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.
Review Quotes:
"Political ecology powerfully joins forces with science and technology studies in these wide-ranging essays to argue that descriptions of nature are never neutral. Knowledge, even scientific knowledge, always comes from somewhere. It is the product of particular perspectives and partial visions. This is a timely message from an exceptionally distinguished array of authors spanning several disciplines. In a time of despair for many environmentalists, they offer hope that a new politics of inclusivity, in knowledge and power, is possible--and will lead us forward."
--Sheila Jasonoff, Harvard University