{"title":"On Critical Proximity: Distance, Difference, and Digital Sociality","authors":"Jennifer Johnson, Alder Keleman Saxena","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4783","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers the extension of digital connectivity into remote areas, especially the kinds of geographically out-of-the-way sites that have long characterized ethnographic fieldwork about the environment, arguing that this phenomenon calls for a critical re-examination of the role that the notions of distance and difference have played in shaping the discipline. The kinds of frequent, distance- and difference-bridging social interactions that digital-social spaces enable, we argue, trouble the ideal-type of far-off field-sites populated by radically different interlocutors. Putting the authors’ field research in Uganda and Bolivia in conversation with our lived experiences as Xennial ethnographers and digital media users, the paper examines three themes: how digital connectivity is changing “the field” and fieldwork; how the ubiquity of digital technologies is changing the relationship between “the field” and “home”; and how ethnographers can position their research in academic settings where digital data is increasingly prevalent and powerful. While the extension of digital sociality across these spaces limits “critical distance,” we suggest that it productively enables “critical proximity” - a situated ethnographic stance which rests not just on engagement with our interlocutors across time and place, but also responsiveness to the kinds of claims-making that digital social interactions uniquely enable.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44588583","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}
Mario Pérez-Rincón, María del Pilar Peralta Ardila, Fabián Méndez, I. Vélez-Torres
{"title":"CONFLICTO ARMADO INTERNO Y AMBIENTE EN COLOMBIA: CLAVES DESDE LA ECOLOGÍA POLÍTICA (1960-2015)","authors":"Mario Pérez-Rincón, María del Pilar Peralta Ardila, Fabián Méndez, I. Vélez-Torres","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2901","url":null,"abstract":"A través de una revisión exploratoria de literatura y de los registros en el Atlas Global de Justicia Ambiental (www.ejatlas.org), este artículo analiza 82 casos de conflictos ambientales con participación de actores vinculados al conflicto interno armado en Colombia. Diferenciando las Acciones de Guerra de las Acciones Extractivas utilizadas por los actores del conflicto, este artículo utiliza estadística descriptiva para caracterizar las modalidades de violencia y la afectación diferenciada a ecosistemas y población vulnerable entre 1960 y 2015. Las actividades extractivas más intensivas en afectación a Derechos Humanos, impactos ambientales, y afectación de comunidades vulnerables corresponden a la explotación de Biomasa y Tierras, Minería y Combustibles Fósiles. Esto confirma la estrecha relación entre extractivismo y conflicto armado interno, siendo esta diada una característica diferencial del modelo reprimarizador colombiano respecto al resto de América Latina. Bosques y ecosistemas hídricos son los bienes ambientales que muestran mayor impacto. Además, 3 de cada 4 casos analizados evidencian afectación a población étnica, por lo cual afirmamos una dimensión crítica de racismo ambiental en la configuración del conflicto armado colombiano.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47073790","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}
{"title":"Whose Limit? Water and Democracy in a Green Californian Desert","authors":"B. Müller, Elise Boutié","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4686","url":null,"abstract":"Groundwater governance in Cuyama valley unites in a nutshell the structural dilemmas ofneoliberal environmental governance: a weak state, powerful corporations, a population called to participate but not to decide and a limited vital resource. Creating institutions of self-governance in the conflictual domain of groundwater use draws local actors into the centerof political struggles and strategies, as the State of California avoids to govern or limit, groundwater use purportedlyfor fear of getting embroiled in costly and lengthy lawsuits with private agroindustry. The SGMA process shows the power of property and money in thepolitical game of sustainable resource governance, but it also confronts powerful actors with objectivizing satellite measurements, that point to absolute limits and challenge the growth myth. The institution building for groundwatergovernance in Cuyama presents similar paradoxes and dilemmas as the attempts onthe international level to create national self-governance mechanisms for mitigating climate change.@font-face{font-family:\"Cambria Math\";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face{font-family:NSimSun;panose-1:2 1 6 9 3 1 1 1 1 1;mso-font-alt:\"Microsoft YaHei\";mso-font-charset:134;mso-generic-font-family:modern;mso-font-pitch:fixed;mso-font-signature:3 680460288 22 0 262145 0;}@font-face{font-family:\"@NSimSun\";mso-font-charset:134;mso-generic-font-family:modern;mso-font-pitch:fixed;mso-font-signature:3 680460288 22 0 262145 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:\"\";margin:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;mso-hyphenate:none;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:\"Times New Roman\",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:NSimSun;mso-font-kerning:.5pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:AR-SA;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-family:\"Calibri\",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:\"Times New Roman\";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48280724","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}
{"title":"Book review of Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone. 2021. Consequences of capitalism: manufacturing discontent and resistance","authors":"Serena Mombelli","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5100","url":null,"abstract":"Book Review of Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance by Marv Waterstone and Noam Chomsky (Haymarket Books, USA), 2021","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43608228","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}
{"title":"The Many-headed Hydra: Assessing the Indigenous-hydropower cycle in Costa Rica","authors":"E. Hite","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2998","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the intersection of hydropower development and Indigenous rights within the context of climate governance. A historical rift between dam supporters and opponents has evolved into a contentious ebb and flow of dam proposal-resistance between hydropower industries and Indigenous communities around the world. Conflicts have recently intensified as dams are promoted as a climate mitigation strategy and are increasingly encroaching on Indigenous territories. Research analyzes a case study in Costa Rica, where an Indigenous-hydropower cycle emerged from a 50-year feud between the national electricity institute (Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad or ICE, pronounced E-say) and the Brörán peoples over development of the Térraba river—each time the state proposed a dam, the Brörán peoples defeated it, and another would emerge in its place. In this article, I ask why dam building continues despite the multitude of critiques and documented negative social-ecological impacts of hydropower projects. To address this question, I introduce the adaptive cycle, which serves as a heuristic model to investigate how and why the cycle continues, as well as to understand the power, justice, and equity issues involved in climate decision-making processes. Through a political ecology framework, I assess the hybridity of interrelated social-ecological, political, and economic factors encompassing the human-water nexus, conceptualized as a hydrosocial territory. Analysis suggests a rigidity trap that spans across multiple scales of governance causes the cycle to repeat, and given the current acceptance of hydropower within the climate governance arena, the cycle is likely to continue. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44151255","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}
{"title":"The political logics of EU-FLEGT in Thailand’s multistakeholder negotiations: Hegemony and resistance","authors":"S. Lewis, J. Bulkan","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2398","url":null,"abstract":"The reduction of illegal logging and related trade has been on the international policy agenda since the 1990s. The EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade initiative (EU-FLEGT) seeks to address illegal logging through a scheme that rests on multistakeholder negotiations. However, past initiatives seeking to reform forest governance in the global South have reproduced the uneven outcomes of colonial forest governance by further empowering national government authorities. In the case of Thailand, FLEGT negotiations between November 2013 and April 2021 succeeded in opening a political space for civil society to engage with government actors. However, FLEGT negotiations during this period failed to address the uneven outcomes of forest governance, benefiting elites at the expense of the rural poor due to an 'anti-politics effect. The FLEGT multistakeholder negotiations did not consider the uneven historical relations to land and resource rights nor the intrinsic power dynamics of different actor groups. As such, dominant actors from the government and private sector succeeded in structuring the terrain of the FLEGT negotiations to determine which civil society demands for reforms to tenure and resource rights they would concede, and which they would not.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41799538","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}
{"title":"Forgotten pioneers in degrowth: John Africa and the MOVE Organization","authors":"Anthony T. Fiscella","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5123","url":null,"abstract":"Decades before the term 'degrowth' had gained currency as a rallying cry against the ideology of economic expansionism, John Africa founded The MOVE Organization in Philadelphia based on sanctity of life and dismantling institutions of state and capital (including economic growth). Members eschewed many forms of technology, lived collectively, harbored stray animals, and strove toward an entirely raw food diet in a communal lifestyle that many today would label 'simple living' or 'primivitist.' They rejected fashion and cosmetics, demonstrated for animal liberation as well as against police brutality, militarism, prisons, and pollution of land, water, and air. Notably, John Africa and MOVE emphasized the need to maintain sobriety and break with personal addictions in order to achieve personal and societal balance. Yet, rather than a set of 'single issues' strung together, John Africa formulated an all-encompassing paradigm. This article presents John Africa's paradigm as well as his grassroots decolonial semiotics that critically deconstructed, qualified, repurposed, and reframed conventional English language terms toward emancipatory and radically egalitarian ends. This paradigm, based on 'Mother Nature' and oneness, aligned with (without overtly borrowing from) many Indigenous and Aboriginal paradigms that similarly locate human life as interwoven with habitats and nonhuman animals. Whether or not one agrees with his ideas or approach, John Africa and the organization he co-founded seem to clearly qualify as early pioneers of degrowth. This article brings their hitherto unrecognized contributions into conversation with degrowth literature both to fill out the historical record and provide potentially useful insights for degrowth researchers and organizers alike.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42597578","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}
{"title":"\"Not all crises are created equal\": Online narratives about COVID-19 and induced earthquakes in the province of Groningen, The Netherlands","authors":"Elisabeth N. Moolenaar","doi":"10.2458/jpe.5121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5121","url":null,"abstract":"his article explores the COVID-19 pandemic as it interacts with other vulnerabilities, risks, and disasters people experience. It examines online narratives about COVID-19 from people suffering from induced seismicity in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands, posted on social media, blogs, and websites, complemented with ethnographic data. Focusing on social and discursive practices, the article looks at how risk, disaster, and crisis are talked about and mobilized. The narrative data shows interrelated layers of vulnerability and the experience of a compounded disaster. Narratives indicate that their composers and sharers understand disasters as produced and constructed, and use COVID-19 to reframe risk, disaster, and crisis. More importantly the data demonstrates how COVID-19 is employed as an opportunity to draw attention to marginality, inequality, and the experience of another type of disaster, and to reveal taken-for-granted power relations and impel political action.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45101084","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}
{"title":"Examining the implementation of the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan in Ghana through a governmentality lens","authors":"C. P. Hansen","doi":"10.2458/jpe.2844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2844","url":null,"abstract":"The EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan isa key global initiative in addressing deforestation and forest degradation. Thereis considerable scholarly debate about its impact. This paper contributes tothis debate through a detailed examination of FLEGT implementation in Ghanaapplying a Foucauldian governmentality lens with focus on government practicesof problematization, knowledge production, intervention and subjectification.The analysis for its empirical materials rely mainly on document and literaturereview. The paper illustrates that FLEGT frames illegal logging as the centralproblem, which relegates other problems – forest and tree tenure and benefitsharing – to secondary positions. This problematization goes hand in hand witha knowledge production that produces ignorance rather than certainty and helpsfurthering FLEGT implementation. FLEGT implementation encompasses various interventions.It has enhanced consultation and participation of private sector and civilsociety in forest governance as well as increased forest sector transparency. Onthe other hand, it has so far been less successful in driving deeper forestgovernance reforms that could provide incentives for agents in the sector toengage actively in forest conservation and cultivation of trees. Theimplementation focuses on technical issues failing to address inherentlypolitical issues. It maintains local populations living in and close to theforest as passive subjects with limited rights to the forest and influence overits management. The paper concludes that FLEGT implementation in Ghana needs tomove from a technical focus to address political issues of tree tenure, benefitsharing and access, and suggest that civil society has a key role to play ifthis change is to happen. ","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43964095","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}
Lise Desvallées, Xavier Arnauld de Sartre, C. Kull
{"title":"Epistemic communities in political ecology: critical deconstruction or radical advocacy?","authors":"Lise Desvallées, Xavier Arnauld de Sartre, C. Kull","doi":"10.2458/jpe.4702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4702","url":null,"abstract":"Recent political ecology scholarship appears to be turning towards de-growth agendas and radical activism, notably in Europe. These postures diverge somewhat from the 'classical' political ecological tradition rooted in a critical deconstruction of dominant ideas and actors and field-based analyses. We posit a heuristic distinction between these two impulses. While both are based in critiques (Robbins' 'hatchet'), as far as the 'seed' one impulse leans more towards critical 'deconstruction', the other towards radical 'advocacy.' Through a systemic review of the political ecology literature, we seek to identify and characterize these impulses, link them to epistemic communities of knowledge production, and explain these trends. Our review incorporates qualitative analysis of key texts, as well as quantitative bibliometric and content analysis of Scopus-indexed publications referring to political ecology (1951-2019) and abstracts from all the articles published in Journal of Political Ecology, from POLLEN conferences in Europe (2016, 2018) and from DOPE conferences in the US (2013-2019). Among other things, we find that even if political ecology has long been divided between deconstructivist and advocacy approaches, the second is becoming preeminent since many political ecologists are taking a radical turn, with strong theoretically rooted attacks on the capitalist system taking place. Some political ecological research increasingly positions itself in socio-political debates related to the greening of unjust societies in the First World. This is most prominent in continental European academia (and some English universities), where political ecology is institutionally more marginal; in the remaining British and North American universities, the more deconstructivist impulse is more dominant but also more pluralistic in its orientations.","PeriodicalId":46814,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Ecology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48767534","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}