Political Ecology: a Critical Introduction, Second Edition

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. 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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Robbins, Paul, 1967- Political ecology : a critical introduction / Paul Robbins. – 2nd ed. â 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,

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