Aoife K. Pitts, B. Trost, Nathaniel Trost, Benjamin Hand, Jared D. Margulies
Throughout a semester-long introduction to the field of political ecology, our class turned to Paul Robbin's notion of the "hatchet" and the "seed" to categorize the goals of the field. Exploring this metaphor through political ecology's past and present in 2021, we felt compelled to consider its full potential within an expanded view of how racial capitalism fundamentally structures socio-environmental relations. The hatchet points to political ecology's commitment to dismantling systems of oppression embedded in racial capitalism while the seed suggests the constructive pursuit of freedom, sustainability, and care within and for destroyed, forgotten, and embattled spaces left in capitalism's wake. After reading a series of case studies, we felt that our hatchets had been well-sharpened and our eyes attuned to the structural inequities not only in the geographically diverse locales we had read about, but also in our own state, our town, and our university. As the semester would to a close, we read a series of interventions entwining the Black Radical Tradition and abolition with political ecology and found ourselves with a new sense of political ecology's ability to not only diagnose inequities and harms, but to propose and enact novel interventions. The ideas we explored through works of authors such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Nik Heynen, Megan Ybarra, and Malini Ranganathan resonated with us as cutting and vital critiques, helping us to imagine abolition within situated ecologies. To expand on Robinson's "hatchet" and "seed," we propose the "seed bomb" as a useful tool for thinking about the way that abolition ecologies intervene in, and destabilize, existing political-ecological regimes.
在对政治生态学领域长达一个学期的介绍中，我们班转向保罗·罗宾的“斧头”和“种子”的概念来对该领域的目标进行分类。通过2021年政治生态学的过去和现在来探索这个隐喻，我们感到有必要在种族资本主义如何从根本上构建社会环境关系的扩展视图中考虑其全部潜力。斧头指向政治生态学致力于拆除种族资本主义中嵌入的压迫制度，而种子则暗示着对自由、可持续性的建设性追求，以及对资本主义留下的被破坏、被遗忘和被包围的空间的关心。在阅读了一系列的案例研究后，我们觉得我们的斧头已经磨得很锋利了，我们的眼睛已经适应了结构性的不平等，不仅在我们所读到的地理上不同的地方，而且在我们自己的州，我们的城镇和我们的大学。在学期即将结束时，我们阅读了一系列将黑人激进传统和废奴隶制与政治生态学相结合的干预措施，并发现自己对政治生态学的能力有了新的认识，不仅可以诊断不平等和危害，还可以提出和制定新的干预措施。我们通过Ruth Wilson Gilmore、Nik Heynen、Megan Ybarra和Malini Ranganathan等作家的作品探索的思想与我们产生了共鸣，这些思想是尖锐而重要的批评，帮助我们想象在现有生态中废除奴隶制。为了扩展罗宾逊的“斧头”和“种子”，我们提出“种子炸弹”作为一种有用的工具，用于思考废除生态学干预和破坏现有政治生态制度的方式。
{"title":"Abolition Ecology is a Seed Bomb","authors":"Aoife K. Pitts, B. Trost, Nathaniel Trost, Benjamin Hand, Jared D. Margulies","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4715","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout a semester-long introduction to the field of political ecology, our class turned to Paul Robbin's notion of the \"hatchet\" and the \"seed\" to categorize the goals of the field. Exploring this metaphor through political ecology's past and present in 2021, we felt compelled to consider its full potential within an expanded view of how racial capitalism fundamentally structures socio-environmental relations. The hatchet points to political ecology's commitment to dismantling systems of oppression embedded in racial capitalism while the seed suggests the constructive pursuit of freedom, sustainability, and care within and for destroyed, forgotten, and embattled spaces left in capitalism's wake. After reading a series of case studies, we felt that our hatchets had been well-sharpened and our eyes attuned to the structural inequities not only in the geographically diverse locales we had read about, but also in our own state, our town, and our university. As the semester would to a close, we read a series of interventions entwining the Black Radical Tradition and abolition with political ecology and found ourselves with a new sense of political ecology's ability to not only diagnose inequities and harms, but to propose and enact novel interventions. The ideas we explored through works of authors such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Nik Heynen, Megan Ybarra, and Malini Ranganathan resonated with us as cutting and vital critiques, helping us to imagine abolition within situated ecologies. To expand on Robinson's \"hatchet\" and \"seed,\" we propose the \"seed bomb\" as a useful tool for thinking about the way that abolition ecologies intervene in, and destabilize, existing political-ecological regimes. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43123802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Contributions in political ecology draw heavily on case study research. This has triggered questions regarding the wider theoretical relevance to such studies. This article argues that one of the main shortcomings of political ecology case studies is not their wider applicability, but that scholars often miss reflection on their chosen cases and case methodology. The purpose of the article is to examine the continued relevance of case study research, especially within more recent advances of political ecology, and to develop ten recommendations for how a political ecology case study could overcome identified weaknesses.
{"title":"Ten recommendations for political ecology case research","authors":"Cornelia Helmcke","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2842","url":null,"abstract":"Contributions in political ecology draw heavily on case study research. This has triggered questions regarding the wider theoretical relevance to such studies. This article argues that one of the main shortcomings of political ecology case studies is not their wider applicability, but that scholars often miss reflection on their chosen cases and case methodology. The purpose of the article is to examine the continued relevance of case study research, especially within more recent advances of political ecology, and to develop ten recommendations for how a political ecology case study could overcome identified weaknesses.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42999947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on intensive and long-term field research and document reviews, this article compares the historic evolution of lithium mining in Chile and Argentina. We highlight national development discourses and government regulatory frameworks in both countries. We illustrate and assess the diverse perceptions and strategies of local actors. Finally, we discuss the socio-spatial materialization of lithium mining in terms of power relations, ecology, and economy. Using perspectives from political ecology brings to light different power relations between the state, mining companies, and indigenous communities in Chile and Argentina. These power asymmetries have an enduring influence on local actors’ possibilities for taking action.
{"title":"Mining companies, indigenous communities, and the state: The political ecology of lithium in Chile (Salar de Atacama) and Argentina (Salar de Olaroz-Cauchari)","authors":"Felix Malte Dorn, H. Gundermann","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5014","url":null,"abstract":"Based on intensive and long-term field research and document reviews, this article compares the historic evolution of lithium mining in Chile and Argentina. We highlight national development discourses and government regulatory frameworks in both countries. We illustrate and assess the diverse perceptions and strategies of local actors. Finally, we discuss the socio-spatial materialization of lithium mining in terms of power relations, ecology, and economy. Using perspectives from political ecology brings to light different power relations between the state, mining companies, and indigenous communities in Chile and Argentina. These power asymmetries have an enduring influence on local actors’ possibilities for taking action.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47748574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cet article examine la façon dont un groupe de chercheurs français a importé les idées d'Elinor Ostrom, jusqu'à inspirer la naissance d'un programme de gestion dans les réserves de biosphère françaises. Promoteurs d'une philosophie participative visant à dépasser le dilemme État-marché, ces chercheurs ont proposé un modèle de gestion fondé sur l'engagement volontaire des communautés locales. La genèse du programme "éco-acteurs" permet d'analyser les opérations de traduction entre la phase d'exploration par les chercheurs et celle d'opérationnalisation par les gestionnaires, ainsi que les dynamiques de "co-production" entre science et politique. En effet, cet article démontre que la recherche transdisciplinaire en environnement promeut et promet de nouvelles formes de gouvernement qui, tout en cherchant des voies alternatives, s'insèrent dans un ordre néolibéral. À l'heure du "faire mieux avec moins", ces scientifiques ont défendu un type de gouvernement rendu théoriquement efficace et peu coûteux par les mécanismes de "contrôle social." Le programme "éco-acteurs" offre ainsi l'opportunité de confronter les principes théoriques d'Ostrom aux réalités de leur mise en œuvre locale, dans un contexte marqué par un manque généralisé de financements publics.
{"title":"Quand la recherche transdisciplinaire en environnement promet/promeut un mode de gouvernement: genèse du programme \"éco-acteurs\" dans les Réserves de biosphère françaises","authors":"T. Jacob, C. Hervé","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4857","url":null,"abstract":"Cet article examine la façon dont un groupe de chercheurs français a importé les idées d'Elinor Ostrom, jusqu'à inspirer la naissance d'un programme de gestion dans les réserves de biosphère françaises. Promoteurs d'une philosophie participative visant à dépasser le dilemme État-marché, ces chercheurs ont proposé un modèle de gestion fondé sur l'engagement volontaire des communautés locales. La genèse du programme \"éco-acteurs\" permet d'analyser les opérations de traduction entre la phase d'exploration par les chercheurs et celle d'opérationnalisation par les gestionnaires, ainsi que les dynamiques de \"co-production\" entre science et politique. En effet, cet article démontre que la recherche transdisciplinaire en environnement promeut et promet de nouvelles formes de gouvernement qui, tout en cherchant des voies alternatives, s'insèrent dans un ordre néolibéral. À l'heure du \"faire mieux avec moins\", ces scientifiques ont défendu un type de gouvernement rendu théoriquement efficace et peu coûteux par les mécanismes de \"contrôle social.\" Le programme \"éco-acteurs\" offre ainsi l'opportunité de confronter les principes théoriques d'Ostrom aux réalités de leur mise en œuvre locale, dans un contexte marqué par un manque généralisé de financements publics.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49601332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Detroit is in the midst of a contemporary urban renewal project that is being carried out through speculative investment and green gentrification. Unlike the active infrastructural violence of the past that was implemented by building freeways through neighborhoods, the displacement of residents is happening through discursive and political means that leave residents with few options for remaining in the city. In this paper, I explore how resource management, particularly water and wastewater infrastructure, has been used to degrade the political efficacy of Detroit residents. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analysis of news articles and government reports, I argue that in recent years the city of Detroit has developed a wasting economy. This political-economic-environmental structure relies on the coupling of deconstructive and constructive processes that promote the withering of citizenship in order to make way for radical transformation in the use of the cityscape.
{"title":"Deconstructing Citizenship and the Growth of Detroit’s Green Renaissance","authors":"Jennifer S. Carrera","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2829","url":null,"abstract":"Detroit is in the midst of a contemporary urban renewal project that is being carried out through speculative investment and green gentrification. Unlike the active infrastructural violence of the past that was implemented by building freeways through neighborhoods, the displacement of residents is happening through discursive and political means that leave residents with few options for remaining in the city. In this paper, I explore how resource management, particularly water and wastewater infrastructure, has been used to degrade the political efficacy of Detroit residents. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and discourse analysis of news articles and government reports, I argue that in recent years the city of Detroit has developed a wasting economy. This political-economic-environmental structure relies on the coupling of deconstructive and constructive processes that promote the withering of citizenship in order to make way for radical transformation in the use of the cityscape.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45708689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elia Apostolopoulou, Dimitrios Bormpoudakis, Alexandros Chatzipavlidis, Juan José Cortés Vázquez, Ioana Florea, M. Gearey, Julyan Levy, J. Loginova, J. Ordner, Tristan Partridge, Alejandra Pizarro, Hannibal Rhoades, Kate Symons, C. Veríssimo, N. Wahby
In this article, by drawing on empirical evidence from twelve case studies from nine countries from across the Global South and North, we ask how radical grassroots social innovations that are part of social movements and struggles can offer pathways for tackling socio-spatial and socio-environmental inequality and for reinventing the commons. We define radical grassroots social innovations as a set of practices initiated by formal or informal community-led initiatives or/and social movements which aim to generate novel, democratic, socially, spatially and environmentally just solutions to address social needs that are otherwise ignored or marginalised. To address our research questions, we draw on the work of Cindi Katz to explore how grassroots innovations relate to practices of resilience, reworking and resistance. We identify possibilities and limitations as well as patterns of spatial practices and pathways of re-scaling and radical praxis, uncovering broadly-shared resemblances across different places. Through this analysis we aim to make a twofold contribution to political ecology and human geography scholarship on grassroots radical activism, social innovation and the spatialities of resistance. First, to reveal the connections between social-environmental struggles, emerging grassroots innovations and broader structural factors that cause, enable or limit them. Second, to explore how grassroots radical innovations stemming from place-based community struggles can relate to resistance practices that would not only successfully oppose inequality and the withering of the commons in the short-term, but would also open long-term pathways to alternative modes of social organization, and a new commons, based on social needs and social rights that are currently unaddressed.
{"title":"Radical social innovations and the spatialities of grassroots activism: navigating pathways for tackling inequality and reinventing the commons","authors":"Elia Apostolopoulou, Dimitrios Bormpoudakis, Alexandros Chatzipavlidis, Juan José Cortés Vázquez, Ioana Florea, M. Gearey, Julyan Levy, J. Loginova, J. Ordner, Tristan Partridge, Alejandra Pizarro, Hannibal Rhoades, Kate Symons, C. Veríssimo, N. Wahby","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2292","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, by drawing on empirical evidence from twelve case studies from nine countries from across the Global South and North, we ask how radical grassroots social innovations that are part of social movements and struggles can offer pathways for tackling socio-spatial and socio-environmental inequality and for reinventing the commons. We define radical grassroots social innovations as a set of practices initiated by formal or informal community-led initiatives or/and social movements which aim to generate novel, democratic, socially, spatially and environmentally just solutions to address social needs that are otherwise ignored or marginalised. To address our research questions, we draw on the work of Cindi Katz to explore how grassroots innovations relate to practices of resilience, reworking and resistance. We identify possibilities and limitations as well as patterns of spatial practices and pathways of re-scaling and radical praxis, uncovering broadly-shared resemblances across different places. Through this analysis we aim to make a twofold contribution to political ecology and human geography scholarship on grassroots radical activism, social innovation and the spatialities of resistance. First, to reveal the connections between social-environmental struggles, emerging grassroots innovations and broader structural factors that cause, enable or limit them. Second, to explore how grassroots radical innovations stemming from place-based community struggles can relate to resistance practices that would not only successfully oppose inequality and the withering of the commons in the short-term, but would also open long-term pathways to alternative modes of social organization, and a new commons, based on social needs and social rights that are currently unaddressed.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45072116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With an example from Rwanda, we ask how the State's policy strategy and attempts to construct "ideal agricultural subjects" resonate with the actual changes experienced by farmers themselves. We present three different empirical examples to show that a) when opportunities from agricultural transformation initially arise, only the wealthiest can capture them, and even then the government is seen as the main beneficiary; b) some priority crop growers experience an increase in income and savings due to higher productivity and better prices, while those who do not grow priority crops face land scarcity and lack of employment opportunities; c) requirements to upscale livestock production do not align with the strategies or capacities of many smallholders. We show that only endowed farmers with sufficient land and ability to engage in priority crops or livestock production can take advantage of the opportunities presented by agricultural transformation, while smallholders with constraints to their adoption of promoted changes face vulnerability to dispossession and poverty. We relate these findings to our broader conceptual frame, and encourage further research to explore the integration, modification, resistance to and impacts of idealized policies in Rwanda and across sub-Saharan Africa.
{"title":"Agrarian modernization through \"ideal agricultural subjects\": a lost cause for smallholders in Rwanda?","authors":"M. Pasgaard, Sung Kyu Kim, Neil Dawson, N. Fold","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5012","url":null,"abstract":"With an example from Rwanda, we ask how the State's policy strategy and attempts to construct \"ideal agricultural subjects\" resonate with the actual changes experienced by farmers themselves. We present three different empirical examples to show that a) when opportunities from agricultural transformation initially arise, only the wealthiest can capture them, and even then the government is seen as the main beneficiary; b) some priority crop growers experience an increase in income and savings due to higher productivity and better prices, while those who do not grow priority crops face land scarcity and lack of employment opportunities; c) requirements to upscale livestock production do not align with the strategies or capacities of many smallholders. We show that only endowed farmers with sufficient land and ability to engage in priority crops or livestock production can take advantage of the opportunities presented by agricultural transformation, while smallholders with constraints to their adoption of promoted changes face vulnerability to dispossession and poverty. We relate these findings to our broader conceptual frame, and encourage further research to explore the integration, modification, resistance to and impacts of idealized policies in Rwanda and across sub-Saharan Africa.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49620638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planetary urbanization is considered to be one of the leading causes of the current global process of the degradation of nature, and a reduction in urban consumption becomes, therefore, a crucial goal for degrowth. Three fundamental premises underly an investigation of these issues. Firstly, territorial management underpins global environmental justice through the implementation of conservation policies; Secondly, degrowth narratives must operate in the urban context; and thirdly, there is a need for a paradigm shift at an economic, social and nature-relational level. This article presents two research approaches. Firstly, it sets out a theoretical framework in the field of 'urban degrowth', collecting arguments from political ecology, urban planning, deep ecology and degrowth thinking; and secondly, it proposes a preliminary line of investigation towards the process of urban de-occupation and re-naturalization through a bibliographic analysis of urban-ecological variables fostering natural recovery. The aim of the study is to stir up discussion about urban degrowth, as an essential mechanism to counter increasing land consumption, and global habitat and biodiversity loss. Anthropized landscapes require care for nature, conservation, collective action and initiatives at the practical and experimental level, and further research.
{"title":"Autonomous re-naturalization of cities in a context of degrowth","authors":"María Espin","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4820","url":null,"abstract":"Planetary urbanization is considered to be one of the leading causes of the current global process of the degradation of nature, and a reduction in urban consumption becomes, therefore, a crucial goal for degrowth. Three fundamental premises underly an investigation of these issues. Firstly, territorial management underpins global environmental justice through the implementation of conservation policies; Secondly, degrowth narratives must operate in the urban context; and thirdly, there is a need for a paradigm shift at an economic, social and nature-relational level. This article presents two research approaches. Firstly, it sets out a theoretical framework in the field of 'urban degrowth', collecting arguments from political ecology, urban planning, deep ecology and degrowth thinking; and secondly, it proposes a preliminary line of investigation towards the process of urban de-occupation and re-naturalization through a bibliographic analysis of urban-ecological variables fostering natural recovery. The aim of the study is to stir up discussion about urban degrowth, as an essential mechanism to counter increasing land consumption, and global habitat and biodiversity loss. Anthropized landscapes require care for nature, conservation, collective action and initiatives at the practical and experimental level, and further research.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42092945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the U.S.-Mexico border region, an estimated 134,419 people live in United States colonias that lack access to water and/or sewer services. This article draws from ethnographic field research in one such Mexican-American community, where attempts by residents to move "decision-makers" to connect their community to water have for decades met a shifting resistance. Attention to water-infrastructure arguments at local, state, and federal levels reveals that this resistance ushers from bureaucracy and a deeply entrenched neoliberal logic. Access to basic water and sewer services is subordinated to strict ranking criteria, infrastructural rules and regulations, and funding metrics such as cost-per-connection. In response, residents have raised a counter-discourse, emphasizing their human dignity, needs, and basic rights to water. Thus, this article exposes a central tension in the political ecology of water: The neoliberal thinking that undergirds infrastructural violence in the "hydrosocial waterscape," and the strategies by which residents attempt to mobilize, to fight, and to push back.
{"title":"Ranked-out waterscapes: An ethnography of resistance and exclusion in a U.S.-Mexico border colonia","authors":"Chilton Tippin","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4868","url":null,"abstract":"In the U.S.-Mexico border region, an estimated 134,419 people live in United States colonias that lack access to water and/or sewer services. This article draws from ethnographic field research in one such Mexican-American community, where attempts by residents to move \"decision-makers\" to connect their community to water have for decades met a shifting resistance. Attention to water-infrastructure arguments at local, state, and federal levels reveals that this resistance ushers from bureaucracy and a deeply entrenched neoliberal logic. Access to basic water and sewer services is subordinated to strict ranking criteria, infrastructural rules and regulations, and funding metrics such as cost-per-connection. In response, residents have raised a counter-discourse, emphasizing their human dignity, needs, and basic rights to water. Thus, this article exposes a central tension in the political ecology of water: The neoliberal thinking that undergirds infrastructural violence in the \"hydrosocial waterscape,\" and the strategies by which residents attempt to mobilize, to fight, and to push back. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49534685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Participatory mapping is popular as a means to secure customary rights of marginalized communities and as a tool for sustainable natural resource management. It is therefore seen as a grassroots exercise in the articulation of the ‘sovereignty’ of indigenous people over their ‘resources’. Consequently, much attention is given to making the mapping (the process) more inclusive and improving the techniques of cartography instead of reading the map (the product). However concepts such as sovereignty and resources cannot be taken for granted. Based on observation of a participatory forest mapping exercise among the indigenous Gonds of Adilabad in South India, and also drawing from concepts such as “epistemological symmetry” and “ecological sovereignty” this article aims to read their map for what it reveals about agents of conservation and sustainability. By mapping non-human actors (natural and supernatural) as equally potential agents of conservation, the Gonds have produced a non-sovereign, symmetrical map that challenges notions of human sovereignty over ecology.
{"title":"Non sovereign, symmetrical cartography as a road to sustainability: Insights from a participatory forest mapping exercise","authors":"Gomathy K N","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2371","url":null,"abstract":"Participatory mapping is popular as a means to secure customary rights of marginalized communities and as a tool for sustainable natural resource management. It is therefore seen as a grassroots exercise in the articulation of the ‘sovereignty’ of indigenous people over their ‘resources’. Consequently, much attention is given to making the mapping (the process) more inclusive and improving the techniques of cartography instead of reading the map (the product). However concepts such as sovereignty and resources cannot be taken for granted. Based on observation of a participatory forest mapping exercise among the indigenous Gonds of Adilabad in South India, and also drawing from concepts such as “epistemological symmetry” and “ecological sovereignty” this article aims to read their map for what it reveals about agents of conservation and sustainability. By mapping non-human actors (natural and supernatural) as equally potential agents of conservation, the Gonds have produced a non-sovereign, symmetrical map that challenges notions of human sovereignty over ecology. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48518521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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