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2010 Engaging with the Politics of Determinist Environmental Thinking Andrew Sluyter Louisiana State University, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Andrew Sluyter, Engaging with the Politics of Determinist Environmental Thinking, Progress in Human Geography 34 (2010) 111-16.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Geography & Anthropology at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Prog Hum Geogr OnlineFirst, published on August 11, 2009 as doi:10.1177/0309132509338749 Progress in Human Geography (2009) pp. 1–19

Forum

Environmentalist thinking and/in geography

Organizing editor: Sarah A. Radcliffe* Contributors: Elizabeth E. Watson, Ian Simmons, Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Andrew Sluyter

Abstract: In recent years, a new type of determinist environmental thinking has emerged. It can be understood to be one strand in a much broader realm of ‘environment talk’. Many human geographers have expressed a combination of scepticism and surprise at the apparently inexorable rise of the neo-environmentalist arguments which differ from early twentieth-century environmental determinism yet continue to draw upon biologistic accounts of human culture. Although geography has in recent years been at the forefront of the academic discussions of environmental change in relation to science, institutional context, political costs and human impacts, the discipline nevertheless has to contend with a widespread misperception of the place of environment in human affairs and the world’s future. This Forum discusses the context for the rise of, and consequences of, determinist accounts.

Key words: geographical explanations, global development, global inequality, human-animal relations, neo-environmental determinism, political ecology.

Introduction: the status of the It can be understood to be one strand in a ‘environment’ in geographical broader discourse of what we can call aca- explanations demic ‘environment talk’ (which includes The immediate stimulus for this Forum is the political ecology, environmental history, perception among a number of geographers climatology, and many others). Yet this ‘neo- across the subfields of their discipline that environmental determinism’ (Sluyter, this ‘the environment’ has in certain spheres been Forum) is characterized by an emphasis on brought into arguments that attribute it with the core explanatory power of non-human/ powerful and singular causal power; and, non-animal components of the biophysical moreover, that these arguments have been sphere in shaping human outcomes (in rela- associated with the discipline in ways that tion to development, disease, conflict, re- have various effects on the nature of geo- sponses to climate change, etc). Whereas graphical explanations and their public other forms of environmental talk, such as prominence. political ecology (eg, Peet and Watts, 2004), In recent years a certain type of deter- highlight the contingent historically and geo- minist environmental thinking has emerged. graphically specific cultural meanings and

*Email: [email protected]

© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: DOI: 10.1177/0309132509338749 http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav 2 Progress in Human Geography human engagements with environmental public audience, and the potential long-term processes, neo-environmental determinism consequences for the discipline of these high- claims to discern invariable dynamics be- profi le representations of ‘geography’. tween (certain kinds of) society and ‘the’ en- Hence the diverse contributors to this vironment. These determinist frameworks Forum were invited to engage in a broader differ from early twentieth-century versions way than they might in scholarly writing and of environmental determinism in a number of teaching with questions about the politics, ways.1 First, in intellectual terms, recent de- consequences and intellectual basis of these terminisms have emerged in the context of arguments, and their connection with their widespread knowledge of Darwinian evolu- own fi elds of inquiry. From varying perspec- tion, atmospheric and climate science, ‘new tives, the contributors address questions genetics’, and detailed ecological and social such as the following. Should geography knowledges, all of which create a more engage with environmentally determinist knowledge-rich starting point (while also pro- arguments in the public arena and other dis- viding the basis of robust critiques of these ciplines? If so, how and to what ends? How do same environmental determinisms; see existing forms of environmental determinism below). Second, in terms of sociopolitical con- affect the content and form of knowledges texts, current environmental determinisms produced by human and physical geographers refl ect subtle arguments about ‘cultural’ de- broadly defi ned? Environmental determinist terminism, rather than crass racial ideologies. thinking, of course, comprises a number of However, as Felipe Fernández-Armesto differing arguments, fields of inquiry, and makes clear (this Forum), the concept publicly accessible discourses – while some ‘culture’ can be used as if it were equivalent to contributors mention specifi c names, others a biologically determined entity, and he address themselves to what they perceive thereby reveals the biologisms that underlie to be wider, more diffuse infl uences of neo- certain strands of neo-environmental deter- environmental determinism on public debate. minist thinking. As noted above, Jared Diamond occupies Many human geographers have expressed a specifi c position in these debates, not only a combination of scepticism and surprise at because of the fame and high sales of his the apparently inexorable rise of such argu- books, but also because of his appointment ments. Johnston (2007) calls Jared Diamond to and profi le in, professional academic geo- – whose books have often provided a lightn- graphy. Jared Diamond has been appointed ing rod for critique and debate – ‘a late inter- to the UCLA Geography Department, loper … [but] not [a geographer] really’. and gave one of the plenaries at the 2007 Yet there has been a surprising lack of dis- American Association of Geographers’ an- cussion about the implications of the rise of nual meeting, in which he rehearsed the argu- neo-environmental determinist arguments. ments developed in his best-selling books Geographical journals have tended to engage Guns, germs and steel and Collapse. Although with these arguments through book reviews, Diamond always attributes environmental as well as indirectly in articles presenting de- factors with a partial role in societal change, tailed analyses of environment-society rela- his discussion tends to highlight these factors tions (as indeed do numerous books). Yet at the cost of others. Yet it is invidious to relatively little has been written systemat- single out one individual, as similar arguments ically about these arguments in terms of (albeit not based on Diamond’s zoological their validity (or lack of it) within the discip- research) have also been gaining a wider cur- line, about their implications for human geo- rency within public understandings of what graphers’ and environmentalists’ attempts ‘geography’ is (eg, Posner, 2004; cf. Geertz, to bring non-determinist research to a 2005). Arguments about conflict in Sudan Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 3 and elsewhere in Africa are increasingly em- profi le – as a fi eld of research endeavour, as a phasizing the role of climate change, down- claimant on public funds, and as a ‘relevant’ playing the political interpretations that have subject in instrumentally orientated times – long held sway in the scholarly understand- rests in part on its credentials as a contributor ings of famine, conflict and land shortages to the global climate change debate. The chal- (UNEP, 2007; de Waal, 2007). lenge for geography lies in creating a dis- One area in which environmentally de- cipline that refl ects the complexity of – rather terminist arguments have gained public – than simplifi es – accounts of the world, with- although not always professional – salience out losing sight of a synthetic account. is in relation to global issues and inequality. As noted above, neo-environmental deter- Ian Simmons (Simmons, this Forum) points minisms often draw on a biologistic model of out that geographers need global narratives human culture. They see the concept as a because of the scale and predicted trans- tool by which to differentiate one social group formative power of global climate change. from another in explanations of relative Separately, however, Andrew Sluyter and flexibility in face of stress, or adaptability Elizabeth Watson each point out how not to new opportunities. While such accounts all global narratives are the same. As neo- have certainly replaced nineteenth- and environmental determinist accounts of early twentieth-century racial explanations global climate change offer universalizing (cf. Sluyter, this Forum), the denial of the explanations, other types of explanation – powerful hierarchies of (racial/cultural) value those that point to legacies of colonialism, and the strongly infl uential histories and geo- racially segregated labour markets, or locally graphies of colonialism and imperialism speak motivated political confl ict – fade from view more to progress in laboratory science than to (Sluyter, this Forum; Watson, this Forum). the careful, extensively documented and ap- Neo-environmental determinist narratives propriately researched fi ndings of hundreds risk obscuring the interactions between local, of social scientists (among them geographers) regional, and specifi c global processes by high- over the past 30 years (Kobayashi and Peake, lighting supposedly worldwide processes, 2000). By drawing on biological science thereby doing an injustice to the extensive rather than social science, such accounts work in geography on scalar interactions. Yet, fall prey to the engaging simplifications of in a universalizing picture, the ‘environment’ – Malthusian arguments (Simmons, this in the sense of desertifi cation, drought, dis- Forum). Yet even laboratory science and ease, and so on – gains a spurious ranking in an its fi ndings are only selectively drawn upon. explanatory framework, while other factors For instance, extensive work on the lack such as society, culture, politics, geopolit- of easy boundaries between human and ical relations, and history are pushed into the animal societies and cultures (documented background (compare Adams and Mulligan, in Fernández-Armesto, this Forum) high- 2003). Tanya Murray Li suggests that ‘en- lights the need to rethink our category of gaging simplifications’ may have powerful ‘culture’. More importantly in the context of social and political consequences, as they this Forum, we need to acknowledge that appear to offer a route-map for politicians history is the explanatory timeline relevant and planners alike (Li, 2002). for human-environment relations, rather To the extent that the discipline of geo- than evolutionary time. graphy articulates an account of global The Forum is in three parts. The first climate change and its various local and re- comprises a discussion of the various ways in gional ramifi cations (from melting polar ice to which neo-environmental determinism is agrarian transformations in the Sahel), it too affecting geographers’ sense of their explan- is entangled in the power of such engaging atory frameworks in the classroom, and simplifi cations. In other words, geography’s in public debates. Through books such as 4 Progress in Human Geography

Jared Diamond’s Collapse (2005) or Bjørn the intellectual and institutional conseque- Lomborg’s The skeptical environmentalist nces. It also suggests that we need constantly (2001), professional geographers are re- to interrogate and evaluate critically the ways minded of the myriad ways in which ‘big’ in which forms of knowledge gain power. global environmental issues bring students Without advocating that geography engage into our departments, drive high-level policy in other ‘simplifi cations’, the contributors to debates, and remind us how our own per- this Forum imply that there is still a job to be sonal research interests only too frequently done to make other complex stories acces- remain constrained in scope and scale con- sible and powerful in public debates. tributing incrementally to a wider project of In conclusion, although geography has expanding and transmitting knowledge in recent years been at the forefront of the (Castree et al., 2008). In Part II, there is a dir- academic discussions of environmental ect refutation of two forms of determinism change in relation to science, institutional con- shaping current debate: first, the idea that text, political costs and human impacts, the evolution determines the circumstances of discipline nevertheless has to contend with human groups today and, second, the notion a widespread misperception of the place of that human ‘cultures’ correspond analo- environment in human affairs and the world’s gously to organisms, and are thus subject to future. Given its research strengths and pro- evolutionary pressures. As Felipe Fernández- fessional standing, geography – and geo- Armesto argues, neither of these doctrines is graphers – can directly engage with and helpful in offering insight or explanatory frame- challenge such views, contributing to urgent works for social change, nor environment- conversations in academia and policy arenas society relations. In other words, although alike. This public role must, however, be social scientists have Darwinian evolutionary counterbalanced by an awareness of its own theory in their toolkit as a broad intellectual institutional and professional investments in setting, they fi nd its insights too broad-brush the fi eld of environmental studies. The power as a proximate framework to understand, of ‘environmental big-talk’ to raise geo- to pick a random example, how indigenous graphy’s profi le, particularly perhaps in coun- forest dwellers in Bolivia negotiate with state tries where it has not had a large presence conservation initiatives. In Part III, the con- in universities, must be weighed against the text in which neo-environmental deter- risk of simplifying the causal drivers behind minism emerged is examined. The neoliberal global environmental and climate changes. political economy of the North in combin- ation with the South’s continued under- Sarah A. Radcliffe development are suggested as factors behind University of Cambridge the public salience of neo-environmentalist accounts. Part I: Types of determinist This Forum provides no straightforward environmental thinking response to the rise of neo-environmental determinism. While certain contributors are 1 Convenient examples for inconvenient truths keen to engage students in the debate, others In a Masters on Environment, Society and are more concerned to raise issues with uni- Development that I co-teach with Tim Bayliss- versity administrators and professional Smith at the Department of Geography, the bodies. But the Forum does, we hope, contri- students are asked to read and debate Jared bute to what is likely to be an ongoing, and Diamond’s Collapse (2005). Student criticisms at times heated, discussion. It offers us some of his thesis often start with a questioning pointers about the stakes involved in the rise of the way Diamond selects his examples. of neo-environmental determinism, some of They suggest that perhaps he chooses his Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 5 cases to support his storyline. Students also growth, left unchecked, leads to a ‘natural’ comment that, although he gives credit to chain of events: population growth leads to non-environmental factors in his fi ve-point agricultural intensification, expansion onto framework for explaining historical change marginal land, unsustainable practices and and disintegration of societies, all too often environmental damage; to food shortages, the cases are structured in a way that rele- starvation, ‘wars among too many people gates non-environmental factors to a lower fi ghting for too few resources’ and political tier of significance. The Rwandan study is upheaval; to population decrease and ‘loss of a case in point. Diamond makes clear that political, economic and cultural complexity’ environmental factors were only one contri- (Diamond, 2005: 6). The logic of this argu- butory factor in the genocide, and that there ment has been critiqued extensively by geo- is no automatic link between population graphers, anthropologists and others, who pressure, competition for scarce natural re- have, for some time now, challenged its over- sources, and confl ict. But he ends by citing simplifi cations. The environmental degrad- the work on Rwanda by Gérard Prunier, ation narrative continues to endure, despite who comments that competition for land much evidence to the contrary, because it and livestock was not a ‘negligible incentive’. serves powerful interests (for a review of Diamond concludes with the warning that this critique, see Leach and Mearns, 1996). ‘Malthus’s worst-case scenario may some- What is striking is that, despite this largely times be realized, and that Rwanda may accepted critique, Diamond’s reworking of be a distressing model of that scenario in Malthus has been warmly received, with operation’ (Diamond, 2005: 327–28). One the book topping the non-fi ction best-selling student commented: ‘I read the chapter on lists. Diamond has been embraced by the Rwanda, and I appreciated everything he geographical academy. The welcoming of said about other factors, but afterwards, Diamond’s argument represents therefore a all I could remember was that the genocide radical shift, even reversal, in perspective. had been caused by population growth and The question is why? One explanation is environmental pressure.’ in the new context in which we are working: The emphasis on the environmental factor the current global environmental crisis is now is also produced by the overall structure of so severe and pressing that Malthusian Diamond’s book. Each chapter tells a com- thinking, and the deterministic role of the plex story in terms of the interrelations be- environment, is relevant again. tween social, political, economic and envir- In effect, the extent of the global environ- onmental factors, but the element that links mental crisis has brought with it a new re- them all is that the changes in the environ- quirement for meta-explanations that will be ment have been partly responsible at least able to bring about action strong enough to for the history of each case. By placing all mitigate its effects. One danger here is that of these examples side by side, the reader is the sweeping explanation gives insuffi cient encouraged to identify this common thread, attention to what is happening at local scales. and to conclude that the environment is the New epistemological violence can be done to most signifi cant consideration. Other factors different places and peoples as they come to that vary from case to case become less im- symbolize and exemplify certain parts of the portant. This conclusion is also supported by wider environmental storyline. The subtitle Diamond’s more explicit commentary on the of Diamond’s book is how ‘societies choose role of the environment, and the way in which to fail or survive’, and the examples cited are, analysts have ignored it in recent years. at times, categorized into exemplary models Diamond’s argument thus reasserts the to emulate, or into cautionary tales. The logic of Malthus and others that population question is, are you a Tikopia or an Iceland 6 Progress in Human Geography

(success stories), or a Rwanda or a Somalia students may also be frustrated by being given (‘ecocides’)? As with the Orientalist discourse different readings (not Diamond) that stress (Said, 1978), this environmental narrative that problems of development, including works through a process of crude othering. poverty, disease, food shortages and confl ict, For example, Somalia symbolizes, even epi- are not necessarily ‘natural’, technological tomizes, collapse, ecocide, an inability to problems or even results of a lack of economic do anything about one’s problems, apathy, growth, but are complex political problems and potentially our own destiny should we about distribution, rights and access to re- ‘fall’; by contrast, the association between sources. Whatever the case, the only cer- the ‘first world’ and a particular form of tainty that emerges from contemporary ‘civilization’ that must be defended is also literature is that achieving sustainable devel- enshrined. The details of what is happening in opment is not easy. The current context of Somalia are not discussed, but the country is global climate change provides the impetus cited in the beginning and the end of the book to cut through these complexities and this as a warning: ‘Either we solve the [environ- hand-wringing with grand theories which mentally related] problems by then, or the provide an agenda for global-scale action. problems will undermine not just Somalia but Theories are contextual; and in this context also First World societies’ (Diamond, 2005: Diamond’s schema is seductive. What seems 7). The success stories are also questionable. to be happening in Diamond’s work, and else- For example, little is known about the envir- where in public debate, is a new tacking back- onment and settlement history of Tikopia wards and forwards between the global- prior to the twentieth century. One thing level environmental problem and the local that is known, however, is that young Tikopia situation, between the macro and the micro men set off on lone suicide voyages in fragile situation, and there is a new politics to it. The canoes when this ‘success story’ became new global environmental agenda can ‘trump’ too much for them to bear (Bayliss-Smith, local processes and agendas, especially more personal communication). A second danger complex political ones. is that, if the knowledge about a place is not These dynamics are also evident in policy correct, then any policies on which they are debates in development circles. One example based are likely to be inappropriate. One of this is the media coverage of a UNEP of the main reasons for failures of develop- report (2007) claiming that Darfur was the ment and conservation is that policies have ‘first climate change war’ (Julian Borger, often been based on one-size-fi ts-all models, The Guardian, 28 June 2007). Ban Ki-moon, developed on a larger scale. the UN Secretary-General, explained in a Despite their recognition of some of these speech: concerns, it is also striking that student feedback remains nonetheless positive. In Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a con- venient military and political shorthand – an support of Diamond’s argument, they com- ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against ment that it ‘brings the environment back in’, black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, ‘raises awareness’, ‘sets the agenda’ and de- though, and you discover a more complex monstrates ‘how pressing the problem of dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political environmental change is’. One student com- causes, the Darfur conflict began as an eco- mented: ‘it identifies the choice we have. logical crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. (Ban Ki-Moon, Washington Post 16 Societies that collapsed didn’t have the know- June 2007, added emphasis) ledge and perspective that this book pro- vides, and it can therefore be used to bring What happens here is that a simplistic narra- about change.’ Many of our masters students tive that explains confl ict in terms of ‘ancient are already committed to this agenda. Some tribal enmities’ between primordial groups Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 7 in Africa has been replaced with another in this case environmental resources and narrative pointing to the climate change political outcomes, is limited. Situations like ‘culprit’ in which many years of political and Darfur show that there are multiple factors historically informed analytical work is over- that infl uence outcomes and confl icts; many looked. De Waal’s (2007) treatment of the of the factors are political and historical, argument concludes that environmental and they are caused by relations between change may be a factor in the problems countries as much as they are by relations experienced in Darfur, but ultimately the within countries. None of these processes are explanations for what has happened must accounted for in the models. This economic pay more attention to political processes, literature is highly influential, however, as distribution of rights and the role of govern- when politics and processes are translated ment. An environmental cause has yet to into numbers the models gain authority. Yet be proved. What is important is not to iden- the generalized global and national pictures tify one factor as more determinant over they portray may not have included inform- the others, but to examine the way in which ation from certain localities, and may not different factors link up and impact on fit with what is taking place there. Most each other. It is this network of causality notably, for example, this literature may be and process that requires investigation and used to make policy in parts of Africa where understanding. the ‘resource curse’ theory is often thought In economics too, there is a new literature most relevant. But some African countries that tries to correlate political stability (or are not always represented in the global-scale political effectiveness; levels of democracy) analysis as the data are highly inaccurate with environmental factors. In this ‘resource and/or often lacking. curse’ literature, global-scale analysis is car- One question posed by the call for contri- ried out by comparing data from different butions to this Forum was, should geo- countries to explain historical outcomes in graphers engage with environmentally deter- terms of whether or not being rich or poor ministic arguments in the public arena and in natural resource terms is likely to lead other disciplines? In response to this, the to development or to chaos and conflict. Diamond material, the Darfur case and the Sophisticated equations demonstrate links short discussion of the economic material between forms of political system and de- reveal that this environmental determinism pendence on, or abundance of, natural re- can take different forms and has different sources (see Brunnschweiler and Bulte, 2008; agendas and impacts. They are forms of Brunnschweiler, 2008). It is not easy for a what Li (2002) has termed ‘engaging simpli- non-specialist to comment on this technical fications’, that capture the imagination of work, but, even to the untrained eye, their the public and aim to overcome apathy and work raises strong concerns about the data change behaviour. Many applaud such argu- on which global and national comparisons ments because they agree with the ends are made. The literature acknowledges that that they promote. But, like other engaging the data are often unreliable and patchy, simplifications, they can distort realities as especially in the global South. Further as- well as result in unintended consequences, sumptions are included as systems’ stability frequently with negative impacts on the or success are categorized according to broad least powerful. Simplified models can give criteria: for example, parliamentary systems decision-makers a false sense of confi dence are assumed to work more in the public good that the problems are easy to identify and the than presidential regimes (Brunnschweiler solutions straightforward to implement. In and Bulte, 2008). In addition, a project that response to this situation, geographers are in draws correlations between only two factors, a good place to trace the more complex ways 8 Progress in Human Geography in which environmental and other factors understanding comes from examining and interrelate. Perhaps the challenge is to remain discussing different case-study examples, engaged with policy and to communicate re- convenient or not. Only in this way will it search and analysis, while maintaining that be possible to trace out the varying impact engagement with complexity. The role of the of climate change with rigour, and to under- academy should be to support these efforts. stand the places and communities in which Political ecology is one area of geography different policies to address it must be based. that focuses on unpacking the ways in which changing societies and populations inter- Elizabeth E. Watson sect with changing environments. Political University of Cambridge ecology aims to examine social, political and environmental processes, and to take into 2 Environmental determinism in geographers’ account the way in which different scales environments (the local, regional, national and global) inter- Since the 19th century, the Promethean relate. But here, too, political ecologists have mythology (for which read ‘modernism’) has been criticized for being very good at their been dominant: the stealing of fi re (for which political and Foucauldian analysis, and much read ‘energy resources’) has apparently al- less good at understanding environmental lowed the development for humans of a change and the role it plays (for a review, see world without limits. Where geographers Walker, 2005). The ascendancy of envir- take our clues from the natural sciences, we onmental-driven analysis in Diamond’s and adopt those parts of a Promethean narrative others’ work has some justifi cation. It is im- that suggest that science-based knowledge portant to engage with environmental pro- (which many equate to control) is the key to cesses, and to explore, in more depth, the all progress. In the social sciences many of us way in which the different factors inter- are heirs to myths about the perfectibility of relate. Geographers, who work with physical humankind and we (nearly) all accept a myth material processes and sociopolitical ones, of a cosmic hierarchy with Homo sapiens well ought to be leading the field in this area – above other primates, trees and rocks as a tracing the way in which different scales working reality: no ‘deep ecology’ for us (cf. interrelate and making space to understand Fernández-Armesto, this Forum). and appreciate local difference and local I was tempted to begin — and end — perspectives and interests (wherever that this piece with the four letters ‘IPCC’. For ‘local’ might be, near or far). Such issues of every report of that infl uential body is water- representation and understanding are not marked with the message that the limits of straightforward, especially in cross-cultural atmospheric resilience are about to be reached contexts, and – worryingly – debates about and that human societies have to adapt their these matters appear to have become less behaviour to prevent any further stretching of rather than more prominent in geographical the apparently fragile envelope that confi nes literature in recent years. weather and climate to fluctuations with Global climate change may be an ‘incon- which we can cope. Such terseness would of venient truth’, but it is likely to be a signifi - course be frowned upon but it reminded me cant one with untold outcomes for every- of the role of spatial scale. The argument is no one. The full nature of its impacts requires longer about worker productivity in New full investigation, and policies designed to England or the evolution of the epicanthic mitigate it deserve to be based on as full an fold but about the whole planet. At some understanding as possible of the circum- levels, even the most determined post- stances on the ground, however complex modernists have not challenged some of the such circumstances may prove. Such an features of the biophysical world as set out Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 9 in the laws of physics: the presence and avenue of barely mediated concern is label- strength of gravity, for example, or the laws led Malthusian. There are a number of ways regarding the conservation of energy. Maybe in which population growth is regarded with the part of the second law of thermo- anxiety. The most social in its orientation is dynamics that seems to govern time has the way in which a given society can cope been keenly scrutinized but not even Big Oil with populations that double every 20 years has yet announced any work on sucking back or so and in which there are so many young the heat from burning fossil fuels once it has people without many future opportunities; at reached space. Working ‘inwards’ from that the infl exible end of the thinking is the under- perspective, there has arisen a view of the lying notion (derived mostly from ecological globe’s biophysical systems as constituting science) of carrying capacity. There may be, a kind of envelope. Our discussions have it is argued, a finite limit to the number of largely been about whether this is made of humans that can be fed or watered or kept a fl exible material which can be pushed out- from each others’ throats, and that limit is a wards indefinitely or whether it impinges consequence of the biophysical character of differentially from place to place according the planet mediated through a number of to political or technological regimes. feedback mechanisms. Even as I write (June Other constructions of the world often 2008), the FAO has been having ‘crisis’ then adopt a particular spatial scale in put- meetings, a fact related to the oil prices hit- ting forward their view of the envelope and ting US$130 that same month. After the its contents. In doing so, they also bring along UN Population Conference in Cairo in 1994 factors such as the directness of the envir- it was rather un-PC to mention Malthus, onmental processes involved: there is a clear but I think his ghost is now showing itself difference between the onset of an ocean- again well beyond the streets of Bath, in wide tsunami and the decision to grow organic whose Abbey his memorial is affixed. This carrots; the rate of change is a different on-and-off attention span is indicative of the entity in the regimes of mountain glaciers way in which many topics that feed into a versus the adoption of Green Revolution complex discussion seem like temporary crops in the 1960s, so that there are a series crystallizations in flows of energy, matter of buffers between a physical force or a bio- and ideas, rather than the hard-edged lumps logical system which allow societies to of thinking that dominate any account that mediate at the fl exible ends of the directness is in writing.2 spectrum. The human agency most involved Yet, to be repetitive, the climate profes- (it is no surprise to fi nd) has been access to sionals are the most direct inheritors of the energy resources that can be applied to the radical environmentalist school of thought biophysical systems in the form of techno- which has swirled around and through the logy. Thus in energy-rich societies the buf- western world since the 1960s. Even though fers are strongest: as Max Frisch said, in his the mode of transmission is that of the ‘green- novel Homo faber (1957), ‘Technology is house gases’, the message is clear: adapt to a way of organizing the world so that man the carbon fl ows of the planet or else suffer doesn’t have to experience it’. unpredictable fluctuations of amplitude of So, surrounding us all the time but im- climate and weather. The more optimistic pinging only from time to time and place to responses, such as those of Bjorn Lomborg, place there are determinist ideas and policies argue that the situation is negotiable and which come through a variety of channels as that money be spent on adapting to rapid well as, occasionally, the brutal directness change rather than trying to prevent it: in of a tsunami, an earthquake or a typhoon. other words to deny the existence of limits In the social sciences the most common to human societies (Lomborg, 2001). To read 10 Progress in Human Geography the material of the more environmentalist zoo. Now my generation recalls it with end of the spectrum, and to see the almost embarrassment, and even self-loathing, desperate attempts of many media to foster as politically incorrect and injurious to ways by which to lower our individual car- chimpanzees’ dignity. The chimps sat at a bon footprints is perhaps to acknowledge table laden with teatime paraphernalia and that radical environmentalism has been a foodstuffs, and entertained the crowd by carrier of western Puritanism and that its making a mess. According to one of the proponents have a little more in common world’s leading experts on chimpanzee be- with the Taleban than they would care to haviour, they probably deliberately hammed admit. But how long will this last? Media up the performance (de Waal, 2002: 52). attention spans are notoriously short and We onlookers, however, thought it funny – ‘democratic’ governments are always wary though we may not have expressed it thus – of which voters they might offend. Evoking because we thought that humans were Puritanism, at any rate in the western world, uniquely cultural animals, and that chimps’ brings us back into the sphere of myth. efforts to imitate our table manners were The Promethean myth is not dead: ideas vitiated by a fundamental inability to under- of hi-tech carbon sequestration beneath the stand what manners were. Now the joke is oceans, deserts covered with solar panels and on us, because half a century of research has sun-refl ecting mirrors in space are the heirs taught us that we are not alone in possessing of the hollow stalk, as is the nuclear fusion culture, and that chimpanzees are among a power which is always, it seems, 40 years number of non-human cultural creatures: into the future. Most Greek legends have epi- practitioners, that is, of behaviours that are sodes of hubris followed by those of nemesis socially but not practically functional and are and environmentalists sometimes point to the neither instinctive nor advantageous in an uncomfortable time that Prometheus spent evolutionary sense. Rather, they are trans- chained to a rock and having his liver pecked mitted by tradition and acquired by learning out by a vulture. So this myth has something (de Waal, 2001; de Waal and Tyack, 2003; for everybody, including perhaps the story Hurley and Nudds, 2006; on dolphins, see also that Zeus eventually freed Prometheus. It Pryor and Norris, 1991; Mann et al., 2000). seems the case that the concatenation of So humans are not uniquely cultural. There Geography with other constructions of the is, however, a conspicuous respect in which world is beset with myths, even though we humans still seem peculiar. Other animals’ all choose to dress them up in other verbal cultures remain more or less static, whereas clothing. In such a context the appearance of those of humans are highly mutable – even environmental determinism is perhaps like a volatile. A huge question arises, perhaps the snake in a burrow – you don’t see much of it biggest question the social sciences (broadly but from time to time it whips out and bites defined, including history and human geo- you; or maybe it is like that vulture, soaring graphy) are called on to answer or at least way above and thus ignored until nemesis address: why do human cultures, alone of produces some corpses. those of cultural animals, change so much? The question seems – some might say, Ian Simmons threatens – to replace history with natural University of Durham history and human agency with the vast im- personal forces of environment and evolution. Part II: Questioning the notion of It is reasonable – one might almost say human culture versus the environment natural – to look to environment or evolution The chimpanzees’ tea party was a spectacle for explanations. But, as I tried to show in I often enjoyed on childhood outings to the one of my books, widely divergent societies Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 11 have often taken shape in similar or identical instructing her tribe in her newly discovered environments (Fernández-Armesto, 2001). technique of washing the dirt off sweet pota- Environment changes at rhythms very dif- toes before eating. Subsequent generations ferent from, and generally much slower than, learned how to do it and continue the trad- those observable in culture. Although there ition – with some modifi cations – to this day. are occasional cases, such as large-scale vol- Proof that the practice is a rite rather than a canic eruptions or the sudden evolution of a crudely useful function is that the monkeys new and powerful micro-organism, when the will always do the washing, even if humans rhythms of environmental and cultural change deliver the vegetables ready-cleaned, as if coincide, these are too infrequent to account in a supermarket (de Waal, 2002: 51). Since for all the lurches of culture. So, although we the discovery of macaque culture, innumer- can accept, as a matter of common sense, able cultural practices have been detected in that environment infl uences culture, we can many species of apes and monkeys and also, set it aside as a source of direct explanation according to investigators in the field, in for the innumerable variations in human cul- elephants, dolphins and rats. In some cases, tures that arise over time. there is evidence of cultural divergence Evolution, too, is bound to be part of any among communities of a single species. In picture of cultural behaviour, because, some baboon tribes, for instance, males prac- although we humans may transcend it, we tise monogamy; in others, they have harems. have always to start from the point to which Different chimpanzee communities have it has brought us. All cultural animals are pro- different technologies; some hunt quite in- ducts of evolution and whatever disposes tensively (Stanford, 1998), whereas others them to cultural behaviour must be part of do not. In different places, orang-utans play the equipment with which evolution has fur- different games. Yet it remains true to say nished them. The search for a link between that cultural divergence – which is an index of evolution and culture has a long history (for the scale and rate of cultural change – is very a good account, see Durham, 1991). Here I small in non-human species, compared with want to address only two currently fashion- the immense diversity of human cultures. able doctrines – forms of determinism, rooted To express the problem another way, it in scientifi c traditions concerning evolution, would be otiose to attempt to write histories which have helped to shape current or recent of the societies of any cultural creatures debate: fi rst, the argument that cultures are except humans. Even chimpanzees, who are collections of evolved individuals, whose in- in just about every respect the creatures most herited characteristics determine what hap- closely comparable to humans, hardly have pens to human communities; second, the any history. They have politics, which the claim that cultures, or ‘units’ of which culture great analyst of chimp political science, Frans is said to be composed, behave in ways so de Waal, has characterized as Machiavellian closely analogous to organisms as to con- (de Waal, 1986: 19). But, although one alpha form to evolutionary rules – evolving, for male from time to time successfully displaces instance, by selection of environmentally suc- another, the nature of authority in chimpanzee cessful variations or by way of competition communities never changes. It would be between ‘units’ of culture, self-replicated like rash to say that it never could change. One genes. I want to suggest that neither of these of the most curious episodes observed by doctrines is helpful. researchers in Tanzania was of a chimp low The evidence that some non-human down the ranking among the males of his animals have culture began to pile up in the tribe who for a time successfully challenged early 1950s, when investigators in Japan ob- the leaders’ dominance by rolling packing served a now famous macaque monkey cases, appropriated from the primatologists’ 12 Progress in Human Geography camp, across his rivals’ favoured tracks respects resemble each other closely in culture through the forest. At fi rst, the incumbents – must have been an early form of societies’ were inclined to defer to him in their puzzle- mutual differentiation. Even so, the dif- ment; but his coup did not last long and no ferences between widely dispersed peoples permanent revolution occurred in the dis- in the palaeolithic era were small, by recent tribution of power or in the way in which standards, and not much greater than that chimpanzee leaders emerge. Nonetheless, it of many other primates. If art is the mirror of is tempting to see in this incident evidence society, the rate of change in palaeolithic both of how limited the range of chimpanzee cultures was minimal. The recent discovery of political culture is compared to that of humans cave paintings at Chauvet, some 10,000 years and of how the distance might be narrowed in older than previously known examples of the the future (Goodall, 1990; Wrangham et al., genre, reveals startling continuity in subjects, 1994). We no longer have alpha males run- techniques and treatment (Clottes, 2001). ning our societies as, presumably, our hominid So the peculiar mutability of human society ancestors once did. We have replaced chal- has its origins not in ‘human nature’ – whatever lenge and combat, which still prevails that is – but in the circumstances of the rela- among chimpanzees, with other means of tively recent past. The increasing pace of selecting leaders, by charisma, sacrality, change, moreover, is not an inherent pro- heredity, sagacity, demagogy. But among perty of change, but a historical phenomenon. chimpanzees it is already possible for an It has occurred – for the most part – within a individual to attain temporary ascendancy by relatively well-known and relatively well- an innovative strategy. Over time, new kinds documented period, which can be said to of political change could become systematic have coincided roughly with the Holocene, in chimpanzee societies, as in our own. and to have quickened spectacularly in the Meanwhile, humans are the only species last few centuries. with history. But this form of human distinc- The critical gap between human and non- tiveness has accrued over time. It is not human cultural species therefore demands ‘natural’ to humans in the sense of having been a peculiarly human explanation. Evolution a feature of human life since Homo sapiens seems generally too slow-working a mechan- fi rst emerged. On the contrary, as far as we ism to meet the case. Even the syncopations can tell, for most of our existence, our spe- of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ are too slow cies has been culturally stable – in key respects and too rare. We can measure the pace of as unchanging as other species. The earliest human evolutionary divergence in our DNA divergences we can attribute to human cul- (Jorde et al., 1998); the results do not stand tures arose as a result of the migration of comparison with the cultural divergence Homo sapiens out of our native environment historians record (Berry, 2002: 265–73). in east Africa, about 100,000 years ago. Those Culture, moreover, seems un-Darwinian divergences were consequences of the need because it is a story of the survival of the un- to adapt to new and previously unexperi- fi ttest. Evolution has delivered, as far as we enced environments, which produced, for can tell, no increase in the duration of spe- instance, variants in dress and foraging techni- cies. So we should not demand that it deliver ques, and of the sheer distances that arose more durable cultures. Nonetheless, we have between increasingly sundered commun- to take account of the fact that the most ities. I suspect that separation by distance adaptive cultures are not the fi ttest for sur- must have stimulated linguistic divergence, vival, but the most prone to catastrophe. which – to judge from the huge differences in A system which – independently of human language today between contiguous peoples choice – imposed cultures equipped to survive in Australia and New Guinea, who in other would select for foraging. Cultures which Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 13 have stuck to that strategy have survived generation: innovations occur by way of for scores of millennia, whereas those that random mutation, rather than as a result have substituted sedentarism, urbanization, of human inventiveness. Even Dawkins agriculture and all the other adaptations we finds this an unsustainable way of thinking associate with ‘civilization’ are one with about culture, crediting Socrates, Leonardo, Nineveh and Tyre. The societies we class as Copernicus and Marconi with ‘contributions’ least evolved – least complex, least developed, of ‘meme-complexes’ commendable for with fewest parts – are those that endure their longevity. This gets close to saying that longest, while elaborate civilizations collapse. human minds originate cultural traits – which Our adaptations bear the fi ngerprints of free is what everyone’s experience suggests. If will precisely because, so far, just about all of that is so, it is unnecessary to endow memes them have been unsuccessful (Fernández- with a life of their own. Humans think them Armesto, 2001). Their increasing pace looks up in the first place; so humans can adopt like a measure of increasing desperation. them and reject them as they wish. The only serious attempt to solve this Indeed, what Dawkins calls cultural traits problem – the theory of memes (Dawkins, can all fairly be represented as ideas, because 1976: 202–15) – is of little appeal, not least everything else he includes – technologies, because there is no evidence for the exist- techniques, tunes, teachings – do not appear ence of memes, in the sense of evolved ‘units’ on earth fully formed or leap from culture to of culture, or of any mechanism analogous to culture except, in the fi rst instance, as purely heredity, by which evolution could select mental facts, communicated between minds. them for transmission to other cultures. Even in the case of an artifact which arrives According to Richard Dawkins, who first by trade or chance in a milieu where it is un- described memes and invented the name, a familiar, and spreads by being copied, it is meme is a ‘replicating entity’ and ‘a cultural not effectively transmitted from its culture trait [that] may have evolved in the way of origin to its host culture unless and until that it has, simply because it is advantageous a recipient conceives an idea of it. Cultural to itself’ (Dawkins, 1976: 206, 214, original changes, in other words, originate in the emphasis) – not to the people or society realm of ideas. I do not mean to assert that who adopt it. It would be inconsistent with the mind – or, to focus on exactly what I mean Dawkins’s concept even to speak of memes by ‘mind’ in the present context, the cap- being ‘adopted’ in any sense that implies acity for generating ideas – is unaffected by conscious adoption – rather they colonize evolution. As far as we can tell, our capacity their host societies, somewhat as parasites for thought is itself a product of evolution infest bodies. This is a doubly unsatisfactory and, if it is true – as we suppose, on the basis doctrine. First, it requires another set of ex- of our present knowledge – that humans planations to account for why different traits have an exceptional capacity for generating achieve different levels of social infl uence: it ideas, evolution should have played some part is easy to accept, for instance, that genes for in endowing us with it. brown eyes should prevail over those for blue As a working hypothesis, I propose that eyes in a body where both are inherited; but ideas are a byproduct of a well-equipped im- the same mechanisms cannot explain why, agination, which in turn is a product of a well- say, Islam should prevail over Christianity in developed power of anticipation. Evolution a society with access to both (Smail, 2008: selects for anticipation, especially in the case 96–97). Second, elements of culture have, of hunting animals, who need to be able to in the imaginary world of the meme, no anticipate the behaviour both of prey and way of emerging except by a form of self- of rival predators, often in environments replication reminiscent of spontaneous which occlude the senses. Homo sapiens 14 Progress in Human Geography needs a relatively rich imagination to make adaptations to the different environments up for the feebleness of body, slowness of human migrants encountered. Subsequently, gait and weakness of sight and smell that dis- at fi rst very gradually or fi tfully, as sundered advantage us as hunters. This, I suspect, is communities re-established contact, ideas why humans have so many more ideas than oscillated with increasing frequency across other primates, who resemble us so closely newly established frontiers, generating or in so many other respects, but who rarely contributing to the generation of accelerating or never eat meat and who typically do not change (Fernández-Armesto, 2006). Among go hunting. Now that some chimpanzee the changes were projects for extending the communities have taken this step and have reach of exploration and exchange, and tech- embraced the ecology of hunters, I think it is nologies to effect them: striking examples unfanciful to speculate that their trajectory of of re-imaginings of the world, realized in change could eventually draw closer to ours, practice. The beginning of a new, and so far as hunting becomes more important in their relatively short, period of convergence there- economies, evolution responds accordingly, fore coincided with a quickening of change of and chimps get ever more imaginative. all kinds. The most marked feature of the very However that may be, the link between recent past – which we call globalization – ideas and cultural change is unproblematic. is, from one point of view, intensified ex- We observe our world. We imagine it dif- change. To put it crudely, change grows out ferently. We work to realize our imagined of exchange (Fracchia and Lewontin, 2002). world. But this still leaves the increasing The more exchange, the more change. Inter- pace of cultural change unexplained. If I am cultural contacts do not just reshake the right so far, ideas need to multiply in order kaleidoscope of the world; they also multiply for cultural change to accelerate. The best- the crystals it contains. attested reason for the multiplication of ideas is the fertilizing effect of exchange. Ideas Felipe Fernández-Armesto multiply as the result of dialogue. That is why Tufts University we are here, talking to one another. Cultures change, in part, at least, because unfamiliar Part III: Engaging with the politics of ideas about how to do things impinge from determinist environmental thinking outside. For example, the work of Jared History is real simple. (Rush Limbaugh, quoted Diamond has made familiar the notion that in Nash et al., 2000: 6) Eurasia has been an arena of faster change than other parts of the world because its The paradox that neo-environmental deter- geography favours intense exchanges of minism has apparently convinced so many culture between its indigenous civilizations despite its fatal epistemological and empirical (Diamond, 1997: 354–75 ff.). Isolation retards flaws suggests the need to treat it as part change, exchange stimulates it. of the process of underdevelopment rather This helps us understand why for so much than as pop science in need of debunking. of the human past cultural change was so slow Debunking certainly poses no great challenge – barely exceeding, as we have seen, the rate because environmental determinism’s lack of change in other cultural species. The story of engagement with complex historical of our past has been, for most of the time, processes in favor of making simplistic cat- one of divergence, as human communities egorical associations mimics the major migrated across the globe and in many cases epistemological defect of racism, sexism, lost touch with one another. Such cultural and other determinisms (Sluyter, 2005). A changes as occurred during the period of propensity for fallacious empirical claims divergence are largely explicable in terms of further undermines neo-environmental Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 15 determinists’ conclusions (Sluyter, 2003). (1997: 376–401) attempt to explain African That they nonetheless enjoy some credibility underdevelopment thus differs from the thus remains largely inexplicable except as an racist one he claims to counter only by retreat- initial effect of a weakening of the nature/ ing from genetic determinants to environ- society divide that has long defi ned the found- mental ones, most basically the relatively ational structure of modernism (Sluyter, small surface area and meridional orien- 2002: 215–27). Interminable debunking and tation of that continent. Thus, he argues, philosophical speculation, however, have Africa’s blackness has not determined its come to seem less useful than treating neo- underdevelopment; instead, its environ- environmental determinism as an object of ment has determined both its blackness and analysis in research on underdevelopment, its underdevelopment. Racism and neo- much as political ecologists have already environmental determinism, then, equally studied the roles of racism, sexism, and obfuscate the historical processes that ex- Orientalism in that phenomenon (Sluyter, plain underdevelopment in favor of cor- 1999). Such an analysis would at a minimum relating racial or environmental categories to need to focus on how neo-environmental ones of wealth and power, eliding the pos- determinism has supplanted racism as the sibilities for constructive change that begin major pop explanation for underdevelopment with acceptance of social responsibility and and on how neo-environmental determinism come to fruition through restructuration of emerges in and impacts particular sites of social relations. underdevelopment, including universities. Given that racist and environmental deter- Neo-environmental determinism certainly minist arguments play the same obfuscating seems to have supplanted racism as the major role, the replacement of the former by the pop science explanation for underdevelop- latter must involve a response to some sort ment. In general terms, that brand of racism of dynamism in the process of underdevelop- essentializes peoples of non-European origin ment itself. One possible source relates to as forever incapable of creativity and produc- the diasporas of (post)colonial peoples that tivity or, at best, as requiring a long colonial began during the cold war: Algerians to apprenticeship before achieving the cap- France, Indonesians to the Netherlands, acity for independence and development. In Indians to the UK, Cubans and other Latinos an effort to supplant such ideas, the author to the USA, and so on. US Census 2000 of one of the best-known neo-environmental provides one measure of the scale of that determinist books on underdevelopment phenomenon: 35.3 million people self- actually claims he wrote Guns, germs, and identifi ed as Hispanic or Latino, already by steel: the fate of human societies as a counter- then 12.5% of the total population and pro- argument to racism (Diamond, 1997: 18–25). jected to grow to 30% by 2050 (Therrien Ironically, racist and environmental deter- and Ramirez, 2000). Such (post)colonial minist explanations of underdevelopment migration contrasts markedly with that of share so many key characteristics that they the 1800s and early 1900s, when European complement rather than counter each other. groups such as Irish, Italians, and Germans Both ignore colonial and (post)colonial pro- comprised the largest ethnic minorities in cesses, with Diamond ending Guns, germs, the USA. In addition to underdeveloped and steel some five centuries ago, just as countries having replaced European ones as the dichotomy between the developed and the main sources of migrants, Europe itself underdeveloped worlds was beginning to has become a destination, a role previously emerge. Both instead emphasize supposedly fi lled largely by its settler colonies such as the innate characteristics, genetic in one case USA. Moreover, migrants have increasingly and geological in the other. Diamond’s become transnational in that they maintain 16 Progress in Human Geography persistent connections to their origin com- they typically study. Each such site provides munities through remittances, circular migra- a different type of entry into the process tion, and voting (Davis, 2000). of underdevelopment, and even sites such As (post)colonial underdevelopment pro- as university departments that seem far re- cesses have relocated ever larger numbers of moved from the negative social and environ- African, Latin American, and Asian workers mental effects on the ground in Africa or Asia toward developed countries, the racist might yield an essential explanatory element. obfuscation of underdevelopment has be- In his latest book, The university in chains, come counterproductive to neoliberal poli- Henry Giroux (2007) provides some insight cies. Characterizing immigrants as racially into how neoliberals have secured academic incapable of creativity and productivity would sanction for an obfuscating explanation of alienate them rather than co-opt them as underdevelopment that facilitates avoid- voters, workers, and consumers. Even char- ance of democratic accountability for social acterizing them as requiring long tutelage and environmental destruction. As a point before becoming productive seems inane of departure, he uses Dwight Eisenhower’s give the many recruited directly into the high- final speech as US President, when on 17 tech industries of Europe and the USA. January 1961 he warned of the ‘acquisition Neo-environmental determinism provides of unwarranted infl uence, whether sought or neoliberals with a strategic revision of the unsought, by the military-industrial complex’ racist obfuscation by shifting the supposed (Eisenhower, quoted in Giroux, 2007: 14). cause of underdevelopment from people to But Giroux extends that complex to include environment, from genes to geology. Latinos universities, terming it the military-industrial- living in the USA can thereby be producers academic complex. In part his insights into and consumers of value-added goods while that extended alliance derive, as do my own, their countries of origin remain underdevel- from experiences while a member of the oped suppliers of raw materials and cheap faculty at the Pennsylvania State University, labor because of presumed environmentally commonly known as Penn State (Giroux, deficiencies. Neo-environmental deter- 2007: 107–108). During the 1950s, Milton minism thus maintains the obfuscations of Eisenhower, Dwight’s brother, served as pre- racism but with the added benefi t of facili- sident of Penn State and used his Pentagon tating the vast transfer of skilled labor and connections to establish that university as mass consumption from the underdeveloped a major defense contractor. That process world to the developed world while main- marked the campus landscape with the taining their existing political-economic secretive Applied Research Laboratory, the relations. Breazeale Nuclear Reactor, and the Garfi eld Beyond elaborating understanding of that Thomas Water Tunnel, used to design sub- global context, a political ecology of neo- marine hulls and torpedoes. environmental determinism would have to Now, as Giroux demonstrates, the pres- focus on particular sites of underdevelop- sures on academics to adopt the obfuscating ment, including universities. Given the part explanations that serve neoliberal policy that academics have played in revising racism have never been greater. His analysis ranges into neo-environmental determinism, univer- from quantifying sources of research funding sities might actually be the most pertinent to textual deconstruction, and draws three sites of all. Political ecologists can in that compelling conclusions. First, the military- sense begin to treat universities much as industrial-academic complex has over the they do the African villages, Amazonian past two decades drawn in many more uni- forest preserves, international development versities than those such as Penn State organizations, or biotech corporations that that established strong connections to the Sarah A. Radcliffe et al.: Environmentalist thinking and/in geography 17

Department of Defense during the cold war. Giroux also provides political ecologists Second, that process threatens the demo- with guidance on the sorts of data and an- cratic foundations of US society. Third, aca- alysis available to answer such questions. demic faculty and students can counter that Such research should involve deconstruc- process through critical research, teaching, tion of the minutes of meetings recovered and learning. from the archives of academic societies and With his focus on cultural studies and university departments; of speeches and critical pedagogy, Giroux does not directly papers by neo-environmental determinists; address the emergence of neo-environmental of their books; and of syllabi in geography and determinism at universities, but he does other disciplines. It should include analysis point political ecologists toward the sorts of the distribution of positive and negative of questions that will lead to greater under- book reviews as well as of citation patterns standing of that phenomenon and therefore across different disciplines and nationalities. It the processes of underdevelopment. To should include participant observation of the illustrate, we can use Diamond once again. military-industrial-academic complex to, for As a biologist, he lacks the expertise to study example, determine the prevalence of neo- underdevelopment; his research on that environmental determinist thinking among topic therefore lacks methodological and military clients of academic geographers empirical rigor, and he consequently has to (Potter and Sluyter, 2007). And, of course, it publish it as popular science rather than in should follow the money. refereed, scholarly journals. Why under those If political ecologists are to understand circumstances would UCLA, putatively an neo-environmental determinism as part of intellectual meritocracy dedicated to rigorous the process of underdevelopment, engaging scholarship and education, appoint him as such questions about our own universities a professor of geography?3 Who approved becomes as necessary as research on con- that appointment and who resisted? Who servation policy in Africa, genetically modi- benefited from it and how? Who invited fied soybeans in South America, or soil him to present the opening plenary at the erosion in Asia. 2007 Association of American Geographers meeting? Who promoted that choice and Andrew Sluyter who resisted it? Who benefi ted from it and Louisiana State University how? Does Diamond’s new status as a geo- grapher, conferred by some at UCLA and Notes endorsed by others at the AAG, influence 1. However, there are also parallels between earlier the reception of his arguments in aca- environmental determinisms and today in terms of imperial geopolitics (cf. Peet, 1985; Godlewska and demic disciplines beyond geography, in gov- Smith, 1994), and a concern to celebrate the ‘local’ ernment, and among the general public? (culture or ecology) in the face of homo-genization Does that status influence the adoption of and/or destruction. neo-environmental determinism within and 2. With the possible exception of poetry perhaps: let beyond the discipline of geography or deepen us have some new anthologies of ‘green’ poetry that go beyond the scenery-and-fl owers surfaces. the intellectual chasm between its physical 3. I completed this essay about half a year before the and human component parts (Sluyter et al., news broke that some of the native peoples Jared 2006)? Will nature/society research within Diamond has used in his publications are now suing and beyond geography become less rig- him for libel, a development that has prompted more orous and capable under the influence of geographers to begin asking how he ever gained the credibility to write about underdevelopment given neo-environmental determinism, resulting him by a faculty position in a geography depart- in increasingly poorer rather than better ment and plenary lectures at the AAG meetings understandings of underdevelopment? (the 20 April 2009 court summons is available at 18 Progress in Human Geography

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