Global Political Ecology

by Peet; Dick

• ISBN13: 9780415548151
• ISBN10: 0415548152
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-02-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The world is caught in the mesh of a series of environmental crises. So far attempts at resolving the deep basis of these have been superficial and disorganized. Global Political Ecology links the political economy of global capitalism with the political ecology of a series of environmental disasters and failed attempts at environmental policies.This critical volume draws together contributions from twenty-five leading intellectuals in the field. It begins with an introductory chapter that introduces the readers to political ecology and summarizes the books main findings. The following seven sections cover topics on the political ecology of war and the disaster state; fuelling capitalism: energy scarcity and abundance; global governance of health, bodies, and genomics; the contradictions of global food; capital's marginal product: effluents, waste, and garbage; water as a commodity, human right, and power; the functions and dysfunctions of the global green economy; political ecology of the global climate and carbon emissions.This book contains accounts of the main currents of thought in each area that brings the topics completely up-to-date. The individual chapters contain a theoretical introduction linking in with the main themes of political ecology, as well as empirical information and case material. Global Political Ecology serves as a valuable reference for students interested in political ecology, environmental justice, and geography.

Author Biography

Richard Peet is Professor of Geography at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. Paul Robbins is Professor and Director of the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona. Michael J. Watts is Professor of Geography, and Co-Director of Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. viii
List of tables	p. ix
List of images	p. x
Notes on contributors	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Global nature	p. 1
Food, health, and the body: political ecology of sustainability	p. 49
Excess consumption or over-production?: US farm policy global warming, and the bizarre attribution of obesity	p. 51
Killing for profit: global livestock industries and their socio-ecological implications	p. 67
ôModernö industrial fisheries and the crisis of overfishing	p. 84
When people come first: beyond technical and theoretical quick-fixes in global health	p. 100
Capital's margins: the political ecology of the slum world	p. 131
Global garbage: waste, trash trading, and local garbage politics	p. 133
Green evictions: environmental discourses of a ôslum-freeö Delhi	p. 145
Risk, certification, and the audit economy: political ecology of environmental governance	p. 167
The politics of certification: consumer knowledge, power, and global governance in ecolabeling	p. 169
Climate change and the risk industry: the multiplication of fear and value	p. 185
Carbon colonialism? Offsets, greenhouse gas reductions, and sustainable development	p. 203
War, militarism, and insurgency: political ecology of security	p. 225
The natures of the beast: on the new uses of the honeybee	p. 227
Taking the jungle out of the forest: counter-insurgency and the making of national natures	p. 254
Mutant ecologies: radioactive life in post-Cold War New Mexico	p. 285
Fuelling capitalism: energy scarcity and abundance	p. 305
Past peak oil: political economy of energy crises	p. 307
The geopolitics of energy security and the war on terror: the case for market expansion and the militarization of global space	p. 325
Blue ecology: the political ecology of water	p. 345
Commons versus commodities: political ecologies of water privatization	p. 347
The social construction of scarcity: the case of water in western India	p. 371
Biopolitics and political ecology: genes, transgenes, and genomics	p. 387
Governing disorder: biopolitics and the molecularization of life	p. 389
Transnational transgenes: the political ecology of maize in Mexico	p. 412
Index	p. 431
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