Urban Political Ecology from Below: Producing a “Peoples’ History” of the Portland Harbor

Antipode ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Goodling
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
History Of

Urbanizing Islands: A Critical History of Singapore's Offshore Islands

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862110510
Author(s):  
Creighton Connolly ◽  
Hamzah Muzaini
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Environmental Inequalities ◽  
Over Time

While Singapore is often considered an island city in the singular sense, the city-state actually consists of many islands, with the Singapore mainland being by far the largest. While most of these islands traditionally had thriving indigenous communities, all have since been displaced over time as the islands were developed to service Singapore's economic and metabolic needs as a rapidly urbanizing and developing nation. Some of the islands have also undergone considerable transformation (through reclamation) which has had significant impacts on the ecologies of the offshore islands. This simultaneously allowed for the ‘ruralization’ of mainland Singapore to provide more green space for nature conservation, recreation and leisure. This paper will provide a brief history of these transformations, drawing on specific examples which serve to illustrate how Singapore's offshore islands have been redeveloped over time to service the nation-state and in response to the changing needs of the urban core. In doing so, the paper examines how spaces on the urban periphery are deeply bound up with processes of ‘urbanization’, given their important role in processes of urban metabolism. In this way, the paper contributes to recent work in urban political ecology which has sought to trace processes of urbanization beyond the city and render visible the socio-environmental inequalities produced therein.

scholarly journals Urbanisation Through Brick Kilns: The Interrelationship Between Appropriation of Nature and Labour Regimes

Urbanisation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Pratik Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
New Labour ◽  
National Capital Region ◽  
Brick Kiln ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Brick Kilns ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
National Capital ◽  
History Of

This article follows the emergence and growth of a brick kiln cluster in Khanda village on the periphery of the Delhi’s National Capital Region agglomeration. Khanda’s landscape and ecology have been profoundly altered and shaped by brick kilns in what can be taken as a manifestation of extended urbanisation. This urbanisation is not only bound up with the urban demand for bricks but is also mediated by various situated processes that are not city-centred. The article draws attention to a number of these processes—Khanda’s history of agrarian decline as a condition of possibility for the kiln cluster, the upscaled metabolism of the soil with changing forms of commodification and the emergence of new labour processes that alter as well as reproduce historical relations of production particular to brick kilns. The article establishes dialogue between the fields of agrarian urbanism and urban political ecology to develop a situated critique of the metabolism of brick kilns. It also brings brick kilns into Marxist debates on the interrelationship between nature and labour within capitalist production through a discussion on the changing modes of appropriation of soil and its relation to everyday practices of working the soil.

scholarly journals Historical tools and current societal challenges: reflections on a collection of environmental migration cases

2020 ◽  
Vol 198 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-162
Author(s):  
Roberta Biasillo
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Horizon 2020 ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Environmental Migration ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
History Of ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
And Migration

Through considering a "Geo Archive" as a tool of history, this paper explores several conundrums concerning environmental migration in social sciences. It demonstrates how historical perspectives can problematize and unsettle various automatisms that are widely present in journalistic, public, and policy discourses. Through examples from the Geo Archive, the article illustrates how unavoidable historical dimensions can enrich our understandings on the interaction between environmental issues and migration flows. This paper engages with an open access "archive in-the-making". This Geo Archive includes case studies of migration flows and puts those flows in conversation with environmental transformations and climatic changes. The analysed collection presents high-profile stories which are representative samples of different approaches, temporalities, geographies, sources of information, narratives, and scales. This endeavour encompasses different disciplines and fields of expertise: environmental humanities, IT and communication experts, and political ecology. The archive places itself within the realms of public history, environmental history, and history of the present and aims to reach out to wider audiences. This digital humanities project stemmed from a support action funded by the EU initiative Horizon 2020 titled CLISEL whose overarching goal was to analyse and better inform institutional responses and policies addressing climate refugees and migrants.

The limits of power: the political ecology of the Spanish Empire in the Greater Southwest

Antiquity ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (250) ◽  
pp. 153-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
History Of

The Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most dramatic cultural and biological transformations in the history of the world. Small groups of conquistadores toppled enormous empires. Millions of Native Americans died from epidemic disease. Old World animals and plants revolutionized Native American societies, while New World crops fundamentally altered the diet and land-tenure of peasants across Europe. In the words of historian Alfred Crosby (1972: 3),The two worlds, which God had cast asunder, were reunited, and the two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day [I1 October 14921 to become alike.

Archaeology and Environmental Anthropology: Collaborations in Historical and Political Ecology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Fairhead
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
West African ◽  
Environmental Anthropology ◽  
Environmental Archaeology ◽  
Humid Forest ◽  
Transition Zones ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the importance of integrating archaeological perspectives within contemporary environmental anthropology. It does this through exposing key questions raised by environmental anthropologists concerning West African relations with soil and forests that can only be addressed through collaboration with archaeological investigation (see also Balée, Chapter 3 this volume). Environmental anthropological research has been particularly important in revealing the ecological knowledge and environmental practices of land users and how these practices interplay with ecological and economic processes in the shaping of landscapes. This research has systematically undermined a paradigm of environmental reasoning that equates land use with the progressive degradation of otherwise ‘natural’, ‘equilibrial’, or ‘pristine’ environments (whether of soils, forests, or faunal assemblages). Whilst equilibrial ecology is apparently no longer upheld in ecological sciences either, in its shift to non-equilibrium ecology and recognition of path dependency, and whilst nature is no longer so easily configured simply as the absence of people, assumptions rooted in such simplistic ideas of nature still strongly inform and mislead the way West African environments are understood and problematized. Anthropologically derived critiques of the way landscapes are understood have been associated with a rereading of the history of those landscapes. Yet given how oral historical and anthropologically derived historical evidence can so easily be delegitimized and dismissed by apparently ‘harder’ sciences, environmental archaeology becomes a crucial player in these debates. In this brief chapter I shall focus on two key debates which can only be resolved (or reconceptualized) through environmental archaeology. The first of these concerns the degradation (or otherwise) of soils and vegetation linked to farming in West Africa’s Guinea savannah and forest-savannah transition zones. The second concerns the legacy of past land use on current ‘old growth’ forest in the Central and West African humid forest zones. These are not only interesting debates, but are at the heart of sustainable development policy deliberation in West Africa. The continued power of the paradigm in environmental reasoning that equates land use with the progressive degradation of otherwise ‘natural’ or ‘pristine’ environments is visible in the way that landscape features are often interpreted uncritically as ‘relicts’ of that nature.

scholarly journals Who defines 'whole': an urban political ecology of flood control and community relocation in Houston, Texas

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 951 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Flood Control ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Urban Political Ecology ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
Public Agency ◽  
The Us ◽  
Flood Control Infrastructure

Abstract Even if public agencies sponsoring projects like flood alleviation have the best of intentions for relocated households, there may still be residents who do not agree with being forced to move. Federal relocation policy in the US has been, and continues to be, concerned primarily with housing economics and financial compensation. And yet, residents subject to relocation continue to express other concerns. The public agency responsible for relocation from flood-prone Kashmere Gardens in Houston, TX has promised to make households 'whole' in terms of finding new housing that is no more expensive (in terms of rent, mortgage payments, and equity) than vacated homes. While these considerations are important, this article illustrates how public agencies need to expand how they define 'whole.' Interviews with 53 households affected directly or indirectly by relocation show that the following factors need consideration when subjecting households to involuntary relocation: (1) suitability of new housing, (2) perceived competence of relocation specialists, (3) the relocation planning process, and (4) potential health issues for relocated households. Key Words: Kashmere Gardens, Houston, Uniform Relocation Act (URA), flood control infrastructure, urban political ecology

Obstinate curiosity and situated solidarity in urban political ecology

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Goldfischer ◽  
Jennifer L. Rice ◽  
Sara T. Black
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Urban Political Ecology
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