MARXISM, CULTURE, AND POLITICAL ECOLOGY

Abstract

Concern with the politics of environmental resource conflicts in the Third World has grown steadily over the past decade. Early studies emphasized the changing dialectic between society and environment, underscoring the interrelation of political economy and resource management (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Dove 1985; Schmink and Wood 1987). In its broadest conceptual reaches “political ecology” has addressed issues of resource access and control, the political processes influencing land rights, and the ethics of technology and development (Hecht and Cockburn 1992). While the term “political ecology” lacks a coherent theoretical core, its Marxian versions direct attention to history, social relations of production, and the embeddedness of local land-use practices in regional and global political economies (see Bassett 1988; Bryant 1992; Neumann 1992; Sheridan 1988; Zimmerer 1991). Recent regional and local studies situate agrarian and pastoral struggles within historical patterns of access to critical environmental resources across Africa (Bassett and Crummey 1993; Fairhead and Leach 1994; Little 1992; Peters 1994), Latin America (Faber 1993; Hecht and Cockburn 1990; Painter and Durham 1995; Schmink and Wood 1992; Stonich 1993), and South Asia (Agarwal 1994a; Gadgil and Guha 1992; Guha 1989; Peluso 1992).

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