Power and the Environment

Question 1

Basic view of political ecology

Answer 1

Power shapes the environment, thus the environment should be understood in socio-political terms

Question 2

4 ways the environment can be understood in socio-political terms

Answer 2

Access (to natural resources)
Use
Distribution (of environmental goods and bads)
Degradation

Question 3

3 key concepts of political ecology

Answer 3

Marginality
Ecology
Political economy

Question 4

Political ecology: Marginality

Answer 4

Power discrepancies among people are visible in the environment, and power affects how people interact with the environment

Question 5

Political ecology: Ecology (2 points)

Answer 5

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?

Question 6

Political ecology: Political economy

Answer 6

Power characterizes economics, and economic power shapes the environment

Question 7

According to political ecologists, how is the environment a social construction (3 points)?

Answer 7

1. It’s a product of power
2. It’s not static or objective
3. Can be made and remade

Question 8

According to political ecologists, how is nature and society entangled?

Answer 8

There is no hard and fast separation between nature and society, instead they overlap

Question 9

3 points: When political ecologists say that nature and society is entangled, it is in opposite to…

Answer 9

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”

Question 10

2 disciplines that have the nature/society dichotomy

Answer 10

1. Environmental management (administering nature, trying to control the environment to benefit humans)
2. Radical ecocentrism (venerates nature, puts environmental concerns before human concerns)

Question 11

What is the main implication of political ecologists regarding environmental problems?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Where is power located in the water use in Chile example?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Main argument of Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy

Answer 13

The rise of modern mass democratic politics (democracy) was facilitated by the turn to coal as a primary energy source

Question 14

Explain how democratic politics was facilitated by the turn to coal

Answer 14

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)

Question 15

According to Mitchell, how is oil different from coal?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Definition: Depoliticization

Answer 16

Removing an issue from political discourse, closing it to debate, deliberation, and contestation. Decouples an issue from questions of power

Question 17

Definition: post-politics

Answer 17

Period of time with depoliticization

Question 18

What characterizes post-politics? 5 points

Answer 18

1. Consensus over dissensus
2. Universalizes a particular political position and demands
3. Normative power behind opinions are hidden and concealed, empowers a dominant position framed as “the consensus”
4. Reducing politics to technological and administerial solutions, politics getting stuck in the status quo
5. Sidelines demos, as managers and administrators can solve issues, not the democratic mass - just need to find “compromise”

Question 19

Post-politics is associated with

Answer 19

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

Question 20

4 reasons why environments are vulnerable to depoliticization

Answer 20

1. Timing and character of a post-political context and lack of emancipatory subject (no specific target of change)
2. Urgency and immediacy discourse rules out debate and encourages band-aid solutions
3. Denialism as a result of the lack of political debate and contestation
4. 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

Question 21

3 discursive mechanisms on the environment that depoliticize it

Answer 21

Scientization, economization, and moralization

Question 22

Scientization of the environment

Answer 22

Climate change is a scientific concern that needs a technological solution, e.g. focus on calculating how much carbon dioxide we can technically have

Question 23

Economization of the environment

Answer 23

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”

Question 24

Scientization and economization have these 3 things in common

Answer 24

1. That climate change becomes a problem for experts to solve, rather than empowering citizens they empower experts
2. Average citizens must heed to expert opinions and adopt “green lifestyle choices”
3. Refuses the language of power while empowering some and disempowering others (citizens)

Question 25

Moralization of the environment

Answer 25

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

Question 26

According to Swyngedouw, what are 4 ways to push back against depoliticization (e.g. repoliticize)?

Answer 26

1. Understanding that nature is open-ended and multiple -> and there is no one correct way to engage with the environment
2. Recognizing that politics is always divisive and to intervene politically is to take one course of action while foregoing others
3. Affirming equality and increasing egalitarian features for an equitable distribution of power
4. Acting from a place of “can”, embracing the impossible, removing focus from what we can’t do to what we can