Environment and Society. Paul Robbins
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science seriously. Several key concepts and processes from a range of environmental sciences are described and defined, especially in the latter half of the book, including carbon sequestration, ecological succession, and predator–prey relationships, among many others. These are described in terms detailed enough to explain and understand the way human and social processes impinge upon or relate to non-human ones. Throughout we have drawn on current knowledge from environmental science sources (the report on global climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example), but we intend a book that requires no previous knowledge of such sciences or sources. We believe this book might reasonably accompany more strictly environmental science approaches, or be used in courses that seek to bridge environmental ethics, economics, or policy with issues in ecology, hydrology, and conservation biology, or vice versa.
The Authors’ Points of View
Finally, we provide many points of view in this volume that directly contradict one another. It is difficult, for example, to simultaneously believe that the source of all environmental problems is the total population of humans on Earth, and to hold the position that population growth leads to greater efficiencies and potentially lower environmental impacts. Even where ideas do not contradict one another (for example, risk perception in Chapter 6 might be seen as a sort of social construction in Chapter 8), they each stress different factors or problems and imply different solutions.
With that in mind, it is reasonable to ask what the points of view of the text’s authors might be. Which side are we on? This is difficult to answer, not only because there are three of us, each with our own view of the world, but also because, as researchers, we often try to bring different perspectives and theories to bear on the objects of our study, and to foster a kind of pluralism in our thinking.
Nonetheless, we do collectively have a point of view. First, we are each urgently concerned about the state of natural environments around the world. Our own research has focused on diverse environmental topics, including Professor Hintz’s work on the status of bears in the western part of the United States, Professor Moore’s research on the management of solid and hazardous waste, and Professor Robbins’ investigation of the conservation of forests in India. From these experiences, we have come to share an approach best described as political ecology: an understanding that nature and society are produced together in a political economy that includes humans and non-humans. What does this mean? To keep it as straightforward as possible, we understand that relationships among people and between people and the environment are governed by persistent and dominant, albeit diverse and historically changing, interactions of power (Robbins 2020). This means that we have some special sympathy for themes from political economy, social construction, feminism, and critical race theory.
Political Ecology An approach to environmental issues that unites issues of ecology with a broadly defined political economy perspective
Reconciliation Ecology A science of imagining, creating, and sustaining habitats, productive environments, and biodiversity in places used, traveled, and inhabited by human beings
When Hintz examines the conservation of bears in Yellowstone, for example, he thinks it is critical to examine how bears are imagined by people and to know what media, assumptions, and stories influence that imagination, since these prefigure how people do or do not act through policy, regulation, or support for environmental laws. When examining solid waste in Mexico, in another example, Moore thinks the crucial question is who controls access to and use of dumps, since this determines, to a large degree, how waste is managed, whether problems are addressed or ignored, and where the flow of hazards and benefits is directed. When examining forests in India, Robbins wants to know how local people and forest officers coerce one another, in a system of corruption that determines the rate and flow of forest-cutting and environmental transformation. People’s power over one another, over the environment, and over how other people think about the environment, in short, is our preferred starting point.
We also share an assumption that persistent systems of power, though they often lead to perverse outcomes, sometimes provide opportunities for progressive environmental action and avenues toward better human–environment relationships. We are stuck in a tangled web, in other words, but this allows us many strands to pull upon and many resources to weave new outcomes.
As a result, we also stress throughout the volume a preference for some form of reconciliation ecology. As described by ecologist Michael Rosenzweig (2003), this describes a science of imagining, creating, and sustaining habitats, productive environments, clean air and water, and biodiversity in places used, traveled, and inhabited by human beings. This point of view holds that while many of the persistent human actions of the past have stubbornly caused and perpetuated environmental problems, the solution to these problems can never be a world somehow bereft of human activity, work, inventiveness, and craft. We live on a planet fully transformed by our presence, yet one always outside of our control.
Such a point of view does not deny the importance of making special places (conservation areas, for example) for wild animals, sensitive species, or rare ecosystems. But it does stress that the critical work of making a “greener” world will happen in cities, towns, laboratories, factories, and farms, amidst human activity, and not in an imaginary natural world, somewhere “out there.” As author Emma Marris describes the possibilities of such a world, she wisely invokes the metaphor of the Earth and its ecosystems as a “Rambunctious Garden,” a hybrid of wild nature and human activity (Marris 2011).
For all the weight of our own views, however, we strongly believe in the analytical challenges presented by all of the approaches described here. It is our intention, therefore, to present the most convincing and compelling arguments of the many and diverse ways of viewing society and environment. We insist that, while it is impossible for us to present a fully unbiased view of the many ways of thinking about nature, it is possible to present fair characterizations of many points of view: characterizations without caricatures. Only the reader can judge our success in this regard.
References
1 Kolbert, E. (2012). Recall of the wild. The New Yorker December 24.
2 Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. New York: Bloomsbury.
3 McKibben, B. (1990). The End of Nature. New York: Random House.
4 Mlot, C. (2013). Are Isle Royale’s wolves chasing extinction? Science 340 (6135): 919–921.
5 Radeloff, V.C., Williams, J.W., Bateman, B.L. et al. (2015). The rise of novelty in ecosystems. Ecological Applications 25 (8): 2051–2068.
6 Robbins, P. (2020). Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
7 Rosenzweig, M.L. (2003). Win–Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2 Population and Scarcity
Keywords
Birth rate
Carrying capacity
Death rate
Demographic transition model
Ecological footprint
Exponential growth
Fertility rate
Forest transition theory
Green Revolution
Induced intensification
Kuznets curve (environmental)
Neo-Malthusians