scholarly journals The new politics of environmental degradation: un/expected landscapes of disempowerment and vulnerability

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna J. Willow
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Energy Development ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Hydraulic Fracking ◽  
Structural Shifts

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.Key words: Energy, environmental degradation, environmental justice, fossil fuels, hydraulic fracking, landscape, North America, shale gas

African Sustainability Advocacy Against Extractivism

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bond
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Energy Economics ◽  
Extractive Industries ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Critical Challenge

<p class="p1"><span class="s2"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| The challenge of interdisciplinary intellectual and strategic work in the extractive industries is particularly acute at the interface of research and social activism. Numerous social movements which are dedicated to sustainability fail to ‘connect the dots’ between their campaigns and broader political-economic and political-ecological visions<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>This is becoming a critical challenge in Africa, where the extreme damage done by mining and fossil fuels has generated impressive resistance<span class="s3"><strong>.</strong></span>However, the one obvious place to link these critiques from African activists was the Alternative Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February 2015, and a survey of narratives at that event leads to pessimism about interdisciplinary politics. The potential for much greater impact and deeper critiques of unsustainable extractivism lies in greater attention to combining social reproduction and production (as do eco-feminists), and to tackling social, economic, political and ecological factors with a more explicit structuralist critique and practical toolkit<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>Areas such as energy, economics and climate are ripe for linkages<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>One reason for optimism is a climate justice declaration made by leading civil society activists in Maputo in April 2015.<strong></strong></p>

The Role of Politics in the Historical Transport Networks of the Iberian Peninsula and the Pyrenees from Roman Times to the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-260
Author(s):  
Pau de Soto ◽  
Cèsar Carreras
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Transport Network ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Transport Networks ◽  
Political Economic

AbstractTransport routes are basic elements that are inextricably linked to diverse political, economic, and social factors. Transport networks may be the cause or result of complex historical conjunctions that reflect to some extent a structural conception of the political systems that govern each territory. It is for this reason that analyzing the evolution of the transport routes layout in a wide territory allows us to recognize the role of the political organization and its economic influence in territorial design. In this article, the evolution of the transport network in the Iberian Peninsula has been studied in a broad chronological framework to observe how the different political systems of each period understood and modified the transport systems. Subsequently, a second analysis of the evolution of transport networks in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula is included in this article. This more detailed and geographically restricted study allows us to visualize in a different way the evolution and impact of changes in transport networks. This article focuses on the calculation of the connectivity to analyze the intermodal transport systems. The use of network science analyses to study historical roads has resulted in a great tool to visualize and understand the connectivity of the territories of each studied period and compare the evolution, changes, and continuities of the transport network.

scholarly journals Lone Star Wars: LNGs, communities and globalization versus local resistance in the Laguna Madre region of coastal South Texas

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Garrett ◽  
Arthur Sementelli
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Energy Development ◽  
Local Resistance ◽  
Laguna Madre ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Regulatory Commission ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This study aims to theoretically contextualize the liquefied natural gas (LNG) issue using Bauman and Debord. More generally, this research provides a theoretical and qualitative context to understand the LNG issue in discussions of environmental management, globalization and local government. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Boje’s narrative case study approach to analyze the politics around localized resistance movements to LNG production in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). Specifically, this study examines the data collected from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, personal interviews and public declarations (newspapers, blogs, social media) to create an historiographical account of LNGs in the RGV to analyze the Laguna Madre resistance case regarding three LNG companies. Findings The development of LNG in Laguna Madre has been at least temporarily halted. This is considered partially because of the pandemic, reduced demand and local resistance. In the Laguna Madre case, controlling narratives by the LNG resistance appeared to be an essential component of their overall strategy. Originality/value Understanding the impact of energy development locally and globally becomes increasingly important, as access to fossil fuels become more limited. This case helps understand the overall adverse actions taken by LNGs to exploit communities, individuals and the environment while illustrating practical tools being used to resist the less desirable elements of energy development.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Beekman
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Terminal Classic ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter addresses recent research that identifies migration as a specific form of human movement in which social groups move into new social contexts. Migration is inherently disruptive to people’s lives, and it occurs embedded within political, economic, or social processes that make it highly context-specific. I discuss the history of theory in migration research, including recent shifts away from a concern with ethnicity in favour of communities of practice. Late Mesoamerica is a data-rich environment for the study of migration within its social context. The Classic period saw regional political systems that extended their reach economically or militarily and frequently had a demographic component. The widespread disruption of the Epiclassic or Terminal Classic periods included environmental change, political collapse, and a major reorganization of the social landscape. The Postclassic witnessed the re-emergence of complex societies claiming descent from migrant populations. The contributions to this volume come from many different disciplines and assess the timing, causes, perceptions, and impacts of migrations across a variety of social contexts. Political disruption, environmental change, and migration are frequently interrelated in ways reminiscent of our world today.

In the Shadow of Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-72
Author(s):  
Christina Ergas
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Treadmill Of Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autonomous Development

The prevailing notion of sustainable development has remained ineffective at reducing environmental degradation and social inequalities. The chapter argues that sustainable development, as it has been conceived, is actually a shell game for creating neocolonial dependency in the developing world rather than more sustainable, self-sufficient nations. This chapter explains the history of colonization and urbanization, contextualizing the problem of weak, neoliberal, sustainable development using social science environmental theories, such as climate denialism, ecofeminism, environmental justice, metabolic rift, and treadmill of production. It then provides an alternative, a radical sustainability that is at once socially and ecologically egalitarian, or transformative, and restores the health of people and the planet, or regenerative. These cases are presented as alternatives to sustainable development and as examples of radical sustainability and self-sufficient, autonomous development.

scholarly journals Shadows of Divestment: The Complications of Diverting Fossil Fuel Finance

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-11
Author(s):  
Kate J. Neville
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Commodity Trade ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Two Sectors ◽  
Social Damage

This forum article offers a critical assessment of the strategy of divestment from fossil fuels as climate action, considering the unintended or spillover consequences of reinvestment in other industries. With a focus on two sectors—agriculture and renewable energy—it examines how reinvestment to achieve competitive financial returns might exacerbate non-emissions-based environmental and social damage. The analysis draws on established and emerging research in global environmental politics on the political economy of commodity trade to sound a cautionary note about divestment, arguing that the strategy can maintain the status quo as readily as it can disrupt systems of power. A focus on divestment addresses a crucial immediate problem, but without a critical look at reinvestment and the current political economic order, activists could be reinforcing the same systems of environmental and social damage they are aiming to dismantle.

In Search of a Sustainable Society in Africa: Christianity, Justice, and Sustainable Peace in a Changing Climate

2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-89
Author(s):  
Ben-Willie Kwaku Golo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
African Society ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Forms Of Violence

The violence which humankind has visited not only on the natural world but also on human populations has resulted in negative environmental change which in turn induces diverse forms of violence in Africa. This has been threatening a sustainable society and human flourishing in Africa. Invited as Christ’s witnesses, Christians need to offer qualitative resources to forestall the violence that threatens human flourishing. What opportunities do these challenges offer Christian theologians and ethicists to provide life-transforming alternatives that enhance a sustainable African society? In this paper, I argue that considering the linkage between climate change and violence, a crucial transforming alternative towards a sustainable society in Africa is the quest for sustainable peace, realisable only within the context of justice (a just society)—specifically, climate and/or environmental justice. I intend to explore the Christian virtue of justice and its promise for a sustainable society, peace, and human flourishing in Africa.

Political Systems and Development in the Third World: New Directions for Social Science Research in Asia

1982 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-499 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Third World ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The People ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Political Economic

Starting from the fact, well-established by now, that conventional social sciences, developed in a specific social/cultural/political/economic context, cannot be relied upon to explain, analyse and understand the social dynamics in different contexts - let alone to predict the outcome of this dynamics - this paper outlines the agenda for research in social sciences in Third World countries. It identifies the areas of research and goes on to emphasize the need for evolving an alternative theory of development which, instead of insisting on industrialization and modernization at all costs, takes into account the historical and social factors in each society and sets itself goals that are both desirable and viable, and comes to grips with the needs and aspirations of the people.

The Abstract Grid of Distribution

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
Joel Auerbach
Keyword(s):  
Material Properties ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Immediate Transition

The necessity of immediate transition from fossil fuels has made painfully conspicuous the fact that energy sources such as solar and wind do not have the same material properties as coal and oil, and has attracted critical attention to the ways in which the social values and political-economic possibilities of the last century and a half have depended on a fossil regime. This essay takes up the notion of solar economy to ask what such a perspective may reveal that goes beyond a petro-analytic framework centered on the material properties of fuel. Drawing on Marx, Bataille, and Deleuze and Guattari, I emphasize the interrelated themes of the distribution of excess, the socius or virtual body of the social, and the reproduction of form. Taking as an example California’s recent struggles to make good on what some have viewed as the revolutionary potential of solar, this essay argues that capitalist dynamics can survive a material influx of the solar energy if more is not done to elaborate a transversal and molecular distribution of excess that solarity as a general condition invites. This discussion provides a starting point for a broad assessment of the nature and status of subjectivity in relation to questions of energy, infrastructure, and capitalism today.

Masturbatory Ecologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-59
Author(s):  
Jeremy Chow
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
The Erotic

This essay considers how environmentalism can be interwoven with discourses of sexuality and the ways in which sexuality can participate in environmental justice movements. By thinking with provocative, erotic media that highlight environmental degradation, it marries investigations of ecological crisis at the hands of deforestation and porn studies with two aims. First, it highlights the fraught relationship a pornographic video aggregator like Pornhub might share with feminist and queer epistemologies. Second, it emphasizes the ecosexual nature of environmental justice by way of Pornhub’s Give America Wood initiative (2014) and the documentary Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2014). While Goodbye Gauley Mountain and Pornhub are incommensurate in many ways, together they demonstrate how masturbatory ecologies enable a relationship with the environment that can be both active, as in the film’s offering, and passive, as with Pornhub’s, and thus constitute a “perverted” environmental justice through the experience and demonstration of sexuality. A perverted environmental justice envisions a broader framework that recognizes the potential to actively and passively participate in environmental social justice while also enfolding the environment into sexual arrangements. “Masturbatory ecologies” thus signifies a self-gratifying mode of environmentalism that harnesses the self, the body, and the erotic to foster positive environmental world building in apocalyptic times.

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