Political ecology 1: From margins to center

Abstract

Some epistemologies remain marginalized in political ecology. Here I demonstrate why it is important to learn from various relational margins to further advance the field. Insights and critiques from feminisms and decolonial theories have enriched and expanded political ecology in nuanced ways, yet they continue to remain relegated to the margins. I contend that it is vital to engage and advance different forms of intersectional, interdisciplinary, and international feminist inquiries to address ongoing socioecological crises at the current conjuncture. Different epistemological, methodological, pedagogical, and praxis insights showcase how and why representation matters if we are to pursue decolonial futures and solidarities.

Hemispheric, Relational, and Intersectional Political Ecologies of Race: Centring Land‐Body Entanglements in the Americas

“…I appreciate Vasudevan’s (2019) explicitly rich feminist contribution and the importance of intimacy as a “crucial analytic” to racial capitalism. Still, I am struck by how “insights and critiques from feminist political ecology … have vastly enriched and expanded PE in nuanced ways, yet continue to remain relegated to the margins” (Sultana 2020:2). This is partially why this Afterword centres the entanglements of Indigenous and Afro‐descendant lands and bodies following critical feminists across the hemisphere as an effort to advance our understandings of multiple kinds of power—gender, carnal and racial power—shaping struggles over nature.…”

Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: a feminist reading of overlapping crises

“…The importance of intersectionality in research are many, but largely because it is (in policy language) a value-added that necessitates disaggregated data requirements but also gets behind such data, and therefore it can help formulate policies and projects that don't further marginalize people and reproduce socio-ecological inequities. This requires close understanding of local contexts and complexities, as well as engagement with insights from evolving bodies of scholarship and theories (such as feminist scholarship, critical race theories, postcolonialism, decolonial and Indigenous scholarship, and so on) (Sultana, 2021).…”

Policy Studies during an age of uncertainty

“…Policy problems can also be found in academia. One concern that is often raised is the privileging of some kinds of knowledge and research methods over others (Goertz and Mahoney 2012;Monroe 2005;Sultana 2020). There is no single methodological approach that can address the questions set out above and so a pluralism of approaches are encouraged.…”