Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Political Ecology's Engagement with the Scientifi c
Practice of Ecology
As already seen in the discussion above, environmental change and politics are very
much shaped by our ideas about ecological relations. Ecology as a broad fi eld,
including not only academic ecology but also the applied ecologies of natural
resource extraction and management (forestry, grazing management, agroecology,
wildlife ecology, conservation biology, fi sheries science . . . etc.), plays an important
role in how we understand ecological relations. In many ways, the ecological sci-
ences mediate our understandings of ecological relations and therefore are impli-
cated in environmental politics and our understanding of anthropogenic environmental
change. Increasingly, political ecologists are critically engaging with scientifi c prac-
tices and the depictions of ecological relations they produce. In this section, I do
not attempt to review this rapidly expanding literature (see Forsyth, 2003; Taylor,
2005), but instead outline how greater engagement in the practices of ecological
scientists may enrich the two core themes of political ecology.
Ecology and the relationship between environmental and
social change
Those scholars concerned with the relationship between social and environmental
change have, through their own engagements with ecological relations, critically
engaged with the assumptions, methods, and theories of ecological scientists. Such
critical engagements have raised questions about the use of inappropriate models
of ecological dynamics in under-studied regions of the world by resource man-
agers, scientists and policymakers (Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Bassett and Zuéli,
2000; Forsyth, 2003). Moreover, this work has raised questions about the social
content in environmental diagnoses and prescriptions of environment (Fairhead
and Leach, 1996; Neumann, 1998; Bassett and Zuéli, 2000; Taylor, 2005). By
'social content' I refer to the observations that: (i) most applied ecologies have
developed in close relation to a resource extraction activity bundled with a par-
ticular social organisation and set of technologies;
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(ii) due the limited availability
of data, many diagnoses of environmental problems are based less on biophysical
fact and more on cursory observations of: a. local social conditions that are seen
as leading to environmental mismanagement (population density, property regime,
resource-related confl ict) and; b. poor environmental condition (defi ned by visual
appearance); (iii) local understandings of the geographical and historical contexts
of changing resource availability have most often been ignored as unscientifi c; and
(iv) knowledge claims about the ecological relations are far from politically neutral
in effect or intent - resource management and policy institutions may make sci-
entifi c claims that reinforce their control over resources and people within the
target area.
Due to the social content in environmental scientifi c work, political ecologists'
place-based orientation for understanding the relationship between social and envi-
ronmental change will often lead to a critical engagement with scientifi c claims that
implicate local resources and people. The degree to which that engagement delves
into the underlying methods, assumptions, and practices of scientist and resource
managers depends not only on the political ecologist's adherence to critical realist
or social constructivist epistemologies but also on her intended audience. A critical
