L1 -power and the env Flashcards
theory
how we look shapes what we see
what we see shapes what we think can/should/must be done (in the arena of env politics)
diff ways of looking at how politics and env intersect -> diff understandings of hat the the env political challenges we need to face are + diff prescriptions
- how we look = basic premise theory
Theorein = to consider, speculate, look at
- theoros = spectator
- thea = a view
- horan = to see
diff theories give diff ways of seeing, this vision matters bc diff ways of seeing constructs diff problematics, they rule out diff paths moving forward
political ecology
sees env through lens of power
- highlights how power shapes environment
(much of the material world is shaped by and reflects the power dynamics between human beings)
(power dynamics structure acces to resources etc.)
-> need to be understood in sociopolitical terms
power dynamics between people can structure:
- access to resources
- distribution of env goods and bads
- ways env issues are defined, prioritized, and addressed
- physical contours and composition of material environs
power shapes material makeup of environment: power can mold physical contours of the environment
key concepts =
- marginality: power differences/discrepancies between people are made manifest in the environment + impact how people interact with the environment differently
- ecology: relationships, how do living organisms relate to their physical surroundings = matter to political ecologists in how power balances and imbalances shape the environment
*political ecology take systems level approach - how do power, matter and energy flow throughout and across the system given their interrelationship, how does change in one impact the others? - political economy: power characterizes economics (political econ = study how political institutions and eco ones influence one another) - focus how political economic power shapes the environment in particular
this way of seeing has some implications: (see flashcard 4)
most central = environment shapes power, power shapes environment -> thus politics is shaped and shapes the environment
key concepts political ecology
marginality
- power differences/discrepancies between people are made manifest in the environment + impact how people interact with the environment differently
- political ecology is attentive to how power shapes the environment -> it is paying attention to differences in power (inaccess to power and extreme power) -> see how this is reflected in the world we inhabit
ecology
- ecology: relationships, how do living organisms relate to their physical surroundings = matter to political ecologists in how power balances and imbalances shape the environment
- political ecology take systems level approach - how do power, matter and energy flow throughout and across the system given their interrelationship, how does change in one impact the others?
political economy
- political economy: power characterizes economics (political econ = study how political institutions and eco ones influence one another)
- focus how political economic power shapes the environment in particular
implications (political ecology)
environments are socially constructed (it is not discrete/singular nor ..)
- the environment is not one thing, it depends, is diff for diff actors
->
environment and nature are not the opposite of society and culture, but interconnected with them
- if env participates in power relations and makes manifest power relations, it can’t be seen as separate from society and politics (goes against traditional understanding)
- society and culture are things made by humans + nature has always there = traditional understanding
!!political ecology does not hold this view
->
environmental disrepair is a social, political and eco challenge (i.e. not merely technical or scientific) = will require social, political and economic response
- social problem, therefore also political and eco
- rules out some prescriptions for env repair: can’t be solved through strictly biological, technological solutions
- social solution has to be part of response
political ecology in action: Budds
- neoliberalism
neoliberalism
- free market most efficient, equal and neutral way to allocate (scarce) resources
- dominant political, eco, and political-economic ideology (came to prominence in the 70s)
neoliberalism informed dev economics in 1980s Chile and way Chileans interacted with their environment
neoliberal thought encouraged then developing nation-states like Chile to privatize and marketize natural resources in order to increase exports and grow their economies
following this logic, Chilean gov privatized water rights (private rights of use of water, expected it would increase efficiency)
- aimed to do 2 things at once: increase export agriculture + own control over private economic activity
on Budds’ analysis: this ultimately increased water scarcity and aggravated social inequality
political ecology in action: Budds
- Chilean case
1981 Pinochet (military regime) government rewrites Chilean Water Code
- water remains public property but state grants private rights of use, which can be bought and sold
*private rights of use = private right of use separate from property that can be bought and sold, can only be expropriated at market value - expected to increase efficiency of water use by channeling it into high value projects
Water Code incentivizes private investment in lucrative, export-driven commercial agriculture, namely water-intensive, fruit production (vs. subsistence agriculture and production for national markets)
= to some extent it worked
but rent was taken away from subsistence agriculture, to fruit production (= more lucrative and water consuming)
This increases demand for water and rights of use, which largest producers lay claim to
-> competition for water rights
-> most well-off tended to fare best: large-well financed agriculture producers more likely to have water rights + access to formalize informal rights + more likely to have financial capacity to buy off right of use
- so money went to the people with the biggest pockets
Power shapes:
- agricultural producers’ ability to compete for, access, and use water
- Chilean state’s embrace of neoliberalism (obligation to conform to neoliberal principles: impulse to privatize in the name of efficiency/development didn’t come from nowhere: it was promoted by powerful actors (states, non-states (WB))
-> Chile adopted policies that increased water scarcity and social inequality
environment shapes power
Mitchell, Carbon Democracy
(all of this is his argument)
- different energy regimes can support different kinds of politics
- by facilitating different kinds of political activity and empowering different kinds of actors
19th century coal regime supported mass democratic politics
- extraction, production, and transportation was worker-intensive
- which empowered workers to make demands others had to listen to (make political demands)
- workers used this power to democratizing ends (e.g., enfranchisement)
- coal put workers in powerful condition: whole economies ran on it + with coordination they could turn it off -> ability to make demands backed by credible threat that others had to take seriously (e.g. strikes (specific location, or general or specific node of the network), sabotage)
- material control over energy used to democratizing ends - extent right to vote, form labor unions, create political organizations -> mass democratic parties win political office and secure policies further protecting workers interests
!this changes with transition to oil
20th and 21st century oil regime has not supported mass democratic politics
(can be produced, distributed in very diff ways: did not require big concentrated work force (liquid form and pipe lines))
- extraction, production, and transportation was not worker-intensive
- which made it harder for workers to translate labor power into political power (oil pipelines harder to sabotage + easier to fix + oil easily shipped (ships transporting can be easily redirected -> hard for labor strikes to be effective + ships can avoid labor rights by picking convenient flags)
The material properties of different natural resources and the way that societies use them can impact politics
environment can also shape power: diff energy sources can shape diff types of political systems by forming who has access to resources
(so the gist of this argument: coal -> democracy, oil doesn’t)
(the actual book has more nuance though: technology is key)
(coal facilitated rise of mass democratic politics through colonial expansion = simultaneous expansion power at the core + diminishing of it at the periphery)
(enfranchisement = getting the right to vote: energy workers are in coal-based pol-econ able to exercise a lot of material power -> can translate it to political power)
main difference = nature of resources + how political economy is organized around it (yes oil, but physical properties only important if the political economy is based on it)
- for political ecologists it is always both
depoliticization and post-politics
(undercuts political ecology)
depoliticization =
- removes an issue from politics, closing it to democratic contestation and deliberation
- decouples an issue from questions about and language of power
- often associated with post-politics
post-politics / post-political
- rejects (ideological) disagreement
*creates irony/paradox bc politics is all about disagreement, post-politics is a political form that tries to get rid of politics, it tries to circumvent it - champions ‘consensus’ or particular political viewpoint/demand/position framed as if it were a universally agreed on perspective -> removes them from democratic debate
*relation with power: presenting it as universal -> endows it with normative power and hides that normative power at the same time
*values/interests etc. in the “universal” position go unnoticed - makes it diff to ask question about power + makes it hard to doubt the power/position - endows ‘consensus’ with normative power while also obscuring this power
depoliticization and post-politics prioritize
a. expert-led social administration
b. technical-managerial order
-> implications:
- governance and policy-making tend to affirm the status quo (remain entrenched in the status quo, what already is)
- otherwise creates heterodoxy, and it doesn’t want to - politics becomes something experts/technocrats do, not something democratic citizens do
-> politics is practiced by allegedly neutral actors that compromise
depoliticization decouples an issue from power, empowers technocrats, disempowers everyday democrats (it becomes difficult to see/critique/question power)
(it makes alternatives difficult to see, or see them as impossible, or too strange)
(can be specific party that does it, but also dominant discourses, international fora = it is about structuring discourses, so not just the obvious political actors)
environmental depoliticization: Swyngedouw
question of how best to respond to env degradation is closed to public deliberation
bc we all allegedly agree on what must be done:
- reduce amount CO2 in the air
- by commodifying carbon
framed as point of “consensus” this perspective becomes diff to challenge or otherwise critique
- presents it as if it is the only view, something we all already agree on -> becomes diff to challenge/critique
= empowers experts over citizens!!
(environmental depoliticization makes it difficult to see how power and the environment relate to each other)
depoliticization and nature discourse
- 3 common ways of talking about nature
(Swyngedouw)
- nature as floating signifier or montage
- catch-all category that captures a lot of diff things into one
- things like: elephants, ecosystems, DNA, hunger
- montage/mozaik with enormous array of diff things of life
- all sliced together and rolled into one thing as if they were one thing
- slips into the imaginery because it is basically everything
- nature as law or norm
- natural = good, as it ought to be
- unnatural = bad
- capital and nature becomes anker of criticism etc.
- pictures it as timeless
- nature as desire for harmony
- dreamworld of sustainable plenty where all is well
- wholeness, original but now lost unity we now yearn to get back to
- fear we will never get back to nature, that we will be disconnected and never return to harmony
- nature is invoked as promise (we can enjoy if we treat carefully) and as threat (is you misuse disaster will follow)
all are depoliticizing
bc they present nature as a fixed entity with fixed/uncontestable meaning
(empty core of nature, colonizing its core, nature just is A, B or C -> capture what we all know to be true -> standard ways of talking of nature place it outside of/beyond politics)
(nature isn’t one thing: capital, nature is not something that can be captured in one thing)
(env and people are mutually constituted)
standard ways of talking about nature locate it beyond politics and public deliberation
“nature” discourse disavows heterogeneity, unpredictability, and social construction in favor of attributing static meaning to a homogenized and singular “nature”
depoliticization and climate discourse
(Swyngedouw)
climate change discourse is strangely two-sided
(often depoliticized)
- discourse 1: climate change poses an apocalyptic threat to human survival
(fear as crucial motive, fear for apocalypse, endemic resource shortages, depletion, destruction, suffering, floods, hurricanes) - discourse 2: nothing fundamentally needs to change; existing social, political, and eco institutions just need to be reformed = change to change nothing approach
(keep calm and carry on more or less as usual: world is ending but nothing ultimately needs to change: modification necessary yes and quick, but not radical transformations socio-political and eco structures) = everything can stay as it is
we can rise to challenge of solving climate change without fundamentally altering anything of how we live
Swyngedouw asks: how can these two seemingly antithetical sensibilities both be so central to climate change discourse and policy?
how can both structure climate change conversations and policy (how can we talk about maintaining the status quo and apocalypse in one breath?)
what unites them = their depoliticizing effect
- discourse 1: achieves this effect by citing crisis and delegitimating conflict - in face of crisis no time/space for disagreement, we need to work together, act quickly
*act now, how to act is closed to politics, already predetermined - Discourse 2: achieves this effect by suggesting existing institutions are environmentally irreproachable
existing socio-political-eco structures are sound at their core and beyond debate -> nothing inherently problematic with them, we can just fix problem with modifications rather than restructuring organization life/society
depoliticization and fetishizing carbon
For Swyngedouw, fetishizing carbon refers to reducing and equating environmental harm to the problem of excess atmospheric carbon
(environment becomes just about decarbonizing, but it is just one way to see what env politics is, how it should be resolved)
This constrains environmental politics and predetermines its content: emissions reduction
Swyngedouw argues that this may be a worthy goal, but it’s just one way of framing environmental politics and what it would mean to repair environmental harm
Fetishizing carbon contributes to environmental depoliticization by:
- Framing CO2 as a common, external enemy which a) identifies environmental harm as extrinsic to existing social, political, and economic institutions and b) rules out dissensus by suggesting humanity must fight back as one united and uniform bloc
- Framing CO2 as a commodity which a) likewise identifies environmental harm as extrinsic to existing institutions and b) turns environmental politics into a technical project to be executed by technicians and technocrats
common enemy, intruder in otherwise well-functioning system - enemy intruder needs to be get rid of (excess CO2 gone -> problem fixed) = basically saying that the problems are not internal to existing structures
humanity becomes unified block, necessary is unified action => erases difference and potential disagreement (people are in fact heterogeneous and impacted by climate change differently)
- it silences other social-political differences
second prong: it turns it into a technical project to be executed by technocrats, not everyday citizens
- carbon is commodified, hoping to decrease overall consumption
- depoliticizng to avoid change: it assumes there is nothing wrong with the market/order, we just need to fold carbon into the market
also: makes env politics matter of market expansion and regulation -> for market experts and politicians to do (main actors) - other actors don’t help shape content of environmental politics
environment should be fixed with changes that don’t actually change anything
presents itself as only solution -> power hides and entrenches
Swyngedouw - environmental repoliticization
Swyngedouw in principle argues power is shaped by and shapes the environment
“The politicization of the environment is predicated upon [1] the recognition of the indeterminacy of natures, [2] the constitutive split of the people, [3] the unconditional democratic demand of political equality, and [4] the real possibility for the inauguration of different possible…socio-ecological futures that express the democratic presumptions of freedom and equality”
- seeing “natures” as neither fixed nor singular (i.e. recognizing “indeterminacy”) allows env to be linked back to power
- nature seen as multiple/constructed -> becomes harder to think there is just one uniform/uncontestable ways for human beings to relate to it
- nature is multiple + changing -> not one correct way to engage with nature + not one solution to material destruction
- natures in place of nature + constructed natures in place of given natures -> makes it easier to see there are multiple ways to address/see the environment
- acknowledging that politics can’t help but be divisive (i.e. it “splits” and divides) enables repoliticization, incl. env repoliticization
- all politics is divisive: to say yes to one option is to say no to alternatives
- is true for all form of political action (not just environment)
- there’s no going around this with saying there is a consensus -> need to be honest about divisive nature democracy
- bc environment can be politicized in all sorts of ways, we should be conscious of and pursue their egalitarian repoliticization
- env can and should be helped along by insisting on importance equality
- democratic adaptation should have egalitarian features: more equitable distribution social power + mode of production
- politicization doens’t have to be democratic, Swyngedouw makes plea for democracy/equality to fix it - we should inflect environmental discourse with commitment to equality
- which is facilitated by remaining open to an array of “socio-ecological futures” incl. those that from the “consensus” perspective are otherwise rejected as impossible or impractical
- we need to embrace the impossible
- go from a place of can’t -> restrain the universe of can
- just focusing on what we can’t, we restrain our ability to see what is possible
!!this is not easy, but it can push against depoliticization - to bring power back into our view
how does environment shape power
diff forms of energy are physically different -> puts people in diff relations with each other
- oil is lighter, does not demand same concentration of workers -> dispersed labour -> harder to coordinate en masse threats to demand democratic/political power
not just the who/what of the people, also the resources being worked with
question chilean case
tries to spur private investment and development, makes water something you can purchase a right of use to -> directs activity in profitable directions -> transition to large scale production for export (avocado), this is more water intensive = strain on access to water = increased scarcity -> more pressure to have acces to water title -> big producers snipe up rights to use water bc they can pay for it (
take away
how we view someting shapes how we see
depolitiziation: removal of issue form political deliberation makes it diff to see how power shapes all types of thing
esp true with the env - obscures how power shapes the environment
