Towards enriched narrative political ecologies

Abstract

Work on narrative, story, and storytelling has been on the rise across the humanities and social sciences. Building on significant work on these themes from Indigenous, Black, and Feminist scholarship, and other varied traditions, this piece explores and elaborates the potential regarding the elicitation, sharing, and analysis of stories for nature-society studies. Specifically, the piece examines core contributions along these lines to date, as well as the methodological, analytical, political, and transformative potential of story and storytelling to enrich, broaden, and deepen work in nature-society, political ecology, and environmental justice. All told, focus on story and storytelling, offers a number of relevant and rich openings to understand and engage complex, unequal, and dynamic socio-natures. While these elements have been present in nature-society work from some traditions and lines of inquiry, the time is ripe to broaden and deepen these engagements to more fully imagine, and respond to, key nature-society challenges.

Political ecology III: Praxis - doing, undoing, and being in radical political ecology research

“…For instance, storytelling (Harris, 2021), counter-mapping (Moore et al, 2019), participatory research methods (Bezner Kerr et al, 2018), and public engagement (Demeritt, 2015) are of mounting interest to political ecologists. Research has been used to help advance justice goals of communities and proffer new research findings but also to challenge legal instruments and state operations (Anthias, 2019).…”

Relationality

“…As Lyotard pointed out, while technical discourse is often the privileged language of those in power, it is narrative that is the language that binds community (Lyotard, 1984). Narrative can then be a way of giving voice to the most marginalized (Harris, 2021). Narrative can be a vehicle for revealing needed policy reforms and reconnecting those disenfranchised from the process (e.g., Huff and Cooke, 2022).…”

Learning from Aotearoa: Water governance challenges and debates

“…Although work on narrative has been on the rise in political ecology studies (c.f. Harris, 2021), the example by Lanari and Overton stands out as it argues not only that there were diverse and contested storylines regarding a possible dam development, but in fact the reason why one storyline became dominant, and displaced alternative framings, was precisely due to the fact that it contained all of the necessary elements of story (with beginning, middle and end). Other framings, they contest, contained only partial elements, and as such did not gain the same traction.…”