Political ecology and the epistemology of social justice

Piers Blaikie’s writings on political ecology in the 1980s represented a turning point in the generation of environmental knowledge for social justice. His writings since the 1980s demonstrated a further transition in the identification of social justice by replacing a Marxist and eco-catastrophist epistemology with approaches influenced by critical realism, post-structuralism and participatory development. Together, these works demonstrated an important engagement with the politics of how environmental explanations are made, and the mutual dependency of social values and environmental knowledge. Yet, today, the lessons of Blaikie’s work are often missed by analysts who ask what is essentially political or ecological about political ecology, or by those who argue that a critical approach to environmental knowledge should mean deconstruction alone. This paper reviews Blaikie’s work since the 1980s and focuses especially on the meaning of ‘politics’ within his approach to political ecology. The paper argues that Blaikie’s key contribution is not just in linking environmental knowledge and politics, but also in showing ways that environmental analysis and policy can be reframed towards addressing the problems of socially vulnerable people. This pragmatic co-production of environmental knowledge and social values offers a more constructive means of building socially just environmental policy than insisting politics or ecology exist independently of each other, or believing environmental interventions are futile in a post-Latourian world

Partnerships for technology transfer: how can investors and communities build renewable energy in Asia?

Technology transfer for climate change mitigation needs to focus on the diffusion of existing technologies as well as the innovation of technologies. • Diffusion requires full involvement of non-state actors, particularly business investors in new and renewable energy technologies and the local communities who adopt technologies. • This paper presents advice about how partnerships between investors and communities can accelerate technology transfer by reducing investors’ costs and making technologies more relevant to local development. Partnerships are based on a combination of creating assurance mechanisms, reducing transaction costs, and building trust and accountability. • Capacity-building and enabling environments for technology transfer therefore have to include building these partnerships between investors and host communities

Book Review: Brown, Katrina. 2016: Resilience, development and global change, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. xiv+228pp. ISBN: 9780415663465 (hbk), ISBN 9780415663472 (pbk), ISBN: 9780203498095 (ebk). £80 hardback, £26.09 paperback

Brown, Katrina. 2016: Resilience, Development and Global Change. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. xiv + 228 pp. £80 (hardback), £26.09 (paperback). ISBN: 978–0-415–66346–5 (hardback). ISBN: 978–0-415–66347–2 (paperback). ISBN: 978–0-203–49809–5 (e-book). </jats:p

Book review: The palm oil controversy in Southeast Asia: a transnational perspective

Book review of: Oliver Pye and Jayati Bhattacharya (eds), "The Palm Oil Controversy in Southeast Asia: A Transnational Perspective." (Singapore: ISEAS, 2013) ISBN 9789814311441

Politicizing environmental science does not mean denying climate science nor endorsing it without question

This paper argues that the resistance to climate science from so-called deniers cannot be explained by drawing an imaginary line between two fields of science and politics and then investigating each for malfunctions. Instead, there is a need to understand the co-evolution of scientific knowledge and political norms more holistically, and to identify how simple classifications of right and wrong reduce discussion about climate risks and policies. This paper makes three recommendations. First, the debate about climate denial is a question of how science and politics connect, rather than a moral choice in accepting or rejecting science. Second, different ideologies (including "deniers" or "acknowledgers") will always make simplistic statements about climate science. Third, there is a need to open up the discussion of climate risks beyond one master statement that humans have caused global warming to consider how to reduce emissions and vulnerability, which can include industrialization in developing countries

ID graduates reunite in Myanmar

Where do ID graduates work after the LSE? Tom Berliner and Bart Roberston have chosen Myanmar. After years of political and economic isolation, Myanmar—previously called Burma—is opening to international investment

Thailand's Red Shirt protests: popular movement or dangerous street theatre?

The public demonstrations by Thailand's Red Shirts in early 2010 have been explained as a labour-based movement resisting Bangkok's entrenched elite, or as a mob mobilized by the deposed prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in order to destabilize the current government. This profile looks into the protests' origins and nature. It argues that there are elements of truth to both explanations, but also that the protestors adopted powerful forms of symbolism of poverty and victimhood to draw attention to their needs, and to delegitimize the force used against them. This symbolism allowed both Thaksin and the protestors to gain political ground

Alcohol use, alcohol-related aggression and intimate partner abuse: a cross-sectional survey of convicted versus general population men in Scotland

Introduction and Aims. Scotland has a particular problem with alcohol, and the links between intimate partner abuse (IPA) and alcohol appear stronger here than elsewhere across Europe. This study explored differences in alcohol use, related aggression and relationship conflict across a number of groups: men convicted for intimate partner abuse, men convicted of general offences and men recruited from community sports teams. Design and Methods. Participants (n = 64) completed three questionnaires exploring their experiences of alcohol use (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, AUDIT); alcohol and aggression (Alcohol Related Aggression Questionnaire, ARAQ-28), and relationship conflict (Revised Conflict Tactics Scale, CTS-2). Results. There were significant differences across the groups in terms of AUDIT and ARAQ-28 scores, IPA and general offenders scored higher than the community sample. CTS-2 scores showed significant differences: both offender groups reported more use of negotiation and psychological abuse, than the community men, and IPA offenders reported causing more physical harm than either general offenders or the community sample. ARAQ-28 scores correlated with psychological abuse for general offenders. Alcohol use was very high across all groups, but the community group did not endorse an aggression-precipitating view of alcohol and did not report high IPA. Discussion and Conclusions. Discussed is the need for cross-cultural research to explore putative mediators and moderators in the relationship between alcohol, aggressiveness and IPA. [Gilchrist EA, Ireland L, Forsyth A, Godwin J, Laxton T. Alcohol use, alcohol-related aggression and intimate partner abuse: A cross-sectional survey of convicted versus general population men in Scotland. Drug Alcohol Rev 2017;36:20-23

Is resilience to climate change socially inclusive? Investigating theories of change processes in Myanmar

Approaches to resilience to climate change can be socially exclusionary if they do not acknowledge diverse experiences of risks or socio-economic barriers to resilience. This paper contributes to analyses of resilience by studying how theories of change (ToC) processes used by development organizations might lead to social exclusions, and seeking ways to make these more inclusive. Adopting insights from participatory monitoring and evaluation, the paper first presents fieldwork from four villages in Myanmar to compare local experiences of risk and resilience with the ToCs underlying pathways to resilience based on building anticipatory, absorptive, and adaptive capacities. The paper then uses interviews with the development organizations using these pathways to identify how ToC processes might exclude local experiences and causes of risk, and to seek ways to make processes more inclusive. The research finds that development organizations can contribute to shared ToCs for resilience, but adopt tacitly different models of risk that reduce attention to more transformative socio-economic pathways to resilience. Consequently, there is a need to consider how resilience and ToCs can become insufficiently scrutinized boundary objects when they are shared by actors with different models of risk and intervention