University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group: Notes from the field

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The University of Kentucky Political Ecology Working Group (PEWG) is pleased to announce our new "Notes from the Field" series. A mix of grad student and faculty, regular and one-time contributors will be sharing their experiences doing political ecology. They'll write up, audio/visually record, draw, etc. brief and more extended reflections on methodological, topical, and theoretical issues they are confronting. For us, the field is what you make it out to be - you don't have to have your hip waders on to be in the field. The idea is more: how is your research going? What's a funny story about it? What's a telling story from it? We hope to provide political ecologists a platform for beginning to think through their research and to connect with others who find themselves in similar situations.

In this inaugural edition of "Notes" we feature writings from UKPEWGers. We begin by hearing from geographers who share how they do research with communities at the center of often controversial productions of socionature...

 Read the rest here.

Defining Political Ecology

Political Ecology is an interdisciplinary collection of scholars and writers who investigate the politics of human-environment relationships.  Is political ecology a discipline?  A field of study?  A theory?  A framework for approaching problems?  Whatever it is, you will find a lot of geographers, sociologists, environmental scientists, and, yes, anthropologists who identify with the goals and perspectives of political ecology.  I think it's a pretty fascinating collection of ideas and interests.  But that's just me.

The Political Ecology Working Group at the University of Kentucky (of which I am a part) has a new series that explores key issues in political ecology through short online essays.  The first round asked the question: What is political ecology?  Here's a selection from the opening essay, written by Paul Robbins from the University of Arizona:

Political Ecology is a kind of text

Political Ecology represents neither a theory nor a method, but instead reflects a global community of practice, convened around a certain kind of text.

As a community of practice, political ecology has formed a general constituency: a global conversation revolving around a set of themes, which adopts a specific sort of critical attitude. It is drawn from a large group of people who write professionally (like university academics) as well as those in international agencies (e.g. FAO), NGOs (e.g. WWF), state bureaucracies (e.g. USEPA), and local organizations. Typically, its constituency operates in the borderlands between analysis and action and between social practice and environmental change. It is, however, a community that holds a deep skepticism precisely of the institutions within which it operates. Its members, prodded by a sense that something has gone profoundly wrong...

Read the rest of of this essay, and all the others, here.

Political Ecology: Where is the politics?

At the entrance to not so small Mexican pueblo not far from the where I am doing my fieldwork, a homemade banner waves in the afternoon breeze. It's not really a banner—it's a white sheet that has been spray painted with a message for all passersby. The sign proclaims support for a large scale mega-development that has everyone in the region in an uproar. Some people are against it, since they fear that it will pillage the environment, rob them of fresh water, and turn these desert landscapes into scenic afterthoughts for the eighteenth hole. This is a distinct possibility. Others, however, cry out in support of the project. They want the jobs. And who can blame them? It's not like there are exactly a ton of jobs around here. Nobody is getting rich, so when some large international developer says that they are going to bring in 19,000 new jobs, people listen.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, the once verdant wetlands have been completely ground away to carve out the beginnings of a new harbor and marina. Soon, the hotels will be built—and the golf courses. Always golf courses. All of this will require water, which isn't exactly abundant around these parts. Down the road, the conservationists fight to save the region, to make their case for finding a way to keep things as they are—at least to an extent. But the pressure of possibilities—those 19,000 jobs—pushes people apart. Real estate values skyrocket, people make the hard decision to sell their lands. But where does all of this lead? Where can it lead? If this isn't an ecology laden with politics, I don't know what is.

So here I am: the researcher, putting myself in the middle of all this. And the question is this: What am I going to do? Write a nicely worded article that will appear in some handsome and reputable academic journal? Or will I actually do something? Because these political ecologies aren't just here, they are everywhere. The politics of human-environment relationships are undeniably pervasive. See, for example, the ways in which the landscapes of my own home town are also being churned and transformed to make room for 18-holed, water sucking, wetlands-destroying leisure-scapes: 

Golf course in process.  Carlsbad, CA, 2005.  Photo: RA.

 

Conference at the University of Kentucky: Dimensions of Political Ecology

Well, it's getting pretty close to the conference that the Political Ecology Working Group is putting together at the University of Kentucky. In fact, I need to finish my paper SOON. The conference focuses on interdisciplinary research that explores the nexus between nature and society. To find out a bit more, check out the PEWG website at the U of Kentucky. Also, here is a copy of a preliminary flier, just to add some visual zest to this post:

*Photograph: Power lines running across the deserts in Imperial County, California, 2006. Taken by yours truly while I was burning up in the middle of the summer.