition related to water rights in the western United States, is examined via a collaborative planning effort in Montana. Consensual support for a water-use measuring proposal was undermined by strong libertarian resistance to governmental regulation, and an unwavering embrace of the status quo. However, based on insights from scholars engaged in the ‘post-political’ dimensions of contemporary forms of rule – dissensus – understood as the manifestation of consensus-forestalling disagreement articulated between oppositional voices – is revealed as a condition to be actively nurtured, rather than purged.
This case reveals how dissensus can open discursive spaces for hegemony disrupting modes of inquiry, alternative perspectives, and innovative possibilities, even among sanctioned participant voices operating within otherwise established, depoliticized governing arenas. The study thus deepens our understanding of the complex political dynamics of participatory water planning.

The objective of this essay is to rejuvenate interest in Marxian rent theory in urban political e... more The objective of this essay is to rejuvenate interest in Marxian rent theory in urban political economy by identifying and deepening discussion of an important aspect of the contemporary neoliberal city: class monopoly rent. First introduced by David Harvey, the concept of class monopoly rent has curiously evaded in-depth scholarly inquiry and has never been substantively elaborated or examined. But the conditions through which class monopoly rents are extracted from property have since evolved. Yet, we know little about the relation between this standard institutional practice and contemporary urban landscapes, modes of governance, and processes of urban restructuring. The essay first reviews and identifies the concept of class monopoly rent as an important aspect of the urban process and discusses its limited scholarly engagement over the past four decades. It then discusses the implications of class monopoly rent in the context of current urban redevelopment policies and practices in Chicago, Illinois. It is suggested that a deeper examination of this concept could build a more robust and intricate understanding of the contemporary neoliberal city, particularly in the context of the post-2007 economic recession.

Neoliberal urban governances are now widely recognised as contingently manifest and constantly ev... more Neoliberal urban governances are now widely recognised as contingently manifest and constantly evolving social and institutional formations. Yet, there remains comparatively little empirical work on the place-specific complexities of urban neoliberalisation, and as variegated formations within the same city. Drawing on Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen neighbourhoods, we reveal the intraurban contingency character of neoliberal urban governance. Both ‘neighbourhood governances’ in Bronzeville and Pilsen, we suggest, are constituted by similar yet different ensembles of developers, local officials and politically oriented community organisations, and redevelopment strategies. Second, we illuminate one dimension of this intra-urban contingency: the mutually
constitutive and differentially unfolding relation between contestation and neoliberal governance. Finally, four inter-related variables are revealed as mediating factors within this relationship that account for why Bronzeville and Pilsen’s governance's have evolved in different ways: historical legacy, the dynamics between activist groups and pro-growth agents, economic circumstances and political orientation of contestation.

Urban Affairs Review, 49 (3), 435-467

""Urban redevelopment governances are commonly treated as singular, monolithic entities that are ... more ""Urban redevelopment governances are commonly treated as singular, monolithic entities that are interactively homogeneous, deploying uniform ensembles of policies and practices across their respective cities. This study, alternatively, reveals these formations as adroitly proactive and interactively heterogeneous across their respective cities. Through a racial economy lens, we empirically examine the racial contours of this “governance heterogeneity”
in one urban setting: Chicago, Illinois. In this frame, a comparative
analysis of Chicago’s Bronzeville and Pilsen neighborhoods is presented. Both neighborhoods are constituted by different racial profiles: Bronzeville is home to a predominantly African-American population, whereas Pilsen is mostly Mexican and Mexican-American. The study reveals that redevelopment governances are differentially responsive to established, deeply rooted racialized conceptions of “Blackness” and “Latinoness.” As a result, the form and trajectory of redevelopment in both settings has unfolded in markedly different ways.""

This study examines the current role of ideology in maintaining and reproducing consumer demand f... more This study examines the current role of ideology in maintaining and reproducing consumer demand for residential suburban spaces in the outer ring of American metropolitan regions. It highlights the contradiction between the promises that are made through the ideology
and discourse of the American Dream and the inherent limits of those promises within the realities of a highly dynamic capitalist society. It is argued that this powerful discursive formation has evolved through recent neoliberal times, and is manifest in the suburban landscape in new ways. It must continue to produce simulated images that signify mythologized narratives of the past that cater to sentiments of hope and a better life in the future. At the same time, it works through existing fears and anxieties in order to secure the progressive accumulation of capital in the suburban built environment. Evidence will be provided from the ongoing suburbanization of Kendall County, Illinois at the southwestern edge of metropolitan Chicago.

Book Chapters by Matthew B Anderson

Chapter 2, in A. Bourke, T. Dafnos, and M. Kip (eds.), Lumpen-City: Discourses of Marginality/Mar... more Chapter 2, in A. Bourke, T. Dafnos, and M. Kip (eds.), Lumpen-City: Discourses of Marginality/Marginalizing Discourses (2011). Ottawa, Canada: Red Quill Books, 43-74

Chapter 5, in L. Benton-Short (ed.), Cities of North America: Contemporary Challenges in U.S. and... more Chapter 5, in L. Benton-Short (ed.), Cities of North America: Contemporary Challenges in U.S. and Canadian Cities (2013). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 113-142

Book Reviews by Matthew B Anderson

The Canadian Geographer, 2019

Antipode, 2019

Water Resources Management, 2019

Progress in Human Geography

Urban Affairs Review, 49 (3), 435-467