Political Ecology

About The Series

This book series is dedicating to advancing the discipline of political ecology. Inviting critical and relevant works, this series, seeks to popularize political ecology by publishing politically and ecologically engaged works open access. This political ecology series, hosted by Rupture Press, seeks to advance the critical, open and committed spirit of political ecology that—with the exception of the Journal of Political Ecology—has devolved into corporate capture and mediocre academic content. This book series seeks to resist, and up-end, this trend by providing a space for committed political ecology works.

What is Political Ecology?

While diverse approaches exist in political ecology, the study examines power relationships exerted over and circulating through environments. To designate certain features within political ecology, the study has diversified with ideas of “feminist political ecology” (Rocheleau et al., 1996), “liberation ecology” (Peet & Watts, 2004), “global political ecology” (Peet et al., 2010), “geopolitical ecology” (Bigger & Neimark, 2017), “anarchist political ecology” (Springer et al., 2021), “decolonial ecology” (Ferdinand, 2021) and “International political ecology” (Selby et al., 2022) among others. These terms seek to accentuate aspects of political ecology (e.g. feminist & anarchist), while simultaneously combining political ecology with decolonial theory, geopolitics and international relations.  

While theoretically and methodologically diverse (Perreault et al., 2015), ecological distribution conflict (EDC) emerging as a possible way of engaging with multiple languages of valuation. EDC remains foundational to political ecology (Martínez-Alier, 2002), recognizing how "social conflicts arising over the unequal distribution of environmental benefits, such as access to natural resources, fertile land, or ecosystem services [sic], as well as over unequal and unsustainable allocations of environmental burdens, such as pollution or waste" (Scheidel et al., 2018). EDC remains inspired by, and reinforces, environmental justice studies to which political ecology remains central. While criticizing EDCs for underwriting cultural (and ontological features; see Blaser, 2013), Arturo Escobar (2008, 6), acknowledges “political ecology as the study of ecological.” While this concept has been heavily critiqued (Blaser, 2013; Tempter, 2019; Álvarez & Coolaest, 2020; Dunlap, 2023), it remains a central contribution from the “Barcelona School’s” economic political ecology and environmental justice studies (Villamayor-Tomas & Muradian, 2023).

Political ecology remains rooted, and intersecting, with anthropology, geography, development and environmental studies. Despite an economic approach, political ecology is characterized by on-site research, or ‘fieldwork,’ seeking to understand the way ‘the political’ and ‘the ecology,’ considered broadly, produce environments, people and contestations. Understanding power relations within and between people and environments remains central feature of the study. Political ecology, explains Paul Robbins (2012: 20), “explores these social and environmental changes with an understanding that there are better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things.” Political ecology has, and continues, to be a reaction to “apolitical ecology” and other research making unfounded, or inaccurate, claims to objectivity (Robbins, 2012). Aiming for the roots of issues, political ecology, Robbins (2012: 20) contends, "is directed at finding causes rather than symptoms of problems” and offers “both a ‘hatchet’ to take apart flawed, dangerous, and politically problematic accounts, and a ‘seed,’ to grow into new socio-ecologies.” Said simply, political ecology seeks to improve political and ecology harmony, which might include research into violent uprisings, planting forest gardens and how the two might intersect and weave together.

What does this Book Series invite?

We celebrate and see in Rupture Press an ethical commitment and approach that resonates with the ethos and the purposes of political ecology. Through this book series, we seek to expand the publishing of high-quality books that are available free of charge (as PDF) and as affordable paperbacks, offering a truly not-for-profit operation that does not charge authors fees (but do expect greater attentiveness to formatting, typos, and index, see Author Guidelines). We seek to create and expand outlets of dignified oppositional publishing given that this is, regretfully, not already the norm within academia.

We are seeking and welcoming works related to political ecology explicitly or considered broadly through different disciplines and approximations. This book series consequently requires a conceptual framing and engagement with political ecology. We welcome monographs, translations, edited volumes or novel and original contributions that engage (but are not limited to) the follow topics:

• Exploring environmental conflicts considered broadly;

• Struggles against land control and/or extractivism;

• Manuscripts exploring environmental justice in rural, urban and factory contexts;

• Works exploring agroecology, forest gardening, Indigenous science and permaculture;

• Investigating food, water, electricity, sanitation and housing that challenges and/or appropriates modernist & capitalist development patterns;

• Advancing anarchist, decolonial and Marxist political ecology by name or otherwise;

• Developing Queer & trans-feminist political ecology;

• Urban political ecology; 

• Critical research into epistemology/science and quantitative methods;

• More-than-human encounters challenging anthropocentrism;

• Analysis of the continued failures of the developmental enterprise within different actors/sectors (i.e. agriculture, energy, transportation, industrial development etc.);

• The political ecology of counterinsurgency and green militarization;

• And more….

We must reclaim our work from the extractive networks of academic publishing, and begin expanding respectable spaces outside the Big 5 Publishers (advancing exploitation, extractivism, and financial violence). The book series is curated by a collective of political ecologists. Please fill out the Rupture Press book proposal form and send an expressions of interest to rupturepress[AT]proton.me. In the email subject heading please write: POLITICAL ECOLOGY: [Proposed manuscript title]

References

Álvarez L and Coolsaet B (2020) Decolonizing environmental justice studies: a Latin American perspective. Capitalism nature socialism 31(2): 50–69.

Bigger P and Neimark BD (2017) Weaponizing nature: The geopolitical ecology of the US Navy’s biofuel program. Political Geography 60: 13–22.

Blaser M (2013) Notes toward a political ontology of ‘environmental’conflicts. In: Green L (ed.) Contested Ecologies: Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge. Cape Town: HSRC Press, pp. 13–27.

Dunlap A (2023) The Structures of Conquest: Debating Extractivism(s), Infrastructures and Environmental Justice for Advancing Post-Ddevelopment Pathways. In: Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer and Asanda Benya (Eds.), The Afterlives of Extraction. Alternatives and Sustainable Futures. International Development Policy. Geneva: Brill-Nijhoff, pp. 52–76.

Escobar A (2008) Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke University Press.

Ferdinand M (2021) Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World. Chicago: Polity.

Perreault T, Bridge G and McCarthy J (2015) The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. London: Routledge.

Martínez-Alier J (2002) The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Northampton: London: Edward Elgar.

Peet, R., & Watts, M. (2004). Liberation ecologies: environment, development and social movements. London: Routledge.

Peet, R., Robbins, P., & Watts, M. (Eds.). (2010). Global political ecology. New York: Routledge.

Rocheleau, D., Thomas-Slayter, B., & Wangari, E. (2013). Feminist political ecology: Global issues and local experience. Routledge.

Scheidel A, Temper L, Demaria F, et al. (2018) Ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability: an overview and conceptual framework. Sustainability science 13(3): 585–598.

Selby, J., Daoust, G., & Hoffmann, C. (2022). Divided environments: An international political ecology of climate change, water and security. Cambridge University Press.

Springer S, Locret M, Mateer J, et al. (2021) Undoing Human Supremacy: Anarchist Political Ecology in the Face of Anthroparchy (Volume 1). London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Temper L (2019) Blocking pipelines, unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory. Local Environment 24(2): 94–112.

Villamayor-Tomas S and Muradian R (2023) The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology: A Companion in Honour of Joan Martinez-Alier. Cham: Springer.