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.

 

Gasland (what's in your water?)

Just saw this documentary called Gasland.  Have you seen it?  Maybe you should check it out:

Black Diamonds - Trailer for a film about MTR

Here's one more:

For more about this film, check this website. This is an issue that is incredibly controversial throughout Appalachia, and there aren't easy answers. But one of the first steps is taking a closer look at the effects of these extraction processes, and listening to the people whose livelihoods and ways of life are affected. Yes, coal mining is about jobs, but it's also about clean water, public health, and the clash between local communities and mining companies. A larger part of the issue is the fact that coal is used widely throughout the US, but the costs of coal production aren't always considered--or even imagined--but the people who use it to power their daily lives. Often, when we take "costs" into account, we are really only looking at a highly reductive version of reality. Costs are about more than just what shows up on ledgers.

A few more MTR pics

Mountain Top Removal & KFTC

This past weekend was the Dimensions of Political Ecology conference at the University of Kentucky. One part of the conference was a field trip in conjunction with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) to see some of the effects of Mountain Top Removal (MTR) out in Eastern Kentucky. The photographs above are just a few of the images I took on that drizzly day. The national demand for "cheap" power (coal) results in these radically "transformed" landscapes--the worst part of all of this is how clear it is who is really paying the price for all of this: the small communities who live in the heart of coal country. Trucks rumble through communities throughout Eastern Kentucky (and elsewhere), hauling the raw materials that power so many daily lives. But how many of us actually think about--or can even imagine--the effects of this type of energy extraction? How "clean" is coal when we take the experiences of local communities into account? It's no accident that these sites remain out of public view.

Another idyllic landscape