Reimagining Political Ecology

Who and What Is a “Population”? Historical Debates, Current Controversies, and Implications for Understanding “Population Health” and Rectifying Health Inequities

“…A new wave of work contesting the still reigning idea of "the average man" can currently be found in recent theoretical and empirical work in the social and biological sciences attempting to analyze population phenomena in relation to dynamic causal processes that encompass multiple levels and scales, from macro to micro (Biersack and Greenberg 2006;Eldredge 1999;Eldredge and Grene 1992;Gilbert and Epel 2009;Grene and Depew 2004;Harraway 2008;Illari, Russo, and Williamson 2011;Krieger 2011;Lewontin 2000;Turner 2005). Also germane is research on system properties in the physical and information sciences (Kuhlmann 2011;Mitchell 2009;Strevens 2003).…”

“…As for the inherent relationships characterizing populations, both internally and externally, I suggest that four key types stand out, as informed by the ecosocial theory of disease distribution (Krieger 1994(Krieger , 2001(Krieger , 2011; the collaborative writing of Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary biologist, and Marjorie Grene, a philosopher of biology (Eldredge and Grene 1992); as well as works from political sociology, political ecology, and political geography (Biersack and Greenberg 2006;Harvey 1996;Nash and Scott 2001). As tables 2 and 3 summarize, these four kinds of relationships are (1) genealogical, that is, relationships by biological descent; (2) internal and economical, in the original sense of the term, referring to relationships essential to the daily activities of whatever is involved in maintaining life (in ancient Greece, oikos, the root of the "eco" in both "ecology" and "economics," referred to a "household," conceptualized in relation to the activities and interactions required for its existence [OED 2010]); (3) external and ecological, referring to relationships between populations and with the environs they coinhabit; and (4) in the case of people (and likely other species as well), teleological, that is, by design, with some conscious purpose in mind (e.g., citizenship criteria).…”

Patrimonio, paisaje y convivencialidad: experiencias de desposesión en el sur de Chile

“…Habiéndose abierto espacio para la comprensión procesual de la existencia social de los seres humanos, es aún preciso incorporar a las otras especies que concurren en la historia y transformaciones de los paisajes. Esta perspectiva promueve la articulación de la historia con la biología (Brosius, 1999;Biersack y Greenberg, 2006;Escobar, 1999), lo cual nos invita a pensar el paisaje como el conjunto de interacciones entre personas, organismos e hitos, como una síntesis simbiótica entre seres humanos y naturaleza. El paisaje, a diferencia de la sociedad o del ambiente, entraña la asociación evanescente de significados e hitos, e importa la lugarización del mundo.…”

Revisiting Maine’s lobster commons: rescaling political subjects

“…Biersack and Greenberg 2006;Rocheleau and Roth 2007;Elmhirst 2011). Some with poststructural inclinations explore subjectivity more deeply, rejecting dualistic taxonomies of structure and agency that undergird some structuralist work.…”