Literature Review: Political Ecology and the Cultural Politics of Degrowth

Nov 30

INTRODUCTION

Political ecology consists of transdisciplinary research that investigates nature-society interrelations. Rather than generalizing about ‘human’ or ‘anthropogenic’ influences on the environment, it’s scholars look for the fundamental ways that both a lack of social justice and conflicts stemming from historical-political formations influence changes in the environment. This literature review covers a chronological assessment of the anthropological perspectives on political ecology since the 1970’s. It then focuses on the evolving strands of political ecology that deal with activism and social movements for degrowth: in particular, scholarship on the commons movement and the call for a “cultural politics” to prefigure degrowth.

The commons movement advocates for and supports the creation of pooled community resources, rooted in self-management and shared responsibility rather than financial and legal systems. Commons are an ancient tool for social organization and are maintained by over two billion people around the globe today. In New Mexico, for example, native Hispanic-Americans have managed community-based waterways known as acequias since the 1600’s; despite being an arid region, the commons system has kept alignment between community usage of water within the ecological limits (Bollier 129).

Cultural politics considers the political ramifications of global cultural productions across artistic and academic disciplines; it refers to the way that culture—such as people’s attitudes, opinions, beliefs and perspectives, as well as arts and the media—shapes society and political opinion, and gives rise to social, economic and legal realities (Meissner 512). In calling for a “cultural politics of degrowth”, Dutch scholar Miriam Meissner argues for a “tactical employment of cultural practices, values, narratives, and identities to pursue a degrowth-oriented transformation of socio-culture and political economy” (513).

Utilizing comprehensive references on political ecology by Brett Campbell (2018) and Bengt Karllsson (2015), this study traces the lineage of contemporary political ecology: from Wolf’s “Ownership and Political Ecology” (1972), which introduced the term in its modern usage; through Blaikie and Brooksfield Land Degredation and Society (1987) and Richard Peet and Michael Watts’s Liberation Ecologies (1996); to contemporary scholars like Juanita Sundberg and Dianne Rocheleau, who have shifted the focus further away from the identities of vulnerable groups. Instead, they look to identify the systems that create and reproduce inequitable access to and exchange of resources. Drawing on recent work by interdisciplinary scholar Mirriam Meissner (2021), and the call for “Intersectional Ecologies” from Sarah E. Vaughn, Bridget Guarasci,and Amelia Moore (2021), this review argues for political ecology to turn towards a cultural politics of degrowth as “an intervention into how we see, approach, and think environments” (Vaugn et al 285). This study argues for researchers who engage with political ecology to further conceptualize the role culture can play, as both a functional and strategic instrument, in the expanding social movement for degrowth.

POLITICAL ECOLOGY LITERATURE REVIEW

In the early seventies, a special issue of Anthropological Quarterly – focused on land ownership and inheritance in the Alps – contained a brief preface by Eric Wolf, “Ownership and Political Ecology”. Reflecting on how the current implementation of ownership and inheritance strategies within Alps communities was largely shaped by external influences, Wolf argued that a greater awareness of social and political history, coupled with local ecological contexts, was needed to unpack the situation. Essentially, as the community’s autonomous decision-making powers were lessened throughout the 20th century by the “transformation of land, labor, tools and money into commodities”, Wolf suggests that “the use of strategies of ownership and inheritance [were] now increasingly prompted by factors over which the community [had] little control” (203).

Swedish anthropologist Bengt Karlsson, in his entry “Political Ecology: Anthropological Perspectives'' for the 2015 edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, remarks that while this concept may appear self-evident today, anthropology at the time of Wolf’s article was primarily influenced by various forms of environmental determinism. Though the term political ecology only figures in the title of his article, Wolf suggested that different social arrangements do not follow from or are adaptations to the particular ecosystem, but need to be understood in relation to wider historical and political processes. “Ecological factors matter, but to grasp aspects like access, control, or ownership of land in emerging capitalist relations, the influence of nonlocal elites is critical” (Karlsson 351).

“Political ecology is a diverse critical caravan with many co-travelers…'' begins Ben Campbell’s entry in the 2018 International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. He explores the seeds of thought which coalesced into political ecology:

It was born out of the 1970s movement of radical consciousness about the crises facing planet earth, the questioning of science in accounts of these crises, and the crises' connections with the consequences of capitalist growth and recession… [there was] a common motivation to rethink the standard toolbox with which we can understand relationships between structures of power and ecological vulnerability… [beginning with] people's environmental knowledge and practices being embedded in relations of inequality.

Campbell contends that political ecology was sown in the critical thinking soil about ecological crises that weren’t purely “natural” in origin, whose impacts were felt mainly by groups of people who lacked social and economic power. Political ecology, says Campbell, consists of transdisciplinary research that investigates nature-society interrelations, with particular focus on disputes and struggle regarding land and resources. Since its emergence from Wolf’s article, it has remained a loosely defined research field lacking a coherent theory. Perhaps it is more unbounded than “loosely defined”, a hinterland rather than a field. Or as Campbell sums it up, political ecology is an approach: “rather than generalizing about ‘human’ or ‘anthropogenic’ influences on the environment, political ecology looks for the fundamental effects on environmental change of social inequality and conflict embedded in historical-political formations” (Campbell 1).

Political ecologists question the ways that the physical sciences became privileged in accounts of environmental dynamics, and how that privilege impacts the proposed solutions to the problems. Over a decade after its emergence in the seventies, political ecology morphed into a systematic project for challenging both the approaches to intervention and the forms of understanding being offered by development studies. Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield’s 1987 introduction to Land Degradation and Society has been noted as “the launch” for this goal . Blaikie and Brookfield explore and acknowledge the varied reasons why land management can fail (Campbell 1). Their work further developed political ecology as “an approach that combines ecology and political economy to address relations between society and land-based resources, and between social groups and classes with differing access to and use of those resources” (Paulson 44). Bengt Karlsson, in reference to Land Degradation, writes that “critical political ecology analysis commonly goes against the grain of global ecological governance models that are based on the idea of putting a price on nature and hence encouraging environmental stewardship through market mechanisms”. The market leads to an exchange of goods and resources which extracts and erodes from one place to accumulate and pollute another. “One person’s degradation is another’s accumulation,” as goes a well known Blaikie and Brookfield quote (1987).

Tim Forsythe views “Blaikie’s writings on political ecology [as] a turning point in the generation of environmental knowledge for social justice” (756). He argues that Blaikie’s key contribution to political ecology was that he pushed scholars to reframe environmental analysis and policy directly towards addressing the tangible suffering of socially vulnerable groups (Forsyth 756). Campbell points out that in response to the question “What is political or ecological about political ecology?,” Forsyth suggests these questions are only useful as long as they do not reinstate the great divide between nature and society (758). In relation to the growing awareness of concepts like the Anthropocene, Campbell emphasizes the importance for anthropologists to “continue with engaging normative debates over who is responsible for global warming and its consequences, in ethnographically and theoretically informed ways” (4).

Campbell notes the 1992 Rio Earth Summit as an inflection point for political ecology, stating that “[it] drew in more diverse understandings such as Foucauldian discourse theory, Giddens’s structuration, actor-network theory, and comparative indigenous knowledge” (2). Weaving these emerging strands together and positioning political ecology among broader academic discourses and social movements, asserts Campbell, was Richard Peet and Michael Watts's Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (1996): a collection of case studies from Latin America, Africa, East, Southeast and South Asia, exploring contemporary debates over development and the environment. Peet and Watts, in their introduction, state that their aim is “to raise the emancipatory potential of environmental ideas and to engage directly with the larger landscapes of debates over modernity, its institutions, and its knowledges (38). “This collection reworked the initial framework of political ecology to be of broader accessibility to movements and networks that merged the politics of economic and ecological distribution and the politics of cultural and human rights recognition” (Campbell 3).

Campbell highlights the contributions of James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, whom he considers “among the anthropologists who have successfully engaged with the broad currents of political ecology.” He notes that their “combinations of forest ecology research and oral histories of the Sahel”, the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south, “… subverted lazy assumptions about the harmful effects of rural communities and shifting savanna zones.” Campbell also identifies Peter Brosius as a leading anthropologist seeking “to connect with ways in which anthropological knowledge can become politically implicated.” He describes Brosius’ analysis of interests and subjectivities amidst environmental concerns for Borneo’s rainforest: [it] throws up ways in which certain categories of people are deemed valid dwellers of the forest and others become scapegoated. Indigenous peoples may be seen as “guardians of biodiversity” while poor peasants and migrants are considered inappropriate inhabitants of the rainforest topos” (Campbell 3). Campbell notes that this era saw a body of critical concepts, such as Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society (1992) and Janat Biehl/Murray Bookchin’s The Politics of Social Ecology (1998), joining the call to advocate for the potential contributions of indigenous, subaltern, or local knowledge and institutions for healing from and dealing with environmental crises.

Karlsson points to “Against Political Ecology”, a 1999 article from ecological anthropologist Andrew P. Vayda and geographer Bradley B. Walter, as a generative critique for the field and the “the rubric of political ecology” (352). Karlsson summarizes their arguments:

if the field once emerged as a reaction against ‘ecology without politics’ it has now become ‘politics without ecology,’ and thus better belongs to fields like political science, natural resource politics, or political anthropology … they question what they see as a priori judgments that political influences … especially political influence from outside, ‘from the so-called wider political-economic system’ always should be given priority (352).

In his 2018 article “After Political Ecology”, Karlsson argues that “political ecology approaches tend to reduce nature to a matter of resources – or more precisely, resources for human appropriation – and in so doing, fail to account for the more dynamic and complex aspects of the multitude of life that constitutes nature” (22). He acknowledges the echo of Vayda and Walters, and points to scholars “Tim Ingold (2013) who evoked the notion of ‘biosocial becomings’, and Donna J. Haraway, who has insisted on the need for humans to ‘become-with’ other living beings and hence that human history is a multispecies story” as inspiration for “this new turn to nature in anthropology” (22). Karlsson aims to build conversation between political ecology and these emerging strands within environmental anthropology. He asserts that the title “After political ecology” does not refer to a call to discard political ecology, “but rather to suggest a radical remake, perhaps a political ecology 2.0, which brings in nature in a new way and at the same time makes the category of the political more inclusive” (24).

Karlsson concludes by saying that rather than work to devise and advocate for policy fixes, anthropology ought to provide space for critical introspection by “slowing things down… [and that] it is high time to engage with and tell stories about how human coexistence with other living beings is critical for our collective survival on earth” (24). While in agreement with the critical need to speak, share and engage with stories about life’s interdependence, this study argues that due to the near universal agreement amongst climate scientists that "incremental linear changes to the present socio-economic system will not suffice to curb environmental degradation at the speed and scale required” (Meissner 512), political ecologists ought to turn towards “a cultural politics of degrowth'' as “ an intervention into how we see, approach, and think environments” (Vaughn et al 285) This is in contrast to Karlsson’s call to shift away from working to conceive and champion policy “fixes”: political ecologists must continue to engage with policy, but not with its “fixes” but rather its future. This study also recommends anthropologists working with political ecology to further conceptualize the role culture can play, as both a functional and strategic instrument, in the expanding social movement for degrowth via channels such as the commoning movement.

WHAT ARE ‘THE COMMONS’

In the 2015 edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavior Sciences, Bengt Karlsson summates that “the global dimension of politicized environments remains a defining feature [of political ecology], and so also the concern with power and the normative persuasion for a sustainable and equitable future.” This “normative persuasion” - how other people influence an individual’s conception of reality- is an important component to investigate as scientists hoarsely shout that piecemeal changes to the present socio-economic system will not be enough to curb environmental degradation at the speed and scale required (Meissner 512).

Deepening awareness of the global environmental crisis is engaging ecological anthropology in multidisciplinary debates over what ought to be considered ‘sustainable development’. The rapid destruction of tropical forests, wetlands, grazing lands, coastal ﬁsheries, etc., has provoked suspiscion towards the ‘tragedy of the commons’: a concept first introduced in 1833 by British economist William Forster Lloyd. The story certainly found its fans. Economist Garrett Hardin brought the term into the 20th century with his 1968 essay “Tragedy of the Commons” – one of the most quoted essays in the social sciences of the last 45 years. In it, Hardin has readers imagine an open pasture where everyone can graze their cattle, and goes on to argue that no single herder will have any rational incentive to limit his cattle and thus the pasture will inevitably be overexploited. Hardin’s “practical solution” to this hypothetical inevitability is exclusivity via individual property or top-down control and authoritative coercion; another term for Hardin’s prescription is enclosure.

Policy analyst Emery Roe argued that the ‘tragedy of the commons’ is repeated in various forms of development and environmental practice, yet is based on simplistic a priori assumptions about how the environment is fragile, and how individuals act politically (289). He observes that:

When the tragedy of the commons argument is probed empirically … the data turn out to be much more ambiguous or outright contradictory… long-term climatological changes along with growing and competing land uses have led to degradation more than the existence of the commons -- a commons which, the critics hasten to add contra Hardin, was often managed in a restricted access, not open access, fashion until these exogenous pressures undermined local management efforts (289).

Contemporary scholars on the commons continue to point out that the situation Hardin describes is simply not a commons, “but an open-access regime, a free-for-all situation without boundaries, rules, and communication among users” (Bollier and Helfrich 76). A commons, however, “has boundaries, rules, monitoring systems, punishment of free-riders, and social norms – all of which are typically developed by the users themselves according to their circumstances.”

Most scholarship on the commons pays its gratitude to Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, who in 1973 founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University to research “common property regimes”. Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009. Her 1990 book, Governing the Commons, summarizes the conditions in which self-management can thrive: clearly defined boundaries, effective exclusion of unauthorized parties, locally adapted rules regarding the appropriation and provision of resources, collective-choice arrangements that allow most users to participate, monitoring, graduated sanctions for rules violations, easily accessible mechanisms of conflict resolution, and recognition by higher-level authorities (Bollier and Helfrich 76).

Commons are better understood as a social process rather than as a noun; modern commons consist of a wide variety of self-provisioning systems that function primarily outside of both State and market. They are rooted in self-management and shared responsibility, rather than financial and legal systems. Bollier and Helfrich detail that:

The commons is usually understood in two primary senses: as a paradigm of governance and resource-management, and as a set of social practices in virtually all fields of human endeavor. As a system of governance, the term refers to the norms, rules, and institutions that enable the shared management of specific resources… It is more accurate to talk about “commoning” or “making the commons” than “the commons” as a thing. Commons don’t just fall from the sky. They aren’t simply material or intangible collective resources, but processes of shared stewardship about things that a community (a network or all of humankind) possesses and manages in common or should do so (76).

The centrality of autonomous participation in the process of commoning is paramount, and may, perhaps, be utilized in the commoning movement itself. “The commons is primarily about the ways we relate to each other when using something in common,” and the ways we relate to each other are the cultures we embody. While the notion of pooling common resources may still be perceived as far-fetched by much of the Western world, an estimated two billion people around the globe continue to directly rely on the commons as a provisioning model, according to the International Land Coalition (ILC). For example, Swiss alpine villagers have successfully managed and conserved meadows, forest and irrigation as commons for many hundreds of years. David Bollier and Silke Helfrich’s 2015 book Patterns of Commoning surveys a broad array of contemporary commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons.

In their entry on the commons for 2014’s Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Day, Bollier and Helfirch suggest the commoning movement offers “radically democratic solutions that don’t pit environmental concerns against social justice” (78). Working alongside scholars, the dawning commons movement has promoted a growing conversation around the commons as a political philosophy and policy agenda, deconstructing and criticizing the moral and political justifications for enclosures which permit private ownership of enthno-botanical knowledge, genes, life-forms, and nano-matter. Highlighting the scholar-activist persuasion thats prevalent among “commoners”, Matthew Turner argues that:

political ecology’s historical engagement with the complexity of the phrase ‘access to resources’ provides a strong analytical framework for addressing some of the deficiencies of dominant institutionalist frameworks for understanding mixed property forms… [and] by relating political ecology to the expanding literature and activism of ‘commoning’... [hopes] to plant some seeds (Robbins, 2004) for constructive engagement by political ecologists in the (re)making of environmental governance and property relations (798).

The principles of commoning, Bollier and Helfirch assert, don’t need economic growth to thrive; rather, commoning can actively contribute to dematerialization of production and consumption in three ways: re-localizing production, intensifying use through collaborative and cooperative use, and fostering “prosumption”-- the combining of production and consumption into one process. Instead of measuring a nation’s wealth through its ability to infinitely grow its GDP, commons can help alter the cultural imperative to consume by embodying “alternative social spheres” that demonstrate that cooperation can supersede expenditure– illuminating the movement’s alignment with degrowth philosophies.

Susan Paulson calls for “a more systemic grasp of the role that hierarchical identity systems play in the constitution of economies, landscapes and environmental governance [in order] to deepen dialogue among degrowth, political ecology, ecofeminism, environmental justice and related movements, and to strengthen the impact of their work” (47). This study argues for political ecologists to turn towards a cultural politics of degrowth as the necessary intervention to decolonize conception of and policies for the environment, as recently articulated by Miriam Meissner.

CULTURAL POLITICS OF DEGROWTH

Susan Paulson, in her entry on political ecology for Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (D’Alisa et al 2014), states that political ecologists hold “an eagerness to explore a plurality of knowledges and a diversity of practical actions, including those of non-dominant groups” (46). She sees this focus overlapping and aligning with the expanding movement for degrowth. Degrowth, as articulated in the introduction to the aforementioned book, is:

… first and foremost, a critique of growth . It calls for the decolonization of public debate from the idiom of economism and for the abolishment of economic growth as a social objective. [Its] desired direction [is] one in which societies will use fewer natural resources and will organize and live differently than today. ‘Sharing’, ‘ simplicity ’, ‘ conviviality ’, ‘ care ’ and the ‘ commons ’ are primary significations of what this society might look like (D’Alisa et al 3).

How can political ecologists contribute to the burgeoning movement to steer our global community in this direction? This study follows Meissner’s proposal for an extended understanding of cultural politics: a conceptual framework and research agenda that considers three dimensions of cultural politics: prefiguration, popularization and pressure (513). In calling for a “cultural politics of degrowth”, Meissner argues for political ecologists to explore and conceptualize a “tactical employment of cultural practices, values, narratives, and identities to pursue a degrowth-oriented transformation of socio-culture and political economy” (513).

Meisnner articulates two discrete goals in the article: scientifically, to conceive of the functional and tactical role culture can play in generating support and sway for degrowth; practically, to provide insight to degrowth’s defenders in order to mobilize present and emerging cultural forms. Cultural politics, Meissner suggests, is often considered in terms of prefiguration– the act of performing and enacting desired futures in the present. She argues that culture can play an “active and versatile role in degrowth politics… as a source of experimentation, inspiration and awareness-raising for degrowth.” If the compelling narrative of the “tragedy of the commons” was able to prefigure particular responses towards enclosure to favor capital-intensive development, the opportunity exists for a new (and in many ways, old) story to prepare, envision and enact a degrowth future.

Meissner states that there is general agreement amongst degrowth scholars that an overall shift in cultural habits, values and ideologies must be alongside a shift in socio-economic institutions (515). Referencing economist and philosopher Latouche:

Drawing on Castoriadis’ The imaginary institution for society… [he] called for a "de-colonization of the imaginary”... [arguing] that a degrowth transition requires the debunking of established, quasi-religious beliefs in economic progress. It would entail the creation and societal establishment of "different objectives in life" – objectives other than the expansion of production and consumption (Castoriadis 2010, qtd. in Latouche 2015: 117). It would require "profound changes in the psychosocial structure of people in the Western world" (Castoriadis 2010, qtd. in Latouche 2015: 118). This also involves the de-commodification of social relations and the concomitant creation or re-appropriation of the commons (Gómez-Baggethun 2015) – for instance via the establishment of cooperatives (Johanisova et al. 2015)... the project is compared to a "cultural revolution" (Latouche 2015: 119) – a "detoxification" that, however, "is not fully possible if a degrowth society has not been already established" (ibid.). (515).

Acknowledging the chicken and egg question “what comes first – a change in culture or a change of socioeconomic institutions?”, Meissner contends that it need not be an either/or situation, as both pieces must work together. She points to a prevalent strand of degrowth scholars who highlight the role of cultural practices as inspiration for the masses to envision what a degrowth society would resemble: ethics of voluntary simplicity, anti-consumption and frugal living (Alexander and Ussher 2012; Lee et al. 2013); back-to-the landers provide blueprints for a close-to-nature, ecological way of life (Calvário and Otero 2015); and the concept of Buen Vivir ('living well') provides a growth-independent philosophy of wellbeing and development (Gudynas 2015). Put together, these works offer substantive evidence that degrowth-aligned cultural values, practices and ideologies are alive and well. And importantly, that “they are more feasible, happy and socially sustainable than its critics would admit” (516).

Meissner’s argument is a refraction of the recent call for intersectional ecologies, to make environmental anthropology view its scholarly frameworks as “complicit practices”. As Vaughn et al suggests, “reorienting environmental anthropology around intersectionality means making intentional connections across difference (285). In order for Meissner’s cultural politics of degrowth to find its footing and begin disassembling the hierarchical ladder which underpins our consumptive cultural forms, scholars must heed Vaughn, Guarasici and Moore’s recommendation to embrace expansive dialogue and cross-pollination across disciplines (289). As Matthew Turner argues:

commoning activism and scholarship offer opportunities to political ecologists to work constructively with communities and activists in support of their attempts to develop conditions that support shared use, management, and production of needed resources… [allowing] political ecologists to work to illuminate how these mixed institutional forms work in practice as mediated by ideology and political power (see Noterman, 2016) (800).

Political ecologists, Turner suggests, have much to offer the commoning field – “not only through [their] history of scholarship on the social mediation of resource access but through [their] success working through differences and commonalities between the political ecologies of the South and North. Political ecology holds a vast wealth of analyses and activism around commoning processes from a broad array of cultural and political-economic contexts” (800). It is time political ecologists develop and support narratives of cultural politics for degrowth if we are to succeed at “the rapid and systemic socio-economic change scientists deem indispensable for the effective tackling of the current climate and ecological crises, while at the same time creating just and convivial common futures” (Meissner 528).

CONCLUSION

Following the lineage of anthropological perspectives in political ecology, this study has highlighted the expanding scholarship that centers concepts such as the commons that aim to advocate for and prefigure degrowth. Political ecologists look for the fundamental ways that both a lack of social justice and conflicts stemming from historical-political formations influence changes in the environment. They question the ways that the physical sciences became privileged in accounts of environmental dynamics, and how that privilege impacts the proposed solutions to the problems. In the words of Susan Paulson, political ecologists share “an eagerness to explore a plurality of knowledges and a diversity of practical actions, including those of non-dominant groups” (46).

Anthropologists have been tasked to raise the emancipatory potential of environmental activism and to engage directly with the broader debates over modernity, its institutions, and its knowledges, given our desperate need to enact rapid and systematic change to the dominant socio-economic paradigm that has plunged the globe into ecological crisis (Peet and Watts 38, Meissner 528). Political ecologists have often aligned with advocates for degrowth (Paulson 46): a call for global decolonization and the abolishment of economic growth as a social objective, given broad awareness of the ecological degradations that follow these forces (D’Alisa et al, 2014).

Drawing on Miriam Meissner’s recent push for a “cultural politics of degrowth '', this study argues for political ecologists to further conceptualize the role culture can play, as both a functional and strategic instrument, in the burgeoning social movement for degrowth. If Hardin’s 1986 “Tragedy of the Commons” served to prefigure enclosure in the service of capital-intensive development, political ecologists must utilize their transdisciplinary approach to offer cultural activists ways to effectively mobilize present and emerging cultural forms in the service of degrowth.

SOURCES

Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society : Towards a New Modernity. London ;: Sage Publications, 1992.

Blaikie, Piers M., and H. C. Brookfield. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen, 1987. Web.

Biehl, Janet, and Murray Bookchin. The Politics of Social Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1998.

Bollier, David. Think Like a Commoner : a Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons. Gabriola, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2014. Print.

Bollier, David, and Silke Helfrich. Patterns of Commoning. Amherst, MA: Off the Common Books, 2015. Print.

Campbell, B. (2018). Political Ecology. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, H. Callan (Ed.). Web.

D’Alisa, Giacomo., Federico. Demaria, and Giorgos. Kallis. Degrowth : a Vocabulary for a New Era. Abingdon, Oxon ;: Routledge, 2015. Web.

Forsyth, Tim. 2008. “Political Ecology and the Epistemology of Social Justice.” Geoforum 39: 756–64. Web.

Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 162.3859 (1968): 1243–1248. Web.

Karlsson, Bengt G. “After Political Ecology: New Directions in the Anthropology of the Environment.” Anthropology Today, vol. 34, no. 2, 2018: 22–24. Web.

Karlsson, Bengt. (2015). Political Ecology: Anthropological Perspectives. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Web.

Meissner, Miriam. “Towards a Cultural Politics of Degrowth: Prefiguration, Popularization, Pressure.” Journal of political ecology 28.1 (2021): 511–532. Web.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons : the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge [England] ;: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Web.

Paulson, Susan. “Political Ecology”. Degrowth : a Vocabulary for a New Era. Abingdon, Oxon ;: Routledge, 2015: 43-47. Web.

Peet, Richard, and Michael Watts. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London: Routledge, 1996. Web.

Roe, Emery M. “Development Narratives, or Making the Best of Blueprint Development.” World development 19.4 (1991): 287–300. Web.

Turner, Matthew D. “Political Ecology III: The Commons and Commoning.” Progress in human geography 41.6 (2017): 795–802. Web.

Vaughn, Sarah E, Bridget Guarasci, and Amelia Moore. “Intersectional Ecologies: Reimagining Anthropology and Environment.” Annual review of anthropology 50.1 (2021): 275–290. Web.

Vayda, Andrew P, and Bradley B Walters. “Against Political Ecology.” Human ecology : an interdisciplinary journal 27.1 (1999): 167–179. Web.

Wolf, Eric. “Ownership and political ecology”. Anthropological Quarterly, 45 (1972), pp. 201-205. Web.

Melissa MacDonald