Ecologies of contention: how more-than-human natures shape contentious actions and politics

Arnim Scheidel, Juan Liu, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorria, Sergio Villamayor-Tomas

Corresponding author: Juan Liu, e-mail: juanlcau@gmail.com

The Journal of Peasant Studies, Published online

Abstract: Which role plays the more-than-human world in shaping the possibilities for contentious actions and politics? We discuss this question by revisiting reflections from social movement theory, agrarian studies, and commons management, and by reviewing empirical cases of protest significantly shaped by ecological endowments. Distinct political ecological opportunities may arise from vulnerabilities in ecological cycles, ecological potentials, interspecies relationships, ecological invisibility, ecological visibility, ecological resources, and ecological connectivity, among other features. However, whether people, activists, and social movements are able to turn them into a dynamic source of power ultimately depends upon how they perceive and relate themselves to the more-than-human world.

Keywords:Political ecological opportunities; ecological endowments; social movements; environmental movements; agrarian transformations; contentious actions

Ecologies of contention_how more-than-human natures shape contentious actions and politics.pdf

Link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2142567