Underground political ecologies: The second Annual Lecture of the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers

Geoforum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1152-1162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Annual Lecture ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Cultural And Political Ecology

scholarly journals Artificial lawn people

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Brooks ◽  
Robert A Francis
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Online Discussion ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Artificial Grass ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Dynamic Relationships ◽  
Shed Light

This paper explores a new artificial political ecology through a novel digital methodology. The emotional impacts of the replacement of living turfgrass landscapes with synthetic simulacra are researched via a netnography of animated and polarised online discussion. We investigate how the cultural use of domestic lawns has extended into the creation of non-living artificial lawns and how the environmental values of these new landscapes are debated. Synthetic polymer (plastic) grasses are increasingly being used as alternatives to turfgrass in domestic gardens, changing urban ecologies. We examine the emotional landscapes that are reproduced in online discourse. Paul Robbins showed that a certain suite of behaviours constitutes ‘Lawn People’. Here we demonstrate that ‘Artificial Lawn People’ act in reference to cultural expectations of a ‘good’ lawn to produce non-living, homogeneous, green and tidy gardens, yet their actions spark fierce criticism from others who do not value this new synthetic nature. Our research involved analysis of 948 online discussion posts, and introduces a secondary notion of ‘artificial people’ as our subjects were anonymous contributors to virtual public debates on the environment: generating impassioned polyvocal contestation. Mumsnet.com is a space of heated discussion between proponents and opponents of artificial lawns. We identify three topics: (i) emotional responses: artificial grass is polarising, and its social value contested; (ii) bio-physical affects: plastic fibres impact human and non-human life and (iii) environmental values: turfgrass replacement influences local and global political ecologies. The conclusions shed light on the dynamic relationships between the emotional values of living and non-living landscapes.

scholarly journals Visceral Encounters: A Political Ecology of Urban Land, Food, and Housing in Dubuque, Iowa

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Chennault ◽  
Klavitter ◽  
Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Community Gardens ◽  
The Body ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Racial Relations ◽  
Food Gardening ◽  
Political Ecologies

Through a praxis of co-authorship between a university scholar and two community gardeners/organizers/activists, this article showcases the ways in which knowledge, practices, and relationalities emergent in community gardens in Dubuque, Iowa USA directly engage with the politics of food, land, and housing. The authors engage in co-authorship across university and community boundaries to ontologically reframe knowledge production and draw critical attention to the everyday livelihoods and political ecologies experienced within marginalized communities. We use extended conversations and interviews to analyze the food, land, and housing issues that emerge in the context of uneven racial relations and neighborhood revitalization. We then organize our analysis using a Political Ecology of the Body (PEB) framework to consider how people’s bodily, emotional, and social lives impact their relationalities with food, gardening, and neighborhood spaces. Our findings show that community gardening efforts are transforming the Washington and North End neighborhoods—even if these changes appear to outsiders to be small-scale or difficult to measure—while also calling attention to the anti-oppression and anti-racism work that remains to be done. Our co-authorship demonstrates how community gardeners and university partners can work together to contest histories of marginalization and foster more socially just relations.

scholarly journals Scalar fixes of environmental management in Java, Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin C Lukas ◽  
Michael Flitner
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Environmental Narratives ◽  
Segara Anakan Lagoon ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Cultural And Political Ecology ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Scalar Analysis

This paper analyses the emergence and fixing of scales in struggles over environmental issues. Using the example of watershed and coastal management in Java, we show how political framings of environmental matters and struggles over resources are linked to scalar regimes. We conceptualise these regimes as scalar fixes in which scales of intervention and scales of knowledge production are bound by environmental narratives and social–ecological processes to produce lock-in effects for prolonged periods of time. In our empirical case, particular scales were central in providing ‘problem closure’ and legitimising interventions while precluding other problematisations. Sedimentation of the Segara Anakan lagoon, first desired to support conversion into a rice bowl, was later framed as threat caused by upland peasants. The lock-in of interpretive framings and scales of observation and intervention, which was linked to politics of forest control, impeded debate on the various causes of sedimentation. With our newly defined concept of scalar fixes we contribute to understanding environmental narratives and related knowledge, providing a complement to the micro-perspectives on the stabilisation of knowledge claims currently discussed in cultural and political ecology. In doing so, we offer an approach to scalar analysis of environmental conflicts linking environmental narratives with the material social–ecological processes enrolled.

scholarly journals Centering the Korle Lagoon: exploring blue political ecologies of E-Waste in Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 448
Author(s):  
Peter C Little ◽  
Grace Abena Akese
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ecological Restoration ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
River System ◽  
Toxic Waste ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Political Ecologies

<p>Among emerging studies of the global political economy and ecology of electronic waste (or e-waste), few directly explore the already complex waste trades and materialities in relation to the general political ecology of water, flood control, dredging, and neoliberal ecological restoration. Even fewer focus on how this political-ecological challenge is unfolding in a West African context where ocean-based e-waste trades have played a dominant role. This article engages this particular domain of blue economic critique by focusing on Ghana in general and what we shall call "blue political ecologies of e-waste" in particular. The article focuses on e-waste politics unfolding in and around the Korle Lagoon in Accra, Ghana. The Korle Lagoon is an urban marine space of intensive land use, toxic waste disposal, social life, and urban ecological restoration. Amidst heavy contamination, there are attempts to rehabilitate the lagoon through the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project, an ecological science and restoration project focused on the Lagoon and its river system in the metropolitan area of Accra. It showcases the neoliberal complexities of ecological restoration. Importantly, situated in a multi-use marine environment, the project also highlights, we argue, a political ecological moment that is both about things 'blue', like water quality concerns, but also about other things non-blue such as contestation over land and housing, 'green' international NGO intervention on e-waste risk mitigation, and desires for new urban ecologies. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2015 and 2018, this article contributes to blue political-ecological research and critique in Africa by asking: how do e-waste politics leak into discussions of the blue economy along the Korle Lagoon in Ghana? What are the promises and prospects of a blue political ecology of e-waste in general, and in Africa in particular?</p><strong>Key Words</strong>: Political ecology, Ghana, e-waste, lagoon contamination, ecological restoration

The History of Agriculture in Ethiopia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. McCann
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Over Time

Ethiopia’s highlands and their lowland peripheries offer a distinctive and, in many ways, ideal setting for human habitation and the evolution of agricultural ecologies. The ranges in climate variability by season and over time framed a sophisticated set of crops, agricultural practices, and local political ecologies. Chief among these was the development and use of the single-tine ox-plow (i.e., the ard or scratch plow) that integrated endemic annual crops with secondary crop introductions and, in some areas, cultivated or intercropped with perennial crops such as ensete and coffee. Animal husbandry to sustain animal traction and pastoral livelihoods in regional ecologies was essential, over time, to regional economies and their political ecologies. Agricultural patterns existed at the heart of cultural diversities and periods of political conflict and accommodations. In some areas of the south (Sidamo), southeast (Harar highlands), and southwest (Jimma), coffee cultivation complemented annual grain cropping. Yet the plow in its current form as a dominant tool appears in rock painting dating as far back as 500 ad. That technology was both efficient and persistent. While Ethiopia’s plow agriculture dominated the region’s political ecology over more than two millennia, in the late 20th century Ethiopia’s agrarian economy began an inexorable set of changes. New crops (such as maize), urbanization, and global migration of peoples and commodities (oil seeds, fibers, and grains) brought new seeds, inputs, and pressures to adapt to change, particularly for smallholder farmers and new enterprises. Heavy investments in dams and irrigated agriculture also foretell new agricultural landscapes of riverain areas that will need to coexist with the classic highland smallholder farms. The story of maize in Ethiopia’s agricultural history is emblematic of the struggle between pressures for change and the inertia of tradition felt by farmers. Their agrarian adaptation to new methods, new materials, and a new climate will play itself out in existing geographies and natural contours.

scholarly journals Political ecologies of wood and wax: sandalwood and beeswax as symbols and shapers of customary authority in the Oecusse enclave, Timor

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura S. Meitzner Yoder
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
Local Protection ◽  
Timor Leste ◽  
History Of ◽  
Labor Requirements ◽  
Political Ecologies

The enclave of Oecusse-Ambeno, Timor Leste, was formed in part through struggles over controlling trade in sandalwood and beeswax, two forest products that continue to influence political and ritual allegiances, and the political history of Oecusse. These products are interwoven with the region's contacts with outsiders, influencing local political hierarchies and roles of kings, village heads, and ritual authorities. While wood and wax are recognized to be of Timorese origin, local myths posit that their use and value was unrecognized before the arrival of Chinese traders and Portuguese missionaries. Several narratives of the origins of trade in sandalwood, and the kings' annual beeswax candle tributes, illustrate the enduring connections among local authorities, forest resource control, religious symbolism, and ritual obligations surrounding harvests of sandalwood and beeswax. Customary practices contribute to forest conservation through local protection of beeswax-producing forests, and by circumscribing the harvest. While both beehives and sandalwood impede intensive agricultural land uses, farmers welcome beeswax as a profitable product that supports ritual. But they resent sandalwood's growth in their fields since it involves more regulation and increased labor requirements. The two products' different ecologies of disturbance and incidence contributed over time to distinct ownership norms and forms of control by customary authorities. This is the "political ecology of wood and wax" in Oecusse.Key words: Oecusse, Timor Leste/East Timor, sandalwood, beeswax, customary authority, colonialism.

scholarly journals Ecofeminist Horizons

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Lamas ◽  
Stefania Barca ◽  
Bernadete Souza Ferreira ◽  
Ivonne Yanez
Keyword(s):  
Rural Education ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Feminist Political Ecology ◽  
Southern Bahia ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
The University

Abstract Decolonial political ecology embodies far more than mere critique. Rather, decolonial political ecologies allow us to advance transformative proposals, to articulate sophisticated reflections on emancipatory practices, and, above all, to re-imagine future scenarios and horizons. These imagined horizons were articulated by three women from different social contexts: Bernadete Souza Ferreira Santos, a ialorixá peasant and specialist in Rural Education and Agroecology from USP, who works as a ‘popular educator’ in the region of Ilhéus (southern Bahia); Ivonne Yanez, an environmental activist from Ecuador and one of the founders of the organization Acción Ecologica; and Stefania Barca, a scholar in feminist political ecology, originally from Naples (Italy), and currently working at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Together, they show us the paths towards emancipatory horizons that can be found at the intersection between Political Ecology and feminism.

Entangled agencies: Rethinking causality and health in political-ecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 251484862094388
Author(s):  
Abigail H Neely
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Opening Up

The question of non-human agency has been particularly important and generative in political-ecology. Drawing from science studies, scholars have used actor-network theory and assemblage theory to decenter humans from analyses. Building on this scholarship, this article offers a decolonial approach for rethinking of agency in health for political-ecologies of health drawing from work in feminist science studies that stresses non-proscriptive relationships over individuals. By unpacking the example of isibhobho, a witchcraft illness, through the work of Karen Barad, I argue for an understanding of agency as the reconfiguration of entanglements. This approach offers new possibilities for understanding what causes illness, which moved beyond humans and non-humans to focus on entanglements. This approach challenges models of causality, taken up in both biomedicine and in political-ecology, offering a vision of causality that is relational and opening up new possibilities for healing and for politics more broadly.

scholarly journals Political ecologies of biopower: diversity, debates, and new frontiers of inquiry

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor J Cavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Change Mitigation

This article reviews recent literature on the political ecologies of conservation and environmental change mitigation, highlighting the biopolitical stakes of many writings in this field. Although a large and apparently growing number of political ecologists engage the concept of biopower directly – in its Foucauldian, Agambenian, and various other formulations – recent writings across the humanities and social sciences by scholars utilizing an explicitly biopolitical lens provide us with an array of concepts and research questions that may further enrich writings within political ecology. Seeking to extend dialogue between scholars of biopolitics, of political ecology, and of both, then, this article surveys both new and shifting contours of the various ways in which contemporary political ecologies increasingly compel us to bring the very lives of various human and nonhuman populations, as Foucault once put it, "into the realm of explicit calculations." In doing so, 'new frontiers' of biopolitical inquiry are examined related to: i) species, varieties, or 'multiple modes' of governmentality and biopower; ii) critical (ecosystem) infrastructure, risk, and 'reflexive' biopolitics; iii) environmental history, colonialism, and the genealogies of biopower, and iv) the proliferation of related neologisms, such as ontopower and geontopower.

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