Political Ecology (original) (raw)

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.