Power and the Environment Flashcards
Basic view of political ecology
Power shapes the environment, thus the environment should be understood in socio-political terms
4 ways the environment can be understood in socio-political terms
Access (to natural resources)
Use
Distribution (of environmental goods and bads)
Degradation
3 key concepts of political ecology
Marginality
Ecology
Political economy
Political ecology: Marginality
Power discrepancies among people are visible in the environment, and power affects how people interact with the environment
Political ecology: Ecology (2 points)
The study of relationships and physical surroundings
Systems-level approach: how does power flow in systems that link people to each other and the environment? How does changing one aspect of the network affect others?
Political ecology: Political economy
Power characterizes economics, and economic power shapes the environment
According to political ecologists, how is the environment a social construction (3 points)?
- It’s a product of power
- It’s not static or objective
- Can be made and remade
According to political ecologists, how is nature and society entangled?
There is no hard and fast separation between nature and society, instead they overlap
3 points: When political ecologists say that nature and society is entangled, it is in opposite to…
The nature/society dichotomy that states that nature and culture are in strict opposition to each other
Nature is given by the divine or Cosmos (and is thus fixed), whereas society and culture is socially created
Separates what is “natural” from what is “social”
2 disciplines that have the nature/society dichotomy
- Environmental management (administering nature, trying to control the environment to benefit humans)
- Radical ecocentrism (venerates nature, puts environmental concerns before human concerns)
What is the main implication of political ecologists regarding environmental problems?
Environmental disrepair is a social (and economic and political) problem caused by political, historical, and economic factors that cannot be cured through organizational or technological solutions
Instead, a social solution is needed to fix it
Where is power located in the water use in Chile example?
Water has become a scarce resource in Chile with significant disparity in access between large and peasant farmers because of neoliberal economic development that privatized natural resources
Large disparity because already well-off large producers were most likely to already hold water rights and was able to formalize and buy these as well
Main argument of Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy
The rise of modern mass democratic politics (democracy) was facilitated by the turn to coal as a primary energy source
Explain how democratic politics was facilitated by the turn to coal
Coal needed less area -> workers were concentrated at main work sites -> the concentrated energy created concentrated people who could slow, disrupt or cut off energy (strikes, sabotage, slowing down) -> workers gain political power through control of energy to entire economies (suffrage, labor rights, unions, mass parties)
According to Mitchell, how is oil different from coal?
Oil production is industrially isolated and geographically remote -> need for fewer workers that are more easily surveilled -> fewer opportunities for worker disruption -> fewer opportunities to translate labor power into political demands
Definition: Depoliticization
Removing an issue from political discourse, closing it to debate, deliberation, and contestation. Decouples an issue from questions of power
Definition: post-politics
Period of time with depoliticization
What characterizes post-politics? 5 points
- Consensus over dissensus
- Universalizes a particular political position and demands
- Normative power behind opinions are hidden and concealed, empowers a dominant position framed as “the consensus”
- Reducing politics to technological and administerial solutions, politics getting stuck in the status quo
- Sidelines demos, as managers and administrators can solve issues, not the democratic mass - just need to find “compromise”
Post-politics is associated with
The “end of history”; the post-ideological era where we already know what the future will look like (the present) so no need for contestation and political debate
4 reasons why environments are vulnerable to depoliticization
- Timing and character of a post-political context and lack of emancipatory subject (no specific target of change)
- Urgency and immediacy discourse rules out debate and encourages band-aid solutions
- Denialism as a result of the lack of political debate and contestation
- Commonplace notions of “nature” are uniform and singular, implying the need for one fixed policy response or that nature is beyond the realm og deliberation
3 discursive mechanisms on the environment that depoliticize it
Scientization, economization, and moralization
Scientization of the environment
Climate change is a scientific concern that needs a technological solution, e.g. focus on calculating how much carbon dioxide we can technically have
Economization of the environment
Climate change is a market problem in need of a market solution, e.g. how can production and consumption be decoupled from environmental impact; how can economic growth be “green”
Scientization and economization have these 3 things in common
- That climate change becomes a problem for experts to solve, rather than empowering citizens they empower experts
- Average citizens must heed to expert opinions and adopt “green lifestyle choices”
- Refuses the language of power while empowering some and disempowering others (citizens)
Moralization of the environment
Framing some perspectives as universally good or bad, where the good becomes beyond debate (something is morally right so should not be debated) and the bad becomes impermissable
According to Swyngedouw, what are 4 ways to push back against depoliticization (e.g. repoliticize)?
- Understanding that nature is open-ended and multiple -> and there is no one correct way to engage with the environment
- Recognizing that politics is always divisive and to intervene politically is to take one course of action while foregoing others
- Affirming equality and increasing egalitarian features for an equitable distribution of power
- Acting from a place of “can”, embracing the impossible, removing focus from what we can’t do to what we can
