Geography's contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals: Ambivalence and performance

Abstract

Building on Liverman's critique of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), I argue SDGs must be conceptualized as situated by (i) unpacking the black box of social, political and intellectual consensus behind indicators and (ii) reimagining development goals as dynamic performances that are uneven over time and space for both populations and individuals. Poverty, justice and other targets of SDGs are not a state of being but rather a punctuated experience for the individuals and populations in question. For the SDGs to be effective, they need to go beyond simple statistics to account for how situated, performative aspects of lives evolve, rather than as they are.

Keywords

consensus science; development pathways; indicators; ontological politics; poverty; situated performances

Published in

Dialogues in human geography
2018, Volume: 8, number: 2, pages: 196-200 Publisher: SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD

SLU Authors

• Nightingale, Andrea

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG1 No poverty
SDG13 Climate action


UKÄ Subject classification

Social Sciences Interdisciplinary


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820618780790

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/96363