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Why are Students Attracted to Political Ecology?

Over the last two decades course offerings on the subject of political ecology, mainly within geography, have increased both at undergraduate and at graduate levels in many North American universities and beyond. This is to be expected given the noticeable increase in academic writing on this subject over the same period. What is unexpected, however, is the absence of any sign that political ecology is attaining the level of recognition as a coherent field of study that is given to many other emerging academic specializations. For example, focus areas such as the relatively new field of international development studies have a number of foundational texts aimed both at undergraduate and at graduate levels (eg Corbridge, 1995; Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Sumner and Tribe, 2008; Woolcock, 2007). In contrast, there are just a handful of political ecology texts (eg Neumann, 2005; Robbins, 2004) or articles dealing with the pedagogical aspects (eg Jarosz, 2004; Zerner, 1998). Most books lean towards debates about its value as a framework for research (Bryant and Bailey, 1997), or present case studies that apply a political ecology approach to the study of environmental relations (Leach and Mearns, 1996; Peet and Watts, 2004). Additionally, as evidenced by recent reviews in the journals Political Geography (Bryant and Jarosz, 2004), Environment and Planning A (McCarthy, 2005), Progress in Human Geography (Walker, 2005; 2006; 2007), Geography Compass (Jones, 2008), and Geoforum (Muldavin, 2008; Robbins and Bishop, 2008), political ecology as a field struggles with its own identity, and this has led to disillusionment among some of its scholars. Given what appears to be the problem of political ecology in establishing itself formally in postsecondary institutions, we are interested in the question `̀ Why does political ecology, as a course of study, continue to attract students?'' Surveys or in-depth qualitative studies are needed to provide a complete answer, so all we can do here is to share some preliminary observations and thoughts on this question that might provide some clarification of the issues and inform such studies. Our curiosity with this question was stimulated by interactions we have had with colleagues and with students participating in a political ecology graduate seminar in our department. We thought that some of the statements recently made by faculty and students in our department could be helpful starting points as we ponder the attractiveness of political ecology to students. These include a senior colleague in our department who recently said `̀ I notice that many of my colleagues describe their work as political ecology. I had abandoned using this terminology. Maybe I should begin to claim it back''; a PhD student participating in a graduate seminar on the political ecology of African environments who remarked to the professor during an introductory session that: `̀ From my preliminary reading and the introduction that you are giving us, it appears that there is no clear epistemological foundation for political ecology''; or another PhD student in response to the professor's question about why the students had chosen to take a course on political ecology declared, `̀ I am taking this course because of its subtitle. I would have taken it even if it was not called political ecology. I am simply interested in African environmental issues.'' In addition to other issues that we discuss later, we believe that the `label' of `political ecology', questions about epistemology of the subfield, and the way courses of political ecology are designed and taught, which the faculty member and the two students alluded to above, all partly Commentary Environment and Planning A 2008, volume 40, pages 2539 ^ 2543