In an era of mass extinction and biodiversity crisis, it is increasingly crucial to cultivate mor... more In an era of mass extinction and biodiversity crisis, it is increasingly crucial to cultivate more just and inclusive multispecies futures. As mitigation and adaption efforts are formed in response to these crises, just transitions forward require intentional consideration of the hybrid entanglement of humans, human societies, and wider landscapes. We thus apply a critical hybridity framework to examine the entanglement of the pollinator crisis with the cultural and agricultural practice of hobbyist beekeeping. We draw on ethnographic engagements with Massachusetts beekeepers and find apiculture to be widely understood as a form of environmentalism—including as both a mitigation to and adaptation for the pollinator crisis. Illustrating how power-laden socioecological negotiations shape and reshape regional environments, we then discuss how this narrative relies on the capitalistic and instrumental logics characteristic of Capitalocene environmentalisms. These rationalities, which ob...
Hydropower development is making a global resurgence due to endorsement by powerful global instit... more Hydropower development is making a global resurgence due to endorsement by powerful global institutions such as the World Bank and the imperative to scale up renewable energy production to address global climate change. Employing a green governmentality lens, we analyze the debate surrounding one controversial dam in Laos, the Xayaburi. In the realm of hydropower development in the Mekong, a green governmentality approach allows for both an investigation of the macro-political influences on hydropower development, including trade liberalization and regional economic development, and the micro-political disciplining of state and non-state actors who, through legitimizing particular discourses and practices, reinforce global power relations. Our findings suggest that World Bank-style sustainable development discourses continue to shape ideas and practices relating to hydropower and sustainable development in Laos. However, we conclude that green neoliberalization does not fully explai...
World polity theory argues that as nation-states become further integrated in global governance t... more World polity theory argues that as nation-states become further integrated in global governance they adopt attributes associated with the institutional order, including concern for the environment. We contribute to this scholarship an exploration of how historical changes in the economic dimension of the world polity have shifted the norms and decision-making processes of global environmental treaties over time. Specifically, this paper explores the global shift toward neoliberal environmental governance, how it became embedded in two milestone environmental agreements, the Montreal Protocol and the Basel Convention, and how this shift can negatively affect how global actors engage with scientific knowledge and make policy decisions, reinforcing the prevailing norms of global ecosystem protection. We conclude by suggesting that further qualitative work on neoliberal restructuration of the world polity and actors' ability to maintain focus in global environmental institutions on environmental protection is critical, especially in the area of global climate change governance.
Walking through nearly any grocery store, contemporary American consumers are bound to encounter ... more Walking through nearly any grocery store, contemporary American consumers are bound to encounter organic food. At any of the myriad of farmers’ markets that have sprung up in cities and small communities across the United States, shoppers can expect to see claims about the provenance and farming practices employed to grow everything from prized heirloom tomatoes to seemingly mundane heads of garlic. But behind the scenes, critical scholarship has shown that organic farming increasingly resembles the industrial food system organic pioneers set out to challenge. Faced with the pressures of the modern agricultural economy many farmers have conventionalized, intensifying how they farm in the face of tremendous competition and cost. Beyond the organic labels, emblazoned on products at the supermarket and the glistening bushel baskets arrayed in market stalls, are farmers, many of whom are trying to do their best to achieve sustainability in today’s food system. This book offers a glimpse...
Without abandoning the practical idea of farming as a business, the small-scale farmers in this b... more Without abandoning the practical idea of farming as a business, the small-scale farmers in this book foster connections between consumer experiences and expectations and farming practices that support their visions of organic. They try to build new, alternative markets to challenge the watering down of “organic” that the full-force entrance of corporate market logics ushered in. However, there are limitations to how sustainable such farming operations can be without further changing the relationships the modern food system is based upon. This chapter begins by recognizing the many limitations of localism, including the potentially neoliberal aspects of such efforts. However, the neoliberal notion that individuals can and should bring forth their own interests and engage in political contestation could (paradoxically) be the very kernel that further popularizes small-scale food production networks that provide safer, more healthful food and a better sense of community than the isolat...
John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism shou... more John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism should be understood in terms of a "prefigurative" and "first stage" of red-green thinkers whose insights have largely been transcended by their own work on the metabolic rift. Rift scholars have further argued that "second-stage" ecosocialists should push back against "idealist" deviations occurring amongst historical materialists concerned with the production of nature, socionatures and "hybridity," as well as more or less all engagements with literatures on eco-technological transitions, industrial ecology and the like, which are implicated in supporting "green capitalism." This paper critically evaluates these claims. In each case, it is argued, rift scholarship is narrowing the possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement and for thinking in dynamic and reconstructive terms about red-green futures. It is our sense that an ecosocialist vision of just transitions has to be conceptualized as a diverse, dynamic, iterative and always incomplete affair. Anthropocene ecosocialisms are inevitably going to involve co-producing, making and remaking hybrid social ecologies on an irreducibly restless, turbulent and warming planet. We argue that what follows from this is the necessity to both critique and recuperate the better insights of hybrid political ecology and ecological modernities.
In the traditional view of the world, leaders cause change by affecting the behavior of others. T... more In the traditional view of the world, leaders cause change by affecting the behavior of others. This can happen in any of a number of ways. Some leaders use power and authority. Others use influence and persuasion. Still others lead by example. The key concept to remember is that the real need for change is in behavior. Effective change requires a change in behavior.
In an era of mass extinction and biodiversity crisis, it is increasingly crucial to cultivate mor... more In an era of mass extinction and biodiversity crisis, it is increasingly crucial to cultivate more just and inclusive multispecies futures. As mitigation and adaption efforts are formed in response to these crises, just transitions forward require intentional consideration of the hybrid entanglement of humans, human societies, and wider landscapes. We thus apply a critical hybridity framework to examine the entanglement of the pollinator crisis with the cultural and agricultural practice of hobbyist beekeeping. We draw on ethnographic engagements with Massachusetts beekeepers and find apiculture to be widely understood as a form of environmentalism—including as both a mitigation to and adaptation for the pollinator crisis. Illustrating how power-laden socioecological negotiations shape and reshape regional environments, we then discuss how this narrative relies on the capitalistic and instrumental logics characteristic of Capitalocene environmentalisms. These rationalities, which ob...
Hydropower development is making a global resurgence due to endorsement by powerful global instit... more Hydropower development is making a global resurgence due to endorsement by powerful global institutions such as the World Bank and the imperative to scale up renewable energy production to address global climate change. Employing a green governmentality lens, we analyze the debate surrounding one controversial dam in Laos, the Xayaburi. In the realm of hydropower development in the Mekong, a green governmentality approach allows for both an investigation of the macro-political influences on hydropower development, including trade liberalization and regional economic development, and the micro-political disciplining of state and non-state actors who, through legitimizing particular discourses and practices, reinforce global power relations. Our findings suggest that World Bank-style sustainable development discourses continue to shape ideas and practices relating to hydropower and sustainable development in Laos. However, we conclude that green neoliberalization does not fully explai...
World polity theory argues that as nation-states become further integrated in global governance t... more World polity theory argues that as nation-states become further integrated in global governance they adopt attributes associated with the institutional order, including concern for the environment. We contribute to this scholarship an exploration of how historical changes in the economic dimension of the world polity have shifted the norms and decision-making processes of global environmental treaties over time. Specifically, this paper explores the global shift toward neoliberal environmental governance, how it became embedded in two milestone environmental agreements, the Montreal Protocol and the Basel Convention, and how this shift can negatively affect how global actors engage with scientific knowledge and make policy decisions, reinforcing the prevailing norms of global ecosystem protection. We conclude by suggesting that further qualitative work on neoliberal restructuration of the world polity and actors' ability to maintain focus in global environmental institutions on environmental protection is critical, especially in the area of global climate change governance.
Walking through nearly any grocery store, contemporary American consumers are bound to encounter ... more Walking through nearly any grocery store, contemporary American consumers are bound to encounter organic food. At any of the myriad of farmers’ markets that have sprung up in cities and small communities across the United States, shoppers can expect to see claims about the provenance and farming practices employed to grow everything from prized heirloom tomatoes to seemingly mundane heads of garlic. But behind the scenes, critical scholarship has shown that organic farming increasingly resembles the industrial food system organic pioneers set out to challenge. Faced with the pressures of the modern agricultural economy many farmers have conventionalized, intensifying how they farm in the face of tremendous competition and cost. Beyond the organic labels, emblazoned on products at the supermarket and the glistening bushel baskets arrayed in market stalls, are farmers, many of whom are trying to do their best to achieve sustainability in today’s food system. This book offers a glimpse...
Without abandoning the practical idea of farming as a business, the small-scale farmers in this b... more Without abandoning the practical idea of farming as a business, the small-scale farmers in this book foster connections between consumer experiences and expectations and farming practices that support their visions of organic. They try to build new, alternative markets to challenge the watering down of “organic” that the full-force entrance of corporate market logics ushered in. However, there are limitations to how sustainable such farming operations can be without further changing the relationships the modern food system is based upon. This chapter begins by recognizing the many limitations of localism, including the potentially neoliberal aspects of such efforts. However, the neoliberal notion that individuals can and should bring forth their own interests and engage in political contestation could (paradoxically) be the very kernel that further popularizes small-scale food production networks that provide safer, more healthful food and a better sense of community than the isolat...
John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism shou... more John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues have recently argued that the project of ecosocialism should be understood in terms of a "prefigurative" and "first stage" of red-green thinkers whose insights have largely been transcended by their own work on the metabolic rift. Rift scholars have further argued that "second-stage" ecosocialists should push back against "idealist" deviations occurring amongst historical materialists concerned with the production of nature, socionatures and "hybridity," as well as more or less all engagements with literatures on eco-technological transitions, industrial ecology and the like, which are implicated in supporting "green capitalism." This paper critically evaluates these claims. In each case, it is argued, rift scholarship is narrowing the possibilities for interdisciplinary engagement and for thinking in dynamic and reconstructive terms about red-green futures. It is our sense that an ecosocialist vision of just transitions has to be conceptualized as a diverse, dynamic, iterative and always incomplete affair. Anthropocene ecosocialisms are inevitably going to involve co-producing, making and remaking hybrid social ecologies on an irreducibly restless, turbulent and warming planet. We argue that what follows from this is the necessity to both critique and recuperate the better insights of hybrid political ecology and ecological modernities.
In the traditional view of the world, leaders cause change by affecting the behavior of others. T... more In the traditional view of the world, leaders cause change by affecting the behavior of others. This can happen in any of a number of ways. Some leaders use power and authority. Others use influence and persuasion. Still others lead by example. The key concept to remember is that the real need for change is in behavior. Effective change requires a change in behavior.
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Papers by Brian Gareau