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Making Political Ecology

Author: Rod Neumann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-12

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1444119184

Making Political Ecology presents a comprehensive view of an important new field in human geography and interdisciplinary studies of nature-society relations. Tracing the development of political ecology from its origins in geography and ecological anthropology in the 1970s, to its current status as an established field, the book investigates how late twentieth-century developments in social and ecological theories are brought together to create a powerful framework for comprehending environmental problems. Making Political Ecology argues for an inclusionary conceptualization of the field, which absorbs empirical studies from urban, rural, First World and Third World contexts and the theoretical insights of feminism, poststructuralism, neo-Marxism and non-equilibrium ecology. Throughout the book, excerpts from the writings of key figures in political ecology provide an empirical grounding for abstract theoretical concepts. Making Political Ecology will convince readers of political ecology's particular suitability for grappling with the most difficult questions concerning social justice, environmental change and human relationships with nature.

Critical Political Ecology

Author: Timothy Forsyth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-11-23

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1134665806

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Critical Political Ecology brings political debate to the science of ecology. As political controversies multiply over the science underlying environmental debates, there is an increasing need to understand the relationship between environmental science and politics. In this timely and wide-ranging volume, Tim Forsyth uses an innovative approach to apply political analysis to ecology, and demonstrates how more politicised approaches to science can be used in environmental decision-making. Critical Political Ecology examines: *how social and political factors frame environmental science, and how science in turn shapes politics *how new thinking in philosophy and sociology of science can provide fresh insights into the biophysical causes and impacts of environmental problems *how policy and decision-makers can acknowledge the political influences on science and achieve more effective public participation and governance.

Making Meaning Out of Mountains

Author: Mark C. J. Stoddart

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0774821965

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Mountains bear the imprint of human activity. Deep scars from logging and surface mining crosscut the landmarks of sports and recreation - national parks and lookout areas, ski slopes and lodges. Although the environmental effects of extractive industries are well known, skiing is more likely to bring to mind images of luxury, wealth, and health. In Making Meaning out of Mountains, Mark Stoddart draws on interviews, field observations, and media analysis to explore how the ski industry in British Columbia has helped transform mountain environments and, in turn, how skiing has come to be inscribed with multiple, often conflicted meanings informed by power struggles rooted in race, class, and gender. Corporate leaders promote the skiing industry as sustainable development, while environmentalists and some First Nations argue that skiing sacrifices wildlife habitats and traditional lands to tourism and corporate gain. Skiers themselves appreciate the opportunity to commune with nature but are concerned about skiing's environmental effects. Stoddart not only challenges us to reflect more seriously on skiing's negative impact on mountain environments, he also reveals how certain groups came to be viewed as the "natural" inhabitants and legitimate managers of mountain environments.

Reimagining Political Ecology

Author: Aletta Biersack

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2006-11-22

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780822336723

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A collection of ethnographies grounded in second-generation political ecology, which focuses on the interchanges between nature and culture, and the local and the global.

Third World Political Ecology

Author: Sinead Bailey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-08

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1134798032

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An effective response to contemporary environmental problems demands an approach that integrates political, economic and ecological issues. Third World Political Ecology provides an introduction to an exciting new research field that aims to develop an integrated understanding of the political economy of environmental change in the Third World. The authors review the historical development of the field, explain what is distinctive about Third World political ecology, and suggest areas for future development. Clarifying the essentially politicised condition of environmental change today, the authors explore the role of various actors - states, multilateral institutions, businesses, environmental non-governmental organisations, poverty-stricken farmers, shifting cultivators and other 'grassroots' actors - in the development of the Third World's politicised environment. Third World Political Ecology is the first major attempt to explain the development and characteristics of environmental problems that plague parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Drawing on examples from throughout the Third World, the book will be of interest to all those who wish to understand the political and economic bases of the Third World's current predicament.

Politics and the Environment in Eastern Europe

Author: Eszter Krasznai Kovacs

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1800641354

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Europe remains divided between east and west, with differences caused and worsened by uneven economic and political development. Amid these divisions, the environment has become a key battleground. The condition and sustainability of environmental resources are interlinked with systems of governance and power, from local to EU levels. Key challenges in the eastern European region today include increasingly authoritarian forms of government that threaten the operations and very existence of civil society groups; the importation of locally-contested conservation and environmental programmes that were designed elsewhere; and a resurgence in cultural nationalism that prescribes and normalises exclusionary nation-building myths. This volume draws together essays by early-career academic researchers from across eastern Europe. Engaging with the critical tools of political ecology, its contributors provide a hitherto overlooked perspective on the current fate and reception of ‘environmentalism’ in the region. It asks how emergent forms of environmentalism have been received, how these movements and perspectives have redefined landscapes, and what the subtler effects of new regulatory regimes on communities and environment-dependent livelihoods have been. Arranged in three sections, with case studies from Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Serbia, this collection develops anthropological views on the processes and consequences of the politicisation of the environment. It is valuable reading for human geographers, social and cultural historians, political ecologists, social movement and government scholars, political scientists, and specialists on Europe and European Union politics.

Vibrant Matter

Author: Jane Bennett

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2010-01-04

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0822391627

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In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.

The Political Ecology of Bananas

Author: Lawrence S. Grossman

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780807847183

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This study of banana contract farming in the Eastern Caribbean explores the forces that shape contract-farming enterprises everywhere_capital, the state, and the environment. Employing the increasingly popular framework of political ecology, which highlights the dynamic linkages between political-economic forces and human-environment relationships, Lawrence Grossman provides a new perspective on the history and contemporary trajectory of the Windward Islands banana industry. He reveals in rich detail the myriad impacts of banana production on the peasant laborers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Grossman challenges the conventional wisdom on three interrelated issues central to contract farming and political ecology. First, he analyzes the process of deskilling and the associated significance of control by capital and the state over peasant labor. Second, he investigates the impacts of contract farming for export on domestic food production and food import dependency. And third, he examines the often misunderstood problem of pesticide misuse. Grossman's findings lead to a reconsideration of broader debates concerning the relevance of research on industrial restructuring and globalization for the analysis of agrarian change. Most important, his work emphasizes that we must pay greater attention to the fundamental significance of the "environmental rootedness" of agriculture in studies of political ecology and contract farming.

The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation

Author: Marcus Taylor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-11-17

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1134485891

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This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something ‘out there’ that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to rethink the concepts of climate change, vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity in transformed ways. With case studies drawn from Pakistan, India and Mongolia, it demonstrates concretely how climatic change emerges as a dynamic force in the ongoing transformation of contested rural landscapes. In crafting this synthesis, the book recalibrates the frameworks we use to envisage climatic change in the context of contemporary debates over development, livelihoods and poverty. With its unique theoretical contribution and case study material, this book will appeal to researchers and students in environmental studies, sociology, geography, politics and development studies.