Can Social Theory Adequately Address Nature-Society Issues? Do political ecology and science studies in Geography incorporate ecological change?
View/ Open
Date
2006Author
Nightingale, Andrea J
Metadata
Abstract
There has been an expansion of interest in nature-society issues within human
geography spurred by the rich, sophisticated analyses of environment-development
issues within the Third World. This latter work emerged out of the fusion of cultural
ecology and the political economy of resource use, but scholars are increasingly
turning towards post-structuralism to engage with the complex, mutual constitution of
symbolic and material struggles over land and resources. Yet to some extent, these
theoretical trends are moving nature-society geography away from engagement with
physical ‘natural’ processes despite rhetoric to the contrary. In this paper I raise the
question of whether current work in critical Geography on nature-society issues
adequately tackles the ‘so-what’ issues of socio- natural change. Do political ecology
and science studies—the two, broadly defined approaches currently favoured by most
critical geographers—accomplish what is required theoretically and methodologically
to engage with fundamental issues of social and environmental change? I suggest that
when used in isolation both approaches are inadequate to point us in politically useful
directions. Instead I argue for more engagement with ecological theory and
ecological processes as they articulate with social processes in contingent, dynamic
ways.