Ecologies of contention: how more-than-human natures shape contentious actions and politics

ABSTRACT

Which role plays the more-than-human world in shaping the possibilities for contentious actions and politics? We discuss this question by revisiting reflections from social movement theory, agrarian studies, and commons management, and by reviewing empirical cases of protest significantly shaped by ecological endowments. Distinct political ecological opportunities may arise from vulnerabilities in ecological cycles, ecological potentials, interspecies relationships, ecological invisibility, ecological visibility, ecological resources, and ecological connectivity, among other features. However, whether people, activists, and social movements are able to turn them into a dynamic source of power ultimately depends upon how they perceive and relate themselves to the more-than-human world.

KEYWORDS:

• Political ecological opportunities
• ecological endowments
• social movements
• environmental movements
• agrarian transformations
• contentious actions

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the productive input of two reviewers that helped us to bring this manuscript in its current shape. Some of the expressions presented in this paper were inspired by their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See https://www.information.dk/2000/06/noerrebro-oase-ofres

2 Note that acts of ecotage and eco-defense have been increasingly framed and discredited as ‘eco-terrorism’. Plows, Wall, and Doherty (2004), however, argue that the use of this term cannot be justified, because ecotage and eco-defense do not involve violence against people.

3 Many hill populations practice irrigated-rice cultivation and shifting cultivation simultaneously, maneuvering according to political and economic advantage in different occasions; nearly all swidden cultivators also hunt, fish, and forage in nearby forests as a broad portfolio of subsistence strategies to spread risks, ensure themselves a diverse and nutritious diet, and present themselves a nearly intractable hieroglyphic to any state that might want to corral them (Burns 2003).

4 Although CPR theory is only tangential to (or partially at odds with) the epistemological foundations of this paper, the theory is nevertheless an important reference for us due to our common interest in collective action and its effectiveness, and a common focus on the ways how ecological endowments, collective management, and social mobilization relate to each other.

5 Note that with ‘contentious actions’, we refer not only to collective social mobilizations, but include here also covert and individual contentious actions, such as everyday forms of resistance that aim for de facto benefits, not necessarily de jure ones (Scott 1985), and which are not necessarily part of a broader social movement, however, are acts of resistance against a dominant social regime or group.

6 http://www.fao.org/3/v8330e/V8330E05.htm

7 See https://www.liberation.fr/france/2018/01/15/pourquoi-dit-on-zadiste_1622519

8 Non-predictability of ecological processes, such as crop yields, may also enable important forms of protest. Harvest, for example could be low because yields have been bad, allowing people to appropriated production in acts of everyday forms of protest, without being traced.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: [Grant Number SRYC2000I029088XV0; RyC-2017-22782]; Juan de la Cierva Incorporation Fellowship [Grant Number IJC2020-045451-I]; H2020 European Research Council: [Grant Number GA 695446]; Fondazione Internazionale Premio Balzan: [Grant Number 2020 Balzan Prize for Environmental Challenges]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China Agricultural University: [Grant Number 2022TC061].

Notes on contributors

Arnim Scheidel

Arnim Scheidel is Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and adjunct professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University (COHD-CAU). His research focuses on the political ecology of development, ecological economics, and agrarian and environmental change. Contact: [email protected]

Juan Liu

Juan Liu is Associate Professor of Political Ecology and Agrarian Studies at the College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University (COHD-CAU) and a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). Her research interests include energy transitions, climate change and sustainable practices, land politics, and the political ecology of agriculture, food, and the environment, etc. Corresponding author: [email protected]

Daniela Del Bene

Daniela Del Bene is a Post-doc fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) with the ERC funded ENVJUSTICE project. She is the main editor and coordinator of the EJAtlas project. Her research focuses on ecological conflicts around dams and the political ecology of alternatives towards energy democracy and sovereignty.

Sara Mingorria

Sara Mingorría is Juan de la Cierva Incorporation Research Fellow at Universitat de Girona (UdG). She is co-founder of the feminist research collective FRACTAL. Her research focuses on agrarian and environmental conflicts, complex socio-ecological systems and global changes using the Participatory Action Research approach. She explores the links between feminism, economics and ecology and the bridges between action-research-education and art.

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas is currently Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). He is also affiliated with the Ostrom´s Workshop (Indiana University) and the Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems (WINS).