Book Description
This volume offers a unique, integrative perspective on the political and ecological processes shaping landscapes and resource use across the global North and South. Twelve carefully selected case studies demonstrate how contemporary geographical theories and methods can contribute to understanding key environment-and-development issues and working toward effective policies. Topics addressed include water and biodiversity resources, urban and national resource planning, scientific concepts of resource management, and ideas of nature and conservation in the context of globalization. Giving particular attention to evolving conceptions of nature-society interaction and geographical scale, an introduction and conclusion by the editors provide a clear analytical focus for the volume and summarize important developments and debates in the field.
Review
"An illuminating and comprehensive volume of case studies in political ecology, edited by two of the field's most distinguished analysts. Addressing issues of politics, landscape, and representation, chapters examine topics ranging from urban waterscapes to mountain agriculture, from GIS and environmental science to ecotourism and slavery. The book provides a tour d'horizon of political ecology through its foundational discipline, geography. Useful for students, scholars, and practitioners, this will be an indispensible text for all readers interested in the biophysical and social forces that shape land use."--Susanna Hecht, PhD, Department of Urban Planning, UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research
"Zimmerer and Bassett have assembled an important set of classic and newer essays that emphasize the full integration of ecological process into political ecology. All the chapters take seriously the analysis of nature's agency in political ecology, enabling the authors to collectively 'push the envelope' of work in this dynamic field. While authors are primarily geographers, the volume also incorporates sociological and anthropological perspectives. The editors' introduction and conclusion demonstrate the wide relevance of political ecology to environmental understandings and change, while transcending traditional environmental management and sustainable development paradigms. Addressing interwoven themes of scale, history, ecology, epistemology, and access, this provocative book will be useful in classroom and research settings. It is sure to become an important, classic text for political ecologists of all stripes."--Nancy Lee Peluso, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley
"Zimmerer and Bassett have assembled an important set of classic and newer essays that emphasize the full integration of ecological process into political ecology. All the chapters take seriously the analysis of nature's agency in political ecology, enabling the authors to collectively 'push the envelope' of work in this dynamic field. While authors are primarily geographers, the volume also incorporates sociological and anthropological perspectives. The editors' introduction and conclusion demonstrate the wide relevance of political ecology to environmental understandings and change, while transcending traditional environmental management and sustainable development paradigms. Addressing interwoven themes of scale, history, ecology, epistemology, and access, this provocative book will be useful in classroom and research settings. It is sure to become an important, classic text for political ecologists of all stripes."--Nancy Lee Peluso, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley
