Political ecology: Contributions from the sociology and the anthropology

Abstract

The aim herein is to analyze the contributions by the sociology and the anthropology to the construction of the study object of the political ecology as the study field dealing with the power relationships concerning the environment. An analysis of the theoretical-methodological tools from these two disciplines was conducted in order to highlight its contribution to this space of thinking. It states that what is defined as “natural” is actually built on a field of necessarily contending forces, crossed by unequal power relationships between the social agents. In it, the opposite ways of appropriating the nature are settled. It is also set out that the analyses of how the social groups are linked to their places – the core concern in the political ecology– must work based on this assumption to study the conflicts found in the processes for appropriating the nature. This way, the theoretical-methodological tools from the sociology and the anthropology enable to recognize the historic and sociocultural nature of these processes and to understand the mechanisms whereby subaltern agents report existing environmental injustices and propose alternatives questioning the prevailing model.