Environmental issues have become increasingly prominent in local struggles, national debates, and international policies. In response, scholars are paying more attention to conventional politics and to more broadly defined relations of power and difference in the interactions between human groups and their biophysical environments. Such issues are at the heart of the relatively new interdisciplinary field of political ecology, forged at the intersection of political economy and cultural ecology. This volume provides a toolkit of vital concepts and a set of research models and analytic frameworks for researchers at all levels. The two opening chapters trace rich traditions of thought and practice that inform current approaches to political ecology. They point to the entangled relationship between humans, politics, economies, and environments at the dawn of the twenty-first century and address challenges that scholars face in navigating the blurring boundaries among relevant fields of enquiry. The twelve case studies that follow demonstrate ways that culture and politics serve to mediate human-environmental relationships in specific ecological and geographical contexts. Taken together, they describe uses of and conflicts over resources including land, water, soil, trees, biodiversity, money, knowledge, and information; they exemplify wide-ranging ecological settings including deserts, coasts, rainforests, high mountains, and modern cities; and they explores site located around the world, from Canada to Tonga and cyberspace.

Acknowledgments 1. Place, Power, Difference: Multiscale Research at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century by Liza L. Gezon and Susan Paulson 2. Politics, Ecologies, Genealogies by Susan Paulson, Lisa L. Gezon, and Michael Watts PART ONE: Policy and Environment 3. The Fight for the West: A Political Ecology of Land-Use Conflicts in Arizona by Mette J. Brogden and James B. Greenberg 4. Whose Water? Political Ecology of Water Reform in Zimbabwe by Anne Ferguson and Bill Derman 5. The New Calculus of Bedouin Pastoralism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by Andrew Gardner 6. Land Tenure and Biodiversity: An Exploration in the Political Ecology of Murang'a District, Kenya by A. Fiona D. Mackenzie 7. The Political Ecology of Consumption: Beyond Greed and Guilt by Josiah McC. Heyman PART TWO: Social Hierarchies in Local-Global Relationships 8. Finding the Global in the Local: Environmental Struggles in Northern Madagascar by Lisa L. Gezon 9. Symbolic Action and Soil Fertility: Political Ecology and the Transformation of Space and Place in Tonga by Charles J. Stevens 10. Gendered Practices and Landscapes in the Andes: The Shape of Asymmetrical Exchanges by Susan Paulson 11. Undermining Modernity: Protecting Landscapes and Meanings among the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia by Alf Hornborg PART THREE: Forest Visions 12. Shade: Throwing Light on Politics and Ecology in Contemporary Pakistan by Michael R. Dove 13. A Global Political Ecology of Bioprospecting by Hanne Svarstad 14. The Emergence of Collective Ethnic Identities and Alternative Political Ecologies in the Colombian Pacific Rainforest by Arturo Escobar and Susan Paulson Notes on Contributors Index