Political Ecology, Critical Tools

The more I begin to understand the implications behind Political Ecology, the more fascinating a field it becomes. This week's reading challenged my understanding of the capitalist and communist theories of economy in relation to the environment. While initially it seemed like capitalism was going to be the clear bad guy, Robbins drew out his section on Green Materialism to point out that only some key parts of Marxism and his contemporaries contributed to Political Ecology.

I think that this is an incredibly complicated, but important, distinction. First of all, Robbins takes quite a risk in equating Political Ecology to Marxism when he's writing to help us understand political ecology, at least here in the United States where capitalism holds sway. Even though we may think our politics can adjust, or that we can become progressive, events like the current economic failures and the most recent crisis have shown that the solutions we have in this country are to support the system we have been building and thriving on...there is no drastic socioeconomic change in sight.

Thus it is a concern of mine that in communicating important values of Political Ecology, even if Robbins' intent is to show how materialism only influenced it, even the mention of communist theory is polarizing. I know that my initial reaction was one of skepticism, not even because I do not respect the theory behind Marxism, but because I am just conditioned to throw up a red flag in that situation.

Still, with careful reading, it is clear the the economic influences of PE are not entirely materialist, and in fact Robins lays out the argument very carefully.