Political Ecology: Nonequilibrium Science and Nature‐Society Research

Abstract

Political ecology has emerged as an interdisciplinary space where concepts from the physical and social sciences are utilized to understand nature‐society relationships. In this paper, we explore how political ecologists have used concepts from nonequilibrium ecology to address concerns over the interactions between land management and livelihood practices. We begin by demystifying how equilibrium and nonequilibrium have been used in ecology, demonstrating the dialectical relationship between these divergent frameworks and how each impacts understandings of living systems. Then, we review how political ecologists employ these concepts to examine environmental knowledge production, as well as the role of livelihoods and anthropogenic disturbances in conservation and restoration. We also discuss how nonequilibrium ecology has shaped our own research trajectories and finish the paper by offering some reflections on the possibilities and pitfalls for political ecology’s use of nonequilibrium ecology to bridge the physical‐human divide in geography.

Intervention: Critical physical geography

“…There are numerous other examples of CPG work, such as research on the ways in which institutional power is coded into land-cover classification (Robbins 2001), the interrelated neoliberalization of environmental science and management in stream restoration (Lave et al 2010;Lave 2012aLave , 2012b, the effects of socio-economic conflicts on water management and climate change adaptation (Carey 2010;Carey et al 2012), and the ways in which existing hydrological models entrench certain tradeoffs about who is at risk from flooding and who loses and gains from it (S. Lane et al 2011), among many others (Proctor 1998;Robertson 2006;Crifasi 2007;Sutter 2007;Sayre 2008;Hird 2009;Linton 2010;Lorimer 2010Lorimer , 2012Mansfield et al 2010;Clark 2011;K.M. Lane 2011;Grabbatin and Rossi 2012;Mahoney and Hulme 2012;Simon 2012;Tadaki et al 2012;Wainwright 2012;Doyle et al 2013;Barron et al in review). Although this work spans a wide range of topics and fields within geography, its common characteristic is deep engagement with both theories of power and physical science, using integrative explanatory frameworks to better illuminate the co-production of socio-biophysical systems.…”

Introduction to special issue on critical physical geography

“…The articles in this special issue provide a small sample of the rapidly growing body of integrated physical and critical human geography research, which stretches across biogeography (e.g. Biermann, 2014;Duvall, 2014;Grabbatin and Rossi, 2012), geomorphology (e.g. Lane et al, 2013;Urban, 2005;Wilcock et al, 2013), pedology (e.g.…”

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

“…Moore 2011b, 132), claims of metabolic rift as uniquely capitalist phenomena are predicated on assuming ecological balance. They imply a relative harmony between people and ecosystems before capitalism (Rudy 2001, 58), an argument discredited by findings of nonequilibrium dynamics (Grabbatin and Rossi 2012) and undermined by historical examples of non-capitalist environmental degradation furnished by Foster (1994). 6 The metabolic rift thesis in particular, just like Chew's "ecological time," unravels when applied to actually existing ecological processes.…”