Political Ecology: Reflections from the Global South - Prof Mitul Baruah

Political ecology as an area of academic enquiry is relatively new. The history of it in the Anglophone world can be traced back to the 1980s, pioneered by, among others, Michael Watts’ (1983) groundbreaking work on the Sahelian drought, Piers Blaikie’s (1985) work on soil erosion in Nepal, and Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) seminal work on land degradation.
Within such a short span of time, however, there has been a meteoric rise in political ecology literature both in the western academia and the Global South. Matching political ecology’s rise in popularity has been its thematic and theoretical eclecticism.
This session is not an attempt to present a comprehensive survey of the political ecology literature. Rather, it is a close exploration of the historical genealogies of the field, and an overview of its key characteristics, thematic foci, and new directions. Based on a case study from the Brahmaputra Valley in northeast India, the session will also highlight the importance of political ecological enquiry in the Global South.
Overall, this lecture addresses the political economic contexts of environmental transformations, as well as the ways in which our understandings of and relations with nature are materially and discursively bound up with notions of culture, identity, and power.

This lecture is part of our module on The Environment and Climate change: https://www.connectedsociologies.org/...

Questions for Discussion

What is political ecology? Can ecology be political?
How might a political ecology approach help us gain a critical understanding of nature-society relations?
Can we think of political ecology as praxis? If so, how?
How might perspectives from the Global South further enrich the field of political ecology?