Neoliberal nature, ecological fixes, and the pitfalls of comparative research

摘要

The entanglement of markets and nature has become the focus of a rapidly growing body of scholarship. The urgency of this debate arises from the recent proliferation of marketized forms of nature-from carbon emissions markets to debt-for-nature swaps to water privatization. The fierce controversies which ensue make for complicated analytical and political terrain. The ideological differences run deep, as evidenced by the array of terms deployed: free market environmentalism, liberal environmentalism, (marketized) environmental governance, green ncoliberalism, to name just a few.rnAn increasingly substantial portion of the literature on this topic is produced by critical geographers (Heynen et al, 2007; Himley, 2008; Mansfield, 2008a). Their 'neoliberal nature' approach generally adopts a critical stance towards the doctrine of ncoliberalism, underpinned by a theoretical commitment to Marxian analyses of nature, in which institutional political economy is frequently inflected with insights drawn from political ecology. Scholars of 'neoliberal nature', almost without exception, conduct fine-grained case studies of the effects of neolibcralization on conventional resources (eg fish, water, forests) in site-specific contexts. The combination of a critical conceptual stance with powerfully detailed empirical analyses is the hallmark of this 'nature' approach.