Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, 2nd Edition

300 Pages·2011·5.362 MB·English

by  Paul Robbins

Political Ecology
Critical Introductions to Geography
Critical Introductions to Geography is a series of textbooks for undergraduate
courses covering the key geographical subdisciplines and providing broad and
introductory treatment with a critical edge. They are designed for the North American
and international market and take a lively and engaging approach with a distinct
geographical voice that distinguishes them from more traditional and out-dated texts.
Prospective authors interested in the series should contact the series editor:
John Paul Jones III
Department of Geography and Regional Development
University of Arizona
[email protected]
Published
Cultural Geography
Don Mitchell
Geographies of Globalization
Andrew Herod
Geographies of Media and Communication
Paul C. Adams
Social Geography
Vincent J. Del Casino Jr
Mapping
Jeremy W. Crampton
Environment and Society
Paul Robbins, Sarah Moore and John Hintz
Research Methods in Geography
Basil Gomez and John Paul Jones III
Political Ecology, Second Edition
Paul Robbins
Forthcoming
Geographic Thought
Tim Cresswell
Cultural Landscape
Donald Mitchell and Carolyn Breitbach
Political Ecology
A Critical Introduction
Second Edition
Paul Robbins
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This second edition first published 2012
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2004)
Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global
Scientific, Technical and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing.
Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ,
UK
Editorial Offices
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about
how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our
website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of Paul Robbins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears
in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trade-
marks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service
marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not
associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed
to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It
is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional
services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a
competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robbins, Paul, 1967-
Political ecology : a critical introduction / Paul Robbins. – 2nd ed.
p. cm. – (Critical introductions to geography)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-65732-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Political ecology. I. Title.
JA75.8.R63 2012
304.2–dc23
2011020604
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781119953340;
ePub 9781119953357; mobi 9781119953364
Set in 10/12.5pt Minion by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
1 2012
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition vii
Introduction 1
Part I What is Political Ecology? 9
1 Political versus Apolitical Ecologies 11
2 A Tree with Deep Roots 25
3 The Critical Tools 49
4 Political Ecology Emerges 82
Part II Conceptual and Methodological Challenges 101
5 Challenges in Ecology 103
6 Challenges in Social Construction 122
7 Challenges in Explanation 143
Part III Political Ecology Now 155
8 Degradation and Marginalization 157
9 Conservation and Control 176
10 Environmental Conflict 199
vi Contents
11 Environmental Subjects and Identities 215
12 Political Objects and Actors 231
Part IV Where to Now? 245
13 Beyond Political Ecology? 247
References 254
Index 277
Preface to the Second Edition
The seven years between the first edition and this one have made the relevance and urgency
of political ecology a difficult thing to determine. On the one hand, the field has grown so
dramatically, and in so many directions, that it is even easier to say of this contested enter-
prise that it has become too diffuse to matter. References to “political ecology” in the Web
of Science database have more than doubled in the intervening years but now reflect a huge
range of approaches. One might think that political ecology has finally “jumped the shark,”
a phrase from the television industry suggesting the creative end of a franchise. I am sym-
pathetic with those who may hurriedly wish to get on with the “next thing” as well as those
who are still not sure what political ecology is, let alone whether it has a purchase on a
special kind of explanation.
And yet if political ecology is no longer relevant, no one bothered to tell the world. The
horrifying 2004 tsunami revealed structures of vulnerability that demand structural analy-
sis. The summer monsoon of 2010 swept away hundreds of thousands of people in Pakistan,
in a floodplain perfectly engineered to reduce the year-to-year hazard of flooding in defense
of cash crop production, while increasing the decade-to-decade probability of human
tragedy on an unimaginable scale. Areas gazetted for conservation mushroomed in recent
years without consensus on how to deal with the displacement of people and loss of pro-
ductive resources this entails. Mining concessions have ballooned on indigenous land. The
world got warmer.
And Hurricane Katrina in 2005 came closer than perhaps any other single event of
recent memory to tear back the veil on the structural inequalities of race and class in the
United States, which are physically inscribed into the seascape, implicated in the ecological
transformation of the coastal zone, and inseparably linked to the technologies that govern
the flow of water through the Mississippi delta. That event came closer, but clearly not yet
close enough. There is simply no way to pass through that obscure barrier without continu-
ing to research, produce videos on, analyze, ecologically track, and mount soap boxes to
shout about the swirling political and economic relationships that dialectically produce
levees and slums, soils and dams, tourism and hunger, energy and climate, people and
things. I am forced to conclude that there is as much or more need for political ecology
viii Preface to the Second Edition
now than seven years ago, and the revised version of the book you have in your hands is
the result.
Those familiar with the first edition will notice that changes in the book are numerous,
but made in a judicious attempt not to throw in the “kitchen sink.” I have attempted to
update examples but many cases continue to draw on the canon from the field. I have
added discussions of emerging traditions, including urban ecology and actor-networks, but
not to the detail that they might receive elsewhere. Many new boxes have been added,
including key recent works, but necessarily at the expense of some important older work.
I have added a chapter (Chapter 7) engaging both land change science and the challenge
of causal explanation approaches. I have introduced what I observe as a recent fifth “thesis”
in the field, concerning the political-ecological status of non-humans (Chapter 12). But in
the largest departure from my original effort, I have tried to stress that political ecology is
not a method or a theory, nor even a single perspective. Rather, I suggest, political ecology
is an urgent kind of argument or text (or book, or mural, or movie, or blog) that examines
winners and losers, is narrated using dialectics, begins and/or ends in a contradiction, and
surveys both the status of nature and stories about the status of nature (Chapter 4).
In light of this last revelation, I have tried to resolve the issue that seemed to bother
many commentators: the insistence that I am not a political ecologist. I maintain that,
insofar as political ecology is the characteristic of a text, one might be a political ecologist
only in the same way those who consistently and exclusively write gothic novels might be
considered gothic novelists. But this should not encourage any of us – whoever we are or
whatever we do – to shy away from researching, reading, writing, and witnessing political
ecologies, whenever or wherever it is scientifically enlightening or socially and environ-
mentally urgent. One need not be a political ecologist to mobilize the resources, or learn
from the insights, of political ecology.
Many Acknowledgments
Writing requires a rare space that is comfortable and intellectually challenging. I’ve been
lucky to have two such spaces. Thanks to Ohio State University Geography and Larry
Brown for my first intellectual home and to University of Arizona Geography and
Development, John Paul Jones, and Sallie Marston for my second.
All of the researchers I approached in the preparation of this volume and the previous
edition were invaluable, including Arun Agrawal, Tom Bassett, Fikret Berkes, Piers Blaikie,
Harold Brookfield, Judith Carney, Susanne Freidberg, Larry Grossman, Julie Guthman,
Christian Kull, Tania Li, Nancy Peluso, Dianne Rocheleau, Joel Wainwright, and Michael
Watts. I am also in debt to my many colleagues around the world, who answered e-mails,
read drafts, and explained complex problems so that even I could grasp them, including
Simon Batterbury, Tor Benjaminsen, Denis Gautier, Tony Bebbington, Susanna Hecht,
Noriko Ishiyama, Brad Jokisch, Thembela Kepe, Rheyna Laney, Becky Mansfield, Brian
Marks, Kendra McSweeney, Ian Scoones, and Randy Wilson. John Isom provided feedback
on drafts and produced the original Figures 2.2 and 3.2.
The several years of my own fieldwork described throughout the book would have been
impossible without the help of David Bennett, Jody Emel, Susan Gilbertz, Douglas Johnson,
David McGinnis, Ilse Kohler-Rollefson, Komal Kothari, S. M. Mohnot, Julie Sharp, and