Chapter 8

There is a very strong connection between this chapter and the movie, Milk the Rhino. All of the concepts explained, directly relate to the examples provided in the movie. Discussion of the benefits of these conservations vs. the harm that it does to the culture of tribes and communities. A thought that came up for me in discussion in class, as well as in the reading about the image of wild Africa was how to measure the value of publicity through programs such as Planet Earth or Discovery Channel. There are many factors:
1) It brings in a lot of tourism
2)it's not an accurate image of the relationship between wildlife and people
3)it can create an appreciation for wildlife that may otherwise be forgotten
4)programs can make it look as if there are huge portions of the world that are untouched, which can relieve a lot of people's guilt about the environment.

How can these thoughts be balanced, and reconciled? They are so conflicting. Is it right to create the "myth of wild Africa" as a business endeavor, when it can compromise the real life habits/culture/survival of African communities. As much as it is preservation, isn't it also exploitation?

constructivism

Oh wow. We have constructed ways of thinking of things. These ways of thinking of things have sometimes (often, in fact) created a confusion between cause and effect in environmental phenomena. Things that we conceptualize, like forests, and see being destroyed, are not necessarily dependent only on factors within that physical area. There can be more factors related to human behavior, ecosystems that extend beyond the forest, transfer of pollutants from other sources, etc. which contribute to the health of the forest. It is a human way of thinking to define an area as forest or plain, based on the ratio of grass to tree. It creates a divide between areas, in addition to political divisions, which make it all the more difficult to conceptualize the earth as one system. Examining the historical context in which any concept came to be can help with understanding the complex interactions that our species has had with nature over the millennia.
These thoughts are, hopefully, somehow related to the concept of constructivism. That the very environment that we try to save is simply a constructed idea of humanity. The ideals that we seek are theoretical and may, in fact, have very little to do with how the earth actually functioned.
Constructivism is scary, because how it is described, in some ways seems to discount science as a social phenomenon as well. If that is so, ohhh dear… is there any knowledge to be trusted? The scientific method is so central to our understanding of everything and has already had to go up against religion. In many ways, it is still discounted in certain areas, due to religious beliefs which trump the scientific method. To say that our science is constructed, and based on social and historical values is a very important consideration to take into account, but also a very dangerous one.

critical tools

Not entirely sure how to respond to this chapter. It’s more informational, laying the groundwork for the field of political ecology. It includes peasant studies, feminist studies, and other areas of inquiry that you wouldn’t necessarily think to associate with ecology, but which really, in that way underlines the basic purpose of political ecology: to look at how people are behaving, and what they are reacting to which causes these behaviors when looking at interactions with the environment.

Chapter 2 outlined the ways that our thought has developed from evaluating nature based on human needs to evaluating the needs of nature, in order to sustain human life. The back and forth/give and take between humanity and nature has been continually developing, but it is a fairly modern realization that sustainability is key, and that our historical/political actions have been shaping our interactions with the environment.

Although I don’t entirely understand it now, I can tell that the common property theory will be integral in understanding how we deal with resources in groups, whether it be a community, a state, a country or as a species.

That, in fact, seems to be a fairly huge factor in itself: how we are subdivided into various groups, and allegiances, and who in the end has the authority to conserve resources that, in some cases, provide the livelihood of a large country or region?

Discovering Political Ecology

Until reading this chapter, I had not even stopped to consider the meaning of “political ecology” as the term was casually dropped in discussions in class, or elsewhere. I simply assumed that I would figure out what it meant. But it wasn’t until comparing it to apolitical ecology, that I really grasped the importance of this field.

In my intro to American Politics class, I remember defining “politics” as who gets what, when and how, or the debate on resources. To me it is essentially impossible to talk about the environment without talking about use of resources, and this means distribution of resources which must be political. So of COURSE there is a field called political ecology, dealing with resources, ecological systems and everything that that entails.

The breadth of this field is something that is a bit hard to imagine, but in later chapters, backbones of the field have been laid out, showing how different branches can easily be related through common histories. As demonstrated on page 6, there have been a wide variety of “definitions” of political ecology. The goals have evolved from documentation and description to finding explanation behind phenomena that occur between societies and nature.

I’m shocked at how much unknown this field was to me, and yet how deeply connected it is to things that I consider on a daily basis. People are a huge factor in the environment, and we have ways of governing ourselves and our uses of resources.