Locating the Political in Political Ecology: An Introduction

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Paulson ◽  
Lisa L. Gezon ◽  
Michael Watts
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Relation ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Knowledge And Practice

Recent debates within political ecology have motivated new field. In the introduction to this special issue, we vital challenges faced today, and present a new set of studies that respond to these concerns. We conceptualize power as a social relation built on the asymmetrical distribution of resources and risks and locate power in the interactions among, and the processes that constitute, people, places, and resources. Politics, then, are found in the practices and mechanisms through which such power is circulated. The focus here is on politics related to the environment, understood as biophysical phenomena, together with human knowledge and practice. To apply these concepts, we promote multiscale research models that articulate selected ecological phenomena and local social processes, together with regional and global forces and ideas. We also advocate methods for research and practice that are sensitive to relations of difference and power among and within social groups. Rather than dilute ecological dimensions of study, this approach aims to strengthen our ability to account for the dialectical processes through which humans appropriate, contest, and manipulate the world around them.

International Courts in Latin America and the Caribbean

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Salvatore Caserta
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Caribbean

This introductory chapter presents the main theoretical and methodological issues of the book. In terms of theory, the chapter explains that the book relies on the concept of de facto authority, according to which international courts become authoritative and powerful when their rulings are endorsed by relevant audiences in their practices. To complement this approach, the chapter explains that the book proposes five original analytical markers, which are central for analysing and explaining the social processes through which international courts, in general, and regional economic courts, in particular, gain or lose de facto authority. These are: (i) the nature of the political environment surrounding them; (ii) the timing of their institutional founding; (iii) the material and/or abstract interests of the agents interacting with them; (iv) the fundamental support of different social groups relating to them; and (v) the societal embeddedness in their operational context.

scholarly journals Global tourism in crisis: conceptual frameworks for research and practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-294
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Cheer ◽  
Dominic Lapointe ◽  
Mary Mostafanezhad ◽  
Tazim Jamal
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Global Tourism

Purpose The aims of this Editorial are twofold: (i) synthesise emergent themes from the special issue (ii) tender four theoretical frameworks toward examination of crises in tourism. Design/methodology/approach The thematic analysis of papers highlights a diversity of COVID-19 related crises contexts and research approaches. The need for robust theoretical interventions is highlighted through the four proposed conceptual frameworks. Findings Crises provides a valuable seam from which to draw new empirical and theoretical insights. Papers in this special issue address the unfolding of crises in tourism and demonstrate how its theorization demands multi and cross-disciplinary entreaties. This special issue is an invitation to examine how global crises in tourism can be more clearly appraised and theorised. The nature of crisis, and the extent to which the global tourism community can continue to adapt remains in question, as dialogues juxtapose the contradictions between tourism growth and tourism sustainability, and between building back better and returning to normal. Originality/value The appraisal of four conceptual frameworks, little used in tourism research provides markers of the theoretical rigour and novelty so often sought. Beck’s risk society reconceptualises risk and the extent to which risk is manmade. Biopolitics refers to the power over the production and reproduction of life itself, where the political stake corresponds to power over society. The political ecology of crisis denaturalises “natural” disasters and their subsequent crises. Justice complements an ethic of care and values like conative empathy to advance social justice and well-being.

LAND REGIMES AND THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICS: PATTERNS OF LAND-RELATED CONFLICT

Africa ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Boone
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Land Access ◽  
Land Politics ◽  
Over Time

ABSTRACTThis article proposes an analytic framework to describe variation in forms of land-related conflict that emerge in widely varying circumstances and settings. Focusing on conflict among smallholders, the article suggests that these social processes can often be thought of as redistributive conflicts that are shaped by the land tenure regimes that govern land access and allocation. Land tenure regimes can be conceptualized schematically as constituted by rules about property, authority, jurisdiction and citizenship, and as differentiated along these dimensions. They define a locus of political authority over land rights at the local level, a territorial arena, social groups with different land rights and interests, and the distribution of political and economic powers and rights among them. These arrangements vary across space and over time, shaping the political arenas in which land rights are contested and producing different forms of land-related conflict. In many situations, these dimensions of land regimes are blurred, layered and changing, adding additional dimensions of complexity to land politics that the analysis proposed here may help to illuminate.

Party Systems and the Representation of Social Groups

1960 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Martin Lipset
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
Sociological Tradition

Sociologists and laymen have often seemed to differ over the nature of democracy. Public opinion generally gives prominence to the freedom of citizens to elect representatives, and until recently political scientists devoted most of their attention to the instituted rules which safeguard these rights and make them effective. The sociologist's concentration upon elites and social processes must often haye seemed, to both layman and political scientist, to blur the distinctions between democracy and totalitarian or aristocratic forms of government. This difference in emphasis sometimes reflects the gap between wish and reality; sometimes, however, it is due to the sociologist's excessive neglect of formal institutions. In this omission, the sociologist is frequently suffering from the undue influence of certain ideas in the sociological tradition, which, when first stated, were salutary correctives of older misconceptions. Thus Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter stressed, as the distinctive and most valuable feature of democracy, the formation of the political elite in a competitive struggle for the votes of a mainly passive electorate (I). On account of its heritage of ideas, sociology has yet to create the single theory which will give due weight to the autonomy of legally-constituted elites as well as to the influence of the various other social groups involved in the democratic process.

SOCIAL DYNAMICS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.N. Kurdyukov ◽  
◽  
A.I. Lebedev ◽  
A. Ademu ◽  
M. Hamdi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Natural Growth ◽  
Governance Mechanisms

The article examined different views on population with a view to identifying major trends. Social processes that impede the transition to sustainable development within existing governance mechanisms have been identified. It is noted that due to the high social dynamics, the exit from the "modernization trap" is to be sought both by territories with high natural growth of the population, and economically attractive regions with indicators of natural decline of the population. At the same time, social dynamics in different territories in modern conditions involve the risk of its use for the benefit of different social groups and can act as a manageable factor. In order to increase the sustainability of development, in resolving the contradictions of the existing socio-economic system, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of agricultural territories and to develop self-sufficient models of their development.

Afterword: Reprise and reflection*

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110242
Author(s):  
Terrell Carver
Keyword(s):  
Later Life ◽  
Space Time ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Activities

The bicentenary of Engels’s birth in 1820 is an occasion for assessing his works as received by geographers. This Afterword to the special issue draws on Terrell Carver’s recent researches into Engels’s political activities and associations, beginning with his schooldays in Wuppertal, focusing on his Anglo-German journalism, continuing through his political partnership with Marx, and extending after the latter’s death into later life in London. The article demonstrates the value of close contextual attention to the precise character of the political regimes which Engels struggled to change. This approach also reveals the Marx-centric terms through which Engels has been understood, thus undervaluing many of his achievements. Concluding speculatively, it is possible to glimpse in Engels’s thought a geography of space-time, where capitalism is an Einsteinian warp.

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