Political ecology II: Whither the state?

Abstract

However conceptualised, the institutions and relations associated with the state are clearly crucial to political ecological research. Environmental policies are enacted through state institutions, and property rights over land and resources are enforced by the legal framework and monopoly power associated with the state form. Nevertheless, political ecologists have sometimes had an uneasy relationship with conceptualisations of the state, leading to recurring questions over the adequacy of political ecological theorisations. Over the last decade and a half such questions have led to a call for dialogues with political geography and, more recently, with critical geopolitics. In this second progress report, I review recent political ecological theorisations of the state, pointing to a set of shared concerns associated with the processes, relations and struggles through which states are brought into being and acquire certain effects. I will conclude with a note of caution when it comes to an uncritical dialogue with more abstract interpretations of state power.