Power & the Environment Flashcards
(32 cards)
How does theory affect politics?
- How we look at the world shapes what we see
- What we see shapes what we think can, should, or must be done
- Different theories give us different ways of seeing, and different ways of seeing give us different problematics
– Problematics carve out different paths for politics
What is theorein and what ideas does it stem from?
To consider, speculate, or look at
- Theoros: spectator
- Thea: a view
- Horan: to see
What is political ecology?
- Sees environment through the lens of power
- Highlights how power shapes environment
- Power dynamics between people
What can the power dynamics between people structure?
- Access to resources
- Distribution of environmental goods and bads
- Ways environmental issues are defined, prioritized, and addressed
- Physical contours and composition of material
What are the key concepts of political ecology?
- Marginality
– Political ecology tries to understand how different power differentials are manifest in the environment and how peoples interact with the environment - Ecology
– How do living beings relate to their surroundings
– How does power shape the environment, tend to take a systems level approach to this
—> How do power/matter/energy flow, and how does one part of the system affect another - Political economy
– Power characterizes politics but can also characterize economics
– Political ecologists will key into how political economy can shape the environment
Implications of political ecology
- Environments are socially constructed
– Environment is enmeshed with power - Environment and nature are not the opposite of society and culture, but interconnected with them
– Political ecologists reject the division of society and nature and believe the two cannot be neatly divorced from one another - Environmental disrepair is a social, political, and economic challenge (ie. not merely a technical or scientific one) and so will require social, political, and economic response
– The environment is affected by social pressures are much as anything else
What is the dominant political-economy ideology and what does it entail? (Budds)
Neoliberalism
- Free market most efficient, equal, and neutral way to allocate resources
- Dominant political, economic, and political-economy ideology
What was the connection between Chile and neoliberalism and how they use environment according to Budds?
- Neoliberalism informed development economics in 1980s Chile and the way Chileans interacted with their environment
- Neoliberal thought encouraged developing nation-states, like Chile, to privatize and marketize natural resources in order to increase exports and grow their economies
- Following this logic, the Chilean government privatized water rights
- On Budds’ analysis, this ultimately increased water scarcity and aggravated social inequality
What were the 1981 Chilean Water Code tenets?
- Water remains public property but state grants private rights of use, which can be bought and sold
- Expected to increase efficiency of water use by channeling it into high value projects
How did privatization decrease water access in Chile? (Budds)
- 1981 Pinochet government rewrites Chilean Water Code
- Water code incentivizes private investment into lucrative, export-driven commercial agriculture, namely water-intensive, fruit production (vs. subsistence agriculture and production for national markets)
- This increases demand for water and rights of use, which largest producers lay claim to
– Established producers were more likely to already have water rights, have the ability to make informal water rights into formal rights, and have the financial ability to buy more water rights
What did power shape in Chilean water access? (Budds)
- Agricultural producers’ ability to compete for, access, and use water
- Chilean state’s compliance with tenets of neoliberalism
What does Mitchell (Carbon Democracy) believe about energy regimes?
- Different energy regimes can support different kinds of politics
- By facilitating different kinds of political activity and empowering different kinds of actors
How does Mitchell believe coal regimes shaped politics?
19th century coal regime supported mass democratic politics
- Extraction, production, and transportation was worker-intensive
- Which empowered workers to make demands others had to listen to
– Coal needed a lot of specialized skills for production and was necessary for almost every aspect of the economy
- Workers used this power to democratizing ends (eg. enfranchisement)
– With coordination they could essentially turn the fuel supply off, therefore their threats were credible and they had to be taken seriously
How does Mitchell believe oil regimes shaped politics?
20th and 21st century oil regime undermined mass democratic politics
- Extraction, production, and transportation was not worker-intensive
– And sabotage was difficult
- Which made it harder for workers to translate labor power into political power
What do we take away from Mitchell?
The material properties of different natural resources and the way that societies use them can impact politics
- Not only does power shape the environment, but the environment can shape politics as some forms of power are easier to transport/trade/etc.
What is meant by depoliticization?
- Removes an issue from politics, closing it to democratic contestation and deliberation
- Decouples an issue from questions about and language of power
– Power had hidden itself, so power is harder to see and question
What is meant by post-politics?
- Rejects disagreement
- Champions “consensus” or particular political viewpoint framed as if it were a universally agreed on perspective
- Endows “consensus” with normative power while also obscuring this power
- The point of post-politics is to circumvent politics altogether, get past it
What do depoliticization and post-politics prioritize?
- Expert-led social administration
- Technical-managerial order
What are the implications of the priorities of depoliticization and post-politics?
- Governance and policy-making tend to affirm the status quo
- Politics become something experts do, not something democratic citizens do
Environmental depoliticization according to Swyngedouw
- Question of how best to respond to environmental degradation is closed to public deliberation
- Because we all allegedly already agree on what must be done: reduce the amount of CO2 in the air by commodifying carbon
- Framed as a point of consensus, this perspective becomes difficult to challenge or otherwise critique
What are the three common discursive invocations of nature? (Swyngedouw)
- Nature as floating signifier or montage
- Nature as law or norm
- Nature as desire for harmony
Nature as floating signifier or montage (Swyngedouw)
- Nature becomes something of a mosaic and groups together all sorts of things (eco-cities, dna, trees, etc.)
- Nature tends to slip into the idea of the fantastical or imaginary
Nature as law or norm (Swyngedouw)
- x is natural meaning good or how it ought to be whilst y is bad and should not be
- Nature becomes an anchor for morality
Nature as desire for harmony (Swyngedouw)
- Longing for unity or connection
- Nature conjures up an idea of a place where everyone has everything they want
- Nature is seen as an Eden
- Nature is both a promise (to live a harmonious life) and a threat (if we mess nature up destruction is bound to come)
