Refracted Input

Nustad, K. G., & Swanson, H. (2022). Political ecology and the Foucault effect: A need to diversify disciplinary approaches to ecological management? Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(2), 924–946.
https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211015044

Abstract
While explicitly Foucauldian analyses have declined in recent years in the social sciences, Foucault’s ideas continue to strongly influence scholars’ approaches to power, governance and the state. In this article, we explore how Foucauldian concepts shape the work of political ecologists and social scientists working on environmental management, multispecies ethnography and the Anthropocene – often in an unrecognized way. We argue that – regardless of whether or not Foucault’s work is explicitly cited – his legacy of linking scientific projects, population management and state control continues to have an outsized impact on thinking in these fields. It is time, we assert, to directly consider how such theoretical inheritances are affecting the shape of political ecology, in particular…