Political Ecology - Scope and Influences

Scope and Influences

Political ecology’s movement as a field since its inception in the 1970s has complicated its scope and goals. Through the discipline’s history, certain influences have grown more and less influential in determining the focus of study. Peter A. Walker traces the importance of the ecological sciences in political ecology (Walker 2005, p. 74). He points to the transition, for many critics, from a ‘structuralist’ approach through the 1970s and 1980s, in which ecology maintains a key position in the discipline, to a ‘poststructuralist’ approach with an emphasis on the ‘politics’ in political ecology (Walker 2005, p. 74-75). This turn has raised questions as to the differentiation with environmental politics as well as the field’s use of the term of ‘ecology’. From a geographical point of view, recent political ecological research shifted partially from investigating the politics' influence on the earth's surface to the focus on spatial-ecological influences on politics and power—a scope reminiscent of environmental politics.

The discipline has drawn much from cultural ecology, a form of analysis that showed how culture depends upon, and is influenced by, the material conditions of society (political ecology has largely eclipsed cultural ecology as a form of analysis according to Walker, 2005). As Walker states, “whereas cultural ecology and systems theory emphasize adaptation and homeostasis, political ecology emphasize the role of political economy as a force of maladaptation and instability” (2005, p. 74).

Political ecology will often utilize the framework of political economy to analyze environmental issues. An early and prominent example of this was The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries by Piers Blaikie in 1985, which traced land degradation in Africa to colonial policies of land appropriation, rather than over-exploitation by African farmers.

The movement of the field has changed, broadened and complicated its scope and goals.