Table of Contents

About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction / Reimagining Political Ecology Culture/Power/History/Nature / Aletta Biersack 3
Beyond Modernist Ecologies
Equilibrium Theory and Interdisciplinary Borrowing: A Comparison of Old and New Ecological Anthropologies / Michael R. Dove 43
Nature and Society in the Age of Postmodernity / Gisli Palsson 70
Constructing and Appropriating Nature
Ecopolitics through Ethnography: The Cultures of Finland’s Forest-Nature / Eeva Berglund 97
The Political Ecology of Fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California / James B. Greenberg 121
“But the Young Men Don’t Want to Farm Any More”: Political Ecology and Consumer Culture in Belize / Richard Wilk 149
Properties of Nature, Properties of Culture: Ownership, Recognition, and the Politics of Nature in a Papua New Guinea Society / Joel Robbins 171
Ethnographies of Nature
Progress of the Victims: Political Ecology in the Peruvian Amazon / Soren Hvalkof 195
Red River, Green War: The Politics of Place Along the Porgera River / Aletta Biersack 233
Between Politics and Poetics: Narratives of Dispossession in Sarawak, East Malaysia / J. Peter Brosius 281
Between Nature and Culture
Rappaport’s Rose: Structure, Agency, and Historical Contingency in Ecological Anthropology / J. Stephen Lansing, John Schoenfelder, and Vernon Scarborough 325
Works Cited 359
Contributors 407
Index 409

Promotional Information

Introduces heterogeneity and paradox into our understanding of political ecology, critiquing 'modernist ecologies' and emphasizing transnational, place-based ones.

About the Author

Aletta Biersack is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She is the editor of Papuan Borderlands: Huli, Duna, and Ipili Perspectives on the Papua New Guinea Highlands and Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical Anthropology.

James B. Greenberg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and Professor at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. He is the author of Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico and Santiago’s Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics.

Reviews

"Reimagining Political Ecology is an important contribution to efforts to build a more nuanced poststructural political ecology and a pertinent reminder that political ecology has benefited enormously from the work of anthropologists."--Raymond Bryant, author of The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824-1994 "Political ecologists have helped configure the fields of environmental governance and environmental justice. This thoughtful, insight-filled collection helps readers rethink some of the main concerns of political ecology. Scholars from both disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations will discover the need to consult and use this volume."--Arun Agrawal, author of Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects