Power in political ecology
This workshop at the University of Bergen explores the concepts of power used in political ecology, and is organised by the Norwegian Research Network on Political Ecology and Environmental Policy and the Norwegian Researcher School in Geography, and is organised by the Department of Geography, University of Bergen.
Hovedinnhold
In political ecology, analyses of conflicts in the exploitation, governance and knowledge of the environment and environmental resources form key objects of study. These analyses focus on the involvements of resource users, NGOs, states, planners and (multi)national companies or other actors, including researchers, in material and discursive struggles over access, control and meanings of resources, spaces and landscapes. Identifying power and diverse ways through which power is gained, legitimized, exercised and resisted by different actors in environmental resource governance and at multiple scales is crucial. Understanding power from both structural and actor-oriented perspectives has thus been essential in political ecology, although the concept is not always clearly defined in this field.
This workshop explores the concepts of power used in political ecology. We aim to provide insight into the theories of power explicitly or implicitly used in political ecology, exemplified by cases from all parts of the world.
If you wish to participate (without a paper) please send an e-mail within 5 November to: ragnhild.overa@uib.no
Thursday 26th November
08:30 Registration
08:50 Welcome and introduction
09:00 Keynote: Power and the causes of vulnerability
Jesse Ribot, University of Illinois
09:55 Keynote: Power, oil, scale
Håvard Haarstad, University of Bergen
10:50 Break
11:00 Paper session 1: Discourses and contested meanings
The Privatization of the Common Good; Applications of Climate Change and Sustainable Development Rhetoric.
Hans Geir Aasmundsen, UiB Global
Clean Development Mechanisms in Africa: Plantations, exclusions and conflicts – discourses and power.
Erlend Eidsvik, Bergen University College
Contested Renewable Energies and the (unequal) Power of Discourses.
Rosa Lehmann, University of Freiburg
Imposing the Power of Meaning: Events of Contest over Animal and People Categories in the Kola Peninsula, Northwestern Russia.
Vladislava Vladimirova, Uppsala University
13:00 Lunch
13:45 Paper session 2: Governance dilemmas in mountain environments
Negotiating the power to produce and profit: Understanding the local-nonlocal relations of caterpillar fungus governance in Tibetan China.
Michelle Olsgard Stewart, Amherst College
How wild are the reindeer? Knowledge and power in a regional wild reindeer planning process in Norway.
Eirin Hongslo, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
The Rhythm of the Mountain: A transdiciplinary rhythmanalysis of landscapes of temporality and morality.
Frode Flemsæter, Centre for Rural Research
Contradictory perceptions of power relations in a contested and multifunctional mountain landscape - implications for environmental management.
Annika Dahlberg, Stockholm University
Conservation of a “use-mountain”: Knowledge in the Management of a Landscape Conservation Area in southern Norway.
Frode Sundnes, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
16:15 Break
16:30 Paper session 3: Multi-scalar governance and resistance
What lens at what scale? Exploring the relationship between the way of seeing power and scale.
Qian Zhang, Stockholm University
Hybrid governmentality, transnational spaces and neoliberal conservation: ‘Glocal’ governance in the Ponta do Ouro partial marine reserve, Mozambique.
Kate Symons, University of Edinburgh
Power in the Age of the Darknet.
Brett Sylvester Matulis, University of Leicester
Understanding a Global Urban Political Ecology through the Dredge Cycle in North Sea and New Zealand Ports.
Seth Gustafson, Bremen University
Food sovereignty in Colombia: seed certification as property rights to agro-biodiversity, enforcement, controversies and the seed freedom movement.
Emma Jane Lord, Biodiversity Foundation, Cali
Friday 27th November
09:00 Keynote: Power, intersectionality and authority
Andrea Nightingale, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences
09:55 Keynote: Power in planning
Tim Richardson, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
10:50 Break
11:00 Paper session 4: Political ecologies in post-colonial Africa
The Political Ecology of Water and Power in southern Africa.
Bill Derman, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Killing to make human? Civilising violence, scientific forestry, and the ‘Dorobo question’ in Kenya Colony.
Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Power, technology and renewable energy: Political Ecology meets socio-technical systems thinking.
Helene Ahlborg, Chalmers University of Technology
Power through structural reciprocal relations: Ghana’s state formation processes and ‘power’ in resource access.
Festus Boamah, University of Bergen
13:00 Lunch
13:45 Paper session 5: Natural resource governance and communities
High-value natural resources and transparency.
Päivi Lujala, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Elite Capture and Corruption in Community-Managed Natural Resource Funds in the Mining Sector.
Kendra E. Dupuy, Chr. Michelsen Institute
Land-use conflicts between reindeer husbandry and mineral extraction in Finnmark, Norway: Contested rationalities and the politics of belonging.
Kathrine Ivsett Johnsen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Changing constellations of power: The shifting role of the state in water governance.
Synne Movik, Norwegian Institute for Water Research
15:45 Ending remarks