Global Political Ecology (original) (raw)
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Acknowledging environmental degradation as a profoundly political phenomenon, this article examines how uninvited environmental change transforms people's understandings of and relationships to the natural world. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in a semi-remote Canadian Anishinaabe community and among Euro-American residents of Ohio who oppose local shale energy development, I trace parallels between the disempowerment and vulnerability experienced by people with very different assumptions about the world and their place in it and very different positions within the global political economic system. While environmental justice scholars have revealed compelling correlations between social and environmental inequity, I argue that investigating environmental degradation's sociocultural impacts among relatively privileged groups can encourage more dynamic explorations of conjoined environmental/social/political systems and expose ongoing structural shifts. My comparative analysis seems to suggest that ever-increasing segments of the world's population now contend with environmental challenges that they did not authorize, and do not benefit from. I thus conclude by calling for additional investigations of environmental degradation in unexpected places and the implications of extensive inequity for global sustainability. Cet article examine comment les changements environnementaux sans y être invité transforme les compréhensions des gens du monde naturel. Leur relation avec la nature est également modifiée. Je reconnais la dégradation de l'environnement comme un phénomène profondément politique. Je trace un parallèle entre l'impuissance et la vulnérabilité vécue par les personnes qui détiennent des hypothèses très différentes sur le monde et de leur place dans ce monde, et qui détiennent des positions socio-économiques différentes au sein du système économique et politique mondial. J'utilise une recherche qualitative menée dans une communauté Anishinaabe canadienne, et parmi les résidents américains de l'Ohio qui s'opposent au développement de l'énergie des gaz de schiste local. Alors que les chercheurs de justice environnementale ont révélé des corrélations convaincantes entre les inégalités sociales et de l'environnement, je soutiens que l'enquête des impacts socioculturels de la dégradation de l'environnement entre les groupes relativement privilégiés peut encourager les explorations plus dynamiques des systèmes conjoints environnementaux/sociaux/politiques, et d'exposer les changements structurels en cours. Mon analyse comparative suggère qu'un nombre croissant de gens soutiennent maintenant avec les défis environnementaux qu'ils n'autorisaient pas, et qu'ils ne bénéficient pas. Je conclus en demandant des investigations complémentaires de la dégradation de l'environnement dans des endroits inattendus, et les implications de ce grande injustice pour la durabilité mondiale. Reconociendo la degradación medioambiental como un fenómeno profundamente político, este artículo examina como los cambios medioambientales no deseados transforman el entendimiento de las personas sobre el mundo natural y su relación con este. Basándose en una investigación cualitativa realizada en la semi remota comunidad Anishinaabe Canadiense y entre residentes americanos de Ohio, los cuales se oponen al desarrollo local energético de gas de esquisto; trazo paralelismos entre la pérdida de poder y la vulnerabilidad que sufren las personas que tienen muy diferentes nociones sobre el mundo y su lugar en él, y con muy distintas posiciones dentro del sistema político económico global. Si bien los expertos en justicia ambiental han revelado correlaciones convincentes entre inequidad social y ambiental, yo argumento que investigando el impacto sociocultural de la degradación del medio ambiente entre grupos relativamente privilegiados es posible incentivar exploraciones más dinámicas sobre sistemas conjuntos de tipo medioambiental / sociales / políticos, y revelar los cambios estructurales en curso. Mi análisis comparativo parece sugerir que cada vez más, distintos segmentos de la población mundial lidian con desafíos ambientales los cuales no han sido autorizados por ellos, y de los cuales no se benefician. De esta manera concluyo pidiendo por investigaciones adicionales sobre la degradación medioambiental en lugares inesperados, al igual que las consecuencias de la extensa inequidad para la sustentabilidad global.
Political ecology is a transdisciplinary research field addressing naturesociety interrelations, often with a focus on contentions and struggles over land and natural resources. Power asymmetries and social inequalities are critical points of departure, and many scholars in the field pursue a kind of emancipatory engagement with subalterns or marginalized people whose livelihoods depend on the local resource base. Capital accumulation and political economy more generally provide the overall framework for understanding such instances of dispossession and displacement of local communities by global forces of state and market. Political ecology has from its very inception remained a rather loosely defined research field. During the last two decades, the field has expanded rapidly. From an earlier largely rural focus, recent work increasingly engages environmental politics in urban settings and addresses contemporary questions such as climate modeling, genetically modified organisms, food industries, pollution, city planning and infrastructure development. The way ahead is for political ecology is to enter into new conversations with related strands of scholarship, like, for example, with science and technology studies, with studies that concern humananimal relations, and recent work in anthropology on ontology and radical alterity. This article aims to give a short introduction to central aspects of contemporary political ecology and its emergence.
Against the Environment. Problems in Society/Nature Relations
Frontiers in Sociology
The dominant manners in which environmental issues have been framed by sociology are deeply problematic. Environmental sociology is still firmly rooted in the Cartesian separation of Society and Nature. This separation is one of the epistemic foundations of Western modernity-one which is inextricably linked to its capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal dimensions. This societal model reifies both humanity and nature as entities that exist in an undeniably anthropocentric cosmos in which the former is the only true actor. Anthropos makes himself and the world around him. He conquers, masters, and appropriates the non-human, turning it into the mere environment of his existence, there solely for his use. If sociology remains trapped in this paradigm it continues to be blind to the multiple space-time specific interrelations of life-elements through which heterogeneous and contingent ontologies of humans and extra-humans are enacted. If these processes of interconnection are not given due attention, the socioecological worlds in which we-human as well as others-live cannot be adequately understood. But misunderstandings are not the only issue at stake. When dealing with life-or-death phenomena such as climate change, to remain trapped inside the Society/Nature divide is to be fundamentally unable to contribute to world reenactments that do not oppress-or, potentially, extinguish-life, both human and extra-human. From the inside of Anthropos' relation to his environment the only way of conceiving current socioecological problems is by framing them in terms of an environmental crisis which could, hypothetically, be solved by the very same societal model that created it. But if the transformation of some of the world(s)' life-elements into the environment of the Human is part of the problem, then, socioecological issues cannot be adequately understood or addressed if they are framed as an environmental crisis. Instead, these problems need to be conceived as a crisis of Western modernity itself and of the kind of worlds that are possible and impossible to build within it.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY: PARALYZED THROUGH POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC RE-MODIFICATIONS AND FIEFDOM
The modern material mechanized world's political and economic ideology as far as environmental concerns is based on the policy of self-determination and exploration which relies blindly on biodiversity utilization, desertification, deforestation, industrial growth, chemical wastage, poisonous emissions. Moreover the environmental issues function on local and global phenomenon controlled through decision making of hierarchies of power. Hence modernization and development works at multiple levels including the roles, actions and practices of government agents, civil society and individuals. It connects local, national, international and global environmental domain and discourse, which attempts to bring forth the social impacts and climate change due to environmental problems arising out of scientific advancements.This paper attempts to bring together Ecology and Economics-the disparate disciplines of different nature by probing into the sole objectives of both respectively. It aims to investigate how the local sources become the source of subsistence for inhabitants. Thirdly the paper will take up the role and responsibilities of the stakeholders to reconstruct the dysfunctional ecological balance and to recompense the loss that has occurred due to blindness towards global environmental health and harmony.
journal of geography politics and society 2012 no. 4
The twentieth century, especially its second half, was one of unprecedented rapid change in the Earth's environment. Environmental problems have become global in their scope. Systemic and cumulative degradation has occurred on an unprecedented scale, causing geographically differentiated outcomes that threaten the whole Earth e. The idea that the global environment is at risk due to anthropogenic activity, and that something must be done quickly to abate this, is accepted by a grooving majority of people across the world. Environmentalist "worldviews" are now more or less mainstream in the academic literature. Environmental problems do not respect the artificial boundaries of nation states as is demonstrate by contemporary phenomena such a global warming and climate change. The emergence of the Green or ecology movement has resulted in attempts to refine or reformulate spatial organization of the world. Traditional conception of geopolitical order are statecentric but the green movements try to change our perception of spatial order argue that country does not form the basis for the organization of social and political life but bioregions. Bioregion is defined in terms of the unique overall pattern of natural characteristics that are found in a specific place. The main features are generally found throughout a continuous geographic terrain and include a particular climate, local aspects of seasons, landforms, watersheds, soils, and native plants and animals. People are also counted as an integral aspect of a place's life, as can be seen in the ecologically adaptive cultures of early inhabitants, and in the activities of present day reinhabitants who attempt to harmonize in a sustainable way with the place where they live. In the green political thought bioregions should be the basic unit of organization of global space.