Anna Zalik | York University (original) (raw)

Papers by Anna Zalik

First World Petro-Politics, 2016

Corporate Social Responsibility?, 2015

Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2010

... neo-liberal onslaught that accompanied the transition from military to civilian rule from igg... more ... neo-liberal onslaught that accompanied the transition from military to civilian rule from iggg onward further subordinated weak environmental regulation to the market.For example, although the Federal High Court of Nigeria declared the dangerous practice of gas flaring by oil ...

Journal of Latin American Geography, 2018

International Social Science Journal, 2018

Canadian Public Policy, 2017

This article identifies notable trends in environmental policy surrounding oil and gas developmen... more This article identifies notable trends in environmental policy surrounding oil and gas development in Canada's leading producing provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan) in the period from 2009 to 2014: environmental policy streamlining in particular via the consolidation of environmental policymaking in development-oriented agencies, the continuation and raising of barriers to public involvement in decisions on oil and gas activity, and the avoidance of cumulative impact assessment. These trends signal policy convergence facilitating oil and gas development during a period of accelerating extraction and weakening federal environmental policy. More broadly, this confirms a pattern of conventional politics in energy-dependent subnational governments.

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015

. Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada a... more . Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada as a spatial fix for capital, the article considers how individual firms employ formal review processes to project their strategic interests. The proponent firm shapes, through its own participation, the regulatory terrain on which competitors will subsequently operate. In Alberta's tar sands, the oil industry's reserve replacement process serves as a spatial–temporal fix for capital, and the review process and tribunal acts as a complementary socio-ecological fix – restricting social/affective claims, including First Nations resistance, to an official tribunal setting. In seeking formal approval to replace declining oil and gas reserves with unconventionals, proponent firms claim investor security, while social movement opponents emphasize risk and insecurity arising from carbon-intensive, frontier extraction. In the case of the contested Shell Jackpine Mine Expansion Joint Review Panel, as in other environmental assessment processes in Alberta, the proponent firm and state representatives employ the oxymoronic term ‘resource sterilization’ to describe ecological protection. ‘Resource sterilization’ offers a discursive representation of how capital's spatio-temporal fix in unconventionals is facilitated through the terms of the formal review process, in which social claims are muted.

Area, 2015

In this introduction to a special section on environmental displacement, we introduce the concept... more In this introduction to a special section on environmental displacement, we introduce the concept and ground it in seemingly distinct processes of climate change, extraction, and conservation. We understand environmental displacement as a process by which communities find the land they occupy irrevocably altered in ways that foreclose or otherwise impede possibilities for habitation or else disrupt access to resources within these spaces of life, work and socio-cultural reproduction. Such dislocation amounts to environmental displacement on the grounds that it is justified by environmental or ecological rationales, motivated by desires to access natural resources, or else provoked by human-induced environmental change and attempts to address it. Building from here, we make the case for why climate change and efforts to mitigate and adapt to it, extractive industries, and conservation initiatives should be analysed together as displacement inducing phenomena, as they are empirically connected in consequential ways and materialise from similar logics. We additionally lay out the contributions of the individual articles of the special issue and draw connections across them to help provide a preliminary framework for thinking through environmental displacement, including its causes, logics, and consequences, especially for vulnerable populations.

Area, 2015

Recent oil and gas sector reforms in Mexico transform protections on petroleum resources and labo... more Recent oil and gas sector reforms in Mexico transform protections on petroleum resources and labour that were implemented as a result of the 1938 nationalisation of the country's oil industry. This paper examines the Etileno XXI project, a private petrochemical plant led by a Brazilian firm and supported by Mexican and transnational capital, which manifests the role of early 21st-century global commodity markets in restructuring Mexico's energy sector. Etileno XXI is described as a major step toward privatising petrochemical processing in the country and as a significant creator of jobs, albeit low wage, at the site of production. Yet the project and corresponding oil-sector reforms will have impacts on the surrounding area that compromise pre-existing livelihoods both ecologically and via erosion of earlier protections on labour secured through the national oil workers union. The article thus argues for a conceptualisation of displacement induced by extractive industry that incorporates into its analysis the effects of industrial restructuring and expansion on extant production relations, in both the short and longer term.

Subterranean Estates, 2018

Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gu... more Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf Anna Zalik S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Post Doctoral Fellow Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley W O R K I N G P A P E R S February 2006 Paper No. 15 clas.berkeley.edu 2334 Bowditch Street Berkeley, CA 94720

Oil and insurgency in the Niger Delta: Managing the complex politics of petroviolence

Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gu... more Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf Anna Zalik S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Post Doctoral Fellow Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley W O R K I N G P A P E R S February 2006 Paper No. 15 clas.berkeley.edu 2334 Bowditch Street Berkeley, CA 94720

cultural geographies, 2015

means to obtain it, reject such a culture? The issue at hand is one of subjectivity. Huber’s book... more means to obtain it, reject such a culture? The issue at hand is one of subjectivity. Huber’s book is effectively providing an argument about middle class subject making, but I came away unsure of his theory of the subject. A second is about gender. To discuss at length the centrality of the private home and the sphere of social reproduction as where middle class life is made begs the question of the division of labor within those private spaces and whether this good life is equitably shared among family members. It also raises questions about how shifts from the so-called family wage to two-wage-earner households have perhaps shifted meanings about this life. Following from comments above, I also think there was material to explore regarding masculinity and gas-guzzling cars. No one book can do everything, but I wonder what a gender analysis would have added. A third is about new articulations of work and life. Huber’s book intervenes at a time when the separation of life and work is increasingly difficult to sustain – and in ways that do not necessarily defy alienation. As Kathi Weeks writes, with the imperative of productivity, work intrudes so deeply into life right now (e.g. work at home arrangements, work that far surpasses the 40-hour week, workplace leisure, and social activities) that even vacations can no longer be seen as disengagement from capitalist work processes since they are so purposed around renewal for work.2 At the same time, the precarity economy has given rise to a new generation of young adults who either refuse work or have come up with creative ways to manage artistic and pleasurable pursuits while somehow making ends meet. Huber’s analysis does not really provide the tools to think through these emerging articulations of work, life, and livelihood. Nevertheless, in looking at the present moment and imminent futures, Huber does one thing very well. Notwithstanding the desires of DIYers to return to a world fueled by muscle power, he recognizes the widespread fear that a loss of cheap energy may instill. A return to drudgery is not a vision that is likely to win many hearts and minds. His is a more forward-looking imaginary that recognizes the problem lies not with machines, but in our failure to recognize, and here I quote from the last sentence of the book, ‘the social and collective forces that make any life possible’ (p. 169). All in all, Lifeblood is brilliant, novel, and important, and I hope it gains a readership beyond academia. I intend to use it in my own undergraduate teaching. Those who are similarly inclined might consider omitting parts of chapter 1, where less trained readers may be challenged with some of Huber’s theoretical musings over the real subsumption of work and life, as thoughtful and illuminating as they are.

The Extractive Industries and Society

First World Petro-Politics, 2016

Corporate Social Responsibility?, 2015

Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2010

... neo-liberal onslaught that accompanied the transition from military to civilian rule from igg... more ... neo-liberal onslaught that accompanied the transition from military to civilian rule from iggg onward further subordinated weak environmental regulation to the market.For example, although the Federal High Court of Nigeria declared the dangerous practice of gas flaring by oil ...

Journal of Latin American Geography, 2018

International Social Science Journal, 2018

Canadian Public Policy, 2017

This article identifies notable trends in environmental policy surrounding oil and gas developmen... more This article identifies notable trends in environmental policy surrounding oil and gas development in Canada's leading producing provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan) in the period from 2009 to 2014: environmental policy streamlining in particular via the consolidation of environmental policymaking in development-oriented agencies, the continuation and raising of barriers to public involvement in decisions on oil and gas activity, and the avoidance of cumulative impact assessment. These trends signal policy convergence facilitating oil and gas development during a period of accelerating extraction and weakening federal environmental policy. More broadly, this confirms a pattern of conventional politics in energy-dependent subnational governments.

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2015

. Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada a... more . Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada as a spatial fix for capital, the article considers how individual firms employ formal review processes to project their strategic interests. The proponent firm shapes, through its own participation, the regulatory terrain on which competitors will subsequently operate. In Alberta's tar sands, the oil industry's reserve replacement process serves as a spatial–temporal fix for capital, and the review process and tribunal acts as a complementary socio-ecological fix – restricting social/affective claims, including First Nations resistance, to an official tribunal setting. In seeking formal approval to replace declining oil and gas reserves with unconventionals, proponent firms claim investor security, while social movement opponents emphasize risk and insecurity arising from carbon-intensive, frontier extraction. In the case of the contested Shell Jackpine Mine Expansion Joint Review Panel, as in other environmental assessment processes in Alberta, the proponent firm and state representatives employ the oxymoronic term ‘resource sterilization’ to describe ecological protection. ‘Resource sterilization’ offers a discursive representation of how capital's spatio-temporal fix in unconventionals is facilitated through the terms of the formal review process, in which social claims are muted.

Area, 2015

In this introduction to a special section on environmental displacement, we introduce the concept... more In this introduction to a special section on environmental displacement, we introduce the concept and ground it in seemingly distinct processes of climate change, extraction, and conservation. We understand environmental displacement as a process by which communities find the land they occupy irrevocably altered in ways that foreclose or otherwise impede possibilities for habitation or else disrupt access to resources within these spaces of life, work and socio-cultural reproduction. Such dislocation amounts to environmental displacement on the grounds that it is justified by environmental or ecological rationales, motivated by desires to access natural resources, or else provoked by human-induced environmental change and attempts to address it. Building from here, we make the case for why climate change and efforts to mitigate and adapt to it, extractive industries, and conservation initiatives should be analysed together as displacement inducing phenomena, as they are empirically connected in consequential ways and materialise from similar logics. We additionally lay out the contributions of the individual articles of the special issue and draw connections across them to help provide a preliminary framework for thinking through environmental displacement, including its causes, logics, and consequences, especially for vulnerable populations.

Area, 2015

Recent oil and gas sector reforms in Mexico transform protections on petroleum resources and labo... more Recent oil and gas sector reforms in Mexico transform protections on petroleum resources and labour that were implemented as a result of the 1938 nationalisation of the country's oil industry. This paper examines the Etileno XXI project, a private petrochemical plant led by a Brazilian firm and supported by Mexican and transnational capital, which manifests the role of early 21st-century global commodity markets in restructuring Mexico's energy sector. Etileno XXI is described as a major step toward privatising petrochemical processing in the country and as a significant creator of jobs, albeit low wage, at the site of production. Yet the project and corresponding oil-sector reforms will have impacts on the surrounding area that compromise pre-existing livelihoods both ecologically and via erosion of earlier protections on labour secured through the national oil workers union. The article thus argues for a conceptualisation of displacement induced by extractive industry that incorporates into its analysis the effects of industrial restructuring and expansion on extant production relations, in both the short and longer term.

Subterranean Estates, 2018

Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gu... more Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf Anna Zalik S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Post Doctoral Fellow Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley W O R K I N G P A P E R S February 2006 Paper No. 15 clas.berkeley.edu 2334 Bowditch Street Berkeley, CA 94720

Oil and insurgency in the Niger Delta: Managing the complex politics of petroviolence

Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gu... more Center for Latin American Studies University of California, Berkeley Re-Regulating the Mexican Gulf Anna Zalik S.V. Ciriacy Wantrup Post Doctoral Fellow Department of Geography University of California, Berkeley W O R K I N G P A P E R S February 2006 Paper No. 15 clas.berkeley.edu 2334 Bowditch Street Berkeley, CA 94720

cultural geographies, 2015

means to obtain it, reject such a culture? The issue at hand is one of subjectivity. Huber’s book... more means to obtain it, reject such a culture? The issue at hand is one of subjectivity. Huber’s book is effectively providing an argument about middle class subject making, but I came away unsure of his theory of the subject. A second is about gender. To discuss at length the centrality of the private home and the sphere of social reproduction as where middle class life is made begs the question of the division of labor within those private spaces and whether this good life is equitably shared among family members. It also raises questions about how shifts from the so-called family wage to two-wage-earner households have perhaps shifted meanings about this life. Following from comments above, I also think there was material to explore regarding masculinity and gas-guzzling cars. No one book can do everything, but I wonder what a gender analysis would have added. A third is about new articulations of work and life. Huber’s book intervenes at a time when the separation of life and work is increasingly difficult to sustain – and in ways that do not necessarily defy alienation. As Kathi Weeks writes, with the imperative of productivity, work intrudes so deeply into life right now (e.g. work at home arrangements, work that far surpasses the 40-hour week, workplace leisure, and social activities) that even vacations can no longer be seen as disengagement from capitalist work processes since they are so purposed around renewal for work.2 At the same time, the precarity economy has given rise to a new generation of young adults who either refuse work or have come up with creative ways to manage artistic and pleasurable pursuits while somehow making ends meet. Huber’s analysis does not really provide the tools to think through these emerging articulations of work, life, and livelihood. Nevertheless, in looking at the present moment and imminent futures, Huber does one thing very well. Notwithstanding the desires of DIYers to return to a world fueled by muscle power, he recognizes the widespread fear that a loss of cheap energy may instill. A return to drudgery is not a vision that is likely to win many hearts and minds. His is a more forward-looking imaginary that recognizes the problem lies not with machines, but in our failure to recognize, and here I quote from the last sentence of the book, ‘the social and collective forces that make any life possible’ (p. 169). All in all, Lifeblood is brilliant, novel, and important, and I hope it gains a readership beyond academia. I intend to use it in my own undergraduate teaching. Those who are similarly inclined might consider omitting parts of chapter 1, where less trained readers may be challenged with some of Huber’s theoretical musings over the real subsumption of work and life, as thoughtful and illuminating as they are.

The Extractive Industries and Society