www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Geoforum 37 (2006) 163–168

Political ecology in North America: Discovering the ThirdWorld within?

Richard A. Schroeder *, Kevin St. Martin, Katherine E. Albert

Department of Geography, Rutgers University, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8045, United States

Received 12 May 2005

Abstract

Political ecologists working in many other parts of the world are now heading north, or simply going global, posing a series ofimportant questions related to theory, methodology, politics, and policy along the way. This special issue, contains papers originallydelivered at a conference held at Rutgers University in 2003 that addressed this phenomenon. The papers collected offer case studiesthat reveal the First World as subject to a host of processes that can be insightfully understood via a political ecology perspective.First, globalized production and consumption regimes have created new linkages that demand synoptic analyses of often far-flungresearch sites. Second, the painful coincidence of deindustrialization and a radical restructuring of agricultural credit and price sup-port systems have devastated North American and European heartlands, effectively producing ‘‘Third World’’ conditions in manydepressed rural areas. Third, migration streams originating in Latin America, Africa and many parts of Asia have brought sizableThird World populations into the spatial heart of capitalism. Fourth, the belated recognition of some indigenous claims toresources, especially in Canada, and fierce opposition to others, have reopened questions of (internal) colonial domination. Finally,we see the burgeoning First World political ecology literature as the culmination of what Louise Fortmann has called ‘‘the longintellectual journey home’’ for many scholars who originally carried out research on/in the Third World. All of these factors havecombined to help political ecologists discover suitable analytical terrain in the First World.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Political Ecology; Third World; Boundaries; Uneven development

1 One of McCarthy�s key contributions in this article is theenumeration of a broad range of political ecological themes that areapplicable to First World cases: ‘‘access to and control over resources;marginality; integration of scales of analysis; effects of integration intointernational markets; the centrality of livelihood issues; ambiguities inproperty rights and the importance of informal claims to resource useand access; the importance of local histories, meanings, culture, and

1. Introduction

When James McCarthy first addressed the questionof applying the core concepts of political ecology toNorth America in his analysis of the American West�sradical populist ‘‘Wise Use’’ movement (McCarthy,2002), he effectively laid down a gauntlet that has sincebeen picked up by dozens of North American scholars.McCarthy argued that there is no empirical justificationto withhold political ecological tools from First Worldcases, and that, in fact, important dimensions of envi-ronmental problems in the global north have been ne-

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.05.003

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: rschroed@rci.rutgers.edu (R.A. Schroeder).

glected by scholars due to the failure to investigate keypolitical ecological themes (McCarthy, 2002; cf. Fort-mann, 1996).1 Following McCarthy�s lead, politicalecologists working in many other parts of the world

�micropolitics� in resource use; the disenfranchisement of legitimatelocal users and uses; the effects of limited state capacity; and theimbrications of all these with colonial and post-colonial legacies anddynamics’’ McCarthy, 2002, p. 1283.

3

164 R.A. Schroeder et al. / Geoforum 37 (2006) 163–168

are now heading north, or simply going global, posing aseries of important questions related to theory, method-ology, politics, and policy along the way. This special is-sue, which contains papers originally delivered at aconference held at Rutgers University in 2003, is, in fact,only one of several scholarly collections organized re-cently that explore the possibilities and pitfalls of doingpolitical ecology in North America and other FirstWorld settings.2 We see a number of factors contribut-ing to this trend.

First, globalized production and consumption re-gimes have created new linkages that demand synopticanalyses of often far-flung research sites. It is impossibleto understand the fresh fruit and vegetable productionsystems in Africa, for example, without studying thenature of demand in Europe where fears engenderedby mad cow disease, genetically modified foods andnew ethical standards adopted by fair trade networksare dramatically reshaping the international food regime(Freidberg, 2004). Second, the painful coincidence ofdeindustrialization and a radical restructuring of agri-cultural credit and price support systems have devas-tated North American and European heartlands,effectively producing ‘‘Third World’’ conditions in manydepressed rural areas that were once thriving. These glo-bal processes have restructured the property/labor/con-sumption nexus, a classic political ecological problem, infundamental ways (Watts, 1994; Goodman and Watts,1997; Bonanno et al., 1994). Third, migration streamsoriginating in Latin America, Africa and many partsof Asia have brought sizable Third World populationsinto the spatial heart of capitalism. These groups havebrought with them cultural and economic practices thatlend themselves immediately to political ecological anal-ysis. Transnational migrants have also challenged pre-existing claims to natural resources, setting in motion in-sider/outsider political dynamics that are fraught withthe worst sorts of ethnic, nationalist and racial tension(Hansis, 1998; Anderson and Ditton, 2002). Fourth,the belated recognition of some indigenous claims to re-sources, especially in Canada (Sparke, 1998; Desbiens,2004), and fierce opposition to others (Ishiyama, 2003;Krakoff, 2002; Wainwright and Robertson, 2003), havereopened questions of (internal) colonial domination.Finally, we see the burgeoning First World politicalecology literature as the culmination of what LouiseFortmann has called ‘‘the long intellectual journey

2 A second set of papers by presenters from the 2003 Rutgersconference have been published in a separate special issue on ‘‘FirstWorld Political Ecology’’ edited by McCarthy (2005). Other recentcollections related to this theme include a special issue on ‘‘TheCommodification of Nature’’ edited by Heynen and Robbins (2005), aspecial issue on ‘‘Neoliberalism and Nature’’ edited by McCarthy andPrudham (2004), and a special issue on ‘‘Nature and Capital in theAmerican West’’ edited by McCarthy and Guthman (1998).

home’’ for many scholars who originally carried out re-search on/in the Third World (Fortmann, 1996, p. 545;cited in Emery and Pierce, 2005).3 All of these factorshave combined to help political ecologists discover suit-able analytical terrain in the First World.

2. Themes in common

One of the questions we hoped we would be able toanswer in organizing this volume was whether the moveto bring political ecology to North America would raisedistinctive theoretical and empirical issues for explora-tion. A brief review of the papers contained in this issuesuggests that while political ecologists working in theFirst World are certainly developing a range of new in-sights and evidence, they are for the most part buildingupon and extending the themes of Third World politicalecology rather than making major new departures intheir work. We are encouraged by this continuity, inpart because it shows that the field of political ecologyis coalescing around core themes even as it expands tonew geographical sites.

Kevin St. Martin�s article, for example, highlights themany ways an abstract, rationalist system of scientificfisheries management works to obscure community tiesin New England fisheries, even as it attempts to incorpo-rate the concept of ‘‘community’’—a recent import fromthe Third World—in fisheries regulation. Instead offocusing on families, collectivities or groups, and themoral economies and common property systems theyhave established to govern fishing activities, the dis-course of rational scientific fisheries management estab-lishes ‘‘fishing effort’’ as its key unit of analysis, andglosses ‘‘community’’ simply as the site of managementimpact; in lieu of mapping locally known and producedcommunal territories-at-sea, fisheries science charts fish-ing effort across abstract Cartesian space; and ratherthan consider actual social practices among fishers, theseare ascribed only to terrestrial communities, while theregulation of fishing activities is reduced to discussionsof technical issues such as vessel size and gear types.This discursive enclosure of fisheries effectively precludesany discussion of concrete management problems iden-tified by fishers themselves—localized pollution events,

While space precludes an adequate summary here, there are longintellectual traditions involving critical environmental scholarship inNorth America and elsewhere in the advanced capitalist and post-socialist worlds that have been, or could be, claimed by politicalecologists as direct antecedents. Fortmann is certainly one of the keyforerunners for much later work in this genre. Her early observationthat researchers have tended to develop more sophisticated approachesfor understanding environmental conflicts in non-industrialized placesthan those used to explain environmental issues in advanced capitalistcountries is particularly relevant to the discussion in this special issue(Fortmann, 1996).

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perceptions of environmental degradation, observedqualitative or quantitative changes in existing fish stocksin a given location—in favor of talk of aggregate yieldfigures and other abstract measures of the relative healthof the industry.

Paul Robbins presents a case study of the Yellow-stone National Park ecosystem where the act of re-introducing wolves to the area has generated greatcontroversy. One of the principal challenges to this pol-icy, which seeks in effect to restore a wolf populationthat had been made locally extinct by hunters andranchers earlier in the 20th Century, has come from rep-resentatives of the elk-centered hunting and tourismeconomies. A number of policy prescriptions have beenproposed on seemingly contradictory scientific groundsto resolve the resource management dilemmas at theheart of this controversy. Robbins, using an innovativeQ-sort methodology, arranges these different ap-proaches across intersecting axes which extend fromprivatized wildlife enclosures to broad public access,on the one hand, and from the non-interventionist pro-tection of wilderness to active anthropocentric manage-ment of wildlife resources, on the other. Actors on theground who espouse different positions along these axeshave accordingly aligned themselves behind competingpolicy prescriptions such as block management, habitateasements, grazing retirements, wildlife partnerships andgame farm deregulation.

Sandy Rikoon�s account of the US National ParksService�s attempts to eradicate a group of roughly two-dozen wild horses currently running free in the OzarkNational Scenic Riverways underscores the issue of pop-ulist resistance to state-led environmental management.In the case at hand, Parks Service ecologists workingwith a particular model of restoration ecology havebranded the Ozark horses ‘‘feral’’ and ‘‘exotic,’’ rational-izing their removal from the park as a means of returningthe Ozarks region to its ‘‘natural’’ state. To local resi-dents, however, the horses represent a time and placeof greater community control and self-determination rel-ative to outside forces, and they have become a symbol ofthe residents� own desires to remain free of centralizedgovernment control. As Rikoon shows, these residentshave responded to the threat of the herd�s removal byproducing their own distinctive natural and cultural his-tories of the Ozarks, inventing a tradition centered on thehorses that suits their own needs in countering thedomination of a distant and unfeeling state.

Deborah Che�s research explores the potential forintroducing ecotourism to the hardwood forests of theAllegheny mountains in northwestern Pennsylvania.As Che reconstructs the history of these forests, the areanow enclosed within the Allegheny National Forestexperienced repeated incursions by extractive industriesin the 19th Century resulting first in the selectiveremoval of white pine for construction purposes and

hemlock for leather tanning, and later in large scaleclear-cutting to feed heavily capitalized sawmills, tan-neries, and wood chemical plants. Somewhat predict-ably, perhaps, the subsequent re-growth ofexceptionally high quality hardwood species has nottranslated into improved economic prospects for resi-dent populations, and county and regional plannershave responded with a series of proposals to ‘‘diversify’’the local economy through the promotion of ecotourismopportunities. These proposals have, in turn, been chal-lenged by environmentalists, who argue that any man-agement plan premised on continued commodificationand extraction of Allegheny forest resources is likelyto produce serious negative consequences amountingto irreparable damage to the forest ecosystem.

Finally, Alec Brownlow sets up Philadelphia as anexemplar of environmental change in the northeasternurban corridor, where the model for urban ecology isa highly produced and well-maintained sward of park-land, manicured to suit the aesthetic sensibilities andrecreational needs of urbanites engaged in a wide varietyof genteel pastimes (compare Robbins et al., 2001). Incontrast to this ideal, Brownlow calls attention to parksin the predominantly African American neighborhoodsof western Philadelphia that have been effectively aban-doned by the city�s park board. These are spaces wherethe absence of effective social control reflects deliberatepolicies of disinvestment dating back to the 1960s, andwhere the lack of park-like management contributes toboth the perception and the reality of unsafe terrain,especially for African–American women who have beensubjected to physical assaults in the parks in ever-increasing numbers. Safe parklands, Brownlow argues,are one indicator of community health; their absencemarks whole neighborhoods as marginal territory.

The list of themes covered here, then—community-based resource management, the question of competingscientific and lay knowledge systems, strict protectionversus consumptive use of wildlife, ecotourism as devel-opment planning panacea, intersecting processes ofsocial and environmental marginalization, etc.—will bevery familiar to readers of the Third World politicalecology literature. While St. Martin makes a worthwhilepoint that the search for community has particular sal-ience in the context of the industrialized fisheries ofNew England, his work clearly speaks to the substantialbody of literature focused on the problems and poten-tials associated with forging community ties to facilitatenatural resource management (cf. Western and Wright,1994; Agrawal and Gibson, 2001; Brosius et al., 2005).In the case of Robbins� study of Yellowstone NationalPark, the parallels with controversies swirling aroundwildlife management systems in East and SouthernAfrica are unmistakable (cf. Hulme and Murphree,2001). The sort of populist nostalgia for the openrange documented in Rikoon�s study of the Ozarks is

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widespread in the literature on pastoralism in the ThirdWorld (Hodgson, 2001; Lane, 1996). The boosterisharguments in favor of promoting ecotourism in the Alle-gheny National Forest bear an uncanny resemblance tocase studies drawn from the tropics (Whelan, 1991;Honey, 1999). And the partitioning of the Philadelphiacity park system into racial enclaves is directly compara-ble to the separate amenities provisions of the urbanapartheid system in South Africa (Smith, 1992). Givensuch common themes, the articles in this special issueshould be enthusiastically read by scholars workingwithin a Third World political ecology tradition as wellas those whose interests are confined exclusively to theFirst World.

3. Theorizing the Third World within

At the same time, the ease with which scholars haveapplied theories originating primarily in the ThirdWorld to North American cases begs the question ofhow First World research sites are being conceptualizedin the new studies. The evidence provided in this collec-tion supports two separate approaches. The first, draw-ing on structuralist arguments, sees the First World aspart of a global process of capitalist uneven develop-ment. Its proponents argue, in effect, that the sameforces that produced the Third World as such areresponsible for creating peripheries, backwaters, waste-lands, remote areas, etc. within advanced capitalist na-tions as well. The second approach begins by rejectingthe First World/Third World binary altogether. Ratherthan discover the Third World within, this approach,post-structural in leaning, ‘‘re-reads’’ the First Worldfor heterogeneity and diversity, asserting that spaceswe have always assumed to be purely capitalist alwayscarry within them elements that we now commonlyassociate with the Third World.4

Both approaches powerfully disrupt our spatial imag-inary of the binary of First and Third World albeit insubstantially different ways. To illustrate the contrast,the historical treatment Deborah Che gives to the Alle-gheny Forest documents the impact of successive wavesof capital investment, as well as the abject prospectsfaced by local residents as each round of resourceextraction plays itself out. While Che�s analysis hintsat the possibilities for generating new community-basedforms of development and reclaiming the forest com-mons, these options are not proposed as sufficient out-comes unto themselves so much as conditions for aresurgent capitalism. Entrepreneurs rather than commu-nities or community cooperators seem to populate the

4 On the techniques for, and the political implications of, ‘‘readingfor difference rather than dominance’’ (see Gibson-Graham, in press).

region, and the forest, despite being largely owned bythe state, is simply represented as a resource for oneform of capitalist operation (extraction) or another(ecotourism). In this sense, the Allegheny Forest regionbecomes a kind of Third World within (i.e. a site wherethe language and categories of Third World politicalecology apply) by virtue of its ecological transformationand economic marginalization at the hands of a domi-nant capitalism. St. Martin�s article, by contrast, at-tempts to re-conceptualize First World industrialfisheries not in terms of a dominant capitalism and itsinevitable penetration of all productive spaces, but asa site where non-capitalist alternatives present them-selves as real options, both despite, and in some casesbecause of, such a seemingly overwhelming capitalistpresence. The social forms and practices of fishers inNew England are imbued with characteristics that polit-ical ecologists typically identify with pre-industrial orThird World locations (e.g. community, cooperation,local knowledge, moral economy, etc.). Purveyors ofscientific fisheries management discourse might wish todiscount and discredit such practices as vestiges of aquickly receding past, but they are not simply anachro-nistic. Indeed, their mere existence challenges the waywe think about the First World/Third World dividealtogether.

A similar comparison might be drawn betweenBrownlow�s story of the Philadelphia Parks Service�sred-lining of Cobbs Creek Park and Robbins� study ofthe wolf/elk controversy in Montana. Brownlow essen-tially presents a story of uneven development pitchedat the urban scale. The lack of investment of state cap-ital in African–American neighborhood parks producesa landscape where kudzu vines literally and figurativelychoke the life out of what was once a vibrant social mili-eu. The social marginality of the neighborhood resi-dents, the ecological marginality of their rundownpark spaces and the economic marginality of the illicitactivities that take place there get mapped onto one an-other and are thus mutually constitutive. Where Brown-low�s story can be read as one of untrammeleddomination, however, Robbins� work suggests that theenvironment might be a site where new subjectivitiesare forged and enacted. Robbins� paper has an unstatedgoal of exploring the possibilities for the formation ofwhat he calls a ‘‘green/gun alliance.’’ Objectively, Rob-bins argues, the goals of conservationists and local hunt-ers should or could coincide, given their shared interestsin maintaining access to nature and minimizing inter-vention/management. While the two groups remain atodds, ostensibly because of a range of status and classfactors, the complex dynamics afoot in Montana suggestthat, with some effort/intervention (perhaps a result ofRobbins� own work?), both groups might recognize thecommon cause they share with one other. Indeed, theweb of political alliances spawned in the wake of wolf

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reintroduction would seem to hold out the prospect ofcreating somewhat novel and unpredictable alliancesall along the wildlife political spectrum in the region.

4. Conclusion

To summarize, the contributors to this special issuedo not seem particularly concerned with the questionof the distinctiveness of North American political ecol-ogy, per se. Where regional distinctions are invoked atall, they tend to be pitched at a more localized meso-scale—the Ozarks, Greater Yellowstone, coastal NewEngland (compare Walker, 2003)—and then mostly asa type of shorthand for place-based histories and identi-ties. Thematically, the articles embrace a range of issuesthat are very familiar to readers of Third World politicalecology, underscoring evident continuities across geo-graphical boundaries. These commonalities notwith-standing, the articles gathered here offer divergentinterpretations of what the move to bring political ecol-ogy to the First World ultimately means, with one set ofarguments continuing to refine approaches to the ques-tion of capitalist domination, and the other seeking tomove beyond a structuralist frame toward more activeconsideration of non-capitalist alternatives.

From our perspective, the theories of power anddomination that underpin the uneven development the-sis still carry a great deal of analytical weight when ap-plied to the First World. The logic of capital investmentwith all of its attendant social and environmental con-tradictions, the spatial patterns born of environmentalracism, and the degree of control wielded by state regu-lators over rural natural-resource dependent communi-ties all require careful examination if the liberatorypotential of political ecology is to be realized (Peetand Watts, 2004). Such dynamics take on urgency pre-cisely because they are located in the First World, wheretheir effects may ironically be underestimated or ob-scured, and where their invocation invites political ac-tion directed at fundamental political-economic forcesshaping and limiting options for better futures.

We also see great value in a set of alternative argu-ments put forward here by post-structural analystswho draw our attention to sites within the First Worldwhere capitalism may be present in some form, but isnot as dominant as is widely assumed. These analystshighlight circumstances where the effects of capitalismare partial, contested, or not fully formed, where bothcore and periphery are simultaneously present, intermin-gling and taking shape in contradictory ways. Propo-nents of this position argue that such sites should notbe seen simply as archaic pre-industrial remnants, a kindof ‘‘Third World within,’’ but instead should be viewedas perfectly viable and arguably more hopeful alterna-tives, spaces where a variety of futures can be imagined.

We recognize that these two possibilities may not livetogether happily—no more so, at least, than they have inthe Third World political ecology field. The emphasis onpower and dominance and the continuing effort to ana-lyze a hegemonic capitalist economy that subjugates, un-evenly develops, or neglects particular regions or placesaltogether may not be compatible with a competing de-sire to reveal diversity, complexity and difference, tostress resistance and celebrate local agency in many ofthe same settings. It remains to be seen which of theseemphases will feature most prominently in the new FirstWorld political ecology literature. There can be littledoubt, however, that any concept of political ecologyas the exclusive domain of Third World scholars isnow obsolete, and that political ecologists will continueto mine First World case materials for rich new insightsthat are likely to shape the field in profound ways foryears to come.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all of the participants whocontributed to the Political Ecology at Home conferencewhich lead to this special issue. We would also like tothank those at the Department of Geography, RutgersUniversity who made the conference possible throughtheir generous donations of time. Funding for the con-ference was provided by the Department of Geography,the Department of Human Ecology, and the GraduateSchool at Rutgers University. Major funding for theconference was provided by the MaGrann Fund withoutwhich the conference would have been impossible. Forthese extraordinary gifts we are very grateful.

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