Violent Environments

Do environmental problems and processes produce violence? Current U.S. policy about environmental conflict and scholarly work on environmental security assume direct causal links between population growth, resource scarcity, and violence. This belief, a staple of governmental decision-making during both Clinton administrations and widely held in the environmental security field, depends on particular assumptions about the nature of the state, the role of population growth, and the causes of environmental degradation. The conventional understanding of environmental security, and its assumptions about the relation between violence and the environment, are challenged and refuted in Violent Environments. Chapters by geographers, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists include accounts of ethnic war in Indonesia, petro-violence in Nigeria and Ecuador, wildlife conservation in Tanzania, and "friendly fire" at Russia's nuclear weapons sites. Violent Environments portrays violence as a site-specific phenomenon rooted in local histories and societies, yet connected to larger processes of material transformation and power relations. The authors argue that specific resource environments, including tropical forests and oil reserves, and environmental processes (such as deforestation, conservation, or resource abundance) are constituted by and in part constitute the political economy of access to and control over resources. Violent Environments demands new approaches to an international set of complex problems, powerfully arguing for deeper, more ethnographically informed analyses of the circumstances and processes that cause violence.

Amita Baviskar teaches sociology at the University of Delhi, India Iain A. Boal is attached to the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley Aaron Bobrow-Strain is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley James Fairhead is a reader in social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Paula Garb is adjunct associate professor in the School of Social Ecology and associate director of Global Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Irvine Betsy Hartmann is director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College Emily Harwell is currently a Research Associate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Galina Komarova is a senior researcher in the Department of Interethnic Relations Studies at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow Valerie Kuletz is lecturer in American studies at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand James McCarthy is assistant professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University Roderick P. Neumann is associate professor of geography in the Department of International Relations at Florida International University Nancy Lee Peluso is associate professor of political ecology in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley S. Ravi Rajan teaches environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz Paul Richards is professor at Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands and chair of the Research Group on Technology and Agrarian Development. He is also professor of anthropology at University College, London Susan C. Stonich is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara Nandini Sundar is associate professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi Peter Vandergeest is associate professor of sociology at York University, Toronto Michael Watts is director of the Institute of International Studies and Chancellor's professor of geography and development studies at the University of California, Berkeley