Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Political ecology in the key of policy: From chains
of explanation to webs of relation
Dianne E. Rocheleau
Clark University, School of Geography, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, United States
Received 9 October 2006; received in revised form 16 February 2007
Abstract
Political ecology (PE) is rooted in a combination of critical perspectives and the hard won insights distilled from field work. The theoretical base of political ecology was joined, by Piers Blaikie and others, to an unflinching commitment to empirical observation of biophysical and socio-economic phenomena in place. To this already ambitious mix was added a practical intent to contribute to material as
well as social change: a practical political ecology of alternative development ran beneath the surface of much of this work. For many this
led to serious encounters with policy and the machinery of policy research institutions. While seemingly contradictory with the critical
tenets of political ecology, Blaikie’s pursuit of this pathway led beyond the ivory tower to Political Ecology in the Key of Policy, initially
to inform national and international policy and eventually expanding – through the work of second-generation PE – to address internal
policy in social movements and alternative development networks. Among recent variations on political ecology that have built partly on
the work of Blaikie, Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) expands PE to address women as a group, and gender as a category. FPE and poststructural PE are based on multiple actors with complex and overlapping identities, affinities and interests. An emergent wave of political
ecology joins FPE, post-structural theory, and complexity science, to address theory, policy and practice in alternatives to sustainable
development. It combines a radical empiricism and situated science, with feminist post-structural theories of multiple identity and ‘‘location’’, and alternative development paradigms. This approach honors the legacy of Piers Blaikie and other PE founders yet incorporates
the insights and political projects of feminism, post-structural critique and autonomous or alternative development movements.
Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Blaikie; Political ecology; Hybrid ecologies; Feminist; Post-structural; Policy; Development
1. Introduction
It may come as a surprise to some scholars to find me
tracing roots of Feminist Political Ecology to The Political
Economy of Soil Erosion. The fact is, I have been weaving
‘‘chains of explanation’’ into webs of relation and situated
science for the last 20 years. Some might have expected my
intervention in this special issue, to be an ovarian critical
comment on the seminal work of a pioneer political ecologist and illustrious geographer. Not so. In all seriousness, I
owe a great intellectual and professional debt to Piers Blaikie and will trace his influence in my own early applied
E-mail address: [email protected]
0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.02.005
work as well as more recent developments in Feminist
Political Ecology, Situated Science and Alternative Development/Alternatives to Development. Each of these fields
is characterized by a mix of contributions from Blaikie’s
work, from foundational precedents, to common roots,
contemporary convergences, some significant points of
divergence and eventually offshoots in new directions. I will
characterize these through a brief chronological and topical
account of the contributions of Piers’ work to my own
research, writing and thinking as well as that of students
and colleagues in and out of the academy. I will conclude
with a discussion of new trends in Feminist and Post-structural Political Ecology, Practical Political Ecology and
Alternative Development/Development Alternatives, and
the potential pathways for expansion of PE.
D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
2. A short history of distant connections
My own introduction to Piers Blaikie’s work seems at
first glance very far removed from the study of women,
gender and environment, or even political ecology. In
1986 I was recently hired at the Ford Foundation Nairobi
Office as a Program Officer in Rural Poverty and Resources
for East and Southern Africa. One of my first tasks was to
familiarize myself with the leadership and staff of the
national ministries and non-government organizations
(NGOs) dealing with agriculture, forestry, and rural development. On the occasion of my first visit to an official of
the Kenya Institute for Agricultural Research I was prepared for a dry, fairly formal introductory visit and had
no great expectations for the exchange. Once admitted
and welcomed to his office I began to explain my proposed
program on agriculture, forestry and social justice, thinking it might be a hard sell in a national technocracy.
No sooner had I broached the topic than my imagined
technocrat reached across his desk with a copy of The
Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries
by Piers Blaikie (1985). ‘‘Have you seen this?’’ The enthusiastic scientist noted that it was both practical and political, and as such, extremely useful for thinking about soil
conservation and land management issues in terms of larger scale processes as well as local conditions and concerns. He noted that this put in perspective several of
our mutual interests in rural development and resource
management.
This encounter reminded me of the extent to which the
leaders and staff of national bureaucracies and technocracies use and create indigenous and hybrid knowledge.
‘‘Local knowledge’’ in this case included the experience
and memories of colonial occupation that informed a critical political perspective among even highly placed technocrats in a decidedly conservative government.
I was already accustomed to writing working papers
and technical reports for applied research audiences but
the pathway of Blaikie’s critical academic book to the
desk of a senior scientist and administrator provided a
new role model for my future scholarship. It meant that
I need not (and perhaps should not) choose between academic, practical and policy roles and that I ought to allow
myself to combine these perspectives, even if sometimes it
meant alternating the voice and changing the foregrounded versus back-grounded elements according to
the purpose and audience of a given publication. The
Political Economy of Soil Erosion also strengthened my
resolve to finish Agroforestry in Dryland Africa (Rocheleau et al., 1988), which has since graced the desks of
many ministry and foreign aid officials as well as field
practitioners across Africa.
The Political Economy of Soil Erosion linked the everyday grit of soil conservation and resource management to
politics, and it did so specifically in Kenya, among other
cases. Blaikie clarified the messy implementation and the
ambiguous reception of soil conservation in the mid-
717
1980s by excavating the checkered political past of colonial
soil, water and range management programs and the way
that soil conservation structures became symbols of colonial oppression and sites of active political resistance. This
extended to the specific examples of resistance among the
Wakamba in Machakos District, people who many of my
expatriate social science colleagues in Kenya had erroneously identified as consistent collaborators with colonial
and subsequent national governments. Blaikie’s work
helped to overturn this incorrect characterization.
His combination of practical environmental and
resource management history with critical social and political studies presaged the kind of work that many of us now
take for granted across Political Ecology, Science and
Technology Studies and critical approaches to resource
management in Environmental History (Turner, 1996).
We can see the echoes of Blaikie’s critical and practical history in a raft of PE and related1 scholars, from the profoundly historical work of some authors (Peluso, 1992;
Carney, 2001; Fairhead and Leach, 1995; Guha, 1989) to
more contemporary and STS focused arguments (Escobar,
1995; Goldman, 2003; Turner, 2003; Taylor, 2005). While
critical development studies had long since taken issue with
the prevailing development paradigm using macro-empirical social and economic evidence of failed models at
national scale, Blaikie’s work made a direct appeal to local
and regional scale with empirical evidence from the field as
well as archival reports. This too came as validation and a
message that critical applied geographers could and should
move across scales of time and space, as well as bridging
the barriers between critique and technique in resource
management.
Blaikie set a particularly important precedent for several
geographers and anthropologists – now active in PE and
related fields – working in the 1980s in international agricultural research centers. This group included Judith Carney, Anthony Bebbington, Simon Carter, John Raintree,
Robert Rhoades and myself. Once I encountered Blaikie’s
work I began to further develop the critical dimensions of
the Land User Perspective for Agroforestry (Rocheleau,
1987) and other work for development and policy audiences, with a new sense that this was a proper exercise of
academic inquiry, expertise and power. Once within the
academy (from 1989 onwards), I focused increasingly on
gender, class and imperial power in forestry, farming, land
use, environment and development, as well as participatory
democratic methods (for alternative research and development) in Kenya as well as the Dominican Republic.
1
The ‘‘related’’ category invoked in this article refers to people who do
not self-identify as political ecologists, perhaps in part due to the difference
in the way the term is understood and applied in North America and
Europe, as well as some scholars’ primary self-identification with other
fields and perspectives. Their own choices of label do not, however,
preclude their contributions and roles within the study of PE and in the
work of self-identified PE scholars.
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D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
3. Political ecology in the key of policy
Along with several others now identified as Political
Ecologists (by themselves or others) I could engage in this
work within both development institutions and the academy, in part with the space and license created by Blaikie’s
first ‘‘hybrid’’2 work. Critical agrarian and environmental
studies in Africa (Watts, 1983; Mbithi and Wisner, 1973;
Porter, 1979) as well as Amazonia (Schmink and Wood,
1977, 1992; Hecht and Cockburn, 1989) also opened up
the field. Meanwhile, Blaikie joined with Harold Brookfield to write Land Degradation and Society (Blaikie and
Brookfield, 1987) and called for a regional political ecology, which firmly joined political economy and cultural
ecology. Taken together, The Political Economy of Soil
Erosion and Land Degradation and Society established five
hallmarks of what I call ‘political ecology in the key of
policy’:
1. Multiple methods, objectives, actors and audiences:
Critical explanation
Practical analysis and problem-solving
Testing and framing of policy
2. Integration of social and biophysical analysis of power
relations and environment:
Mixed methods
Integrated analysis
3. Multi-scale analysis:
International, national, regional, local, household;
Policy, practices, effects
4. Empirical observation and data gathering at household
and local level
5. Chains of explanation combining structure and agency
Given the limitations of space, and the focus of other contributions to this volume, I will emphasize the first two of
these five elements in the discussions that follow.
4. Multiple objectives, methods, actors and audiences
The practice of working simultaneously to address multiple objectives and audiences has been widely though not
uniformly and universally adopted in PE. Critical theoretical explanation (directed at other academics) is, by definition, a common objective of all work in PE, as is a general
trend toward multiple objectives. However, Blaikie, along
with a handful of critical and applied development scholars3, has been instrumental in creating space for policy relevant PE research, that seeks to inform national and
international policy as well as practical and technical problem solving efforts by national ministries, bilateral and multilateral aid organizations, and NGOs. For another group
the second objective is most likely to be research about
social movements (Peet and Watts, 2004), or among a
related group, analysis with and for indigenous and other
social movements (Bebbington, 1997; Earle and Simonelli,
2005; Brosius, 1999; Escobar, 1995, 1999), learning from as
well as about them. A growing effort in PE addresses the
conflicts and convergences between development, conservation, cultural survival, gender equality and political
autonomy in a search for social, ecological and technological alternatives (Brosius et al., 2005; Harcourt and Escobar, 2005). Blaikie has tended to focus on economic and
environmental concerns with national and international
agencies while many PE practitioners now address these
perennial issues as well as questions of culture, gender
and autonomy with civil society groups and opposition
movements.
4.1. Multiple methods and the varieties of participant
observation, sites and voices
These different articulations of objectives are expressed
through the very distinct ‘‘voices’’ and subject positions
of researchers as well as their choice of methods and their
focus on particular groups of actors. Blaikie has often been
a critical participant observer within technocratic projects,
frequently a constructive critic and sometimes a reluctantly
detached observer within the confines of the thing that has
become sustainable development. His written work does
not focus on that process but is informed by it. PE scholars
have situated themselves as Critical Participants and/or
Observers in Sustainable Development and have participated, observed, and analyzed to varying degrees, in distinct ways, with different actors, and under very different
terms. Participant observation as a general method is widespread, though the location, practice and identification of
the researchers vary widely.
PE participant observers at the grassroots level may
focus their writing primarily on critique, in content and
tone, rather than practice or policy (Peluso, 1992; Watts,
1983; Carney, 1993; Schroeder, 1999; West, 2005; Sundberg, 2004). Others, closer to Blaikie’s approach, apply
results from household and community-based participant
observation and formal surveys to address technical field
practice by rural people, state and NGO actors, to inform
policy and practice. This mix of qualitative and quantitative methods with technological, ecological and social
imagination in ‘‘hybrid’’ research is embodied in the work
of several PE researchers.4 The combination of participant
observation with writing on social and ecological practice,
technique and critique, and the positionality of researchers
so engaged, is exemplified and discussed in publications on
4
2
I use hybrid in this case to refer to the combination of theoretical and
applied, critique and technique, social and biophysical.
3
Louise Fortmann, Ben Wisner, Robert Chambers, Pauline Peters,
Stephen Biggs, Nick Abel and Robert Rhoades, among others.
Bassett and Crummey (2003), Batterbury et al. (1997), Schroeder
(1999), Rocheleau and Ross (1995), Robbins (1998, 2004), Turner (2003),
Klooster (2006), Roth (2004), Goldman (2003), Hovorka (2006), Hernández et al. (1998), Wisner et al. (2005), Zimmerer (2000), Fox et al. (2005),
Harris and Weiner (2001) and Yapa (1996).
D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
feminist and/or mixed methods in political and cultural
ecology (Rocheleau, 1995; Fortmann, 1996; Brosius,
1999; Nazarea, 1998; Paulson and Gezon, 2004; Rhoades,
2001; Scoones and Thompson, 1994; Jarosz, 1993; Poats
et al., 1988). These differ from Blaikie largely in their explicit focus on methods and the position of the researcher in
their writing.
Blaikie and others also use participant observer status in
‘‘field sites’’ that go beyond the farm household and the
local landscape to the halls of power in national and international technocracies, NGOs and field project locations
(Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Bryant, 2005; Muldavin, 2000;
Pieck, 2006; Roth, 2004). Other PE researchers work with
multiple layers and sites of participation, observation and
analysis within very different contexts, for example in direct
collaboration with social movements in actions, plans and
deliberations on internal policy (see work by Margaret
Fitzsimmons and Arturo Escobar). They may inform social
movements – directly or indirectly – based on participant
observation in distant centers of power or among less visible and vocal people within movement constituencies
(Roth, 2007; Earle and Simonelli, 2005; Wolford, in press;
Asher, 2004).
4.2. The moral economy of soiling our hands: critical,
political and practical work
As a self-proclaimed practitioner of applied and policyfocused PE in development, Blaikie has often been singled
out, unfairly, by critics of applied development research.
Many PE scholars, among others, have voiced misgivings
about his explicit multi-objective approach and the academic/development practitioner model of PE he practiced
as a member of the University of East Anglia International
Development Faculty. He generated part of his salary from
consultancies, contracts and grants, and often worked for
the World Bank, bilateral aid agencies, and national ministries. Academic purists as well as more engaged critical
scholars have expressed distrust, and have discounted or
even denounced such work.
Blanket disparagement of applied work or research done
within and for national and international development
institutions suggests that this is tainted by money and politics, while research within the academy (or alternatively,
NGOs and social movements) is somehow guaranteed to
be clean and untouched by the exigencies of money and
politics. Ethical dilemmas are not unique to multilateral
and bilateral aid institutions, in contrast to the academy
or civil society organizations (see Wolford, in press). The
academy too can be a dirty place. It is certainly not free
of corrosive and corrupting influences equal to those that
plague consulting and salaried work with development
agencies. The tenure process protects our right to speak
out once we are tenured, but also facilitates and intensifies
the social, political and ideological screening for entry and
retention in academic posts (Batterbury, submitted for
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publication). The litmus tests may range from left to right
and from applied to theoretical.
Beyond ideological and paradigm differences, pre-emptive risk aversion can determine hiring decisions. Once
hired, faculty face unwritten tenure requirements, including publication in ‘‘flagship’’ refereed journals, in spite of
the fact that interdisciplinary development scholarship
and hybrid theoretical/applied scholarship may not be welcome in these venues. Less prestigious professional journals and edited volumes may circulate more widely
among scholars and practitioners and better reach developing countries through subsidized subscriptions, mailings or
free access web sites. The ‘‘flagship’’ requirement can have
a chilling effect on applied and/or interdisciplinary work,
and on the careers of those who refuse to submerge or
abandon it.5
This raises several questions about the inherent superiority of basic research and/or research conducted strictly
within academic institutions or even in academic collaborations with NGOs and social movements. Is adherence to
‘‘company lines’’ inherently more pernicious than the
acceptance of academic orthodoxy required even by ‘‘alternative’’ or critical journals? Is the process of seeking,
obtaining and managing academic grants any less political
than doing research for the World Bank, USAID, and
resource management research institutes? The degree of
political meddling does not necessarily correlate with academic, NGO or ‘‘grassroots’’, versus large multilateral
and bilateral institutions. All PE researchers need not follow the same path to be academically legitimate or politically ‘‘clean’’. We all need to examine our own motives
and modes of operation and their consequences for various
groups of people and other living beings.
4.3. Antecedents for soiled hands, muddy boots and multiple
affiliations
There is ample precedent in traditional Geographical
scholarship for ‘‘Blaikie-esque’’ international applied and
consulting work, by none other than Carl O. Sauer. In
1983, John Raintree, my colleague at the International
Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), gave me
a photocopy of a non-refereed journal article that has been
passed from hand to hand among researchers engaged in
interdisciplinary agricultural and rural land use studies in
international institutes. The article, Science and Authority
in International Agricultural Research, by Edmund Oasa
and Jennings (1982) was published in the Journal of Concerned Asian Scholars. The authors, who did not enjoy
the protections of the academy and reportedly suffered professionally for this publication, recounted the key role
played by Carl Sauer in the 1950s as a Rockefeller Foundation consultant in the early design of the international agri5
Blaikie’s publication of high-profile books opened space for PE articles
(his own and others) in journals.
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D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
cultural research centers, and specifically the International
Center for Maize and Wheat Research (CIMMYT) in
Mexico. The article quotes Sauer’s report and recounts
his resignation from the endeavor because the consortium
adopted a commercial mono-cropping approach, based
on ‘‘improved’’ maize and wheat.
Against Sauer’s advice the Consortium of Governments
for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) discounted what they labeled as ‘‘minor crops’’ in complex
mixed cropping systems, which were (and still are) crucial
to nutrition, cultural continuity, political autonomy and
good resource management.6 The CGIAR ignored Sauer’s
warning and resignation under protest. They chose the
path of highly engineered, mono-cropped staples, ostensibly as sources of food and income for rural farmers and
as cheap food for what they saw as the politically vulnerable urban masses. A generation later, the academic and
professional progeny of Sauer – and others of like mind
– have entered the CGIAR and shifted the orientation of
several research centers throughout the world (to varying
degrees) toward smallholder production of multiple crops
and products, according to diverse social and ecological
logics. Whether one wishes to view this as lasting reform
or simply as ‘‘damage control’’ in on-going struggle, the
results matter for rural people.
The moral of this story is that geographers have long
engaged as consultants in ‘‘development’’ and have used
that experience to enrich their academic work and vice
versa. Engaged academic researchers protected by tenure
can provide a channel for critical voices moving into and
out of powerful development institutions. Blaikie is thus
‘‘embedded’’ not only with the various agencies that have
commissioned and funded his work over time but also in
a longstanding and rich tradition of critical applied
research that has been submerged and all but erased in
the history of Geography and PE.
The semi-independence of the academically affiliated
consultant or research collaborator provides a unique platform for exchange of insights and timely linkages at the
interface between the academy, the sustainable development ‘‘establishment’’ and the growing community focused
on development alternatives.7 Blaikie’s work has been productively situated at this interface for three decades, more
consistently and explicitly so than Sauer’s, and provides
one working model of balancing applied and critical work
in PE.
6
The political, cultural and ecological implications of this ‘‘development’’ trajectory are newly real to me as I sit writing in the State of
Chiapas in southern Mexico over half a century later (2006) and
contemplate the unfolding impact of genetically modified maize and the
neo-liberal industrial models of agriculture on the people and ecologies of
the region.
7
For current examples of critical engaged academics in sustainable
development, see Quist and Chapela (2001) on genetically modified maize
in Oaxaca and Mac Chapin (2004) on conservation, development,
indigenous people, donors and censorship of critical voices in environmental organizations.
5. Integration of social and biophysical data, field methods
and analysis
The second major feature of PE in the key of policy is
the fusion of social and biophysical topics, expertise, and
perspectives. This second point resonates strongly with
the first in that it continues a discussion about crossing
over between academy and policy. Blaikie has demonstrated the importance of combining technological imagination with sociological imagination (in the sense
articulated by C. Wright Mills (1959/1976). The Political
Economy of Soil Erosion represents his first and perhaps
best known synthesis of these topics and paradigms in
PE, along with Land Degradation and Society. However,
he continued to combine social and technical sciences in
new applications. From prior studies in Africa and South
Asia to his current research with Joshua Muldavin on the
social and material effects of sustainable development
interventions in the Himalayas, he has consistently
maintained a double focus on social and environmental
changes related to development, past, present and
proposed.
5.1. Making a difference in landscapes and lives ravaged by
HIV/AIDS
Blaikie incorporated this integrated approach into
research beyond the usual reach of PE when he and Tony
Bennett pioneered research on the agricultural effects of
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Autoimmune
Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Uganda and elsewhere in
eastern and southern Africa. Informed by PE experience
and perspectives, they combined social and biophysical
topics and methods in the fields of health, agriculture, planning and land use politics, to address conditions of widespread HIV infection and rising rates of full-blown
AIDS. In this case they incorporated the social relations
of power into a primary focus on the pandemic. Their
research documented the socially and spatially differentiated impacts on agriculture and land use, the range of
impacts by place and group, and the possible responses
by national and international agencies as well as farm
households and local communities.
In 1987, after their proposed project was rejected and
then re-drafted into a politically sanitized call for (more
conservative) proposals on the topic by a major bilateral
aid organization, the duo took their original proposal
on the road. They pieced together funds and developed
a policy research project. A few years later Blaikie and
Bennett (1992) published their book on the agricultural
effects of the AIDS pandemic and possible responses in
Africa. They documented the existing effects, predicted
the future consequences and projected the implications
for agricultural practice and policy, including the feeding
and care of rural AIDS orphans and the larger demographically bisected population, heavy with children,
grandparents and ailing parents. The study combined
D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
data on morbidity and mortality, livelihoods, and labor
allocation, as well as cropping systems, yields and agricultural practices, before and after AIDS struck farm families in Uganda. The researchers then suggested specific
agricultural crops, farming practices and policy responses
to cope with the effects they had documented. What
started out sounding like a coldly calculated set of questions became an important tool for coping with AIDS
from regional to local level. This is a prime example of
Blaikie’s ‘‘hybrid’’ research across social and biophysical
domains.
5.2. Convergent trends in cultural and human ecology
Other researchers have pursued this kind of transdisciplinary and paradigm-bridging research linking biophysical and critical social domains of ‘‘development’’ – in
fairly equal emphasis– including several teams and individuals working in PE, Environment and Development,
‘‘ethno-ecology’’ and critical social studies of rural land
use, ecology and production.8 Among the pioneers of
Ecological PE within forest and agro-ecology are several
authors primarily known to Cultural and Political Ecology
scholars working in Latin America. Their work ranges
from theoretical treatment of the politics of environmental
knowledge, and documentation and scientific legitimation
of indigenous and local knowledges, to ethno-ecology of
the practices of people in forests and agro-ecologies in
Mexico (Gomez-Pampa et al., 1987; Sarukhan, 1996;
Toledo, 2000; Leff, 1994; Bray and Merino Perez, 2004),
Central America (Vandermeer and Perfecto, 1995) and
Brazil (Posey and Balee, 1989; Anderson, 1990).
During the 1990s several researchers in human dimensions of global environmental change, as well as land use
and cover change, also integrated elements of social and
biophysical sciences to inform and change policy. They
used information and insights from field surveys and participant observation in their analyses of regional data sets
and remote sensing imagery, and in the development and
use of regional Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Some authors from this field label themselves as post-positivist cultural and political ecologists, and explicitly engage
PE concepts and methods (Roy Chowdhury and Turner,
2006). Closest to Blaikie’s simultaneously critical and positivist practice is the research summarized in People and
Pixels (Liverman et al., 1998) and Turner et al. (2001) in
the Yucatan.
8
This includes a long list of publications over a 20 year period, some of
which are listed here (Scoones, 1999; Fairhead and Leach, 1995;
Rocheleau et al., 1996, 2001; Turner et al., 2001; Porter, 2006; Robbins,
2004; Zimmerer, 2000; Bassett and Crummey, 2003; Richards, 1985;
Scoones and Thompson, 1994; Chambers et al., 1989; Rhoades, 2001;
Nazarea, 1998; Posey and Balee, 1989; Anderson, 1990; Santasombat,
2003; Ganjanapan, 2000; Padoch and Peluso, 1996; Roth, 2004; Laungaramsri, 2001; Robbins, 1998).
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6. New developments, key points of departure and the future
of PE
The plethora of new departures and developments in PE
in no way implies a contradiction, opposition or rejection
of Blaikie’s previous work. Rather, it demonstrates the
dynamism and vibrancy of the field in which he has played
a foundational and continuing role. I will not attempt to
cover all the varieties of PE currently burgeoning in theory
and practice, within and outside of the academy, but will
briefly discuss two trends: increasing engagement with
activism, situated knowledge and social movements; and
a return to ecology, science and the embrace of complexity.
6.1. Engagement with activism and social movements
The tendency toward increasing focus on and engagement with activism and social movements builds on Blaikie’s work as well as research by scholars such as
Marianne Schmink, who has long studied and worked with
feminist, workers’ and indigenous peoples’ social movements in Brazil. Some of her writing with colleagues is
couched in a descriptive, analytical or critical voice about
organizations, activities and events, from Para to Acre
(Schmink and Wood, 1992) while recent publications have
featured a more practical and policy-focused framework
(Zarin et al., 2006). Blaikie has, in turn, often addressed
topics that were of concern to activists and part of raging
controversies in sustainable development circles, but usually within a national or international agency context, in
a detached voice, and in a neutral positivist framework.
Following Schmink, many PE scholars now contribute
directly to social movements, from joint research on technical questions to participant observer insights on national
and global trends of relevance, to participation in critical
internal analyses of movements, NGO’s and progressive
states (Asher, 2004; Harcourt and Escobar, 2005; Wolford,
in press). They may also join in the World Social Forum
and other discussions across national, regional and local
boundaries, with social movements or organizations representing diverse groups of people seeking alternative futures
(Fisher and Ponniah, 2003).
What is new in PE is not the engagement with the issues
or the movements themselves, but the tendency to write
about the movements per se, to express advocacy, support
and constructive critique, to conduct joint empirical
research on policy and practical questions and to explicitly
describe the terms and processes of collaboration (Wolford, in press). That is, PE scholars are increasingly writing
about, with and for social movements and their
constituencies.
Following from this direct engagement with social
movements is the explicit recognition of multiple actors
and identities and of a rising cultural politics within many
movements. This does not imply an acceptance of simple
identity politics, but is rather indicative of a politics of
affinity, as described by Feminist and Post-structural theo-
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D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
rists (Harding, 1986; Haraway, 1991; Harcourt and Escobar, 2005). This trend also brings an unequivocal acknowledgment of conflict and differences within and among
various groups, within and outside of movements.9
6.2. Liberation Ecologies
Liberation Ecologies is a broad umbrella for the raft of
structural PE approaches that have connected with political and social movements to document their progress, analyze the issues they address and explore the political and
economic roots and solutions of the problems they identify.
This approach to PE has been defined largely through the
work of Peet and Watts (2004) and the edited volume of the
same name.10 They emphasize structural analysis of progressive movements that include resistance, both direct
and indirect (see Scott, 1985) to environmental degradation
and displacement, defense of existing land and resources,
and struggles with powerful individuals, corporations or
hostile states for greater control over resources. This
branch of PE ranges from the historical writings of Rod
Neumann (2004) on displacement of people by parks and
wildlife conservation programs, and the gender and classbased analyses of Rick Schroeder (1999), to recent work
by Wright and Wolford (2003) on the Landless People’s
Movement MST) in Brazil. One of the hallmarks of Liberation Ecology is selective support for social movements
and a distinction between ‘‘popular’’ and ‘‘progressive’’
movements.
6.3. Post-structural Political Ecologies
Post-structural PE has incorporated cultural politics,
identity, and discourse analysis, extending Foucauldian
theories and methods into analysis of sustainable development, environmentalism, and conservation science and
practice (Escobar, 1995, 1999; Asher, 2004; Agrawal,
2005; Braun, 2002; Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Demerritt,
2005; Castree, 2005; Bryant, 2005; Paulson and Gezon,
2004; Rocheleau et al., 1996; Pieck, 2006; Biersack and
Greenberg, 2006). This branch of PE addresses social
movements with a strong emphasis on cultural politics,
complex identities and contingent coalitions (Escobar,
1999; Rocheleau, 2001; Moore et al., 2003; Paulson and
Gezon, 2004). The research ranges from cultural and subaltern critiques of sustainable development theories and
practice, to cultural histories of conservation and development, and discourse analysis of colonial and current imperial practices in environmental science, conservation policy
and mapping. It also includes critical analyses and crosscultural science with and for popular movements (Escobar,
1995, 1999; Agrawal, 2005; Asher, 2004; Vandergeest and
Peluso, 2006; Rocheleau, 2001, 2005; Brosius et al., 2005;
Roth, 2004; Wainwright and Robertson, 2003). The ‘‘cultural turn’’, subaltern voices, and post-structural trends
in Geography have brought a new emphasis on multiple
identity, situated knowledge, positionality of multiple
actors (including researchers), and complexity and contingency in social and ecological relations of power (Whatmore, 2002; Massey, 1994; Gibson-Graham, 2006;
Haraway, 1991; Wolford, in press).
6.4. Feminist Political Ecology (FPE)
Feminist Political Ecology has emerged as a sub-field
of PE, and builds on prior scholarship in PE as well as
the work of feminist scholars in development, agriculture,
forestry11, and feminist theories of science and environment ranging from Socialist to Reformist, Ecofeminist
and Post-stucturalist (see Rocheleau et al., 1996; Schroeder, 1999; Carney, 1993; Deere, 1990; Schmink, 1999;
Nelson and Seager, 2005 for more detailed accounts and
references). FPE scholars have extended the multiple scale
analysis of environment and power in PE to gendered
relations both within and beyond the household, from
individual to national scales. We have all sought – each
in different ways – to complicate what has been called
‘‘community’’ and ‘‘local’’ as well as the often presumed
unit of homogeneous conditions and shared interests,
the household (Poats et al., 1988; Momsen, 1991; Momsen and Kinnaird, 1993; Townsend, 1993). While this sets
FPE apart from Blaikie’s approach, the emphasis on
empirical data at local and household scales maintains a
shared thread. What has changed is the focus within as
well as between households and the study of gendered
power relations within local, regional, national and international contexts. Moreover, feminist theories and methodologies have infused our data collection, analysis and
writing about PE topics, ranging well beyond specific
studies of women and gender, a point often lost on the
larger PE community. Theories of multiple, situated
knowledge, imply distinct forms of research processes of
collaboration, from ecological science to political organization and practice. New voices are creating additional
departures, as FPE grows in size, diversity, and theoretical sophistication, particularly with respect to culture,
identity and applications of feminist and post-structural
theory (Sundberg, 2004; Paulson and Gezon, 2004; Asher,
2004).
9
Blaikie has focused on conflict between national states and local
interests but has not addressed conflicts within communities and households, and issues of ethnicity, race, caste or gender.
10
Some approaches to PE with roots in participatory democracy,
ecology as a subversive science, and Liberation Theology (Rocheleau,
1994; Rocheleau and Ross, 1995), are now identified with Feminist
Political Ecology (FPE).
11
This field draws extensively on the writing and practice of Louise
Fortmann, Marilyn Hoskins, Janet Momsen, Marianne Schmink, Susan
Poats, Carmen Diana Deere, Magdalena Leon among others.
D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
6.5. Participatory and practical political ecology for
alternative development
Within PE, common property resource management,
and alternative development, scholar-practitioners have
developed an applied, practical political ecology. They
have entered into experimental forms of critical and
applied research in search of more democratic and effective
models of collaboration with social movements, NGOs and
grassroots groups. These researchers engage with groups
(formally recognized, or simply self-organized) who are
searching for alternative forms of, or alternatives to, sustainable development. They seek to change their conditions, but recognize the limitations and dangers of
sustainable development as promoted and ‘‘delivered’’ by
national and multi-national technocracies, powerful conservation NGO’s and private interests. They may desire
collaboration to resist specific sustainable development
efforts or to develop their own distinct innovations.
Scholars in this field work in various roles, from critical
observers and analysts, to advocates, innovators and practitioners of participatory approaches in surveys, mapping,
‘‘counter-mapping’’, planning and technology design and
the politics of organization and coordination.12 The alternative approaches to Sustainable Development, apart from
process and terms of participation, also include specific
technologies of production and organization. Many of
these efforts incorporate mechanisms such as organic, fair
trade and environmental certification of farm and forest
goods, crafts and other products of cooperative, communal
and ecologically ‘‘sustainable’’ industries (Russell and
Harshbarger, 2002; Klooster, 2006; Hernández et al.,
1998). Some initiatives involve community-based resource
management (trees, wildlife, water or entire ecosystems)
as in the CAMPFIRES programs in Southern Africa (Murphree, 2005; Brosius et al., 2005). These approaches take
PE from participant observation to attempted embodiments of participatory democracy in action, and from critique to working networks of producers and consumers.
However limited by larger economic and political systems,
the performance of these alternatives has become a hallmark of the global movement linked to the World Social
Forum. It is one way to harness practical political ecology,
and to demonstrate that many other worlds are possible
and practical.
7. Return to ecology: ‘‘Hybrid’’ science, and complexity
The ‘‘return’’ to ecology may be a misnomer for some of
us, since we never left it, but it is still fitting to speak of a
‘‘return’’ or revival in terms of academic PE. While the
12
These are summarized in several publications (Bebbington, 1997;
Batterbury et al., 1997; Slocum et al., 1995; Rocheleau, 1994, 2005;
Scoones, 1999; Brosius et al., 2005; Peluso, 1995; Hodgson and Schroeder,
2002; Roth, 2007; Russell and Harshbarger, 2002; Wisner et al., 2005;
Wolford, in press; Bray and Merino, 2004).
723
social side of PE burgeoned in the early 1990s the biophysical dimensions languished, in print if not in fact (Turner,
1996). Empirical, quantitative and ecological data was routinely purged as ‘‘unnecessary’’ or ‘‘excessive’’ from my
own PE publications and I suspect more than a few others.
Equal emphasis on biological and social dimensions of
ecology was discouraged as awkward, if not impossible
or undesirable, and on at least one occasion I thought I
was in danger of excommunication for the transgression
of invoking ‘‘biological metaphors’’ in a PE panel at the
AAG. Blaikie’s presence and publications helped to maintain a place for applied and policy-relevant PE and provided a platform to launch studies of ‘‘hybrid’’ and
‘‘emergent’’ ecologies. Since 1995, several publications
have featured the social relations of power as determinants
of biological and material elements (positive as well as negative) in a variety of landscapes, from sites identified as
‘‘natural’’ to those assumed to be entirely artifacts of
human intervention (Robbins, 1998, 2004, 2005; Fairhead
and Leach, 1995; Bassett and Crummey, 2003; FitzSimmons and Goodman, forthcoming; Guyer and Richards,
1995; Zimmerer, 1997, 2000; Rocheleau and Ross, 1995;
Rocheleau et al., 2001; Roth, 1999, 2004).
The turn back to ecology in PE has brought a parallel
resurgence of ecological and landscape mapping, ranging
from criticism to activism to ‘‘scientific practice’’. The designation of conservation areas has relied increasingly on
landscape (and seascape) zoning into two-dimensional
polygonal territories of eviction and refuge, and of
accepted and prohibited land use and settlement practices.
Yet, multiple, complex and conflicting claims based on
precedents for human use, rights of use and access, actual
and perceived needs of humans and other species, all determine spatial re-structuring and new demarcation of territories across scales. Several PE13 and Common Property14
researchers have explored the power relations in environmental, resource and ecological mapping and the definition
of territories as sites of control over space, specific material
resources and environmental conditions. They examine the
process of mapping itself, as well as using it for practical,
investigative, and explanatory purposes, in scientific, critical and political frameworks (Hodgson and Schroeder,
2002; Brosius et al., 2005; Rocheleau, 2005; Goldman,
2003; Zimmerer, 1997, 2000; Roth, 2004, 2007; Fox et al.,
2005; St. Martin, 2001; Laris and Wardell, 2006; Vadjunec
13
Several PE scholars examine power and maps (Vandergeest and
Peluso, 2006; Braun, 2002; Brosius et al., 2005; Fox et al., 2005; Goldman,
2003; Hodgson and Schroeder, 2002; Rocheleau, 2005; Roth, 2004;
Zimmerer, 2000; Demerritt, 2005).
14
Common Property Resource Management and Community-Based
Natural Resource Management constitute interdisciplinary practices and
groupings of scholars that combine positivist and critical social science
perspectives and methods with varying degrees of environmental science to
address issues of justice, conflict, shared and divided systems of use and
control, and basic needs in relation to land, water, forests, fisheries,
wildlife and other elements of ecologies used, inhabited and otherwise
affected by people.
724
D.E. Rocheleau / Geoforum 39 (2008) 716–727
and Rocheleau, forthcoming; West, 2005; Vandergeest and
Peluso, 2006). What differentiates this PE group from other
critics and practitioners of mapping, remote sensing and
GIS-based research is the simultaneous use and critique
of mapping and engagement in empirical field research
informed by theory. Blaikie’s historical work on social
and material dimensions of resource management provided
important precedents for critical studies of maps as tools of
power, and for applied studies using maps as power-tools
of resistance and self-determination.
A number of ecological and social researchers have also
embraced complexity theories and models and to some
extent network models and metaphors as well as elements
of PE. Some combine studies of complexity (and resilience)15 with cultural and political studies of ecological
change, multiple ways of knowing and understanding ecologies, and diverse ‘‘traditional’’ and evolving models of
sharing and dividing access, use, labor, knowledge, responsibility and control in landscapes and ecologies (Berkes
et al., 2002; Daily et al., 2001; Roth, 1999; Vandermeer
and Perfecto, 1995; Guyer and Richards, 1995; Toledo,
2000; Bray and Merino Perez, 2004). An increasing focus
on policy has also led to combined examination of ecological and political data at field level and analysis of trends at
larger scales (Nigh and Rodriguez, 1995; Roth, 2004;
Zimmerer, 1997, 2000; Brosius et al., 2005; Escobar,
2004; Leff, 1994). Current debates on parks, poverty and
community-based conservation exemplify this dynamic
edge in the borderlands of PE (Chapin, 2004; Agrawal,
2005). The field of biodiversity and conservation literally
calls out for more ecological PE in the key of policy.
8. From regional PE to feminist, post-structural, complex,
and practical PE
While the developments in FPE and post-structural PE
represent, for some, a definitive break with Blaikie’s empirical and practical work, they have served many of us as
bridges back into material ecologies and engagement with
‘‘science’’, but on new terms. A growing group of social
and ecological scholars has embraced complexity theories,
and network models and metaphors, as part of a new integration of cultural and biological realities in PE. The center
of gravity is moving from linear or simple vertical hierarchies (chains of explanation) to complex assemblages, webs
of relation and ‘‘rooted networks’’ (Rocheleau and Roth,
2007; Rocheleau, 2001; Escobar, 2001, 2004), with hierarchies embedded and entangled in horizontal as well as vertical linkages. PE researchers increasingly seek to embrace
complexity without losing the explanatory power of structural relationships, or the empirical roots of PE. Many also
struggle to shift from participant observation to democratic, participatory research, without sacrificing observa15
See the Resilience Alliance website, the on-line journal Ecology and
Society, Gunderson and Holling (2001) on Panarchy, and publications by
Fikret Berkes on ecology, culture and multiple ways of knowing.
tion, and seek to provide a more transparent accounting
of their complex insider–outsider connections.
As the pendulum swings back to a more even mix of critique and technique, and as PE researchers increasingly
conduct studies with and for rather than only about social
movements and people-in-place, we return to Blaikie’s
example of practical and technical research in a critical
frame, in a new context. There is scope in this evolving
PE for a radical empiricism based in observation, but from
multiple positions and perspectives, using the tools of complexity and network models, both social and biophysical.
Concepts of multiple identities and situated knowledge
from Feminist Post-Structural theory can combine with
complexity and network theories and models to change
the way we do science, critique and practical work on sustainable alternatives to development.
While this is not a definitive feminist critique of Blaikie’s
work it is one feminist’s vision of the potential for building
on Blaikie’s prior work to mesh concepts of PE, feminist
theory and complexity. I propose that we base this emerging ‘‘situated science’’ on ‘‘seeing multiple’’ through the
kaleidoscope of a variety of situations, locations, and experience. From the bedrock of Blaikie’s field research combined with development critique, several new pathways
are opening up in PE. They will differ from his work in
the balance of complexity and simplicity, their emphasis
on induction and synthesis versus deduction and analysis,
and in the voice, presence and position of researchers. They
will, however, be unmistakably indebted to Piers Blaikie’s
life’s work as embodied in writing and practice.
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