Renaturalising sovereignty 45
how the earth has become both an actor in and the stake of global politics
that shapes subjective possibilities and human capacities (Dalby 2020). For
some scholars, this new experience of earthly matter, and new experience as
earth-bound subjects, creates possibilities for more progressive and benevolent politics (Last 2015; Hawkins 2015; Haraway 2016). For others, the
immersion in planetary excess is driving ongoing governance transformations. For example, Chandler (2018) examines how techniques of mapping,
sensing, and hacking are reshaping governance practices in ways that make
governance responsive and adaptive to earth dynamics – a stark contrast to
modernist efforts to impose a human rationality on social and environmental conditions. Lorimer (2020) similarly examines how techniques of probiotic governance utilise excessive powers of life to foster desirable forms of
life. These and other governance transformations are not abandoning the
modernist desire to control social and environmental outcomes and bend
environmental forces to human will, but are rather recalibrating the logics, strategies, techniques, and practices of governance in ways that govern
through unruly and excessive planetary dynamics (Neyrat 2019; Chandler
et al. 2020).
These ongoing transformations of governance in the Anthropocene form
the backdrop against which EARM has emerged as a paradigm shift in
development and disaster management. Key here is the way development
economists drew on new institutional economics (NIE) to understand and
critique the dominant Arrow-Lind paradigm in the context of mounting
catastrophic losses among Caribbean states and other SIDS. Rather than
assuming, as Arrow-Lind does, that states had de facto financial capacity
to socialise risk and finance recovery, these economists drew on NIE to
assert that ‘institutional characteristics and policy choices may have an
impact on the macroeconomic consequences of disaster’ (Noy 2009, p. 222).
As has been well rehearsed, NIE offers a sympathetic critique of neoliberal
economic theory (Best 2014; Collier 2017; Grove 2018) that maintains liberal
assumptions of methodological individualism, but situates the individual
in complex ‘environments’ that exceed total comprehension. Rationality is
thus bounded (Simon 1955) and contingent on the quality of institutions –
formal and informal rules, norms and organisational forms that structure
decision-making processes (Ostrom 1990) – that mediate between interior
worlds of emergent subjective preferences and exterior complex environments that continually present the individual with new information. NIE
thus does not assume that a single institution, such as the market, can offer
a universally valid measure for determining how to provision public goods
and services (Chandler 2014). Instead, decision-making in conditions of
imperfect knowledge involves an indeterminate and reflexive process of
institutional design, a creative and synthetic act of ‘tinkering’ and experimenting with different institutional forms to assemble competing interests
into contingent, pragmatic solutions to intractable problems that lack a
single, optimal solution (Ostrom 1999).
how the earth has become both an actor in and the stake of global politics
that shapes subjective possibilities and human capacities (Dalby 2020). For
some scholars, this new experience of earthly matter, and new experience as
earth-bound subjects, creates possibilities for more progressive and benevolent politics (Last 2015; Hawkins 2015; Haraway 2016). For others, the
immersion in planetary excess is driving ongoing governance transformations. For example, Chandler (2018) examines how techniques of mapping,
sensing, and hacking are reshaping governance practices in ways that make
governance responsive and adaptive to earth dynamics – a stark contrast to
modernist efforts to impose a human rationality on social and environmental conditions. Lorimer (2020) similarly examines how techniques of probiotic governance utilise excessive powers of life to foster desirable forms of
life. These and other governance transformations are not abandoning the
modernist desire to control social and environmental outcomes and bend
environmental forces to human will, but are rather recalibrating the logics, strategies, techniques, and practices of governance in ways that govern
through unruly and excessive planetary dynamics (Neyrat 2019; Chandler
et al. 2020).
These ongoing transformations of governance in the Anthropocene form
the backdrop against which EARM has emerged as a paradigm shift in
development and disaster management. Key here is the way development
economists drew on new institutional economics (NIE) to understand and
critique the dominant Arrow-Lind paradigm in the context of mounting
catastrophic losses among Caribbean states and other SIDS. Rather than
assuming, as Arrow-Lind does, that states had de facto financial capacity
to socialise risk and finance recovery, these economists drew on NIE to
assert that ‘institutional characteristics and policy choices may have an
impact on the macroeconomic consequences of disaster’ (Noy 2009, p. 222).
As has been well rehearsed, NIE offers a sympathetic critique of neoliberal
economic theory (Best 2014; Collier 2017; Grove 2018) that maintains liberal
assumptions of methodological individualism, but situates the individual
in complex ‘environments’ that exceed total comprehension. Rationality is
thus bounded (Simon 1955) and contingent on the quality of institutions –
formal and informal rules, norms and organisational forms that structure
decision-making processes (Ostrom 1990) – that mediate between interior
worlds of emergent subjective preferences and exterior complex environments that continually present the individual with new information. NIE
thus does not assume that a single institution, such as the market, can offer
a universally valid measure for determining how to provision public goods
and services (Chandler 2014). Instead, decision-making in conditions of
imperfect knowledge involves an indeterminate and reflexive process of
institutional design, a creative and synthetic act of ‘tinkering’ and experimenting with different institutional forms to assemble competing interests
into contingent, pragmatic solutions to intractable problems that lack a
single, optimal solution (Ostrom 1999).