Talking our way into trouble

This week’s readings drove home the point that the full cycle of capitalism can be, and often is, socially mediated and constructed – from its impetus (a sense of scarcity), to its modes of production (such as natural resource extraction), to its effects (commodities and waste products) and, finally, to its attempts to manage any challenges (i.e. increasingly through technically-driven silver bullets, such as dams). For instance, in his article on the neoliberalisation of ecosystem services, Robertson looks at the challenges engendered within the current neoliberal system of environmental governance, as observed through the commercial wetland mitigation banking project in the United States. He concludes, amongst other things, that “ecology is a social relation”; in other words, that “one’s approach to the concept of ‘nature’ has everything to do with how one will understand crisis and resistance in neoliberal environmentalism.” Similarly, based on her study of global waste flows and the capitalist drivers behind these, Sarah Moore makes the insightful point that perceptions of waste are context-specific and that definitions and management of waste are negotiated rather than intrinsic. Karen Bakker meanwhile relates how the drive for production both fuels and contributes to a widespread notion of scarcity which is in actual fact relative rather than absolute; an observation drawn from her overview of the environmental governance of water. Finally, Lyla Mehta looks at the Kutch region in India, where the planned Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) dam is touted as being a panacea to the region’s water scarcity, despite the ineffectiveness of similar previous local projects to benefit those most in need of water re-distribution. Thus, not only is one’s grasp of and proposed solutions to environmental issues largely shaped by the context within which one operates, but what is more, one’s grasp of one’s own context can itself be influenced through the work of other actors or groups of actors.

Therefore, great power is endowed onto those who control the content and avenues of discourse, as they can either limit or induce behaviours. In Mehta’s study of the Kutch, the culturally embedded caste structure has been developed into a barrier impeding ‘lower’ social groups from accessing water owned by the ‘higher ups’, thus affecting community health as well as driving geophysical interventions into the local landscape (i.e. through the erection of a dam). On the other side of the coin, rather than imposing restrictions, instances can be found closer to home which use discourse as a tool to generate desired behaviours in individuals. As always during this time of year, the Black Friday hype will see thousands of people sacrificing comfort and sleep in order to snap up goods which have previously been priced out of their income range. Notably these goods are predominantly leisure and luxury items (see infographic: http://www.seo.com/blog/black-friday-cyber-monday-shopping-infographic/), indicating that these do not in fact function for the purpose of human sustenance and survival yet, judging from their high sales volumes and individuals’ considerable efforts in acquiring them, have nonetheless come to be seen as necessary for a good quality of life. And on an even more frequent basis, the fashion industry fabricates a renewed sense of need every Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter (see video: http://youtu.be/UqE1ER19Py8). These machinations of desire both fuel and thrive on, in one case, deprivation, and in the other, mass production, and in turn are drivers in the processes of natural resource extraction and mass waste disposal.

Viewing these dynamics with a purely ecological focus might draw attention solely to the depletion of natural resources (occurring particularly in the developing world) as well as the increased levels of toxicity resulting from improper waste disposal mechanisms owing to lack of effective regulation (again, often in the developing world). Such an account, however, would be lacking in its consideration of the socio-political and economic processes driving such degradation, and potentially misidentify the problem as being attributable to and affecting solely or predominantly the ‘Global South’. An approach rooted solely in political economy, meanwhile, would trace the global flows of demand and supply, as well as uncover the inequitable concentrations of power and inequality. Yet such an analysis might provide little insight into the system’s lack of long-term sustainability, not only in terms of its propensity to fall into crisis, but first and foremost, due to the finite characteristics of the (natural) resources upon which it relies. Finally, an anthropological/ethnographic study would reveal the micro-level effects and coping strategies of those affected, yet perhaps fail to ground them in the wider contexts, both ecological and socio-political, identified through the previously mentioned subject-disciplines.

Thus, having gained a renewed appreciation of the extent to which people’s realities can be co-created through discourses and social constructions, I am once again led to conclude that multidisciplinary investigations, such as those grounded in political ecology, stand to offer more holistic and hence useful data for effecting positive change and enacting necessary reforms of environmental governance.