Student: Bridget Lowry
Graduation date: October 2018
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved: November 2015
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Summary
In this concentration, I will examine development in Latin America through the lens of political ecology. Political ecology is a theoretical tool that questions where power comes from, and how it affects the use of resources and the environment (Bryant and Bailey 1997). It focuses on colonialism, and how the conflict over access to resources and the unequal power relations expressed therein first emerged during the colonial era and continue to express themselves today. I’m interested in how power affects development in Latin America, both in terms of what kind of development is pursued and who the benefactors of this development are. A central component of development is understanding how and why resources in the environment are used the way they are, and political ecology directly addresses this issue. Understanding resource use, and misuse, is critical to understanding environmental problems.
Before I demonstrate why Latin America is an appropriate place to situate my concentration and begin to analyze the political ecology of development in Latin America, I need to define the taxonomy I use throughout the rest of this summary. First, I want to investigate the meaning of the word “development” to understand the implications surrounding its use. There is plenty of discourse around this concept, but a universal definition of development has not yet emerged (Crush 1995). A general and common definition is that development is the lessening of poverty so as humans can best realize their full potential (Crush 1995). However, this definition is problematic because it’s too broad; it’s full of qualitative words that are context-dependent. Additionally, within the context of environmental studies, development is often associated with “sustainability,” another broad and difficult word to define. The definition of development, and of sustainable development, depends on what values one holds, which in turn stems from the culture and events that one experiences (Guha 1997). Those factors affect how development schemes are managed and what type of development is realized (Crush 1995). Therefore, it’s important to understand the context from where development schemes emerge. Power is a central factor in development consideration, even though it’s not always acknowledged.
Often, development is an international force (Zimmerer and Bassett 2003), and thus we need a tool to examine the contexts that development emerges from and the power differentials involved. The theoretical tool that I find most compelling in discourse surrounding development is World Systems Theory, which explores how countries develop in their relation to one another (Wallerstein 1974). This taxonomy categorizes countries as “core,” “periphery,” and “semi-periphery,” based on their ranking in the international division of labor. Core countries are countries that have high skill, capital-intensive production, and peripheral-type countries have low skill, labor-intensive production. (Wallerstein 1974). The context that development decisions are made in is heavily dependent on this power relation. Those with the most power are able to exert their ideas of development on those with less.
Latin America is an appropriate place to situate my concentration for a variety of factors. It’s unique biogeographic location, colonial history, indigenous cultures, trend of neoliberalism, and socialist patterns (Painter and Durham 1995), create a web of intersecting factors that affect power structures and individualized concepts of development. Political ecology, in particular, is well suited for studying development in Latin America because of its colonial past. In the global context, Latin American countries are considered either periphery or semi-periphery, so there is an inherent power differential between Latin America and the foreign aid, typically from core countries, that attempts to assist in development.
To illustrate why Latin America is unique and worthy of situating my concentration in, I have chosen two specific countries within Latin America as well as a context outside Latin America, West Africa, to illustrate how the relationship between Latin America and core countries in development schemes is different than that of other periphery countries. One example of a focused situated context is Mexico. Mexico is unique in Latin America for its close proximity to the United States. This proximity leads to complicated border relations. These border relations are extensive, but one of particular interest to me is trade deals between the US and Mexico, like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has enormous negative impacts on Mexico’s economic development as a semi-periphery country, as well as huge environmental impacts in terms of corn production and an increase in illegal drug trafficking. Additionally, the close proximity of Mexico to the United States causes Mexico to be a popular tourist destination. This creates an economic incentive to develop land as tourism destinations, which causes extensive environmental damage, including destruction of beach and marine habitats, energy use, and the commodification of nature.
Another focused situated area is Venezuela. Venezuela is one of Latin America’s most profitable economies because of its rich deposits of oil (Boué 1993). This oil makes Venezuela extremely susceptible to international interest, and to the “resource curse” (Billon 2001). Oil, and other profitable natural resources, are often strongly associated with capitalism. However, Venezuela has a history of important state and interstate actors, which have altered power structures and thus allowed Venezuela to develop contrary to capitalistic ideals. These include individuals like the Late Hugo Chavez (Corrales and Penfold-Becerra 2011), as well as interstate coalitions like the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Hirst 2015). Both of these actors have strong socialist values, and have drastically affected resource exploitation and economic development.
Both of these Latin American examples differ from other periphery countries, like countries in West Africa. All these counties have stratified power relationships with core countries and are thus political ecology is a suitable tool for analyzing them; however there are important distinctions. West Africa was colonized by the French, as opposed to the Spanish (who colonized most, though not all, of Latin America) which altered the method of colonization pursued, and thus created a different colonizer/colonized relationship. This different relationship has implications for how the countries in this region developed (Turner 2004). Additionally, the cultures of West Africa and of Latin America vary greatly. While both West Africa and Latin America have strong indigenous influences, these indigenous groups have totally different cultures, and many parts of West Africa have strong Islamic influences, in contrast to the Catholic influences in Latin America (Tuinder 1978). Finally, the biogeographic differences in West Africa create particular resource exploitation patterns and development needs. All of these factors have created unique development goals in West Africa (Turner 2004) as compared to Latin America, and help to exemplify why Latin America is unique and applicable for a situated focus.
Literature Cited:
Billon, Philippe Le. 2001. “The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts.” Political Geography 20 (5): 561-84.
Boué, Juan Carlos. 1993. Venezuela: The Political Economy of Oil. Oxford: Oxford UP for the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Bryant, Raymond, and Sinead, Bailey. 1997. Third World Political Ecology. London: Routledge.
Corrales, Javier, and Michael Penfold-Becerra. 2011. Dragon in the Tropics: The Legacy of Hugo Chávez.
Crush, Jonathan. 1995. Power of Development. London: Routledge.
Guha, Ramachandra. 1997. Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Hirst, Joel. 2015. “A Guide to ALBA.” Americas Quarterly. November 10, 2015. http://www.americasquarterly.org/hirst/article.
Painter, Michael, and William H. Durham. 1995. The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan.
Pinelopi Koujianou, Goldberg, and Pavcnik Nina. “Distributional Effects of Globalization in Developing Countries.” NBER.
Tuinder, Bastiaan A. Den. 1978. Ivory Coast, the Challenge of Success: Report of a Mission Sent to the Ivory Coast by the World Bank. Baltimore: Published for the World Bank the Johns Hopkins UP.
Turner, Matthew. 2004. “Political Ecology and the Moral Dimensions of “Resource conflicts:” the Case of Farmer-Herder Conflicts in the Sahel.” Political Ecology 23 (7): 863-889.
Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. 1974. The Modern World-system. San Diego: Academic.
Zimmerer, Karl S., and Thomas J. Bassett. 2003. Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-development Studies. New York: Guilford.
Questions
- Descriptive:What is development? What power structures exist in periphery and semi-periphery countries, and where do they come from? What are the differences among stakeholders’ attitudes about “development?”
- Explanatory: How does the concept of “development” change depending on context (i.e. from communities in Latin America to consumers in core countries)? How do power structures in periphery countries affect development groups’ use of resources and labor? How does the presence of development groups alter and/or reinforce those power structures? What power do state and local actors have vis-a-vis global actors?
- Evaluative: How do power structures benefit or harm groups’/organizations’/governments’ goals in “developing” countries? Who does development most hurt and most help, and in what ways does it hurt or help?
- Instrumental: How can development be best defined to serve the people it’s supposed to help? How can power be repurposed to ensure positive development, as defined by the above question?
Concentration courses
- IA 238 (Political Economy of Development, 4 credits) spring 2017. Exploration of development theories, and of economic and political problems affecting developing countries.
- IA 257 (Global Resource Dilemmas, 4 credits) spring 2015. Learning about controversies surrounding international resource use. Discussion of global power systems and how these systems create differential resource accessibility, which would in turn affect development of a country. Clarification: I will not be taking this as an ENVS breadth course (I will be taking SOAN 249: Political Economy of Food).
- SOAN 265 (Critical Perspectives of Development, 4 credits) spring 2016. This course looks at development from a sociology standpoint, which will be interesting to contrast to the IA course about development and hopefully will help me see new perspectives.
- SOAN 214 (Social Change, 4 credits) fall 2016. This course is about global social change, it discusses "diasporas and migration, market forces, environmental relations, science and technology, development issues in the southern hemisphere," which all relate to my concentration.
- ENVS 460 (Topics in Environmental Law and Policy, 4 credits) fall 2016. Exploration of environmental laws. How these laws affect international trade, as well as how they position the United States in a global context of environmental protection.
- ENVS 350 (Environmental Theory, 4 credits) spring 2016. This course will help me understand theoretical tools and ideas about the environment.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- HIST 142 (Modern Latin American History, 4 credits). Because my concentration is situated in Latin America, I will need an understanding of Latin American history.
- HIST 242 (Borderlands: U.S.-Mexico Border, 16th Century to Present, 4 credits). This course is extremely interesting, and will focus on imperialism and capitalism in the context of the US Mexico border, which ties into my concentration being situated in Latin America.