Analyses and Interventions: Anthropological Engagements with Environmentalism

Brosius, J. Peter

doi:10.2307/2991397

Cited by 160 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 116 publications

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“…More recent political ecology is characterized by the analysis of both material and discursive contestation, arguing that practical struggles are always simultaneously struggles for "truth" and meaning-struggles that happen in imagination and representation at the same time as they are conducted in the material world (Peet and Watts 2002:37). Drawing heavily on the work of Foucault (1972Foucault ( , 1980, it highlights the ways in which representations, narratives, and discourses shape how people perceive and behave in relation to the environment (see Brosius 1997, 1999a, b, Agrawal 2005, Tsing 2005, and Li 2007 for examples of influential works that emphasize the ways in which power and knowledge matter for human-environment relations).…”

Section: Power: Insights From Political Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

Fabinyi¹,

Evans²,

Foale³

2014

E&S

281

224

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ABSTRACT. A social-ecological system (SES) framework increasingly underpins the "resilience paradigm." As with all models, the SES comes with particular biases. We explore these key biases. We critically examine how the SES resilience literature has attempted to define and analyze the social arena. We argue that much SES literature defines people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment, and thereby underplays the role of other motivations and social institutions. We also highlight the SES resilience literature's focus on institutions and organized social units, which misses key aspects of social diversity and power. Our key premise is the importance of inter-and multi-disciplinary perspectives. To illustrate this, we draw attention to the critique of earlier ecological anthropology that remains relevant for current conceptualizations of SESs, focusing on the concepts of social diversity and power. And we discuss insights from social anthropology and political ecology that have responded to this critique to develop different ways of incorporating social diversity and power into human-environment relations. Finally, we discuss how these social science perspectives can help improve the understanding of the "social" in SES resilience research.Key Words: anthropology; political ecology; power; social diversity; social-ecological system INTRODUCTION Underpinning current use of the "resilience paradigm" is a focus on the social-ecological system (SES). The SES is a model with the attendant biases and particular strengths and weaknesses that come with all models (anthropological, ecological, economic, and political). In particular, social elements of the SES remain weakly theorized, highlighting the need for a Special Issue such as this. We focus on how much SES resilience literature tends to define people's interests and livelihoods as concerned primarily with the environment. This underplays the role of other motivations and social institutions, and portrays a limited understanding of the importance of social diversity and power. We discuss insights from the social sciences-in particular, social anthropology and political ecology-to critique the concept of SES, with a focus on the concepts of human adaptation to the environment, social diversity, and power. Emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary learning, we analyze how these social sciences have addressed similar conceptual issues within their own intellectual histories as a response to critiques of earlier forms of ecological anthropology. In our conclusion, we discuss to what extent this can contribute to a broader intellectual understanding of the "social" in SES resilience research.

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Section: Power: Insights From Political Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

Fabinyi¹,

Evans²,

Foale³

2014

E&S

281

224

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Any attempt to understand how nature came to be and what it will be in the future must consider human action in its long-term historical trajectory. A historicized, politicized, and humanized ecology provides a solid foundation for proactive change (Botkin 1990;Brosius 1999;Escobar 1999;Janzen 1998;Kay and Simmons 2002;Zimmerer and Bassett 2003) Archaeology of landscapes and historical ecology provide a powerful multiscalar, historical, people-centric perspective by which to understand the long-term dialectical relationship between humans and the environments they created. If we accept the idea that human agents have played and continue to playa primary role in creating landscape, there is hope that active human intervention informed by this perspective can confront contemporary issues such as global warming, loss of biodiversity, and unsustainable development.…”

Section: Toward a Human-centric Understanding Of Naturementioning

confidence: 99%

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Erickson¹

2006

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology

203

139

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IS A comprehensive concept in anthropology referring to the cultural and genetic control of plants and animals and the processes of adopting farming and living in permanent settlements. Native Amazonians domesticated and cultivated a variety of crops (but few animal species) many millennia before the arrival of Europeans. In this chapter, I explore a simple hypothesis: that Amazonian peoples of the past invested more energy in domesticating entire landscapes than in domesticating individual plant and animal species. Through landscape engineering and the use of simple technology such as fire, the past inhabitants "domesticated" the forest, savanna, soil, and water of the Bolivian Amazon, which had profound implications for availability of game animals, economically useful plants, overall biomass, and regional biodiversity. Because the signatures of human activity and engineering are physically embedded in the landscape, archaeology can playa major role in studying these phenomena. The pre-Columbian peoples of the Bolivian Amazon built raised agricultural fields, practiced sophisticated water-management techniques, and lived in large, well-organized communities millennia before European contact. They rearranged soils, altered drainage, constructed earthworks, made marginal lands productive, and in some cases may have increased local biodiversity.Two themes that are now recognized as myths-one of a pristine environment and the other of the ecologically noble savage-have long dominated the popular and scientific literature on Amazonia. The myth of the pristine environment is the belief that the Americas consisted largely of undisturbed nature before the arrival of Europeans, who subsequently destroyed the environment with their agriculture, mining, and city building. The myth of the ecologically noble savage is the idea that past and present indigenous peoples always existed in harmony with this undisturbed nature. In both myths, nature 236 CLARK L. ERICKSON is imagined as being in a state of perpetual equilibrium with old, undisturbed forests as the ideal form.Environments portrayed as being in this pristine state are often those with low populations of native peoples practicing "traditional" lifeways. Most or much ofAmazonia was considered such a place. In the past few decades, however, research has shown that this state was recently created and not the product of timeless harmonies. Indeed, much of what has been viewed as "pristine wilderness" in the Amazon is the indirect result of massive depopulation after the arrival of Europeans. Within a century, Old World diseases, slavery, rnissionization, resettlement, and wars eliminated the great majority of the indigenous inhabitants from these landscapes. As a whole, Amazonia did not return to its sixteenth-century population level until the twentieth century. Historical ecologists have shown that before that depopulation occurred, native peoples directly determined much ofAmazonia's environmental structure and content. Thus, present-day Amazonian landscapes were sha...

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“…This broad appeal has also evoked strong concerns about the tensions between the different criteria and orientations of the academic and applied audiences for these findings (Agrawal 1995(Agrawal , 2002Appadurai 1995;Antweiler 1998;Purcell 1998;Sillitoe 1998aSillitoe , b, 2000Brosius 1999;Dove et al 2007). …”

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confidence: 99%

Indigenous climate knowledge in southern Uganda: the multiple components of a dynamic regional system

et al. 2009

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Farmers in southern Uganda seek information to anticipate the interannual variability in the timing and amount of precipitation, a matter of great importance to them since they rely on rain-fed agriculture for food supplies and income. The four major components of their knowledge system are: (1) longstanding familiarity with the seasonal patterns of precipitation and temperature, (2) a set of local traditional climate indicators, (3) observation of meteorological events, (4) information about the progress of the seasons elsewhere in the region. We examine these components and show the connections among them. We discuss the social contexts in which this information is perceived, evaluated, discussed and applied, and we consider the cultural frameworks that support the use of this information. This system of indigenous knowledge leads farmers to participate as agents as well as consumers in programs that use modern climate science to plan for and adapt to climate variability and climate change.

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Analyses and Interventions: Anthropological Engagements with Environmentalism

Cited by 160 publications

References 116 publications

Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power: insights from anthropology and political ecology

8. The Domesticated Landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon

Indigenous climate knowledge in southern Uganda: the multiple components of a dynamic regional system

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