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interactive and not determined by the other, the embracement of complexity will
necessarily be associated with the uncertainty. Recognition of this uncertainty works
against constructing a compelling narrative. The mix of different types of infor-
mation of contrasting spatial and temporal resolutions that are created through
engagement with both social and ecological relations make it diffi cult to maintain
a narrative thread. Simply having the interest, training, and resources to engage
seriously with both social and ecological complexity does not produce compelling
research results. Political ecologists who have attempted to engage seriously with the
fuller complexity of social and environmental change may fi nd themselves publishing
the ecological and social portions of their analysis as separate products, directed at
different audiences. Therefore, political ecologists should think seriously about these
limits of full engagement with ecological relations in designing their research.
Current political ecological research spans the range of engagements presented
in fi gure 12.1. Research in the two foci areas of contemporary political ecology -
environmental politics and social-ecological change - tend to be found somewhere
on either end of this range. The majority of political ecology research treats ecologi-
cal relations as a backdrop to environmental politics - a backdrop that either: (i)
broadly defi nes what is and what is not possible in terms of human activity (#1 of
fi gure 12.1) or (ii) produces the spatiotemporal variation in resource availability
that helps shape the nature of resource-related confl ict (#2 and 3 of fi gure 12.1).
The ecological response to human land-use has generally been less of a concern
(engagements greater than #3). The political ecological research on social-ecological
interactions has generally engaged more with ecological relations, ranging from the
documenting the direct, short-term effects of resource extraction (#4 of fi gure 12.1)
to mid- to long-term impacts of human extraction on ecological variables (#6 of
fi gure 12.1). These are general observations of prior work in political ecology. More
detailed explorations of promise and pitfalls of deeper engagements with ecological
relations in these two focal areas are presented below.
Environmental politics: confl icts over natural resources
A major focus of political-ecological research is the environmental politics surround-
ing the claiming, using and managing of the natural resources. As described above,
this body of work has engaged much less with ecological relations than the much
smaller body of work focused on understanding social-environmental change. The
costs of engagement are similar to those described above while the benefi ts are less
clear. Environmental politics is historically embedded and shaped by ideology and
social relations. Any material infl uence is necessarily given political meaning by
these social features.
Many efforts to tie the material world to confl icts over natural resources, ranging
from the works of Semple (1915), Rappaport (1984), Homer-Dixon (1994) and
Diamond (2006), have ignored or downplayed how material constraints or resource
scarcity is strongly mediated if not produced by social relations. Political ecology
as an approach developed (Watts, 1983; Blaikie, 1985; Neumann, 1998), and has
recurrently reinforced (Peluso and Watts, 2001), its identity through its critical
engagement with simple but highly infl uential treatments of environmental gover-
nance and the etiology of resource confl ict. In many ways, political ecology has
developed as a subfi eld around the important idea that resource-related confl ict is
inherently social and that changing material (ecological) conditions infl uence envi-
