Can Social Theory Adequately Address Nature-Society Issues? Do political ecology and science studies in Geography incorporate ecological change?

摘要

There has been an expansion of interest in nature-society issues within humanudgeography spurred by the rich, sophisticated analyses of environment-developmentudissues within the Third World. This latter work emerged out of the fusion of culturaludecology and the political economy of resource use, but scholars are increasinglyudturning towards post-structuralism to engage with the complex, mutual constitution ofudsymbolic and material struggles over land and resources. Yet to some extent, theseudtheoretical trends are moving nature-society geography away from engagement withudphysical ‘natural’ processes despite rhetoric to the contrary. In this paper I raise theudquestion of whether current work in critical Geography on nature-society issuesudadequately tackles the ‘so-what’ issues of socio- natural change. Do political ecologyudand science studies—the two, broadly defined approaches currently favoured by mostudcritical geographers—accomplish what is required theoretically and methodologicallyudto engage with fundamental issues of social and environmental change? I suggest thatudwhen used in isolation both approaches are inadequate to point us in politically usefuluddirections. Instead I argue for more engagement with ecological theory andudecological processes as they articulate with social processes in contingent, dynamicudways.