Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies

Goldman, Mara J.

ISBN 10: 0226301400 / ISBN 13: 9780226301402

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2011

About this Item

Seller Inventory # fae175036845a3e1ebf0b2663602edea

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226301400
• ISBN 13: 9780226301402
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new
• Weight: 0.62 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Political ecology and science studies have found fertile meeting ground in environmental studies. While the two distinct areas of inquiry approach the environment from different perspectives—one focusing on the politics of resource access and the other on the construction and perception of knowledge—their work is actually more closely aligned now than ever before.

            
Knowing Nature brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase the key points of encounter between the two fields and how this intellectual mingling creates a lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics. The contributors all actively work at the interface between these two fields, and here they use empirical material to explore questions of theoretical and practical import for understanding the politics that surround nature-society relations, from wildlife management in the Yukon to soil fertility in Kenya. In addition, they examine how various environmental knowledge claims are generated, packaged, promoted, and accepted (or rejected) by the different actors involved in specific cases of environmental management, conservation, and development. Finally, they ask what is at stake in the struggles surrounding environmental knowledge, how such struggles shape conceptions of the environment, and whose interests are served in the process.

About the Author

Mara J. Goldman is assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado–Boulder. Paul Nadasdy is associate professor of anthropology and American Indian studies at Cornell University. Matthew D. Turner is professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.