Foster, John B., Brett Clark, and Richard York. 2010. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Williams, Chris. 2010. Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books.
This article both synthesizes and critically evaluates a now large, multi-disciplinary body of published research that examines the neoliberalization of environmental regulation, management, and governance. Since the late 1970s, neoliberal ideas and ideals have gradually made their way into the domain of environmental policy as part of a wider change in the global political economy. While the volume of empirical research is now such that we can draw some conclusions about this policy shift, the fact that the research has evolved piecemeal across so many different disciplines has made identifying points of similarity and difference in the findings more difficult. After clarifying what neoliberalism is and explaining why the term 'neoliberalization' is preferable, the article analyzes the principal components and enumerates the social and environmental effects of this multifaceted process. By offering a comprehensive and probing survey of the salient literature, I hope not only to codify the existing research but also to guide future critical inquiries into neoliberal environmental policy.
*Full article is in French
English abstract: This paper proposes to analyze the environmental services provided by farmers in order to clarify the diversity of transactions within the same field. We distinguish two main categories of services: “Service internalization“ corresponding to the internalization of an externality by seeking to modify the joint product, and “Service Delivery“ corresponding to a contract to provide the service. We then cross this characterization with the modes of governance (sectorial vs. territorial) of the environmental services. This analysis allows us, first, to have a better understanding of the dynamics of environmental service supply, and second, to highlight the poor integration of environmental issues in agriculture. The categories generated are illustrated from several empirical studies carried out between 2002 and 2010 in the framework of three research programs.
Spanish abstract: Este documento propone caracterizar los servicios ambientales provistos por los agricultores con el fin de clarificar la diversidad de transacciones dentro de la misma denominación. El artículo distingue dos categorías principales de servicios: “la internalización de servicios“ correspondiente a la internalización de una externalidad a través de modificar el producto conjunto, y “la prestación de servicios“ que corresponde a un contrato de prestación de servicio. Los autores cruzan entonces esta caracterización con los modos de gobierno (sectorial vs. territorial) en el que los servicios ambientales se inscriben; cruce que permite, por un lado, comprender la dinámica de la oferta de servicios ambientales, y por otra parte, remarcar la escasa integración de los problemas ambientales en el sector agrícola. Las categorías producidas son ilustradas a partir de varias investigaciones empíricas llevadas a cabo entre 2002 y 2010 en tres programas de investigación.
French abstract: Cet article propose de caractériser les services environnementaux fournis par les agriculteurs dans le but de clarifier la diversité des transactions qui relèvent d'une même dénomination. Deux catégories principales de services avec quelques déclinaisons ressortent : le « service d'internalisation » visant à internaliser une externalité en cherchant à modifier le produit joint ; le « service prestation » correspondant à un contrat de prestation de service. Nous croisons alors cette caractérisation avec les modes de gouvernance (sectorielle vs territoriale) dans lesquels les services environnementaux s'inscrivent, croisement qui permet, d'une part, de comprendre les dynamiques d'off re de services environnementaux, et d'autre part, de remarquer la faible intégration des problèmes environnementaux dans le secteur agricole. Les catégories produites sont illustrées à partir de plusieurs investigations empiriques réalisées entre 2002 et 2010 dans trois programmes de recherche.
Land is central to Icelandic identity. It is birthright, heritage, a site of memory and belonging; mountains and fjords are the stuff on which Icelandic dreams are made. Land is made culture through story and song, told at family gatherings, and sung at schools and on hiking trips. Icelandic identity was built on this imagining, coupled to a vision of Icelanders as an exceptional people, a Viking race. The events of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which exposed institutional corruption, caused many Icelanders to doubt the Viking image. At the same time, Iceland has been invaded by tourists. This article, based on participant observation, a survey and interviews, argues that one significant effect of the post-GFC foreign invasion has been a transformation of the cultural and moral order in Iceland, away from the boasting Viking and towards a new set of values within which land and nature occupy an even more central place.
Mexican villagers endured three decades of dispossession during the late nineteenth-century dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1880, 1884–1911). The transfer of most lands held by communities known as pueblos led many rural people to join the Mexican revolution of 1910–1917, and it helped to structure the postrevolutionary politics. Using E. P. Thompson's concept of “community,” this article suggests that villagers' sense of solidarity formed by their shared lives within the pueblos, and leavened by collective experiences during the Díaz dictatorship and revolution, helped them to forge a new identity as campesinos with an inherent right to land reform during the postrevolutionary era. A core component of campesino identity was opposition to hacienda owners. This opposition set up a struggle over land during the 1920s and 1930s that led some landowners to “weaponize nature” by destroying natural resources such as forests rather than turning it over to villagers through the land reform.
This article analyzes the geopolitical imaginations promoted via environmental education in the school textbooks of five states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In doing so, it builds bridges between critical studies of education and political ecology. It shows that, when addressing environmental problems, the textbooks examined depoliticize environmental problems and sustain political and economic power structures. They do so by individualizing responsibility for environmental problems, legitimizing political and economic elites, associating environmental protection with wider societal goals, and externalizing environmental problems.
This thought piece reflects on the workings of modern migration through the prism of metabolism. It contends that the metabolic idiom productively underscores how migration as a process is enabled and evoked by particular flows of materials and energy and how the movement of migrants engenders social and environmental transformations.
From Slow Food and farmers' markets to ecolabels and fair trade an unprecedented number of consumer-based alternative food movements have risen in response to concerns about the environmental and social effects of industrialized agriculture. Some research suggests that these movements are successful in their efforts to reconnect communities, demystify global food chains, and produce sustainable foods, which are healthier for the planet and human bodies. Yet other scholars argue that the contemporary focus on consumer responsibility in policy and practice indicates much more than a process of reflexive modernization. The devolution of responsibility to consumers and the dominance of market-based solutions, these scholars argue, reflect the growing influence of neoliberal environmental governance. From this perspective these movements are naive in their assumption that consumers have the power necessary to overcome the structural barriers that inhibit significant change. These critics argue that the focus on consumer responsibility excludes those without access to consumer choice, reproduces social hierarchies, and fails to deliver the political and redistributive solutions necessary to achieve sustainability. Drawing on research across the social sciences this article surveys the existing evidence about the effectiveness of consumer-based movements in their attempts to create sustainable food systems.
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed during informal discussion and from formal interviews with colleagues, together with literature on recent changes in academia, leads us to argue that neoliberal individualism, shaped by management tactics that constantly measure individual performance and output, is making academia an increasingly insecure place in which to work and study. The consequences of this insecurity include increasing mental health problems among both students and staff, intensifying competition at the expense of collegiality and collaboration and an overall decrease in the quality of academic jobs and teaching. Although the discipline of anthropology can help us better understand our own conditions, the personalisation of problems and the focus on success obscure the anthropological lens, which looks at social and cultural structures of power and depends on critical reflexivity.
