Agrarian Politics Episode 6: Political Ecology: Society, nature and the commons
Inequality and injustice cannot be resolved within society without also confronting the destructive and exploitative relations between society and nature. This is a key argument within political ecology, an interdisciplinary approach that challenges ideas among radical thinkers in critical agrarian studies. In this episode, we speak with Prof. Amita Baviskar, a leading Indian scholar and activist involved with struggles around land, forests, water and food. With her, we unpack the concept of ‘political ecology’ and discuss how this differs both from ‘ecology’ and from ‘political economy’. Amita calls for a reconceptualisation of ‘nature’ and a confrontation with both capitalism and patriarchy, in pursuit of sustainable as well as just development across ecological landscapes, insisting that climate change is not the only expression of ecological crisis. We discuss the concepts of ‘red’ versus ‘green’ politics, the ‘commons’, ‘degrowth’ and the ‘Anthropocene’ – and what the current global moment of Covid-19 might tell us about society’s relationships with nature, our food system, globalisation, and one another.
Agrarian Politics is a podcast presented by Prof Ruth Hall and PLAAS post-doctoral candidate Boaventura Monjane.
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Sergio Coronado
Sergio Coronado is a Colombian Ph.D. candidate in Social and Political Science at the Free University, Berlin, affiliated with the Political Ecology Research Group at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Formerly, he was enrolled as a researcher at the “Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular”- Cinep in Bogotá, Colombia, and as a lecturer and researcher at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, specifically at the “Observatorio de Territorios Étnicos y Campesinos” project affiliated to the Faculty of Environmental and Rural Studies. He holds a Bachelor degree in Law, and MA degrees in Rural Development (Javeriana University) and Law (National University of Colombia). He published “Rights in the Time of Populism: Land and Institutional Change Amid the Reemergence of Right-Wing Authoritarianism in Colombia” published in Land, 2019; and co-authored the book chapter: “Colombian land problems, armed conflict and the state” included in: Confronting Land and Property Problems for Peace, book published by Routledge in 2014. Currently, he writes his dissertation on peasant agency and institutional change in Colombia and supports the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) secretariat. Email: sergioandrescoronado@gmail.com; sergio.coronado@fu-berlin.de