Political Ecology - 9780470657324

For students and academics, Robbins (geography and development, U. of Arizona) examines concepts, individuals, research, and arguments in political ecology and the political forces at work in environmental access, management, and transformation. He distinguishes the field from other ecologies and reviews its roots, then describes its historical development, challenges to the field from ecology, the way researchers have considered the environment to be imaginary or constructed, other approaches to nature/society study, and five central research theses, with examples of them: degradation and marginalization, conservation and control, environmental conflict and exclusion, environmental subjects and identity, and political objects and actors. This edition has updated examples; added discussion of emerging traditions such as urban ecology and actor-networks and the research thesis on the political-ecological status of non-humans; a new chapter on land change science and the challenge of causal explanation approaches; and an emphasis on political ecology as an argument or community of practice that examines winners and losers, is narrated using dialectics, begins and ends in a contradiction, and surveys the status of nature and stories about it. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)