Download or read book Reimagining Political Ecology written by Aletta Biersack and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-22 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in political ecology. When political ecology first emerged as a distinct field in the early 1970s, it was rooted in the neo-Marxism of world system theory. This collection showcases second-generation political ecology, which retains the Marxist interest in capitalism as a global structure but which is also heavily influenced by poststructuralism, feminism, practice theory, and cultural studies. As these essays illustrate, contemporary political ecology moves beyond binary thinking, focusing instead on the interchanges between nature and culture, the symbolic and the material, and the local and the global. Aletta Biersack’s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the field’s strengths, and sets forth a bold research agenda for the future. Two essays offer wide-ranging critiques of modernist ecology, with its artificial dichotomy between nature and culture, faith in the scientific management of nature, and related tendency to dismiss local knowledge. The remaining eight essays are case studies of particular constructions and appropriations of nature and the complex politics that come into play regionally, nationally, and internationally when nature is brought within the human sphere. Written by some of the leading thinkers in environmental anthropology, these rich ethnographies are based in locales around the world: in Belize, Papua New Guinea, the Gulf of California, Iceland, Finland, the Peruvian Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Collectively, they demonstrate that political ecology speaks to concerns shared by geographers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists alike. And they model the kind of work that this volume identifies as the future of political ecology: place-based “ethnographies of nature” keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization. Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Søren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gísli Pálsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk

Download or read book Power in Conservation written by Carol Carpenter and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines theories and ethnographies related to the anthropology of power in conservation. Conservation thought and practice is power laden--conservation thought is powerfully shaped by the history of ideas of nature and its relation to people, and conservation interventions govern and affect peoples and ecologies. This book argues that being able to think deeply, particularly about power, improves conservation policy-making and practice. Political ecology is by far the most well-known and well-published approach to thinking about power in conservation. This book analyzes the relatively neglected but robust anthropology of conservation literature on politics and power outside political ecology, especially literature rooted in Foucault. It is intended to make four of Foucault's concepts of power accessible, concepts that are most used in the anthropology of conservation: the power of discourses, discipline and governmentality, subject formation, and neoliberal governmentality. The important ethnographic literature that these concepts have stimulated is also examined. Together, theory and ethnography underpin our emerging understanding of a new, Anthropocene-shaped world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, environmental anthropology, and political ecology, as well as conservation practitioners and policy-makers.

Download or read book Things Fall Apart written by Pauline von Hellermann and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governance failure and corruption are increasingly identified as key causes of tropical deforestation. In Nigeria’s Edo State, once the showcase of scientific forestry in West Africa, large-scale forest conversion and the virtual depletion of timber stocks are invariably attributed to recent failures in forest management, and are seen as yet another instance of how “things fall apart” in Nigeria. Through an in-depth historical and ethnographic study of forestry in Edo State, this book challenges this routine linking of political and ecological crisis narratives. It shows that the roots of many of today’s problems lie in scientific forest management itself, rather than its recent abandonment, and moreover that many “illegal” local practices improve rather than reduce biodiversity and forest cover. The book therefore challenges preconceptions about contemporary Nigeria and highlights the need to reevaluate current understandings of what constitutes “good governance” in tropical forestry.

Download or read book The Political Ecology of Bananas written by Lawrence S. Grossman and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of banana contract farming in the Eastern Caribbean explores the forces that shape contract-farming enterprises everywhere_capital, the state, and the environment. Employing the increasingly popular framework of political ecology, which highlights the dynamic linkages between political-economic forces and human-environment relationships, Lawrence Grossman provides a new perspective on the history and contemporary trajectory of the Windward Islands banana industry. He reveals in rich detail the myriad impacts of banana production on the peasant laborers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Grossman challenges the conventional wisdom on three interrelated issues central to contract farming and political ecology. First, he analyzes the process of deskilling and the associated significance of control by capital and the state over peasant labor. Second, he investigates the impacts of contract farming for export on domestic food production and food import dependency. And third, he examines the often misunderstood problem of pesticide misuse. Grossman's findings lead to a reconsideration of broader debates concerning the relevance of research on industrial restructuring and globalization for the analysis of agrarian change. Most important, his work emphasizes that we must pay greater attention to the fundamental significance of the "environmental rootedness" of agriculture in studies of political ecology and contract farming.

Download or read book Politics and the Environment in Eastern Europe written by Eszter Krasznai Kovacs and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe remains divided between east and west, with differences caused and worsened by uneven economic and political development. Amid these divisions, the environment has become a key battleground. The condition and sustainability of environmental resources are interlinked with systems of governance and power, from local to EU levels. Key challenges in the eastern European region today include increasingly authoritarian forms of government that threaten the operations and very existence of civil society groups; the importation of locally-contested conservation and environmental programmes that were designed elsewhere; and a resurgence in cultural nationalism that prescribes and normalises exclusionary nation-building myths. This volume draws together essays by early-career academic researchers from across eastern Europe. Engaging with the critical tools of political ecology, its contributors provide a hitherto overlooked perspective on the current fate and reception of ‘environmentalism’ in the region. It asks how emergent forms of environmentalism have been received, how these movements and perspectives have redefined landscapes, and what the subtler effects of new regulatory regimes on communities and environment-dependent livelihoods have been. Arranged in three sections, with case studies from Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Serbia, this collection develops anthropological views on the processes and consequences of the politicisation of the environment. It is valuable reading for human geographers, social and cultural historians, political ecologists, social movement and government scholars, political scientists, and specialists on Europe and European Union politics.

Download or read book A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health written by Merrill Singer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health presents a collection of readings that utilize a medical anthropological approach to explore the interface of humans and the environment in the shaping of health and illness around the world. Features the latest ethnographic research from around the world related to the multiple impacts of the environment on health and of societies on their environments Includes contributions from international medical anthropologists, conservationists, environmental experts, public health professionals, health clinicians, and other social scientists Analyzes the conditions of cultural and social transformation that accompany environmental and ecological impacts in all areas of the world Offers critical perspectives on theoretical and methodological advancements in the anthropology of environmental health, along with future directions in the field

Download or read book Conservation Is Our Government Now written by Paige West and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-31 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A significant contribution to political ecology, Conservation Is Our Government Now is an ethnographic examination of the history and social effects of conservation and development efforts in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of seven years, Paige West focuses on the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, the site of a biodiversity conservation project implemented between 1994 and 1999. She describes the interactions between those who ran the program—mostly ngo workers—and the Gimi people who live in the forests surrounding Crater Mountain. West shows that throughout the project there was a profound disconnect between the goals of the two groups. The ngo workers thought that they would encourage conservation and cultivate development by teaching Gimi to value biodiversity as an economic resource. The villagers expected that in exchange for the land, labor, food, and friendship they offered the conservation workers, they would receive benefits, such as medicine and technology. In the end, the divergent nature of each group’s expectations led to disappointment for both. West reveals how every aspect of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area—including ideas of space, place, environment, and society—was socially produced, created by changing configurations of ideas, actions, and material relations not only in Papua New Guinea but also in other locations around the world. Complicating many of the assumptions about nature, culture, and development underlying contemporary conservation efforts, Conservation Is Our Government Now demonstrates the unique capacity of ethnography to illuminate the relationship between the global and the local, between transnational processes and individual lives.

Download or read book Ecologies of Comparison written by Timothy K. Choy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVAn anthropological study of the surge of environmentalist activity in the years surrounding Hong Kong's transfer from British to Chinese sovereignty./div

Download or read book Unruly Hills written by Bengt G. Karlsson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The questions that inspired this study are central to contemporary research within environmental anthropology, political ecology, and environmental history: How does the introduction of a modern, capitalist, resource regime affect the livelihood of indigenous peoples? Can sustainable resource management be achieved in a situation of radical commodification> of land and other aspects of nature? Focusing on conflicts relating to forest management, mining, and land rights, the author offers an insightful account of present-day challenges for indigenous people to accommodate aspirations for ethnic sovereignty and development.

Download or read book Anthropology Ecology and Anarchism written by Brian Morris and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of a long career, Brian Morris has created an impressive body of engaging and insightful writings—from social anthropology and ethnography to politics, history, and philosophy—that have made these subjects accessible to the layperson without sacrificing analytical rigor. But until now, the essays collected here, originally published in obscure journals and political magazines, have been largely unavailable to the broad readership to which they are so naturally suited. The opposite of arcane, specialized writing, Morris’s work takes an interdisciplinary approach that moves seamlessly among topics, offering up coherent and practical connections between his various scholarly interests and his deeply held commitment to anarchist politics and thought. Approached in this way, anthropology and ecology are largely untapped veins whose relevance for anarchism and other traditions of social thought have only recently begun to be explored and debated. But there is a long history of anarchist writers drawing upon works in those related fields. Morris’s essays both explore past connections and suggest ways that broad currents of anarchist thought will have new and ever-emerging relevance for anthropology and many other ways of understanding social relationships. His writings avoid the constraints of dogma and reach across an impressive array of topics to give readers a lucid orientation within these traditions and point to new ways to confront common challenges.

Download or read book Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia written by Joshua Lockyer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to move global society towards a sustainable “ecotopia,” solutions must be engaged in specific places and communities, and the authors here argue for re-orienting environmental anthropology from a problem-oriented towards a solutions-focused endeavor. Using case studies from around the world, the contributors—scholar-activists and activist-practitioners— examine the interrelationships between three prominent environmental social movements: bioregionalism, a worldview and political ecology that grounds environmental action and experience; permaculture, a design science for putting the bioregional vision into action; and ecovillages, the ever-dynamic settings for creating sustainable local cultures.

Download or read book Third World Political Ecology written by Sinead Bailey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An effective response to contemporary environmental problems demands an approach that integrates political, economic and ecological issues. Third World Political Ecology provides an introduction to an exciting new research field that aims to develop an integrated understanding of the political economy of environmental change in the Third World. The authors review the historical development of the field, explain what is distinctive about Third World political ecology, and suggest areas for future development. Clarifying the essentially politicised condition of environmental change today, the authors explore the role of various actors - states, multilateral institutions, businesses, environmental non-governmental organisations, poverty-stricken farmers, shifting cultivators and other 'grassroots' actors - in the development of the Third World's politicised environment. Third World Political Ecology is the first major attempt to explain the development and characteristics of environmental problems that plague parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Drawing on examples from throughout the Third World, the book will be of interest to all those who wish to understand the political and economic bases of the Third World's current predicament.

Download or read book Climate Action Upsurge written by Stuart Rosewarne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 2000s climate action became a defining feature of the international political agenda. Evidence of global warming and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions created a new sense of urgency and, despite consensus on the need for action, the growing failure of international climate policy engendered new political space for social movements. By 2007 a ‘climate justice’ movement was surfacing and developing a strong critique of existing official climate policies and engaging in new forms of direct action to assert the need for reduced extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Climate Action Upsurge offers an insight into this important period in climate movement politics, drawing on the perspectives of activists who were directly engaged in the mobilisation process. Through the interpretation of these perspectives the book illustrates important lessons for the climate movement today. In developing its examination of the climate action upsurge, the book focuses on individual activists involved in direct action ‘Climate Camps’ in Australia, while drawing comparisons and highlighting links with climate campaigns in other locales. The book should be of interest to scholars and researchers in climate change, environmental sociology, politics, policy and activism.

Download or read book The Polictical Ecology of Education written by David Meek and published by Radical Natures. This book was released on 2020-11 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agrarian social movements are at a crossroads. Although these movements have made significant strides in advancing the concept of food sovereignty, the reality is that many of their members remain engaged in environmentally degrading forms of agriculture, and the lands they farm are increasingly unproductive. Whether movement farmers will be able to remain living on the land, and dedicated to alternative agricultural practices, is a pressing question. The Political Ecology of Education examines the opportunities for and constraints on advancing food sovereignty in the 17 de Abril settlement, a community born out of a massacre of landless Brazilian workers in 1996. Based on immersive fieldwork over the course of seven years, David Meek makes the provocative argument that critical forms of food systems education are integral to agrarian social movements' survival. While the need for critical approaches is especially immediate in the Amazon, Meek's study speaks to the burgeoning attention to food systems education at various educational levels worldwide, from primary to postgraduate programs. His book calls us to rethink the politics of the possible within these pedagogies.

Download or read book The Ecological Transition written by John W. Bennett and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2016-06-06 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ecological Transition studies the relationships between humans and the physical environment. It also assesses some converging approaches in cultural anthropology, including cultural ecology, economic anthropology, social exchange, and behavioral adaptation. Comprised of ten chapters, this book focuses on ecological transition, which refers to the process by which humans incorporate nature into society. It discusses how to formulate a policy-oriented cultural ecology and looks at the ecological transition as material evolution and as a problem of equilibrium. The succeeding chapters review some of the contributions of cultural ecology, including its successes and failures. Finally, the book examines the concept of adaptive and maladaptive actions in human ecology. This book is useful for anthropologists who are interested in cultural-ecological research and its implications in public policy.

Download or read book Moral Ecology of a Forest written by José E. Martínez-Reyes and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas. Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an ethnographic account of conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing, conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control of forests and land. Forests pose living questions. In addition to the ever-thrilling biology of interdependent species, forests raise questions in the sphere of political economy, and thus raise cultural and moral questions. The economic aspects focus on the power dynamics and ideological perspectives over who controls, uses, exploits, or preserves those life forms and landscapes. The cultural and moral issues focus on the symbolic meanings, forms of knowledge, and obligations that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes have constructed in relation to their lands. The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.

Download or read book From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive written by Paige West and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-10 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West looks at the process from which coffee is grown, gathered, sorted, shipped, and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in far away places. She shows how coffee becomes a commodity, the different forms of labor involved, and the way that coffee shapes the lives and understandings of those who grow, process, export, sell and consume coffee.