On Political Ecology Questioning Globalization: A Reflection Starting from Bruno Latour and Philippe Descola
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Abstract
This paper develops a reflection about political ecology starting from Bruno Latour's and Descola's research. I explore the work of these two present-day scholars in order to delve into their ideas that are useful to rethink political ecology in relation to globalization. I combine and supplement Latour's reflection on the modern, political ecology, and politics of nature, with Descola's work about the ways in which humans are associated with nonhumans. I identify two key concepts, representativeness and composition, that can be employed to cross their research in order to figure out how political ecology can question the supposed universality of the modern idea of nature that is spread by globalization across the world. Being relevant for the growing interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities and social sciences, especially the debate about the idea of Anthropocene, this paper can be a point of reference to mould alternative perspectives on ecological issues by broadening the horizon of political ecology in a way that it can question globalization without indirectly facilitating any kind of isolationism.
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