Class 6
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
Power, politics and environmental change
MA Environmental Humanities 2012-13
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Intro
•Purpose: explain how post-structuralism studies power through application on environmental issue
•
•Reason why you should know this:
–Because it is another key approach to study how politics and power shape environmental change,
which you can use for your research
–
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Class outline
•Assignment answers
•The post-structural approach to power (how it operates) through central notions of:
–Disciplining
–Challenging discipline
•Basic elements of post-structural study of 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)
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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!
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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?
•
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The situation (St. Martin’s “diagnosis”)
•What it says: 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
–
•How it does it: ‘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: policy interventions
•What it says?
•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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Importance of discourse! Its function
•What it does?
•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
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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 (i.e. in terms of $$) = 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)
–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: fishermen; community; fishery
communities
Socio-cultural relations
>
Economy
NR: fishery
APPROPRIATION (by Kist relations)
Literal (material)
Discursive

STUDYING POWER THE POST-STRUCTURALIST WAY
•Block 2
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Disciplining
•“This article is, therefore, an interrogation into the emergence and subsequent disciplining of
community in fisheries resource management” (p.171)
•What does that mean?
–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)
–By feeling he’s been watched all the time he internalises the rule of discipline (behave as he is
required)
–Guard doesn’t even need be there!
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Presidio Modelo prison, Cuba (Source: Friman, 2005)
Question: What’s this??

Foucault: a geographical approach
•Structure of panopticon building = i.e. the shape of the prisoner’s space: allows/ produces
prisoner disciplining
•Produces a more or less ‘voluntary’ disciplined behaviour or subject
–Trains him to be disciplined
•
•Shaping the space of fisheries as
–Container of resources available for appropriation
–Space where utility-seeking economic men operate
•Disciplines communities
–not to think of the sea/NR as anything else but above
–No other policies, property rights regimes (private)
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What’s the importance of this?
•Power imposed through discourse/ knowledge
•Through the ‘construction’ of (what it means to be) a resource (e.g. the fisheries), a human group
(e.g. fishermen), a space (periphery of New England), an identity (student)
•Through internalisation of rules which then guide behaviour, so that you voluntarily do and don’t
do certain things
•
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Questions, discussion
•Do you understand the approach?
•Does it sound familiar?
–Do you have any personal or known examples of this happening?
–Related or unrelated to environmental management
•
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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)
•How does that happen?
•
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Back to fisheries in New England
•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
21
Source: photographersdirect.com
Source: http://esteveporfolio.blogspot.com

But,
•St. Martin tells us:
–Wait a minute
–If you look closely, you will realise that fishing communities also exist in mixed, industrialised
spaces such as New England!
•How does he find out this?
–Mapping of communities in the sea
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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)
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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
•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?

Spaces of opportunity
•Mixed industrialised environment of New England
–Not worthless, spaces where tradition has been dominated by modernity
–Neither modern nor traditional
•Mix/ hybridity = evidence that capitalism/ modern state domination project = incomplete!
–Space where pre-modern, alternative NR management regimes (commons) are still possible
–State attempts to establish modern (bio-econs) regimes based upon presenting fisheries as spaces
of private econ activity, community as sites of management impact, etc. through policies, events
(e.g. participation) and documents are still unfinished/ unsuccessful
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Copyright: Matt Wickenheiser | BDN (source: http://bangordailynews.com)

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
–Robbins (2007): US suburbs ‘lawn people’ voluntarily contaminating environment and themselves
while complying to rule/ image of “good citizen”
•Study places, resources, spaces, communities
–not for domination, but for diversity and as spaces of opportunity
–E.g. where pre-capitalist/ modern elements (e.g. community) still exist!
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