Nature-society Relations Research Articles

Watershed or Powershed? Critical Hydropolitics, China and the ‘Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Framework’

The countries sharing the Lancang-Mekong River are entering a new era of hydropolitics with a growing number of hydropower dams throughout the basin. Three ‘powersheds’, conceptualised as physical, institutional and political constructs that connect dams to major power markets in China, Thailand and Vietnam, are transforming the nature–society relations of the watershed. In the process, new conditions are produced within which the region’s hydropolitics unfold. This is epitomised by the ‘Lancang-Mekong Cooperation’ framework, a new initiative led by China that proposes programs on both economic and water resource development, and anticipates hydrodiplomacy via China’s dam-engineered control of the headwaters.

Capitalizing on Compensation: Hydropower Resettlement and the Commodification and Decommodification of Nature–Society Relations in Southern Laos

Compensation programs for hydropower dam resettlement have far-reaching effects, including restructuring nature–society relations in support of capital accumulation. Although critical scholarship has shown the structural limitations of compensation programs for reducing poverty after resettlement, here we draw on the specific case of the Xepian-Xenamnoy hydroelectric dam project in the Xekong River Basin in southern Laos to explore the transformation of nature–society relations among the Heuny people. We argue that the compensation processes of valuation, abstraction, and privatization of property relations have contributed to the variegated commodification of land and other natural resources used by the Heuny. In contrast to arguments that capitalist expansion leads to ever increasing commodification, however, we demonstrate that compensation variously decommodifies other natural resources, such as certain nontimber forest products and wild fisheries, keeping other things, such as swidden fields and forest land, noncommodified. Moreover, these processes of variegated commodification are spatially variable, largely dependent on Heuny conceptions of space, thus affecting the commodification of land and other natural resources. Ultimately, by linking compensation to processes of (de)-commodification in its various forms, we suggest new ways in which capitalist social relations are being transformed and expanded through hydropower-induced resettlement. Furthermore, we call into question the ability of material compensation to restore previous livelihood and environmental conditions, as changes brought on by the compensation process itself have much deeper and profound implications when it comes to nature–society relations.

Rescaling and Reordering Nature–Society Relations: The Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Dam and Laos–Thailand Electricity Networks

In 2010, the largest hydropower dam ever constructed in Laos, the Nam Theun 2 (NT2) Power Project, was completed with crucial—indeed, deal-making—support from the World Bank. Although the vast majority of the electricity produced by the project is exported to neighboring Thailand, the most important negative social and environmental impacts have occurred in Laos. While much attention has focused on the dam reservoir, there have been significant effects downstream from the project along the Xe Bang Fai (XBF) River, a major tributary of the mainstream Mekong River. In this article we examine the complex relationships between energy produced by NT2 and energy consumption patterns in Thailand. We link varying electricity demand in Thai air conditioning, fluctuating water releases from the NT2 dam, and downstream changes in XBF hydrology. Taking a political ecology approach, we emphasize how NT2 is part of rescaling electricity production and consumption networks, changes to their modes of ordering, and the reworking of nature–society relations. Although NT2 involves a complex array of social and environmental civil society concerns for Thailand, Laos, and global society, this was largely obscured by the commercial and technical orientation of its novel governance systems.

Historical Political Ecology of Water: Access to Municipal Drinking Water in Colonial Lima, Peru (1578–1700)

Historical political ecology provides a powerful framework for understanding nature–society relations in the past. This approach is applied to municipal drinking water governance in early colonial Lima, Peru, with a focus on how power dynamics influenced sociospatial patterns of water access and control. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century archival sources are analyzed for material aspects of Lima's drinking water pipeline network and for the management strategies employed by the municipal government. Access to water is demonstrated to have shaped, reinforced, and reflected colonial social divisions and to have been linked to the spatial development of the city, including urban–rural relations.

El paisaje de Real de Catorce: un despojo histórico

Given the new wave of foreign investments in mining affecting most of Latin-American countries that has allowed transnational corporations to enter and exploit natural resources in a lax regimes context, Mexico faces resources a dispossession scenario similar to what happened under Porfirio Díaz regime. The study area, Real de Catorce, is an example of the historical transcendence of a resources exploitation model that has left obvious marks in the present landscape. Landscape, as a unit of analysis, permits to extract from its elements and forms the complexities of nature-society relationships. A diachronic examination of landscapes enables to notice structural and organizational process as well as events that result in substantial changes in the landscapes’ evolution. The landscape history of Real de Catorce micro-region refects a trajectory characterized by resources and population exploitation, and accumulation by dispossession and environmental transformation.

Biosecurity and the multiplication of crises in the Egyptian agri-food industry

Through a case study of Egypt’s agri-food industry this paper examines biosecurity as a set of technologies, institutions, and practices that attempt to govern national agri-food industries and global agri-food trade by marrying a political economy perspective and an analysis of ‘nature–society relations’. Consistent with other agri-food industries in the global South, Egypt’s agri-food industry has undergone waves of corporate consolidation during the neoliberal period. By detailing the growth of the poultry industry and the endemic spread of HPAI H5N1 (avian flu), this paper presents an argument that the industry grew and consolidated through emergent and recurrent zoonotic and plant diseases, the management of which has been governed in part by biosecurity measures.

The public health contribution to the discursive struggles surrounding food security and food sovereignty

This commentary adopts a public health perspective to shine further light on the different bases for legitimacy in relation to food security and food sovereignty. It describes, albeit briefly, the influential role that nutrition science has long played in the understanding of food security and in advancing a socio-technical approach to address malnutrition. The commentary then turns to the more recent public health ecology field and proposes that its framing of food security resonates with Jarosz’s call for greater attention to nature–society relationships. Along the way, the commentary argues that identifying food security with developmentalist forces is too simplistic, given the range of developmentalist positions currently being adopted. It also reflects on the actions of the state in relation to nutrition, and the as yet unclear relationship between governments and food sovereignty at household and community levels.

Urban foraging and the relational ecologies of belonging

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show the complex ways that urban foraging is underpinned by interconnected and multiple notions of identity, place, mobility, and agency for both humans and more-than-human interlocutors. The focus on relational ecologies of belonging illuminates important challenges for environmental management and public space planning in socioecologically diverse areas. Ultimately, these challenges reflect negotiated visions about how we organize ourselves and live together in cosmopolitan spaces such as cities.

Imaginative Geographies of Green: Difference, Postcoloniality, and Affect in Environmental Narratives in Contemporary Turkey

Analyzing everyday environmental imaginaries from contemporary Turkey through the lenses of postcolonial, emotional-affective, and nature–society geographies, this article offers insights into shifting nature–society relations and possibilities. Based on a series of interviews and focus groups conducted in four sites (Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakır, and Şanlıurfa), the concept of imaginative geographies of green is offered to highlight social and spatial differences as central to the articulation of green visions and movements. The research foregrounds several social and spatial gradients specific to the Turkish context, including east–west divides both within and beyond Turkey (i.e., Kurdish–Turkish and eastern–western Turkey, as well as notions of Turkishness and Europeanness). The work also suggests that environmental imaginaries have deeply emotional, ambivalent, and power-laden associations. Apart from the implications of the work for enriched understandings of emergent environmental possibilities in this context, the conclusion touches on ramifications for European Union accession debates as well as new directions for work on environmental citizenship and movements in the global south.

Contesting large-scale water supply projects at both ends of the pipe in Kathmandu and Melamchi Valleys, Nepal

The residents of Kathmandu Valley in Nepal face increasing water shortages that worsen during the dry season. Against this situation, the Melamchi Water Supply megaproject, supported by several foreign investors, was launched in 2000 to quench Kathmanduties’ thirst by bringing water from Melamchi River through a 26km-long tunnel. After more than 10years, progress has been very modest. Besides the political instability of the country, opposition from certain sectors of society in both the urban and rural settings has created continuous disruptions of the works. We draw on Urban Political Ecology and Environmental Justice frameworks to analyze two distinct, although interconnected, social struggles battling against the project. The first one, anchored in the urban sphere, took advantage of the entry of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists, and succeeded in bringing down Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) lending condition of handing over the water supply management to a private sector operator. The second one concerns the ongoing struggle of the rural residents affected by the inter-basin transfer. Local people in the rural areas mainly advocated conservation of their source of livelihood and political recognition. In the last part, we discuss how the use of local water sources and community-based alternatives may emerge as an alternative to hegemonic models of nature–society relations and contribute to overcome such conflicts and reduce negative impacts on the environment and social injustices.

Water futures: Reviewing water-scenario analyses through an original interpretative framework

Water is a vital need for humans and a critical resource for the maintenance of social–ecological systems. Against the backdrop of global environmental and societal changes, water scarcity looms large in many parts of the world. This uncertainty regarding the future notwithstanding, not until recently has scenario analysis, a technique to envision possible and consistent paths of the evolution of a system, importantly permeated research on water issues. Through review of theoretical and case-study papers, we built an analytical framework to characterize the use of water-scenario analysis and to evaluate the current situation and future possibilities. By means of qualitative and statistical analyses we propose guidelines to consider before initiating a water-scenario analysis. These recommendations pretend to capture better the complexity of nature–society relationships in scenario analysis and concern i) the representation of drivers guiding water use and in an integrated and transparent manner, ii) the use of participatory approaches and iii) the use of modeling. Despite departing from a water perspective, the framework and recommendations may interest those working with environmental scenarios from local to global scales.

Fisheries Privatization and the Remaking of Fishery Systems

Th is article draws on directed ethnographic research and a review of lit- erature to explore how the commodifi cation of fi shing rights discursively and materi- ally remakes human-marine relationships across diverse regions. It traces the history of dominant economic theories that promote the privatization of fi shing access for maximizing potential profi ts. It describes more recent discursive trends that link the ecological health of the world's oceans and their fi sheries to widespread privatization. Together, these economic and environmental discourses have enrolled a broad set of increasingly vocal and powerful privatization proponents. Th e article provides spe- cifi c examples of how nature-society relationships among people, oceans, and fi sh are remade as privatization policies take root in fi shery systems. We conclude with an over- view of several strategies of resistance. Across the world there is evidence of alternative discourses, economic logics, and cultures of fi shing resistant to privatization processes, the assumptions that underlie them, and the social transitions they oft en generate.

The ‘East Asian’ Olympic Games: what of sustainable legacies?

Sport has proven to be an unstoppable globalising force. The Olympic Movement has come to epitomise modernisation and the extent to which Western sport has become globalised. The philosophy of Olympism, once resting upon just two pillars of Excellence in Sport and Culture has since 1994 been underpinned by a third, the Environment. All of the Olympic Games host cities now have to support a responsible concern for environmental issues and with that the very sustainability of ‘our’ culture, and sport itself. They must do so by bequeathing a holistic positive legacy from their Games. This paper will analyse the three ‘Asian’ Olympic Summer Olympic Games – Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – by looking at the cultural, sporting and environmental legacies each has left. The discussion of the concept of sustainability as an element of culture will embrace Littig and Griessler’s idea that social sustainability is about the quality of societies expressed through the nature-society relationships and is not merely an economically based notion.1 In this paper we consider the three Asian Summer Olympic Games. Each has been related to a specific nodal point in the host country's national history, as a means of illustrating, indeed emphasising, the always unique impacts of context on event and process. Yet we propose that, locked as they are in distinct epochs and differing cultural, political and economic contexts, they are nonetheless marked in common by an Asian discourse heavily reliant upon economic and nationalistic motivations. The progressive analysis of each Games demonstrates that although each was unique, particularly in regards to the expectations stakeholders had of ‘their Olympics’, all three host nations represented themselves as ‘modern hybrids’ by simultaneously demonstrating their modernised characters and emphasising their ancient cultures. The analysis demonstrates the holistic impact of these events by reference to the wide range of economic, social, cultural and sporting changes that have emerged for each host from each festival. The evaluation of the nature and significance of these legacies reemphasises the impact of the Olympic Games as a vehicle for social change and illustrates the transformative power of sport at national and global levels.

Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control and conflict

This article argues that resource access, use, control, ownership and conflict are not only mediated through social relations of power, but also through emotional geographies where gendered subjectivities and embodied emotions constitute how nature–society relations are lived and experienced on a daily basis. By engaging the insights from feminist political ecology literatures and emotional geographies literatures, the article demonstrates that resource struggles and conflicts are not just material challenges but emotional ones, which are mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions. Such a focus fleshes out the complexities, entanglements and messy relations that constitute political ecologies of resources management, where practices and processes are negotiated through constructions of gender, embodiments, and emotions. Abstractions of ‘resource struggles’ and ‘resource conflicts’ are thereby grounded in embodied emotional geographies of places, peoples, and resources, enabling us to better understand the ways resources and emotions come to matter in everyday survival struggles. This framing can enrich feminist political ecology theorizations and texture our understandings of commonly-used terms such as access, use, control, conflict and struggles vis-à-vis natural resources in any context. In other words, we are better able to conceptualize and explain how and why people access, use, and struggle over resources the ways they do. A case study of drinking water contamination from Bangladesh is used to develop the theoretical arguments in contributing to existing debates in (feminist) political ecologies.

Transcending the metabolic rift: a theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology

The theory of metabolic rift is among the most dynamic perspectives in critical environmental studies today. This essay argues that the problem with the metabolic rift perspective is not that it goes too far, but that it does not go far enough. I take a ‘use and transcend’ approach that takes metabolic rift theory as an indispensable point of departure in building a unified theory of capitalist development – one that views the accumulation of capital, the pursuit of power, and the production of nature as differentiated moments within the singularity of historical capitalism. My response unfolds through two related arguments. First, the theory of metabolic rift, as elaborated by Foster, Clark, and York, is grounded in a Cartesian binary that locates biophysical crises in one box, and accumulation crises in another. This views biophysical problems as consequences of capitalist development, but not constitutive of capitalism as a historical system. The second part of this essay moves from critique to synthesis. Drawing out the value-theoretical implications of the metabolic rift – through which capitalism's greatest contradiction becomes the irremediable tension between the ‘economic equivalence’ and the ‘natural distinctiveness’ of the commodity (Marx) – I illuminate the possibilities for a unified theory of capitalist development and crisis over the longue durée. This is the theory of capitalism as world-ecology, a perspective that joins the accumulation of capital and the production of nature in dialectical unity. This perspective begins from the premise that capitalism does not act upon nature so much as develop through nature–society relations. Capitalism does not have an ecological regime; it is an ecological regime.

Reflections from within: nature-society relations, interdisciplinarity, and knowledge production in rural sociology

Cet article examine ce que la sociologie en tant que discipline apporte de distinct a la connaissance scientifique. L’analyse porte en particulier sur la sociologie rurale et la sociologie de l’environnement. La necessite de reflechir a cette distinction decoule de l’interet grandissant accorde a l’interpretation du sens de la relation entre societe et nature, ainsi que des demandes pressantes pour conduire ces recherches de facon interdisciplinaire. Quelques-unes des valeurs fondamentales de la sociologie en tant que discipline sont soulignees, de meme que les problemes theoriques qui apparaissent des lors que l’on commence a interpreter un monde defini comme « socio-naturel ».

Towards interdisciplinary rural research – theorizing nature-society relations

This article deals with the significance of interdisciplinary rural and environmental social research for the theorization of society and society-nature relations. For this purpose fields of knowledge adjacent to rural sociology are reviewed: environmental sociology, human and social ecology, ecological economics, social-ecological systems analysis, research on common pool resources and environmental conflicts. In discussing themes, concepts and reflections about the relations between society and nature, it is shown how theoretical codification and reflection on knowledge as well as knowledge application for natural resource management can develop from interdisciplinary research. Rural sociology can gain from the interdisciplinary knowledge exchange without changing its specialization as sociological subdiscipline.

Concepções da economia ecológica: suas relações com a economia dominante e a economia ambiental

O trabalho aborda as relações natureza-sociedade com o propósito de ampliar o leque das teorias socioambientais disponíveis. Faz rápida revisão e avaliação crítica do pensamento econômico tradicional diante da dimensão ambiental do processo econômico. Mostra o esforço de se incorporar o meio ambiente ao modelo econômico e trata da atividade econômica sob a restrição ambiental. Introduz a perspectiva da economia ecológica e sua abordagem transdisciplinar, explorando implicações da visão integradora dela decorrente. Conclui com uma apreciação de tendências no pensamento econômico-ecológico, lembrando nomes que as representam, com ênfase em Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.

Geographies of security and statehood in Norway’s ‘Battle of the North’

In this paper, we explore how ‘peak oil’ anxieties are woven into the spaces and practices of the state in Norway and the consequences of this for environmental justice and the public sphere more widely. We focus in particular on an ongoing struggle over access to hydrocarbon deposits in the Norwegian Arctic, the so-called ‘Battle of the North’. We use this dispute to highlight three wider theoretical points regarding (i) the continuing relevance of the state in the governing of nature-society relations, (ii) the increasingly fragmented and fluid nature of state space, and (iii) the significance of ‘security’ as a term around which social, economic and environmental tensions pivot. The paper concludes by reflecting on current efforts to prevent new oil activities in the north of Norway.

Privatizing Environmental Governance

Many of today’s systems that regulate the environmental impact of households and arms grew out the work of national legislatures in the early 1970s. Tragically, perhaps, a global cultural shift began within a decade after this wave of legislatively sanctioned regulation; in the age of Thatcher, Reagan, and global neoliberalism, public regulation became anathema to powerful social forces and to many sitting governments. In lieu of national laws or international treaties, a variety of political entrepreneurs and associated interest groups began pushing for private, voluntary systems of environmental governance, as well as for public-private partnerships that might accomplish the kind of things that advocates of legal regulation had once demanded. The three volumes under review all provide empirical evaluations of different examples of such private environmental governance. Taken together, they paint a picture that is not hopeless; some well-designed private systems have been able to shift the basic way in which organizations think about and make decisions concerning their environmental impact. Nonetheless, these studies provide little evidence to suggest that private governance can ever substitute for public regulation. Two of these books are collected volumes. In Privatization and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations, Mansaeld and her colleagues apply the tools of critical geography to the analysis of a set of biosphere issues—agriculture, asheries, genetically modiaed crops, and water—in Canada, the United States, and the developing world. In Reality Check, Morgenstern and Pizer’s authors are primarily concerned with programs to reduce energy consumption or the release of