Class 3
The politics of environmental change II: post-structuralism
Christos Zografos, PhD
Institute of Environmental Science & Technology (ICTA)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
christos.zografos@uab.cat
Environmental Change and Governance
MA Environmental Humanities 2011-12
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

A note
•On structure and content of classes 2 and 3
•Start: answering question to then see how approaches structuralism & post-structuralism study
power (e.g. what they focus on, analyse, etc.)
•Then: move on into looking ‘deeper’ assumptions behind the approaches, i.e. theory behind, etc.
–Here, go to different (not env studies) fields and topics
–Because approaches first developed there and then ‘brought into’ env studies
–Yesterday Hist Materialism (Marxism in economics) – today theories of government (political
science, sociology and history)
•End: “bring back” all this into env studies and our class example (paper)
1

Intro
•Purpose: explain how post-structuralism studies power through application on environmental issue
•
•Reason why you should know this:
–Because it is another approach to study how politics produce environmental change, which you can
use for your research
–
•Class outline:
–Assignment answers: the power of discourse
–The post-structural approach to power (how it operates)
–Some conclusions: study power and environmental change
2

Assumptions and starting points
•St. Martin: fisheries are privatised, i.e. their ownership is being given to individuals
–This is what he calls a “capitalist dynamic”, “capitalist relations”, etc.
–Because ‘capitalism’ is an economic system at whose basis is the idea and practice of private
ownership of the means of production (e.g. land, and NR more generally – such as fisheries)
•St. Martin thinks this is problematic:
–because an alternative ownership regime, common property (different from private and state
property) can be better ecologically-speaking
–Evidence of this around world where common property regimes have sustained both human and
ecological populations in very fragile and ecologically important environments (e.g. peri-desert
areas in Western Africa)
3

Assumptions and starting points
•So, he tries to find out how common property is being made to look irrelevant for NR management
•You may agree or disagree that common or private property are better for the environment, society,
etc.
–We can discuss this if you want later
–But for the class: let’s try to understand how he shows us that power (in this case the power to
impose capitalist NR management relations) works!
4

CLASS ASSIGNMENT 2
•
•
•
•According to St. Martin, there is a dominant discourse:
–What it says?
–What it does?
–How it does it?
–
•St. Martin (2006) explains that “As with past enclosures of common property, the discursive
enclosure clears communities and their associated social/cultural relations from the domain of
economy and produces a resource open to discursive and literal appropriation” (p. 173).
•
•How does that happen?
•
•Do you know of any other past or present examples of this same thing happening?
5

The situation (St. Martin’s “diagnosis”)
•There is a dominant ‘bio-economics’ discourse that holds that economic dynamic of fisheries is the
domain of fisheries bio-economics
•
•What it does?
–Displaces community from economic dynamic of fisheries
–Encloses fisheries in singular capitalist (private property) hegemonic dynamic
–
•‘Disciplining’ of community: geographic dimension
–Fisheries: in sea vs. Community: inland (where fishers live)
–Ports: place of community vs. Sea (resource): place essential economic dynamic unfolds
–“Community resides on  land while processes of economy are at sea” (p. 178)
•
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Dominant ‘bio-economics’ discourse
•What does discourse say? The “ontological frame”
•Economic subject: “the fisherman” = utility-seeking economic man (individual)
•Economic space: fishing space = a container of resources available-for-appropriation
•Subject + space: individual, mobile, competitive utility-maximisers (fishermen) work in abstract
space containing quantities of fish (the sea)
–Where fishermen go, with whom, from where: irrelevant
–Economic space: governed by single economic calculus
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Importance of discourse! Its function
•Academic, governmental, and international organisations have all adopted this vision of fisheries
•…and based on it have:
–designed data collection initiatives
–performed scientific analyses
–developed management strategies
8

Importance of discourse: policy interventions
•Loss of economic rent because there is a deficiency in property relations
–Absence of private property
–
•Common property fisheries (i.e. where community is the owner of the resource)
–Pre-capitalist or not-yet-fully capitalist
–Less efficient and productive
–
•Commons: can only aspire to become capitalist via
–Private property
–Management schemes to stimulate such relations
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Dominant ‘bio-economics’ discourse
•How it does it? Mechanisms of power
•Economic impact analysis
–Assess Econ + Soc impact of FMPs
–Impacts on fishing communities: look recent econ changes
–Measure: gross revenue by region = community health
–“Location of community groups” map: in land
•But what relation with resource?
•
•Social impact analysis
–No connection ports (community residence) – sea (resource site)
–VTR map exception: heterogeneous fishing industry but not projected in sea
–Community: site of impact of decisions taken re: sea (e.g. enclose or not?)
–Community: studied by anthropologists (domain: culture) no implications for NR mngm
–
•Public participation meetings:
–all community issues = struggle over allocation of catch
–community = desires of individuals to increase harvest
–The economic domain (i.e. resource in the sea) remains strongly bounded (enclosed)
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The material result
•“As with past enclosures of common property, the discursive enclosure clears communities and their
associated social/cultural relations from the domain of economy and produces a resource open to
discursive and literal appropriation” (p. 173)
•
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Discursive enclosure: community
communities
Socio-cultural relations
>
Economy
NR: fishery
APPROPRIATION (by Kist relations)
Literal (material)
Discursive

CLASSROOM QUESTION
•Questions?
•Agree? Disagree?
–In what? And, why?
•St. Martin: the dominant discourse of bio-economics ‘disciplines’ communities
–What does discipline achieve?
–What does discipline involve? How does it achieve its ends?
•
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STUDYING POWER THE POST-STRUCTURALIST WAY
•Block 2
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What’s the importance of this?
•Power imposed through discourse/ knowledge
•
•Through the ‘construction’ of a resource (e.g. the fisheries), a human group (e.g. fishermen), a
space (periphery of New England)
•
•E.g. construction of New England:
–communities: in-land, site of impact of decisions taken re: sea
–fisheries: site where individualist economic subjects (fishermen) try to max their monetary
benefit (profit-seekers)
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Studying power: the post-structuralist way
•Study ways in which social groups, resources, and spaces are constituted/ shaped (the power to
shape environments, etc.) (Paulson et al., 2005)
•
•Where is power located?
–Inside ‘the subject’
–
•How does power operate?
–Power forms ‘the subject’ from inside, through rules (s)he voluntarily follows, even whose
application by others (s)he monitors
–e.g. soldier who doesn’t break rules he has internalised as ‘right’ (or even ‘only’) way to behave
(duty) and goes straight to own biological elimination
–Robbins (2007): US suburbs ‘lawn people’ voluntarily contaminating environment and themselves
while complying to rule/ image of “good citizen”
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Theoretical background
•Because constituting communities involves deciding what is ‘true’ and what is ‘unthinkable’ about
them
–E.g. If you establish that communities reside in land, it is unthinkable that they have property
rights over/ in/ out in the sea!
–Unthinkable: they (community) themselves won’t even think that they may have property rights in
the sea
–
•This he calls the “disciplining of communities” (p.171)
–Communities are made obedient (disciplined): not to move into thinking that they may have property
rights in the sea
–Based on ideas of Foucault
•
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Foucault: exercising power
•Power can be exercised in more subtle ways (than outright oppression)
•i.e. by establishing normalised and ‘deviant’: behaviours (homosexuality), processes (democracy is
inefficient), actions (stealing = crime), persons (lepers=unhealthy), places (Africa is dangerous,
e.g. disease, crime), etc.
•People integrate these as personal principles that guide their behaviour -> you no more need to
punish or compensate
•In this way governments (or those ‘in power’) discipline behaviour, processes, actions, people,
places, etc.
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Foucault: disciplining subjects
•Central problem of modern govt.: “the conduct of conduct or else the power to act on the actions
of others”
–Modern governments develop technologies of power to achieve
•Panopticon: what is it?
–Prisoner feels he’s been watched and has to behave at all times in case guard is watching (Sharpe,
2009)
–Guard doesn’t even need be there!
–Structure of building = i.e. the shape of the prisoner’s space: facilitates prisoner disciplining,
i.e. a disciplined behaviour by himself
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Presidio Modelo prison, Cuba (Source: Friman, 2005)
Question: What’s this??

Back to fisheries in New England
•Disciplining communities: making it unthinkable for communities to claim commons property of
fisheries
•Fishing communities: that can claim commons rights in the sea
–Because: heavily “dependent on fisheries resources to meet their economic and social needs”
•Dominant discourse: where can you find “fishing communities”?
–‘Fishing communities’ exist only in developing, pre-capitalist places
–In a developed country such as the USA, they may only exist in peripheral places such as rural
Alaska
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Fishing community at Kazinga, Uganda
James Brown (Source: http://www.new-ag.info)
Akutan in the Aleutian islands (source: http://jacobimages.photoshelter.com)

Back to fisheries in New England
•Fishing communities don’t exist in mixed industrial environments of New England
–These are not “traditional”, pre-capitalist environments
–To be heavily dependent upon fisheries
•There:
–More (and industrial) economic activities take place: mixed industrial & fisheries
–You only have some individuals fishing
–Communities are in land
–Commons rights to sea: unthinkable of
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Source: photographersdirect.com
Source: http://esteveporfolio.blogspot.com

St. Martin, 2006
•Challenging power
•“To accept communities everywhere, to see them as co-extensive with [= having the same scope as]
the urban and mixed industrial environments of the Northeast (as opposed to only in isolated rural
villages), threatens the dominant discourse” (p.177)
•
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Shaping of community space: where is community constituted (St. Martin, 2006)?
•In land: New England Fishery Management Council, 2001
•In the sea: GIS map of community presence in sea by port of origin
•Map 1: community in land (only individuals fishing in the sea)
•Map 2: community in the sea (fishing trips by port of origin)
22

Shaping of community space: where is community constituted (St. Martin, 2006)?
•In land: New England Fishery Management Council, 2001
•In the sea: GIS map of community presence in sea by port of origin
•Mapping exercise: places communities “back in the map” as potential NR owners: it maps community
back in the sea resource
•Maps: technologies of imposing and negotiating power
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•Q: What does his mapping exercise achieve?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY
•Think of the technician who came in to fix the projector for the class. Now imagine that you have
to explain to him what you have just learned about how power operates! How would you explain to him
how power disciplines people and communities (perhaps with examples)?
•
•Get into groups
•
•Discuss
•
•Present your ideas
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CONCLUSIONS: TWO WAYS TO STUDY POWER AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
•Block 3
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Change in ‘First World’ peripheries and power
•Brownlow and St. Martin
•Both study ‘First World Peripheries’ (peri-urban Philadelphia; New England fisheries): Third World
within
–i.e. areas within the ‘First World’ which are marginalised and experience some ‘Third World’
conditions
–e.g. high levels of unemployment, lack of productive economic opportunities, deindustrialisation,
etc.
•
•Brownlow vs. St. Martin
•However, two different ways of conceptualising/ reading First World peripheries
–Premised on two different understandings of how power operates
–Lead to two different ways of studying power
•There are deeper theoretical differences between those two alternative ways of seeing First World
peripheries
–We examine these
•
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Two distinct views
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Two different ways of conceptualising/ reading First World peripheries (Schroeder et al., 2006)
•Brownlow: peri-urban Philadelphia park as wasteland
–E.g. weeds, abandoned cars, condoms, garbage, needles
–Disorder and decay
•St. Martin: New England fisheries as a space of heterogeneity and diversity (communities can be
diverse, e.g. exist also in ‘mixed’ environs)
–Possibility of various types of fisheries (NR) management:
•economic logic of neo-liberalism and enclosure
•community logic of commons

Tensions: structuralism – post-strm
•Structuralism emphasis: power and dominance
–Effort: analyse how hegemonic economic and social relationships subjugate, unevenly develop, or
neglect particular places
•P-str emphasis: diversity
–Effort: stress resistance and celebrate human agency
–
•Employ to study same places (First World peripheries): tension between two approaches
–i.e. read what is happening in those places as:                               dominance
(criticise) or agency (celebrate)??
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