Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies

Description

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives—one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge—their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before. Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling creates a lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics. The contributors all actively work at the interface between these two fields, and here they use empirical material to explore questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics that surround nature-society relations, from wildlife management in the Yukon to soil fertility in Kenya. In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development. Finally, they ask what is at stake in the struggles surrounding environmental knowledge, how such struggles shape conceptions of the environment, and whose interests are served in the process. Contents Introduction - Mara J. Goldman and Matthew D. Turner Part 1. Production of Environmental Knowledge: Scientists, Complex Natures, and the Question of Agency Introduction - Matthew D. Turner 1. Politicizing Environmental Explanations: What Can Political Ecology Learn from Sociology and Philosophy of Science? - Tim Forsyth 2. Debating the Science of Using Marine Turtles: Boundary Work among Species Experts - Lisa M. Campbell 3. Technobiological Imaginaries: How Do Systems Biologists Know Nature? - Joan H. Fujimura 4. Agency, Structuredness, and the Production of Knowledge within Intersecting Processes - Peter J. Taylor 5. Fermentation, Rot, and Other Human- Microbial Performances - Mrill Ingram 6. Ferricrete, Forests, and Temporal Scale in the Production of Colonial Science in Africa - Chris Duvall Part 2. Application of Environmental Knowledge: The Politics of Constructing Society/Nature Introduction - Paul Nadasdy 7. “We Don’t Harvest Animals; We Kill Them”: Agricultural Metaphors and the Politics of Wildlife Management in the Yukon - Paul Nadasdy 8. Political Violence and Scientific Forestry: Emergencies, Insurgencies,and Counterinsurgencies in Southeast Asia - Peter Vandergeest and Nancy LeePeluso 9. Spatial-Geographic Models of Water Scarcity and Supply in Irrigation Engineering and Management: Bolivia, 1952–2009 - Karl S. Zimmerer 10. The Politics of Connectivity across Human-Occupied Landscapes: Corridors near Nairobi National Park, Kenya - Mara J. Goldman Part 3. Circulation of Environmental Knowledge: Networks, Expertise, and Science in Practice Introduction - Mara J. Goldman 11. Rooted Networks, Webs of Relation, and the Power of Situated Science: Bringing the Models Back Down to Earth in Zambrana - Dianne Rocheleau 12. Circulating Science, Incompletely Regulating Commodities: Governing from a Distance in Transnational Agro-Food Networks - Ryan E. Galt 13. Reclaiming the Technological Imagination: Water, Power, and Place in India - Roopali Phadke 14. Circulating Knowledge, Constructing Expertise - Rebecca Lave 15. Experiments as “Performances”: Interpreting Farmers’ Soil Fertility Management Practices in Western Kenya - Joshua J. Ramisch Conclusion - Matthew D. Turner References List of Contributors Index