Introduction: Why a Political Ecology of the U.S. South?

Political Ecology in/of the U.S. South?

Management challenges related to the relationship between nature and society are nothing new in the U.S. South. Technical studies of rural sprawl (Wear and Greis 2002; Cho et al. 2003), coastal development (Allen and Lu 2002), environmental change (TNC 2005; Early 2006), and conservation have, at some level, addressed such challenges. So, too, a number of geographers have explored the role that particular human-environment relationships have played, for example, in urban development in New Orleans and the distribution of environmental risks (Colten 2005). What then, is the purpose of calling for, and writing on, a political ecology in the U.S. South? We argue that political ecology is more than a new term for nature-society studies (though the nebulousness of the contemporary literature might suggest otherwise), but fundamentally about the relations of power and knowledge that emerge in the context of particular nature-society relationships. This is not to say that the studies cited above do not engage with issues of power, authority and legitimacy, but to point out that previous considerations often have come in the context of separate literatures and concerns, aimed at different audiences, journals and conferences, and therefore do not truly speak the same language. While such intellectual heterogeneity can be an important opportunity for innovation, the absence of an integrative conceptual framing across these literatures creates a situation where studies in one literature contain moments of incommensurability with studies from other literatures. In these moments, something gets lost in translation between, for example, a study of rural sprawl and a study of the politics of conservation.

It is this outcome, these moments of incommensurability that led us to think about a political ecology of the U.S. South. By linking these papers under the heading political ecology, we are able to see how they speak to issues much larger than the cases raised in each individual paper. In this sense, we can move beyond illustrative independent case studies and move toward a broader understanding of the issues and processes that shape the outcomes of socionatural relationships, both in the South and in broader contexts. This sort of systematic linking is necessary, if research on nature and society in the U.S. South—or political ecology more broadly—is to do more than put out fires under particular subdisciplinary headings, or in the context of particular problems. For example, studies of rural sprawl are generally focused on larger economic drivers of this development and its impact on the environment and local populations. However, we see little concern for the construction of knowledge and authority that prioritizes certain kinds of development over others and often has the effect of framing debates about these impacts in ways that may intensify social inequalities or erode the unique social relations that constitute these places (i.e. Sackett 2007), though the sets of knowledge produced about these issues are central to the outcomes of particular debates in particular places. Likewise, studies of community conservation, while often recognizing the struggles over meaning that shape policy and land use outcomes, rarely examine how these struggles are shaped by relations of power and knowledge linked to a larger political economy, even though these relations define the contours of what, at first, appear to be local discursive struggles (Hurley and Walker 2004; Robbins 2006). Thus, in this issue we have two South Carolina studies that, though they have emerged in what appear to be distinct intellectual realms, are addressing very similar issues.

Taking a critically-informed, broadly political ecological approach to diverse socionatural relationships in the U.S. South, these papers illustrate the value of such integration and the larger issues of power and knowledge that it brings to the fore. Further, such an approach presents the opportunity to move past the narrow consideration of problems and management solutions or best practices, to recognition that particular local problems are tied to much larger issues that must be considered if that solution is to be lasting, more than the mere treatment of a...