Table Of ContentPolitical Ecology
across Spaces, Scales,
and Social Groups
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Political Ecology
across Spaces, Scales,
and Social Groups
EDITED BY SUSAN PAULSON
AND LISA L. GEZON
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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Political ecology across spaces, scales, and social groups / edited by Susan
Paulson and Lisa L. Gezon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN –--(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN ---(pbk : alk.
paper)
. Political ecology—Case studies. I. Paulson, Susan, 1961- II. Gezon, Lisa L.
JA.8.P
.—dc
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
1 Place, Power, Difference: Multiscale Research at the Dawn
of the Twenty-first Century 1
LISA L. GEZON AND SUSAN PAULSON
2 Politics, Ecologies, Genealogies 17
SUSAN PAULSON, LISA L. GEZON, AND MICHAEL WATTS
PART ONE
Policy and Environment
3 The Fight for the West: A Political Ecology of Land-Use
Conflicts in Arizona 41
METTE J. BROGDEN AND JAMES B. GREENBERG
4 Whose Water? Political Ecology of Water Reform
in Zimbabwe 61
ANNE FERGUSON AND BILL DERMAN
5 The New Calculus of Bedouin Pastoralism
in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 76
ANDREW GARDNER
6 Land Tenure and Biodiversity: An Exploration
in the Political Ecology of Murang’a District, Kenya 94
A. FIONA D. MACKENZIE
7 The Political Ecology of Consumption:
Beyond Greed and Guilt 113
JOSIAH MCC. HEYMAN
v
vi CONTENTS
PART TWO
Social Hierarchies in Local-Global Relationships
8 Finding the Global in the Local: Environmental Struggles
in Northern Madagascar 135
LISA L. GEZON
9 Symbolic Action and Soil Fertility: Political Ecology and the
Transformation of Space and Place in Tonga 154
CHARLES J. STEVENS
10 Gendered Practices and Landscapes in the Andes:
The Shape of Asymmetrical Exchanges 174
SUSAN PAULSON
11 Undermining Modernity: Protecting Landscapes and
Meanings among the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia 196
ALF HORNBORG
PART THREE
Forest Visions
12 Shade: Throwing Light on Politics and Ecology
in Contemporary Pakistan 217
MICHAEL R. DOVE
13 A Global Political Ecology of Bioprospecting 239
HANNE SVARSTAD
14 The Emergence of Collective Ethnic Identities
and Alternative Political Ecologies in the
Colombian Pacific Rainforest 257
ARTURO ESCOBAR AND SUSAN PAULSON
Notes on Contributors 279
Index 283
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
F
ive years ago, as we planned an invited session at the ninety-ninth annual
meeting of the American Anthropological Association, we began the conversa-
tions that led to the collaborative production of this book. Most of the contrib-
utors were present at that double session, held in San Francisco in November
2000, as either presenters or participants in the ensuing discussions. Andrew
Vayda, who had provided important stimulus in his 1999 co-authored article
“Against Political Ecology,” used his role as discussant to pose a series of key
challenges for ongoing work.
Our shared enthusiasm to address those challenges and continue to
explore the methodological and theoretical possibilities of political ecology
evolved into a special issue of Human Organization(vol. 62, no. 3, fall 2003)
called “Locating the Political in Political Ecology.” Thanks go to Don Stull, edi-
tor of Human Organization, for offering excellent editorial support, obtaining
serious and comprehensive peer reviews, and guiding us in ways that made our
message accessible and valuable to a wider audience. Six articles from that spe-
cial issue—those by Mette J. Brogden and James B. Greenberg, Anne Ferguson
and Bill Derman, Michael R. Dove, Andrew Gardner, Susan Paulson, and A.
Fiona D. Mackenzie—were adapted as chapters for this book, where they are
complemented by eight new chapters. While the book builds on concepts and
challenges outlined in the introduction to that special issue, its broadened
scope of interest is manifest in the reshaping of specific analyses and the incor-
poration of a variety of new topics and types of study.
We are grateful for the sincere commitment of the thirteen scholars from
several disciplines who contributed so enthusiastically to this book. We also
want to acknowledge other scholars who have been valuable contributors to
our ongoing discussions about political ecology, its applications, and its possi-
bilities since the inception of this project. The intellectual participation of Jan-
ice Harper and Dianne Rocheleau, who presented valuable papers related to
these themes at the 2000 and 2001American Anthropology Association meet-
ings and engaged in fruitful exchanges with both editors, enhanced the book’s
development. Their work in applying political ecology to urban settings is
advancing the frontiers of the field in exciting ways. Other key interlocutors
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
include Gene Anderson, Tom McGuire, Susan Lees, Terre Satterfield, and Brad
Walters. We thank all of them for their contributions to the conceptual and
methodological discussions advanced here. And we thank those who have made
this project practically feasible, including Kristi Long, our editor at Rutgers Uni-
versity Press; Adi Hovav, editorial assistant at Rutgers; Jessica Cook, undergradu-
ate assistant to Lisa L. Gezon at the State University of West Georgia; and Andrew
Gardner, who did a careful job compiling the index.
We would like to acknowledge intellectual debts to mentors who wakened
us to themes vital to this book and motivated us to explore them as graduate
students and beyond. Lisa L. Gezon would like to acknowledge Conrad Kottak,
who has been a constant source of encouragement and intellectual clarity, and
Roy Rappaport, who inspired new ways of thinking about how humans interact
with the material world around them. Susan Paulson would like to recognize
Paul Friedrich for his inspiring innovations in ethnography, poetics, and politics,
and Terry Turner, whose enduring work with Marxian theory in anthropology
and with indigenous movements for sociocultural and territorial autonomy is
echoed throughout this book.
Finally, we would like to emphasize that this project should not be read as
a collection of distinct papers, each written by a single scientist representing
his or her own research and analysis. This has been a participatory and collab-
orative project from the beginning, and the result is a book conceived and con-
structed as a whole, in which each part communicates a key dimension of the
message and demonstrates unique applications of the shared approach. Lisa L.
Gezon and Susan Paulson wrote or co-authored three and four chapters, respec-
tively, and both engaged extensively in shaping and editing all fourteen chapters.
We hope that the resulting book does credit to those participants mentioned
here as well as the many others colleagues whose ideas and questions have helped
to shape this collaborative project. We have worked to present key concepts,
methods, and applications that characterize the dynamic field of political ecol-
ogy today. This book does not aim, however, to establish an authoritative defini-
tion of political ecology. Rather, we intend to provide ideas and tools to motivate
and support diverse researchers, scholars, students, and actors to understand
and address human-environmental issues in ways we have not yet dreamed of.
SUSAN PAULSON AND LISA L. GEZON
Political Ecology
across Spaces, Scales,
and Social Groups
