Synopses & Reviews
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 Biersackandrsquo;s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the fieldandrsquo;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 andldquo;ethnographies of natureandrdquo; keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization.
Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Sandoslash;ren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gandiacute;sli Pandaacute;lsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk
Review
andldquo;Political ecologists have helped configure the fields of environmental governance and environmental justice. This thoughtful, insight-filled collection helps readers rethink some of the main concerns of political ecology. Organized in complementary counterpoint, the essays use evidence from around the world to make fundamental contributions toward a reconsideration of nature/culture relationships. Scholars from both disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations will discover the need to consult and use this volume.andrdquo;andmdash;Arun Agrawal, author of Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects
Review
andldquo;Reimagining Political Ecology is an important contribution to efforts to build a more nuanced poststructural political ecology and a pertinent reminder that political ecology has benefited enormously from the work of anthropologists.andrdquo;andmdash;Raymond Bryant, author of The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824andndash;1994
Synopsis
"Political ecologists have helped configure the fields of environmental governance and environmental justice. This thoughtful, insight-filled collection helps readers rethink some of the main concerns of political ecology. Organized in complementary counterpoint, the essays use evidence from around the world to make fundamental contributions toward a reconsideration of nature/culture relationships. Scholars from both disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations will discover the need to consult and use this volume."--Arun Agrawal, author of "Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects"
Synopsis
Introduces heterogeneity and paradox into our understanding of political ecology, critiquing 'modernist ecologies' and emphasizing transnational, place-based ones.
Synopsis
A collection of ethnographies grounded in second-generation political ecology, which focuses on the interchanges between nature and culture, and the local and the global.
About the Author
Aletta Biersack is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She is the editor of Papuan Borderlands: Huli, Duna, and Ipili Perspectives on the Papua New Guinea Highlands and Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical Anthropology.
James B. Greenberg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and Professor at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. He is the author of Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico and Santiagoandrsquo;s Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics.
Table of Contents
About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Reimagining Political Ecology Culture/Power/History/Nature / Aletta Biersack 3
Beyond Modernist Ecologies
Equilibrium Theory and Interdisciplinary Borrowing: A Comparison of Old and New Ecological Anthropologies / Michael R. Dove 43
Nature and Society in the Age of Postmodernity / Gisli Palsson 70
Constructing and Appropriating Nature
Ecopolitics through Ethnography: The Cultures of Finlandandrsquo;s Forest-Nature / Eeva Berglund 97
The Political Ecology of Fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California / James B. Greenberg 121
andldquo;But the Young Men Donandrsquo;t Want to Farm Any Moreandrdquo;: Political Ecology and Consumer Culture in Belize / Richard Wilk 149
Properties of Nature, Properties of Culture: Ownership, Recognition, and the Politics of Nature in a Papua New Guinea Society / Joel Robbins 171
Ethnographies of Nature
Progress of the Victims: Political Ecology in the Peruvian Amazon / Soren Hvalkof 195
Red River, Green War: The Politics of Place Along the Porgera River / Aletta Biersack 233
Between Politics and Poetics: Narratives of Dispossession in Sarawak, East Malaysia / J. Peter Brosius 281
Between Nature and Culture
Rappaportandrsquo;s Rose: Structure, Agency, and Historical Contingency in Ecological Anthropology / J. Stephen Lansing, John Schoenfelder, and Vernon Scarborough 325
Works Cited 359
Contributors 407
Index 409