Degredation and Marginalization

A lot of the bigger picture issues raised in this chapter, and a lot of political ecology in general, is very related to a phenomenology course I took last spring. This was one of the most interesting classes I have taken at Goucher, partially because of the name, but predominantly because of the subject matter. Phenomenology, and specifically Husserl, argues that you should not examine the conclusion which you have reached, but rather the suppositions and intentionality which allowed you to reach that conclusion.

A concrete example of this could be the examination of an abnormal behavior. A social scientist would most likely examine the behavior and come up with an explanation that involves the social circumstances and relationships of the individual. A biologist or geneticist, on the other hand, can examine the exact same behavior but explain it according to biological functions. This happens because each individual approaches the problem from their specific perspective; thus they find an answer according to how they approached the problem. Both conclusion can be equally legitimate, but what is important to recognize is that both conclusions were only able to happen because of how the researchers approached the question.

Similarly, as Robbins has illustrated in Political Ecology, our intentionality and what we brings towards nature effectively determines what kind of answers we receive. Especially with these concepts of degradation and marginalization, we see this phenomenological influence. How we view the land, its purposes, its uses, its natural state, etc. determine what we deem to be degradation. Depending on how we see this concept of degradation, we will have a different understanding of how to apply the degradation and marginalization thesis.

As this chapter showed, the thesis is not one thing which perfectly applies to a variety of different situations. Each unique problem will incorporate parts of the thesis, but there will almost always be different levels of both degradation and marginalization and even a changing relationship between the two. The phenomenological influence is present here as well, for in each case we must examine both the issue itself, and always what we are bringing to the table in our examination and how this influences our results.