Degradation and Marginalization: Robbins and Bacon

Until this week's readings, we had not really gotten a discussion in depth of the four theses that Robbins sets aside in his book. This week, along with an article on the Nicaraguan Coffee Crisis, we investigated Degradation and Marginalization.

The thesis is basically this: because of state intervention and development of land in various different cases, systems of land and farming undergo radical changes that usually result in an exploitation of resources. Communities become marginalized as the same forces challenge the existing structures of governance and operation in each community.

The two standout case studies in Robbins were deforestation in the Amazon and banana farming in the Caribbean. What is important to note is that while degradation and marginalization can be applied to the causes of extreme deforestation in the the Amazonian forest (with some critiques of course) the same results that might foster a label of degradation and marginalization had little or nothing to do with the shortage of food produced in Grossman's Carribean. In that second case, cash crops did not have an effect on the community in the same way.

I like that Robbins is always pointing out how much prospective matters in each piece of his book. It is really important to understand that we take so many ecological concepts for granted and that nature is so often misinterpreted because of the way it is marketed as a commodity. Degradation and Marginalization sound a lot worse than they can be, and both the Caribbean study and the nature of understanding the UNESCO forest from chapter 5 are dependent on the perspective one uses.