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 Biersack’s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the field’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 “ethnographies of nature” keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization.Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Søren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gísli Pálsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk
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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 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 Finland’s Forest-Nature / Eeva Berglund 97 The Political Ecology of Fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California / James B. Greenberg 121 “But the Young Men Don’t Want to Farm Any More”: 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 Rappaport’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
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“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.”—Raymond Bryant, author of The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824–1994
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Introduces heterogeneity and paradox into our understanding of political ecology, critiquing 'modernist ecologies' and emphasizing transnational, place-based ones.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822336723
Publisert
2006-11-22
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
649 gr
Høyde
235 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Biographical note

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 Santiago’s Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics.