Political Ecology

One imagining for solving the problems of climate change, which is of growing importance, is geoengineering, or the technological regulation of Earth's climate to avoid the consequences of climate change. The dynamics of this new ‘solution’ is analysed in terms of a general pattern of problem/solution and breakdown at both the psychological and social level. The psychological theory of Carl Jung, shows how paying attention to neglected symbols and imaginative formations can help solve or mitigate existential problems. However, access to these solutions can be channelled by what have been called "cultural complexes". These cultural complexes reinforce current patterns of power and social existence, and can lead to repressions of solutions and upsurges from the social and natural 'unconscious', which are usually dealt with by shadow projection. A characteristic of geoengineering is that it proposes that society is more natural and unalterable than nature itself, despite common awareness of the likely unforseen and disastrous consequences of geoengineering. The chapter argues that geoengineering is embedded in a free market cultural complex, which drives its perception and politics.

Climate change and ecological instability have the potential to disrupt human societies and their futures. Cultural, social and ethical life in all societies is directed towards a future that can never be observed, and never be directly acted upon, and yet is always interacting with us. Thinking and acting towards the future involves efforts of imagination that are linked to our sense of being in the world and the ecological pressures we experience. The three key ideas of this book – ecologies, ontologies and mythologies – help us understand the ways people in many different societies attempt to predict and shape their futures. Each chapter places a different emphasis on the linked domains of environmental change, embodied experience, myth and fantasy, politics, technology and intellectual reflection, in relation to imagined futures. The diverse geographic scope of the chapters includes rural Nepal, the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Sweden, coastal Scotland, North America, and remote, rural and urban Australia.

Ecologies, ontologies and mythologies of possible futures. Linda H. Connor and Jonathan Paul Marshall

Part 1 Intellectual and speculative engagements with ecological change
1. Towards an anthropology of the future: visions of a future world in the era of climate change. Hans A Baer
2. The first draft of the future: journalism in the ‘Age of the Anthropocene’. Tom Morton
3. Ecological complexity and the ethics of disorder. Jonathan Paul Marshall

Part 2 The politics of engagement
4. Futures of governance: ecological challenges and policy myths in tuna Fisheries. Kate Barclay
5. The work of waste-making: biopolitical labour and the myth of the global city. David Boarder Giles
6. From Sociological Imagination to ‘ecological imagination’: Another Future is Possible. Ariel Salleh, James Goodman and S. A. Hamed Hosseini

Part 3 Environmental change in specific places and cultures
7. Indigenous ontologies and developmentalism: analysis of the National Consultations for the Kiribati Adaptation Program. Felicity Prance
8. When climate change is not the concern: realities and futures of environmental change in village Nepal. Sascha Fuller
9. Ontologies and ecologies of hardship: past and future governance in the Central Australian arid zone. Sarah Holcombe
10. From good meat to endangered species: indigenising nature in Australia’s Western Desert and in Germany’s Ruhr District. Ute Eickelkamp

Part 4 Body and psyche
11. Climate change imaginings and Depth Psychology: reconciling present and future worlds. Sally Gillespie
12. What wrecks reveal. Penny McCall Howard
13. Emergent ontologies: natural scepticism, weather certitudes and moral futures. Linda H Connor

Part 5 Technological mythology
14. Official optimism in the face of an uncertain future: Swedish reactions to climate change threats. Mark Graham
15. Geo-engineering, imagining and the problem cycle: a cultural complex in action. Jonathan Paul Marshall
16. The creation to come: pre-empting the evolution of the bioeconomy. Jeremy Walker

Excerpt: "…while STS-inspired approaches to economics are not scarce, much rarer however are studies that, in a way that makes felt the multiplicity and specificity of living patterns of attach- ment in late capitalism, allow such ancient wisdom to silently animate their engagement with typically ‘economic’ practices of consumption, credit, borrow- ing, and debt. While the concept of ecology is not thematised as such, it is pre- cisely the attempt to pay attention to the transversal patterns of attachment between humans, things, feelings, forms of knowledge, calculation, and antici- pation that one may find in Joe Deville’s Lived Economies of Default. That is, a mode of attention that makes present how ‘[e]conomies feel and are felt’, how they ‘breathe and hope and suffer’, how ‘[e]conomies live’ ."

Bu çalışma, bilim ve eğitimin, diğer alanlarda olduğu gibi ekoloji alanında da önemli olduğu düşüncesi üzerine kurulmuştur. Günümüzde ekolojik sorunların önlenmesinde bilim ve eğitimin en önemli unsurlar olduğu savunulmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, mevcut bilim ve eğitim yaklaşımı eleştirilmektedir. Ekolojik sorunları önleyebilmek için her şeyden önce egemen bilim ve eğitim anlayışı değişmelidir. Bu değişiklik, ekolojik ilkelerin esas olduğu bir bilim ve eğitim anlayışı ile mümkündür.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Bilim, Eğitim, ekolojik sorunlar, ekolojik düşünce.

Özellikle 1960’lardan sonra yönetim düşüncesi içinde ekolojik yaklaşımların yönetim öngörüleri de yer almaya başlamıştır. Son 50-60 yıldan bu yana çeşitlenerek zenginleşen ekolojik yönetim öngörüleri, günümüz yönetim krizleri karşısında daha ciddi olarak sorgulanmaya ve hatta değişik ölçülerde hayata geçirilmeye başlamıştır. Farklı ekolojik yaklaşımlarda ortak olarak savunulan başlıca yönetim ilkeleri, küçük ölçeklilik ve ademi merkeziyet/özyönetimdir. “Yaşam merkezli” bir içeriğe sahip olan ekolojik yaklaşımlar, insanın insan ve doğa üzerinde tahakküm kurmasını önlemeye yönelik bütüncül bir yönetsel perspektif sunar. Söz konusu perspektif, ancak küresel ölçekte hayata geçtiği takdirde insan ve doğa üzerindeki yıkıcı sürecin sona ereceğini vurgular.
Bugün ekolojik yönetim öngörüleri, dünyanın farklı yerlerinde bazen aslına uygun biçimde, bazen de araçsallaştırılarak denenmeye başlamıştır. Bu tür uygulamalardan birisi de ülkemizdeki  “Demokratik Özerklik” söylemidir. Türkiye’nin Güneydoğu Anadolu Bölgesi’ne odaklı siyasal bir söylem olan “demokratik özerklik”, geçmişte Stalinizm merkezli sosyalist bir arka plana sahipken, 2000’lerden sonra özyönetim, özgürlükçü belediyecilik ve konfederalizm gibi yönetsel öngörüleri olan “Toplumsal Ekoloji” felsefesine göre biçimlenmiştir. Bugün teorik ve felsefi yapısını büyük ölçüde Toplumsal Ekoloji Akımı’na göre biçimlendirmiş ve pratiğe yönelmiş durumda olan Demokratik özerklik söyleminin, teorik-felsefi altyapısına benzeşen ve ondan farklılaşan yönleri bulunmaktadır. Halihazırda sadece siyasal düzlemde gündeme gelen demokratik özerklik, bilimsel olarak yeterince tartışılmamış olduğunda, hem savunanlar hem de karşı çıkanlar üzerinde çeşitli yanılsamalar yaratmaktadır. Dolayısıyla söz konusu yanılsamaların azalması için demokratik özerkliğin çok boyutlu olarak irdelenmesi gereklidir.
Bu çalışmanın konusu, ekolojik bir teoriye dayalı olan demokratik özerklik söylemidir. Çalışmanın amacı, Toplumsal Ekoloji Akımı’nın öngörüleri ile Demokratik Özerklik söylemini karşılaştırmalı bir perspektifle analiz ederek, paralel olan noktaları belirlemek ve Demokratik Özerkliğin Toplumsal Ekoloji’yi araçsallaştırdığını ortaya koymaktır. Karşılaştırmalı bir yöntemle yapılacak olan bu analiz, ülkemizdeki yeni siyasal yaklaşımların tartışılmasına ve demokratik özerklik söyleminin, anayasada tanımlanmış yerel yönetim tanımından farklılaşmış boyutlarının anlaşılmasına katkı sağlayacaktır. Öte yandan çalışma, “ekolojik düşüncelerin salt doğadaki tahribatı önlemeye yönelmiş düşünceler bütünü” olduğuna yönelik genel kanaatlerin yeniden gözden geçirilmesine ve ekolojik düşüncenin, merkezinde doğa olmayan siyasal düşünceleri de etkileyebileceğine yönelik yeni bakış açılarının gerekliliğini ortaya koyacaktır. Çalışma, literatür taramasına dayalı olup, Toplumsal Ekoloji ve demokratik özerklik söylemiyle sınırlandırılmıştır ve Kongre’nin “Yönetişim ve özyönetim” başlığıyla ilgilidir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Toplumsal Ekoloji, demokratik özerklik, Türkiye, konfederalizm, özgürlükçü belediyecilik, özyönetim.

The subject of this study is administration ideas prevailing in the approaches towards ecological problems. The study aims to compare administration ideas of ecological thought and environmental protectionism that are considered as two different types of approaches to ecological problems. The first section of the study will focus on the basic concepts relating to the issues discussed in the study. In the second part, the problem of the difference between ecological thought and environmental protectionism will be scrutinized. Thirdly, the relationship between ecological problems and administration ideas will be discussed. Then, these two viewpoints will be examined in respect of their ideational structures, principles, approaches towards ecological problems as well as their goals and objectives. The study has been conducted on a common systematic that involves the basic problem in administration thinking, an outlook to the sovereign system and the principles of administration approach. Accordingly, the status of the state in the administrative process and the outlook on its functioning have been discussed along with the various levels of administration policies.

This edited collection contributes to the theoretical literature on social reproduction—defined by Marx as the necessary labor to arrive the next day at the factory gate—and extended by feminist geographers and others into complex understandings of the relationship between paid labor and the unpaid work of daily life. The volume explores new terrain in social reproduction with a focus on the challenges posed by evolving theories of embodiment and identity, nonhuman materialities, and diverse economies.

Reflecting and expanding on ongoing debates within feminist geography, with additional cross-disciplinary contributions from sociologists and political scientists, Precarious Worlds explores the productive possibilities of social reproduction as an ontology, a theoretical lens, and an analytical framework for what Geraldine Pratt has called "a vigorous, materialist transnational feminism."

Just over a decade after the landmark publication of Life's Work (Mitchell, Marston, and Katz, 2004), in this chapter we take stock of current debates and new developments in social reproduction, including theoretical and pragmatic challenges to building a politics of life's work.

Cambodia's headlong 'development' since 1993 has given the country one of the highest growth rates in Asia. This clear-headed, disturbing and often poignant volume counts up the human and ecological costs of uncontrolled 'development', deforestation, land-grabbing, foreign intrusions and endemic corruption on Cambodia's depleted landscape and on its distressed. resilient and long-suffering population." – David Chandler, Monash University, Australia. "This is an important book, and not just for those interested in Cambodia's environmental transformation. Empirically rich, it provides a powerful antidote to the comforting notion that economic growth can go hand-in-hand with environmental protection and this, in turn, with human development. Notwithstanding a few shards of hope, all-in-all this is a sobering volume that should be read by scholars, practitioners and officials alike." – Jonathan Rigg, National University of Singapore. Written by leading authorities from Australasia, Europe and North America, this book examines the dynamic conflicts and synergies between nature conservation and human development in contemporary Cambodia.

This paper introduces the concept of ‘not-quite-neoliberal natures’ in relation to contemporary theoretical debates and Latin American political processes. The phrase is meant to signal both our appreciation of and reservations about theoretical elaborations of neoliberalism, post- neoliberalism, and (post-)neoliberal natures in relation to the wide variety of reforms currently transforming resource governance in Latin America. After reviewing theoretical debates about (post--)neoliberalism and situating them within Latin American history, we present the major themes emerging across the papers in this special issue: (1) the prevalence of concomitant and overlapping political processes, (2) the productivity of tensions and contradictions, particularly with respect to the state-society relationship, and (3) dynamism, or an insistence on the depth and liveliness of ‘context’ and ‘contestation’.

La historia ecológica o ambiental, como rama institucionalizada de la historiografía, surgió hace cuatro décadas al calor de las luchas del movimiento ecologista y la conciencia creciente del rápido deterioro ambiental. Contorneada primero en EEUU, rápidamente se extendió a otros países, tanto europeos como y extra-europeos. Existen diversas maneras de entender el asunto que aborda la historia ambiental, pero provisoriamente se la puede entender a partir de la noción de enfatizar y darle un lugar teórico especial a la naturaleza como agente en los procesos sociales humanos. A partir de esta idea muy general, se han desarrollado diversas maneras de vincular la sociedad humana y el ambiente natural. En este trabajo intentamos pasar revista rápidamente sus argumentos principales, para seguidamente indicar algunas posibles maneras de incorporarlos al estudio de la historia regional/provincial.