Political ecology as ethnography: a theoretical and methodological guide

Abstract

Some of the most important recent transformations in the ecological paradigm are the development of transdisciplinary syntheses between the social and natural sciences, the heuristic proposal of epistemological symmetry and the methodological dialogue with complexity studies. These transformations form the groundwork for a discussion of the contributions of anthropology to the new field of study of political ecology. After the delimitation of the sub-field of the "ethnography of socioenvironmental conflicts," the specific practices of multi-actor ethnography, which identifies and differentiates between social and "natural" actors, and of the use of multiple spatial and temporal levels of analysis are delineated. The article ends with a brief discussion of the academic, critical and policy implications of political ecology research.

Keywords

• análise fractal
• conflitos socioambientais
• ecologia política
• etnografia