Militarized Ecologies: Visualizations of Environmental Struggle in the Brazilian Amazon

Marzec, Robert P.

doi:10.1215/08992363-2392048

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In so doing, the planetary gaze invoked deep-rooted ‘apocalyptic fears about the end of the earth’ (DeLoughrey, 2014: 266). This sense of urgency created by satellite remote sensing resonated well with the early environmental security debate in the 1990s and its alarmist tone (Marzec, 2014: 235). Yet the planetary gaze of the described visual assemblage did not simply produce another discursive frame of a pre-existing environment.…”

Section: The Co-evolution Of Remote Sensing and Environmental Securitymentioning

confidence: 82%

“…First, the militarization of geophysical research during the Cold War created new associations between geoscientists and security actors that were crucial for the emerging imaginary of the environment as a security problem. Marzec (2014: 244) describes how this emerging actor-network led, for example, to the US defense and intelligence community’s interest in climate change in the early 1990s: In 1992 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to establish relations with climate scientists in the program Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis, or MEDEA, when it declassified satellite imagery for ‘patriotic’ climate scientists.…”

Section: The Co-evolution Of Remote Sensing and Environmental Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, I take Copernicus and a range of similar satellite remote sensing projects as a starting point to reflect upon the materiality of visual technologies such as remote sensing and their role in the construction of environmental threats. For this, I draw upon the existing literature on environmental security as governmentality (Grove, 2010; Methmann and Oels, 2015; Oels, 2013; Rothe, 2011) and on the role of images and visuals in the construction of environmental threats (Manzo, 2012; Marzec, 2014; Methmann and Rothe, 2014). This literature is reread through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its notions of ontological politics, immutable mobiles, and assemblage (Latour, 1986; Latour and Hermant, 2006; Mol, 1999, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Seeing like a satellite: Remote sensing and the ontological politics of environmental security

Rothe

2017

Security Dialogue

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The article furthers the debate on environmental security by highlighting the role of visual technologies such as satellite remote sensing in the construction of threats and risks. It provides a rereading of the critical literature on environmental security through the lens of Actor-Network Theory and argues for understanding environmental security as a form of ontological politics. A theoretical framework around the notion of visual assemblage is developed that accounts for the hybrid, socio-technical character of visual technologies like satellite remote sensing, and shows how these render environmental risks and threats visible, intelligible, and thereby governable. Equipped with this framework, the article traces the development of a visual assemblage of satellite remote sensing from the early days of the Cold War until today and reveals its close co-evolution with environmental security discourses and practices. Three major contemporary remote sensing projects are analyzed to reveal how this global visual assemblage enacts multiple versions of environmental security: as resilience of local populations and ecosystems, as a series of local risk factors that become manageable through market-based risk management, and through a ‘meteorology of security’ based on the collection, harmonization, and automated analysis of big (environmental) data from multiple sources.

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Section: The Co-evolution Of Remote Sensing and Environmental Securitymentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: The Co-evolution Of Remote Sensing and Environmental Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Seeing like a satellite: Remote sensing and the ontological politics of environmental security

Rothe

2017

Security Dialogue

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“…Water stress events such as droughts add political pressures to water allocations and social unrest. In many instances, when mega water projects that are financed by core countries face local opposition usually by indigenous peoples (Marzec 2014) in periphery countries, the result is armed forces and deaths. The majority of structural driver analyses within environmental sociology focus on economic and demographic factors.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Militarization and water: a cross-national analysis of militarism and freshwater withdrawals

Alvarez

2016

Environmental Sociology

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The treadmill of destruction theory identifies the military as a major contributor to environmental problems. Water resources exploitation is one major problem that has been insufficiently studied by sociologists. Utilizing the treadmill of destruction framework here, I aim to assess how the military influences water use in nations. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, I utilize the treadmill of destruction theory to explain how the military interacts with water resources through combat and civilian operations. Second, I empirically demonstrate militarization influences on freshwater withdrawals through a fixedeffect analysis of 126 countries between 1997 and 2011. Militarization is measured as the number of military personnel relative to the population and military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. My results show that as military personnel and spending increases, there is a corresponding increase in freshwater withdrawals. My analysis suggests militarization is an important structural driver of environmental impacts including freshwater resources.

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“… 11. In his insightful article on militarized ecologies in the Brazilian Amazon, Robert Marzec (2014: 252) shows how indigenous peoples enacted their resistance to the construction of Belo Monte Dam on the Xingú River by confronting a global representational apparatus, demonstrating ‘the positive possibility of ecocritical visualization within and in excess of the age of spectacle’. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Skin, paper, tiles: A cross-cultural history of Kadiwéu art

Martins

2018

Journal of Material Culture

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This article focuses on the global traffic in images relating to Kadiwéu culture in South America, analysing the extent to which they are entangled in the group's continuing sense of presence. It begins with Kadiwéu designs as they appeared in the sketchbook of the artist-explorer Guido Boggiani in the late 19th century. It then explores the mapping of Kadiwéu territory and the practices and protocols informing a politics of land rights, cultural property and economic survival, looking in particular at the commissioning of Kadiwéu designs for a housing estate and an associated exhibition in Berlin early in the 21st century. By developing a cross-cultural history of Kadiwéu art that considers the transnational networks across different times and spaces, including the case of a transcultural history of copyright, the article seeks to contribute to the ongoing rethinking of the colonial visual archive and its afterlife.

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Militarized Ecologies: Visualizations of Environmental Struggle in the Brazilian Amazon

Cited by 5 publications

References 6 publications

Seeing like a satellite: Remote sensing and the ontological politics of environmental security

Seeing like a satellite: Remote sensing and the ontological politics of environmental security

Militarization and water: a cross-national analysis of militarism and freshwater withdrawals

Skin, paper, tiles: A cross-cultural history of Kadiwéu art

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