Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) in Ghana combine conservation and development objectives and were introduced in the year 2000. In some cases, they have connected collectors of shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) nuts with certified organic world markets, which can be understood as a ‘market-based’ approach to conservation. This paper examines how the benefits of this approach are distributed and argues that shea land formalization is crucial to this process. It makes this argument by drawing on interviews within two communities bordering Mole National Park. One community accepted to engage with, and benefitted from this approach, while the other did not. The paper analyzes narratives from different actors involved regarding why and how the market-based approach was accepted or rejected. It shows that, contrary to the neoliberal principles that underlie market-based conservation, a utility maximization rationale did not predominantly influence the (non-)engagement with this conservation approach. Instead, it was the history of land relations between communities and the state that influenced the decisions of the communities. We highlight the role of traditional authorities and NGOs brokering this process and unpack who in the communities profited and who was left out from benefits from this market-based conservation initiative.

As part of a set of interventions on discomfort feminism, this article addresses how the politics of discomfort informs boundary work in the neoliberalized academic workplace in Switzerland. Departing from the authors’ engagements in a series of workshops on new forms of stress and pressure in academia and the effects of the deteriorating conditions of labor at their department, this article explores multiple and unevenly distributed emotions of discomfort generated by and through the workshops. We discuss discomfort as an affective orienting device that betrays the normative social space and the crossing of the personal-professional boundary in the academic workplace. This article explores the potentials and pitfalls of ‘staying with’ discomfort, rather than attempting to return within a comfort zone. We argue such affective politics can inform change in the neoliberalized workplace by reworking normative boundaries and helping mobilize different academic collectivities, ones based on care and shared vulnerability.

In honour of Sabine Luning Artisanal mining beyond formalisation Artisanal mining has considerably increased in recent decades. While the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that it involved 6 million people in 1993 (ILO, 1999), 25 years later, an estimated 45 million people are directly involved in this activity, which affects over 500 million people, considering indirect employment and families (McQuilken and Perks, 2021). The correlation between poverty and artisanal mining i...

En hommage à Sabine Luning L'artisanat minier par delà la formalisation L’artisanat minier a considérablement augmenté ces dernières décennies. Alors que l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT) estimait que 6 millions de personnes y étaient impliquées en 1993 (ILO, 1999), 25 ans plus tard, 45 millions de personnes seraient engagées directement dans cette activité, ce qui représente plus de 500 millions de personnes concernées, si on considère les emplois induits et les familles (McQuil...